True_Spike

24 In no particular order: Baldur's Gate series (I came back over and over to this game, I meddled in modding and I probably clocked a few thousand [5, 6?] hours on it in the end), Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment.

Let me say this: Witcher 2 had a budget of around 8 million dollars and the game was fully voiced, localized in a number of different languages (most of the time with voice-over, in a few cases the translation was cinematic), it run on a state-of-the-art engine they built from scratch and is probably the best looking RPG (graphics-wise) up to date. It also had a very aggressive marketing campaign, at least in Poland. The budget was low when compared to other AAA titles, because the game was produced in Poland - salaries are lower here and this reduces the overall costs a ton and because CD Projekt RED was it's own publisher (in the local market). Modern games cost a lot to make, but it doesn't mean there's no way around it. There are games that cost ~100 million to make, but mostly because marketing and suits are generating a lot of additional expenses.

I'd like it to be contextual, as well, except that I'd rather if armor was not droppable. If you kill your enemy it's kind of a given his / her armor is ruined. It makes little sense to aquire armor from a dead enemy.

I cannot agree with the OP in the slightest. You're making way too many assumptions about the gameplay. I do believe it can be balanced out quite nicely the way it was presented in the update. Nobody said anything about not awarding XP for fights, Tim Cain just said that players will be awarded for *achievements*, i.e. tackling a problem - in way or another. Nobody said anything about XP for quests only or something on the lines of that.

I think any of them are fine. Be it BG2 "hotspot" style, Fallout 1 & 2 free roaming style or SoZ-like skill-based exploration.

Sometimes I wish I could forget those games just so I could play them again like the first time. You and me both.

Pointless and expensive? Lets throw down some figures to see how expensive and do a study on how much resources it takes away from the core game. As I said in another post, a stretch goal's entire purpose is to expand the game from the core. The argument that MP takes away from experience is a misguided one. It would be like me saying, shame on you Obsidian for offering to make Another faction, race, and class because if you spend too much time doing so...you are taking away from the core of what you were doing. That's just silly talk. The game is multiplayer at its core...its just that we control all of the PCs. Adding in the ability to play with 1-4 player characters and have the rest NPCs shouldn't ruin anything and would add an element that many people enjoy. Multiplayer =/= Less of a Single Player experience. Of course it does take away, because the same resources could be spent on core, single player content - further enhancing the experience. The more you spend on a co-op mode, the less you spend on single player. There's no ceilling on SP spending, you can always do more with it. And an RPG, at heart, IN MY OPINION, is a single player experience first and foremost. And just because you controll many characters does not make the game "multiplayer at its core". It's multiplayer the same way Starcraft would be multiplayer if every unit single on the map would be controlled by a different person. Just imagine Planescape: Torment in co-op mode. It just does not make sense. Only because a certain mode of play works in different genres doesn't mean it will work well in an old-school RPG.

I just rather Obsidian concentrated on the single player aspect only, given the limited funding. And by limitied I mean anything below 10 million. Co-op is just a tad better than a full-fledged multiplayer - it still doesn't fit, it still breaks your immersion. Any form of multiplayer (and co-op is exactly that) limits the gaming experience to the game's core mechanics. That's fine in a racing game or a shooter, because mechanics is all the game really is. For me, personally, an RPG game is not really about mindlessly killing monsters and gathering loot. The mechanics of the game are a vessel for the story, for the setting, for the actual RPG experience. I played BG 2 a whole lot in multiplayer (as buggy as it was) and yes, it was fun. Just nowhere near as much fun (or rather the same kind of fun) as it was to play in single player. Why would anyone want Obsidian to sacrifice resources for co-op mode in a RPG game that's all about the story and the setting is beyond my understanding, but I know many people will disagree, because they approach every game genre the exact same way.

You guys do realize he asks about the story, not the setting, right? Two very different things.

Poland, Łódź.

The tatoos in P:T where there because of the story. They made sense and they were very important. I don't think they would make as much sense in P:E.

For God's sake, I don't want another multiplayer game! Enough with this crap already. RPGs are a form of escapism, not a social media. A good RPG is about immersion first and foremost. Publishers push multiplayer down the throats of developers and even tie it to the single player portion of a game (ME3, future EA titles). No multiplayer in RPGs is the only thing Bethesda does good. I have nothing against multiplayer games, I played Starcraft for more than a decade, but this system just doesn't fit in RPGs, it makes the entire struggle to make the world believable completely pointless, void.

