Sarog

Not quite the same thing

But if you don't feel the temptation of said random hack&slash, that doesn't mean that other people won't encounter some of the dilemmas I've talked about and be frustrated if plot armour limits their actions. The freedom would be nice, and that freedom wouldn't impact on anyone's play experience unless they chose to exercise it.

Everyone does that now, though. Witcher did it. Dragon Age did it. Warhammer and Warcraft both did it in their quirky ways before that. And just about every different D&D setting has a half dozen categories of elves and dwarves anyway. We've reached a point where I think that continuing to innovate something that everyone has been innovating for a long time is rather silly. Because everyone is doing something different with elves and dwarves, you either have to outdo other franchises and be more different (which, if you take it far enough, runs the inevitable risk of people complaining that their elves aren't elfish enough, ala Dragon Age forum community) or you stick to tradition (which is utterly bland). There's just so much baggage attached to these races, and I'm not sure the reward of being instantly able to recognize a race as something familiar is worth it. That said, P:E is going to be a majorly satisfying nostalgia trip, and for nostalgia's sake I can overlook more insipid elves and dwarves.

I don't think all that is necessary. I think forced attack, with opinion penalties ala Arcanum, does just fine. Everything you mention about altering companion stories, scripting dialogue, etc. is great for when the writers choose to do so as part of their companion's story. I think we all expect that if the writers present us with the choice of killing a character in a scripted scene, that it be suitably detailed. But if the player can decide that they don't care about seeing a particular companion's story through to the finish (especially if the narrative never presents the player with the choice of killing the character), I think it is enough to let the player simply gank the character and leave them where they lie without the game having to add anything to that (aside from from opinion penalties where appropriate). That's just a personal roleplaying thing, and you don't need scripting for decisions that you reason through on your own iniative. If the game never presents me with a scripted scene that makes me confront the villainy of Korgan Bloodaxe that doesn't mean that I, as the player character, cannot conclude that "this Korgan dude is a ticking timebomb who is probably going to slit my throat in my sleep and then go murder some villagers" and then deal with the problem as I see fit. Even if there were a scripted scene to face the problem later, that doesn't mean that my character, thinking the way he does, shouldn't get a chance to preempt it. Simply removing plot armour from companions, and leaving it up to the player to justify how they take advantage of that lack of plot armour, would resolve a great deal of frustration. And of course, giving the player this freedom doesn't mean that the writers can't still write scripted scenes involving companion death. It just means that if you kill the companion before those scenes come up, you don't see those scenes. Which is a perfectly fair decision.

If a game has a factional emphasis but I can't outright join a faction, but rather remain like a free agent or hireling, I tend to feel disappointed. Making a factional emphasis but excluding a player from proper commitment to one faction or the other is rather like taking me to a steakhouse and only letting me order the salad. If there are going to be factions, let me get in there and join one as proper member and put my freelance associate days behind me.

If you want consequences for choosing to kill companions, it is still necessary that you have that choice to begin with. I'm sure everyone who wants this particular freedom would like it to have some intelligent consequences, through morale/opinion/reputation penalties or whatever mechanics Obsidian uses to track your relationships with companions and society. So long as the choice is there.

I liked Arcanum's system whereby you could kill anyone, but if you attacked or killed an innocent you would get opinion penalties with your more moral party members. You could kill a couple of people and still have your companions follow you, albeit with much worse morale, and if you went too far with it they would abandon you. That is a fairly simple fix to the morale issue, and I think it handles it well. If your character is charismatic/convincing enough, it is sensible that you'd be able to convince your followers to put up with your decisions, up until a point.

Yes, just not vampires. No vampires, please, I beg of you.

Forgive me for adding to the poll clutter, but I'm curious to see people's opinions on this topic. The RPGs of yesteryear often gave the player the freedom to express his or her displeasure with a companion NPC in a lethal way. If your paladin didn't like or trust Viconia or Edwin, you could rid yourself of them in a way that didn't simply involve telling them to sod off and thereby irresponsibly unleashing them to do who-knows-what to the general population. If your disagreement with Garfield Thelonius Remington III over which was the superior sort of tea turned venomous, likewise you could bring the issue to a murderous conclusion whenever you felt like it. While the player deciding to murder his comrades was not scripted, it did lend a sense of authenticity to one's roleplaying that you actually had the freedom to kill companions who you felt were fundamentally opposed to the ideology/interests/personality of your PC. More recent RPGs typically only allow you to kill your companions during scripted scenes wherein the writers push a companion's themes to a dramatic incident, though even this is increasingly rare. While a scripted scene is certainly more entertaining than a simple personal justification for telling your PC to attack Yoshimo because you feel you shouldn't trust the blighter, it is nevertheless somewhat immersion breaking when you are forced to put up with a companion that your character would not suffer except for restrictive game mechanics. The likes of Anders is a good example; that characters intentions were clearly revolutionary from the beginning of the DA2 narrative, and yet even if your character disagrees with what Anders stands for, you are nevertheless forced to keep him around and only get the opportunity to deal with him after you've been railroaded to the crisis point. This is understandably frustrating. Dragon Age 2 is a good example of the general frustration here, because several of the companion characters in that game are polarized on the game's central issue, and it is extremely unlikely that any given player character is going to get along with all the companions he/she picks up in that game, yet still, once they are acquired, you are forced to endure them as a part of your character's life until you reach a specific crisis point at the end. I think there's an argument to be made that companions represent a significant investment of time and writing for the writers, and that it is therefore understandable that writers want to tell a character's story and a end a character's life on their own terms. However, assuming that a character is not absolutely necessary for the continuation of the main plot (which I don't think should be the case for the overwhelming majority of companion characters, but that's a different discussion), I think it should be up the player to decide whether or not they care to see a specific companion's story to conclusion, and to give them the freedom of killing a companion if they feel that saying "take a hike, you scoundrel!" isn't good enough for their personal character narrative. Obsidian have said that they won't force companions on the player in P:E, but I hope that doesn't just mean "you can tell them to go away". Deciding how your character feels about people and how he or she chooses to deal with them is an important part of roleplaying, and in a violent world this will often involve violent solutions. So considering the general retro vibe Obsidian is going for, I'd like to see a return to the days when I could just whack Anomen with a mace whenever I felt like it and decide for myself how my character justifies the action. Thoughts?

