Xantomas

o-k Your magic liquid sucking wind spirit divine assassin creatures aren't vampires. Creative, but there's no need to use the name of one iconic creature and give it to another completely unrelated creature.

I thought the point of the thread is the idea of them being "unusual" in an exceptional way. Not weird like "oh that Gilmdorp, he sure has one odd sense of humor! *laughtrack*" or "oh i'm so emo weep weep i'm going to write poetry about being emo and cut myself *cut, cut*"but more like "townsfolk and important NPCs being outwardly troubled by their presence." Also... I don't see how it's possible to have a pretentiously postmodern companion in a pre-modernistic world. An NPC's race or appearance is pretty meaningless alone in an isometric RPG. You are never going to see it's face outside of a character portrait. There is no closeup voice acted dialogue here. The Gith cleric in NWN2 was very exotic in all ways and the fans mostly hated her guts. Minsc in BG2 was just a plain old human ranger and he's one of the most remembered and loved NPC's in RPG history. It's the writing and personality that makes for good or bad companion characters. Making it some odd or scary exotic being isn't important. Morte from PS:T is a very memorable character mostly because of his story and personality, not just because he was a floating skull.

The guys and gals at Obsidian are not newbs, they know damn well the internet is full of loud childish idiots and yet realize that the majority of their fans are not. Alvin and all the ladies seemed to take it all in stride and didn't sweat those fools.

Vas Ort Flam! Kal Vas Flam! Corp Por! Corp Por! An Corp... In Vas Mani

I like the idea of monks using their souls to enhance their body directly instead of through their weapons like with a fighter. The monk in the concept art is FLAME PUNCHING those undead guys in the face. I'd like to see the monk as more of a barbarian, they don't need weapons because they channel destructive powers through their fists. They'll have different powers than a fighter and I would think less durability but more evasion. The next question that comes to my mind is how is the Barbarian going to be different than that? Same thing but with a sword? I dunno.

Hardcore mode in New Vegas was absolutely fantastic and I'd love to see something similar in a fantasy RPG. I don't see why an Ironman mode needs to be coded though, players can easily self enforce a single savegame. And as was mentioned before, savegame corruption is common in RPG's and alot of us are trained to cycle multiple save slots to avoid this unholy terror. Having only a single save seems dangerous and potentially super disappointing to me. Not to mention most players can tell when they are fighting a a losing battle and will just re-load their single savegame as soon as the party cleric dies. Or at the very least when they are down to a single survivor and know the fight is hopeless. If a player is disciplined enough to avoid cheesing the reload they are disciplined enough to only make 1 savegame if they want to play Ironman, without an extra game mode to make them. I like the idea of a plane-touched or aasimar type race, but I think Godlike is a bad name for it, heh Hopefully that can be a placeholder and possibly changed in the final game?

Is he holding a whip in his shield hand? That's pretty awesome, can't say I've ever seen that before. I think translations are great, Obsidian has alot of Euro fans and text translations of the game into lots of languages isn't too much to ask to please the fans worldwide. Plus it'll only help with donations.

Other - Who cares? Uber items are stupid, please leave that crap out of my old school RPG.

Kill the bastards I say. I hate forced companions and games like Bioware's latest have been atrocious in this department. DA2 and TOR spring to mind as examples. Luckily old school IE games allowed us to kill companions we hated, or at least get them killed and leave them that way. Companion death needs to be an option, regardless of how it happens. I have faith that Obsidian will keep this feature.

Well along the coast, originating from an off-map non-visitable land or island. Or maybe the pirates are based in a cove on the mainland and are powerful enough to keep themselves from being conquered and driven off. They might sail along the coast raiding villages and such. If that's the case then why wouldn't they be trying to form their own city and making their own civilization instead of continuing to be pirates if they have so much power. Also if no one can stop them then chances are there wouldn't be any villages by the coast or there would be massive harbors that they would have no chance against. My problem isn't with them existing but the game doesn't look like it was designed with gameplay in large bodies of water in mind. I don't want something being forced in just because. That's quite possible, and while I like pirates I also don't want it shoehorned in if it doesn't fit with the world Obsidian is building. This bit of concept art and the holiday today has got me thinking pirates.