Learn to read, my friend. He meant that many games go overboard with the dark and gritty. When there's nothing else in the world it feels artificial. What he's aiming at is not all black, but shades of grey, just like it works in real life, which, in my opinion, makes it easier to discuss mature themes and makes them more believable, too.

Sound is extremely important, so is the music. Both are key contributors to the feel and atmosphere of the game.

I really dislike the concept of DLCs. Free or not, they are not worth an update the vast majority of the time. If you are to update and enhance the game somehow, do it in a big, ToB-like fashion. Don't release single quests, big or not, because it's not worth my time to go through the entire game once again only to experience a shred of an actual expansion.

None! I feel like I already know too much. I had literally *no* idea about the story of Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment before I played them and I feel like this lack of knowledge enriched my experience. Ignorance is bliss, truly.

A realistic setting in terms of basic principles? With soul magic? In a fantasy world? Elves, dwarfes, other races and monsters running about and Gods meddling, but a huge dungeon doesn't fit, because it's not...realistic? Realism? Really?

BG2? That's true, but level scaling has come to be associated with tweaking enemies rather than changing entire encounters. BG2 did the latter and did it in a very, very limited fashion. i'm all for changing entire groups of enemies for the sake of balance, but not everywhere and every monster.. I'm against all monsters being scaled to your level somehow, i.e. level scaling. IE games had none of that. A simple kobold was a simple kobold, period, not a 500hp kobold with Carsomyr in his hand.

Project: Eternity is a party based game. First person perspective makes it impossible for such a system to work. I see no reason for this debate, to be honest.

It needs customization and I would love it if the character creation process was Fallout-like. Pick your stats, skills, abilities etc. I'd love it if the game had traits and perks, as well. You need to be able to tweak the appearance of your character, too (unlike in Fallout). As much as it fits the IE games, I do not want to see rolling in any way, shape or form present in the character creation process. It's random, for starters, which is bad. Almost everyone will roll for hours until they get perfect stats anyway - it's only a time sink.

The game can come out late 2015 for all I care, I just want it to be everything it was promised. And you guys pretty much promised the best RPG to date only 5 days into the project.

1. I'd say twice the size of the Watcher's Keep in BG2. It would be swell if you could combine a smiliar level design to WK (where every next level was just something completely different), but at the same time maintain a focused story, much like it was in Durlag's Tower (with a few smaller storylines in-between). 2. It is crucial. The mega dungeon only adds to the feel and the atmosphere of the plot, but in a way that is hard to replicate in a different setting. The feeling of impending doom, a long-forgotten mystery, the curiosity that drives you to go deeper and uncover more of its secrets - that's what I associate with a WK / DT-like level. 3. No. 4. OH YES. A set of stretch goals - one big, that sort of concentrates on creating it and a bunch of smaller ones (additions to bigger stretch goals?) that expand it further in every dimension.

I really hate achievements. They have no place in a RPG, because they shatter immersion.

The way they presented the stretch goals (and what they are) is actually the worst thing about this project.

If you're playing a localised version of a game your experience will suffer either way. Every localisation I've ever come across is inferior to the original product. Many of those narrative nuances get lost along the way because the translators couldn't fully grasp the narrative themselves or simply didn't bother to. After all, they have to rewrite a ridiculous amount of text - they simply don't have the time to ponder on every word's exact meaning. I cannot agree. Polish version of BG1 & BG2 was far superior to the original. The voice-overs were of top quality and were far more believable than in the English counterpart. I ended up playing the English version, because I played a lot with different mods and they were all available in English - and a partial translation wrecks your immersion. I couldn't believe my eyes (and ears) how inferior the original felt to the Polish version. Overall, your experience will suffer if you're playing a TRANSLATED game. I want to play a LOCALIZED game. Most developers brand their straight-up translations as localizations, but that's a problem of false advertisment. It's all about the quality of the work done. In most modern games it costs a ****ton to localize a title well. Text-based games are not affected by this problem. And contrary to what people believe, it's not hard to "translate a lot of game text". The text is not specialized, you do not need to have any educational background to grasp the narrative, just a proper understanding of (semi)literary texts. It's not poetry, either, and it all comes down to reproducing the effect the original has on the player. It's a skopos translation. As for the proper names and other fantasy-lingo - most of the time proper equivalents already exist within the target language.