Infinitron

You're correct, it really is more strategic than tactical. And that's awesome too.

Right now, they need more stretch goals, period. Visionary or not. It's likely that as the sum gets higher, they will become more and more far-reaching.

I don't know if the game needs to use strict Vancian casting per se, but I would definitely like it to preserve that special D&D feeling of the spellbook as a custom-made "toolkit" that needs to be prepared ahead of time.

Where have you been in the past decade? Six NPCs is already a lot compared to what we're getting these days.

Well, I'm pretty sure mages were more "limited" in D&D than in any MMO...especially at low levels.

"Bugsidian"?

To be honest I don't think the exact form of the character creation is really that important, as long as it's powerful and reasonably complex. Obsidian should go with whatever they feel fits the game thematically.

If you're a fan of character creation that disguises itself (however superficially) as part of the game's plot, then Bethesda's games have some good examples. There's also the Ultima-style "personality quiz" method of character creation but those are way too prone to cheesy metagaming IMO. But yeah, in terms of sheer size and complexity you can't go wrong with NWN2's chargen.

The shaky cam doesn't affect gameplay either. It's just a split-second visual effect. There's nothing "Hollywood" about it, it's retro as hell. You shouldn't be inflicting enough critical hits to see it very often anyway. But of course it should be toggleable.

What's with all the butthurt? I thought the screenshaking was pretty cute and oldschool. An effective and cheap way of making critical hits have more "oomph" without actually have to draw any new graphics.

It would be far more than "an extra bit". We're talking potentially an exponentially larger amount of writing. But what can I say? Don't hold your breath.

It was heavily underused because it would require a ****load of writing and scripting, and SoZ was a low budget expansion. Guess what else is low budget? Besides, in addition to those few unique lines that the NPCs got, they also had the exact same generic lines that your PCs had. That wouldn't work with this type of game. You're basically asking for a game that would work like SoZ but feel like Planescape Torment, but there's a reason games like that don't exist.

How come? I'd think that this would be the perfect game for the SoZ model. If anything, I think it was quite squandered in Storm of Zehir, what with the focus on multiple PC:s rather than deep or engrossing RPC:s. Okay then, can you describe how you would implement an SoZ-like system in Planescape Torment? Because that's the level of quality they're aiming to achieve here.

I really don't think it's that kind of game, Sylvius. The companions will have autonomous personalities - why do you think there are so few of them planned? It's gonna be like Planescape Torment. Obsidian would have to write unique dialogue for each companion, for every single NPC in the game. Like I said, the best we can probably hope for is to have a very extensive and complex system of companion interjections (including the ability to invite them to interject, like that example I described with Dak'kon)

Possibly depending on the influence stat that you might have with that character (if that is present in the game). That too, but I was referring to the skills of the companion doing the talking. For example, you know in PS:T when you can ask Dak'kon to translate the dabus language for you? That could be based on his stats, skills or talents. (maybe not the best example but you get it)

Actually, the best time to discuss everything is NOW, because the team is 100% focused on engaging the community to maximize the Kickstarter's success. They're reading every post in every forum and taking notes. Your priorities will only kick in when the Kickstarter ends.

Like I said, I seriously doubt we'll have the SoZ model. It's simply not that type of game. But I'm hoping for extensive, skill-based interjections.

If you ask me, even early 90's 256 color VGA 2D art still looks pretty awesome.

How about a rapier and main gauche?

Project Eternity is not using the Infinity Engine.

But will they use conversational skills, or only the main character? That's the question.

at that time it had to be scripted and turn based to be compatible with the low processing power of the PCs of the time. today's game engines and PCs can do the same thing easily in real time. besides you usually fight 2 or 3 types of enemies in every battle not all types of enemies the game has to offer at the same time, so it doesn't have to load ALL the animations and run out of memory. lol

The first Baldur's Gate had tons of random commoner NPCs milling around in towns. This shouldn't be a problem.

But which one? PS:T didn't let you talk to people with anybody except TNO. Icewind Dale conversations could differ based on who was talking - sometimes there were special dialogue options for certain classes and races.

It's been customary in games that have a main character to only allow the main character to initiate and hold conversations. As a result, only he needs to get dialogue-related skills. Sometimes the game even prevents you from giving dialogue-related talents, feats, etc to companions, because they'll never use them. I'm wondering if PE will be like this, or if it will be like Baldur's Gate, a rare example of a game with a main character that DID allow you to talk to people with any character in your party (although only extremely rarely did this have any unique consequences in dialogue). An alternative would be to allow only the main character to initiate conversations, but to add many, many scripted companion interjections to the conversations that do utilize the companions' dialogue skills, thus preventing said skills from being worthless. I suppose an SoZ-style converation system would be too much to hope for in this kind of game.