Well along the coast, originating from an off-map non-visitable land or island. Or maybe the pirates are based in a cove on the mainland and are powerful enough to keep themselves from being conquered and driven off. They might sail along the coast raiding villages and such.

Witcher 2's elven terrorist bandits would make excellent pirates in a different fantasy world. It speaks to the desire to not have stereotypical tree hugging fancy pants elves. Maybe this society of elves was driven out of their homes and victimized by a human nation and have taken up piracy and guerrilla war to get back at them. Pirates don't have to be a joke!

Yes, serious pirates and not Disney pirates. They are basically sea-borne bandits. It's a valid point that this is the sort of thing that's certainly going to be thought of anyway without our help, but it's a pirate holiday after all ye filthy bilge rats! Pirates are fun! Arrrr!

It's international talk like a pirate day! I'm thinking NPC pirates, both as hostiles out in the world and characters you can talk to or interact with. The game may have primitive firearms and pirates would fit very well with that! You can even go further with the theme, imagine sailing a ship! Attacking or joining a pirate faction! Maybe a whole island or city of pirates and lawlessness ala Ultima's Buccaneer's Den? The possibilities are endless. So, what say ye scurvy dogs?

YEAAAARRRRGGG! It be talk like a pirate day today! We be wantin' some scurvy dogs in our game!

Yes, but like lots of other people only if they are rare, crude, and have downsides. A little steampunk is fun.

I like the idea that trolls must be killed with fire or acid, or lycans can only be hurt by silver or magic, or a very powerful lich has enchantments that make him immune to anything but higher level magic. I think it can be done reasonably to add some tactical quality to monsters without needing a golf bag of swords. My fighter may only have his normal awesome +3 sword or whatever, but my Paladin's got a silver sword for undead killing, and my Ranger archer has fire and acid arrows for putting down trolls. It's a team effort.

Level scaling has no place in an old school RPG like we've been promised. Old school RPG's are hard, they don't hold your hand. If I go wandering deep into the mountains far away from the peaceful village I just started the game in and find a cave where a drow army is hiding they should eviscerate me in an instant. It is completely ridiculous to expect every creature you come across in your journey to just happen to be a even fight for you. There should never ever be a common bandit, or kobold, or zombie that's anywhere near a challenge for a powerful high level character. A dragon or demi-lich should never ever be something a low level beginning character should expect to even see and live to tell about it. Furthermore having some areas in a game be really hard and others really easy makes perfect sense. Of course the powerful ogre tribe isn't going to be living right outside the well armed and aggressive human citadel. Miles in every direction from civilization is probably going to be safe. That decrepit haunted looking castle waaaaay in the deep scary woods might just be full of powerful undead. And that makes sense because nobody ever goes there. Probably because everybody that ever has is dead! It makes perfect sense to me that some areas are easy and some areas are hard. A good story guides you to those places at the appropriate time. And if it's the kind of game that gives you the freedom to roam around you'd better be prepared to deal with the dangers of doing so.

I think they have already established they are going to do a more traditional themed fantasy RPG here like Baldur's Gate and are using PS:T as an inspiration in the deep emotional story and not it's awesome uniqueness. But have faith, if this game turns out well and succeeds financially maybe we'll get more old school RPG's and they can do a "spiritual sequel" to Torment. :-D

Sounds completely unnecessary to me. These games have resurrection, so your companions will come back as themselves when you heal their body and return their soul. Now, will we see characters like liches (or something more creative) that has it's soul bound to an object against their will or to gain greater power? Sure, maybe, but I don't see why it's got to have anything to do with the party. I doubt this game will be as oddball as PS:T was, this isn't the planes after all, you aren't going to have a party composed of a talking skull, a zombie, a sentient armor, and a renegade cube robot.

Sounds fantastic, thanks for all the info!

OMG, a wand that shoots bullets! Lead magic missles!

I'm going to fix those. Sorry. God is real. You could totally work that into the story too, a great earthquake struck and altered the flow of the river! Or maybe some ancient earth god angrily awoke and his horrible wrath forever changed the landscape. We'd need to meet some ancient NPC to tell us the tale.

Sounds creepy to me, the "regular" romances in these games are bad enough already. Leave that stuff to the epilogue or prologue in the sequel.

I couldn't pick just one, and I think alot of people are like me and have played and greatly enjoyed all of them and then some. My favorite description of the project is this