Infinitron

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.

Sure, most of the offensive spells in D&D/the Infinity Engine games were scalable, although usually within limits. But that's not the same thing as a Diablo-style system of actually leveling up your spells directly.

Fireballs don't have levels and special abilities. They're just fireballs. Now, if OP is referring to the fact that fireball damage scales with the caster's level, then yes, it would be cool to see that increased damage reflected visually.

Whoops! Yeah, it's been too long.

Icewind Dale's Heart of Fury mode had exclusive treasure that you could only find in the game if you played with it. It worked pretty well.

Recent Bioware games have featured an ever-more rigid division of mechanics, where once you enter combat, the game is pretty much "locked" until all enemies are defeated. I'd like the game's systems to be as holistic as possible. Being in combat should not prevent me from doing things (such as picking up items, looting chests, opening a door to escape through, etc) that I can do outside of combat.

I loved it when a group of enemies would panic and rout in Baldur's Gate. You'd see those little blue circles gradually all turning yellow and then you could chase them and cut them down. Good times. Bring this feature back, Obsidian. (of course it should apply equally to your own party)

It may be better to separate it completely from the story. This will allow the designers make the dungeon more hardcore and "off the walls".

That makes no sense. The backers have already bought the game.

The spell cut scenes in PS:T were a gimmick, a homage to Final Fantasy 7 which had inspired the game to an extent. They worked because the game's combat was easy enough that you never really needed to cast them.

Identify is good, but it's probably best when it takes a backseat to using your Lore skill like in 3E.

Perhaps not, but was it like the IE games? Not really. I get the feeling that Josh would like to make something like an "isometric Alpha Protocol", a game not unlike the controversial upcoming indie Age of Decadence. Hopefully, MCA will dump tons of text onto him and he'll be forced to put it in.

Here's a link to the SA thread in question: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post407855368

I think Josh Sawyer has gotten too used to voice acted RPGs. Reading exposition "infodumps" or mundane dialogues simply isn't as annoying and time-consuming in text-only RPGs. You can skim them.

... no. Magic and magical items were not rare in BG1, there were loads of crazy wizards (looooads) and other magical items. After you completed about 20-25% of the game you didn't even have anything non magical in your inventory anymore. I know this for sure, I just completed my last playthrough a few months ago. The best items in the game (magical of course) were indeed rare - or even unique. That's an exaggeration. Heck, mundane non-magical full plate was useful till the end of the game.

Perhaps we should be able to dynamically switch bastard swords (or perhaps any sword) between 1 and 2-handed usage.

Respawning can be good but it needs to be tuned. It could get a bit ridiculous in Baldur's Gate.

Ah, I didn't realize that. well that's kind of a relief. If P:E works out maybe Obsidian can shift to a different development paradigm? Essentially becoming a sort of hybrid, AAA/Indie developer, focusing their efforts on smaller niche type games, but spending less capital on them. Less market penetration, but less risk overall and maybe a more sustainable business in the long run? If they transition to that paradigm it won't be before P:E is released in 2014. Until then they'll have to continue making pitches to AAAs. Hopefully the good publicity from this project will help them with that.

South Park's failure or success has little bearing on Obsidian's future. They've already been paid to do the job, and they're not getting any royalties.

And you know this how? I believe it, based on the costs of game development. Take a look at: http://www.notenough...fall-of-gaming/ P:E isn't Max Payne 3, but neither is it a little Indie game being coded by one guy ... it's very serious money. The Kickstarter money is really what they thought they could get to kick-start development; by the time you factor in marketing, this is going to be an expensive game to develop, so don't think that the guys are Obsidian are thinking that it's game over and they've already won. That article isn't really relevant to this type of game. The Infinity Engine games had budgets of 4-5 million dollars. With modern tools they'd need less. And marketing? I'm not sure there will be any. That said, it is true that Obsidian likely has alternate sources of funding to pay its employees' salaries. This isn't the only game they're making.

And you know this how?

That's not what the poll is about.

Fallout is definitely Tier B. KotOR 2...it's actually been way too long since I played it. I don't remember how often you got new weapons and armor there. But probably closer to C.

Amen. I once classified RPGs into four tiers of "lootiness": A) Games that have minimal inventory and by extension, minimal loot (Mass Effect 2, Jade Empire) B) Games that have inventory, but not much loot to find - mostly standard stuff plus a few goodies to find (Ultima, Baldur's Gate) C) Games that have tons of loot in the world, but most of it isn't useful once you've settled on a stable character build (Morrowind) D) Games that have tons of loot in the world, and you need to examine every bit of it and constantly change your equipment loadout, because of scaling (Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 2) Tier B is the best IMO.