Infinitron

I believe these things can be implemented without a turn-based combat system and without a hex-based battlefield. Total War games do it, though admittedly you can't control each soldier individually there, which makes things simpler. I'm also reminded of certain fights in The Witcher 2.

The formations in the IE games were purely about character placement. They had only a minor tactical effect on combat at best. Maybe since your fighter was at the front of the party, he'd get attacked by the monsters first. Or maybe they'd just run around him and go directly for the squishy mage. By midgame you generally stopped thinking about them entirely since combat quickly become too chaotic to stick to any sort of rigid formation. I'd like to see formations made better. Let them have an actual effect on the combat rolls. Let the game recognize when my characters are bunched together, perhaps giving me the option to automatically place them in some kind of mini phalanx or shield wall formation. Let me effectively block off territory with a row of my fighters, and deflect arrows with their tower shields, defending my poor squishy mages.

It wasn't a leak, it was a planned engine demo that was showed at the UNITY 2012 conference. I don't know who started the dumb rumor that it was a leak.

Voted 1, but I'm also okay with 4 I guess

Don't even joke. EDIT: Just a question - they are deciding on an engine now? Isn't that a bit late? Or maybe their old boss Brian Fargo has already decided for them...

In before Wasteland 2/Project Eternity unified engine? That could actually be pretty cool.

Wat. What then?

What's under the hood is important too.

Feargus has mentioned some kind of new rendering technique I believe, so maybe zoom will be implemented somehow. I wouldn't count on it though.

That's not what we mean here. "Symmetrical" doesn't mean all opponents are equally matched. It means all opponents follow the same rules of the same system.

Hell yes. I love seeing enemies using the same skills and feats that I can. It just makes everything feel more "real", somehow.

Ever read The Death Gate Cycle? Humans aren't extinct there, but something similar happened.

What's interesting is that in most games that try to give the races "non-traditional" roles, the humans end up being even more dominant. Ie, in The Witcher the elves are practically an endangered species.

In short, yes. The pitch video says "locked camera". No two ways around it.

Because it's not a adventure game? Next thing I could say is that I don't need attributes and my character will just bend these iron bars because that's what I believe he should be able to do. If you want to roleplay a brute, why should the system arbitrarily prevent you from doing that? I've played BG2 runs where my stats were modded to they're max, because if I want to play a demigod I should be able to. The restriction of the game engine aside, why does the game have to hold your hand? Are you scared that you won't stick to the character you're roleplaying just because the option is there? It boggles my mind that people want restrictions. I want a roleplaying game that is more open, not more restricted. Here's the deal. It's not just "roleplaying". It's also a game. And games have rules and limitations.

I agree that it is an unconventional approach for an interactive game, but it works fine in many movies and books, and that's what Obsidian were trying to aim for I suppose.

I dunno, Diablo I was actually pretty spooky. A bit. It helps that you don't have a party in Diablo.

Remember that this game will use Obsidian's already-existing proprietary engine. I'm not sure how keen they are on altering it to make it mod-ready. We'll see.

Huge problem? Sounds like a matter of personal preference. I thought it was a fascinating narrative technique. For some people, the fascination will outweigh the confusedness. For others, vice versa.

I take it you didn't like BG2's combat.

Isometric games can have horror themes, but generally that style of gameplay doesn't lend itself well to actually scaring the player. It's like, you have a bird's eye view of everything, you're the f*cking boss. Those scary monsters aren't so scary from up here.

These two aren't exactly the same. In SoZ, once you go unconscious, you slowly "bleed out" and die (unless you have exactly 0 HP IIRC)

This is pretty much a given, I think. Avellone and co are always talking about how much they loved making these.

Money is money. It's not a game.

It's a digital download file. They should have mailed a download link to you, check your inbox if you use Gmail or something.