Infinitron

By the way, OP might be interesting in knowing that Chris Avellone himself has regrets about Planescape Torment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment#Development

Who's this "you" that you're referring to? I for one am quite excited by mechanics.

I doubt people who say they "adore everything about the old Infinity Engine games" are hardcore realtime-with-pause haters. But we can ask him if you're curious.

http://www.gamasutra...hp#.UG61epjMh8E Ahem, ahem.

Juvenile thread is juvenile. What is the point of this post, metiman? You think you're helping this game by pigeonholing people into "factions", talking about "rifts" and making other generalizations? All you're doing is putting people in a combative mood and reducing the chance of the Obsidian developers taking this forum seriously.

I beg forgiveness in advance for the OT. I saw that page already, but I couldn't manage to understand how will it be distributed. I don't want another client. I already have steam and origin (if there's a god I hope he can forgive me) and gog (even though it's just a download manager). I don't want other third party useless programs on my pc... What other client? You'll be able to choose whatever client you want.

Yes, and probably yes. Am I correct then that you view this unfavorably? It has been my experience that people generally praise movies/games that go for this sort of gritty, realistic approach. I can't say I've often seen Nolan's Batman or Game of Thrones used as negative comparisons before, so I'm curious as to your perspective. Actually, not at all! I think that approach is pretty cool, even if overused these days. I just want this game to be authentic to the IE classics which were not that way, that's all.

Yes, and probably yes.

Oh, absolutely. I also think there's an influence here from contemporary cinema - in particular, the Nolan Batman films - which seems to be trending towards making more realistic (and therefore more "gritty") fictional universes.

No, not necessarily. In fact, the first Witcher game had a city much larger than anything in the sequel, and you spent a lot of time there. But it was balanced with other elements, both in terms of locations and in terms of plot and theme.

I can't help but think of when I hear "Godlike".

You're right, it is. But I think if you ran a survey, most people would subjectively agree with me. Seriously man, if you don't see how TW2 was more political than TW1 then nothing I can say will convince you. I don't see why I should spend my time trying to convince you of it. This is a Project Eternity forum, not a Witcher forum, after all.

Well, I disagree. The way in which they are interrelated defines what sort of mood and feel the game has, and that's an important thing. At the end of the day, Witcher 2 felt like a Game of Thrones homage while the original had a more unique and eclectic vibe to it. Similarly, Dragon Age 2 felt like a (very poor) attempt at a fantasy version of "The Wire", telling us the story of a city named Kirkwall in the same way that acclaimed series tells a story of Baltimore, while the city of Athkatla was more or less entirely incidental to the plot of Baldur's Gate 2. If you don't see how that difference matters, then I'm not sure what else I can say.

I think you've answered your own question here. The entire plot of Witcher 2 was predicated on a Very political. Baldur's Gate 2 may have had some low level factional stuff you could meddle with, but the basis of the main plot was the very personal obsession of one Jon Irenicus. Even the "Thieves vs Vampires faction war" aspect was half-hearted and faded out surprisingly quickly as the player went on to Brynnlaw and the Underdark to do more adventurey things. In short, Baldur's Gate 2 is more-or-less the kind of reasonably balanced game I'm interested in, although I would prefer if it also had more wilderness areas.

That's not the kind of human-centrism I'm referring to. When I say "human-centric", I mean humans as a civilization, as political animals - not humans as mere individuals that you meet during your adventures. BG2 (and D&D games in general) tended to have a very simplified view of such things. Note that you never actually got to meet the rulers of Amn or the leaders of the Cowled Wizards in BG2. Correct, Bethesda-style games are the big exception to the trend I pointed out. For all their faults, they still get it, which is why I have a grudging respect for them.

Well, I did qualify that statement with "I suspect". Yes, I might be wrong about that. I'm not a game developer.

So more BG1 than BG2? Yes and no. I did like BG1's larger amount of wilderness exploration, but at the same time, I don't think BG2 was the same kind of faction-centric, dialogue-centric game as some of today's RPGs. Yes, you spent a large percentage of the game in Athkatla, but the city was more like a huge collection of sidequests stuffed together than a coherent setting with well-defined politics and personalities.

Touchy. Again, note that I'm not advocating that those elements you like be removed entirely from the game. Only that they not be the entire focus of it.

RPGs have changed in many ways over the years. One of those changes has been a gradual but noticeable shift, from the classic experience of wilderness exploration, monster slaying and dungeon delving, towards increasingly "human-centric" plots, often involving politics and factions, and taking place mainly in towns. For a good recent example of this, compare Witcher 1 with Witcher 2. Both decent games, but i feel that Witcher 2, with its intense political focus, lost something of the original game's "rural mystique" that made it really special. I suspect that one of the reasons for this shift has been the rise of consoles, combined with the shift towards third person perspectives. It's easier to create smaller, more detailed areas (ie, towns) with the console's limited memory, and the third person perspective tends to fit with a more "cinematic" sort of plot, with lots of dialogue and intrigue. Whatever the case, I hope Obsidian can bring back the balance between oldschool adventuring and "newschool" person-centric storytelling.

"Ciphers" is the nickname for the Transcendent Order faction in the Planescape setting. But they have nothing to do with these ciphers.

This is the best update yet.

I prefer fullscreen, and the best results for fullscreen are at native screen resolution I don't know, non-native resolutions should look decent enough as long as they maintain 16:10 aspect ratio.

Lower your resolution. 1280x800 is a good compromise.

Dragon Age's camera was decent yes. I suspect though that having a good camera is also (perhaps mainly) a matter of constructing maps that are easy to navigate with a free camera.

Where we're going, we don't need cameras. ... Seriously, have you watched the Kickstarter pitch video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC4w9GdFPrg Skip to 2:11