I would like to see just a greater narrative awareness that violence is unpleasant. We expect to kill things in RPGs, whether monsters or people or something in between, and usually do so in great numbers. Even if killing is sensible and justified in the character's circumstances, it is still pretty upsetting to have a bunch of guys/things try to kill you and to end the encounter covered in blood and with chunks of limb scattered all over the place. Adventurers in RPGs tend to kill more people over the course of their careers than viral outbreaks do, but don't show much emotional fatigue from the violent lives they live. I'm not asking for a fantasy examination of PTSD through the eyes of some jaded, self-hating goblin slayer, but still I should like to see a narrative deal with it a little more closely.

Sure, why not. I don't mind different cultures within the game viewing sexuality differently. It'd be a realistic way to approach it. As interesting an idea that is, one that I think would be great for storytelling. I fear that would bring in an entire legion of litigation against this game. I could just see it now "Game maker Obsidian promotes hate crimes against gays!" No thank you. It would definitely be an interesting idea, but as I said in another post the problem with exploring homophobia and other social issues that face homosexuality is that if you deal with the issue frankly, you're likely to make a lot of people feel uncomfortable or persecuted, whichever group they identify with. Even if it was successful it would cause quite a lot of controversy, put the public relations guys through a fair bit of grief, and easily hijack the game's legacy. It would be a gutsy narrative decision, and not one to be taken lightly.

It is nice when games are fully voice acted but it certainly isn't a requirement for me. Baldur's Gate for example used voice acting for important lines and left the rest of the conversation to text, and I'd have no issue if P:E did the same. Having NO npc voice acting would be silly though, there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Please don't pin your religion to your chest when you to decide to troll. It is degrading to the idea of faith that it should be so demeaned as to be dragged into trivial internet arguments to serve as justification for inflammatory comments.

This is hugely important. If our culture, which includes video games, made these kids feel they were ok the way they are, this number wouldn't be so high. It isn't a video game company's responsibility to use its product, a source of entertainment, to champion real world demographics and to save them from depression, suicide, or anything else. That responsibility lies with parents, families, schools, communities, local government. You're making it sound like including gay-themed content isn't a choice for Obsidian with which to pursue their creative objectives, but a responsibility that is inherent to all media, with the implication that companies that don't include gay-themed content somehow share responsibility for things that, while tragic, have nothing to do with them. You can't just force moral obligation onto people when they are not responsible for the things you are laying at their feet. I live in Africa, and between aids, poverty, disease, and governmental corruption, there are millions of people on this continent who cannot afford food or healthcare. If it is up to you to decide that video game companies bear part of the responsibility for suicide among young people, then I can just as arbitrarily put the moral responsibility for Africa's problems on you. How about you live up to your moral responsibility by foregoing the purchase of the game, and instead donating your pledge to an initiative to distribute food and antiretroviral medication to low income African communities? No? Why not? Is it unpleasant to have someone try to guilt you into a position of responsibility that you never asked for? P:E is a video-game in the making. A source of entertainment. Important to those of us who enjoy the medium, but a trivial, first world concern to be sure. Please don't politicize things like suicide rates to try to guilt the developer into making the game you want them to make. This is not a deadly serious issue with ramifications for the wider world, this is a discussion about a video game. Let the storytellers tell the stories they decide to tell without charging them with responsibility for problems that they didn't inflict on the world.

Give me a packmule to carry all my backup weapons around on, and I'll sell the packmule to buy more backup weapons.

Agreed with the OP. Realistic, authentic, practical weapon and armour designs please.

Kind of hoping not to see clerics, to be honest. Rather go for a magic-is-magic approach. I don't think that the typical fantasy polytheisism will work so well in a setting that seems to be going for renaissance-era tech levels, and a lack of spell-slinging clerics adds spiritual ambiguity that nicely compliments more advanced eras. I like the idea of BG2 style class kits. Would prefer that sort of specialization to just more and more classes.

That would be a good story, but I don't think that story will be told in an RPG any time soon. Including a story like that would mean including homophobic prejudice in the story as a theme to be dealt with and a real force in the world, which would invariably make a lot of people - homosexual or not - feel uncomfortable or persecuted, and open the storyteller up to a lot of potential backlash. Games that do include homosexuality largely seem to shy away from any analysis of it in society, treating their game worlds like a sexually open utopia even while tackling issues like racism and terrorism quite boldly. I expect it will be quite a few years yet before the nitty gritty of such a topic can be examined in a game. I guess someone is going to have be bold and be the first to try approaching the issue as anything other than thinly veiled allegory, but I wouldn't want to be the PR guy working for that company.

Personally I'm hoping that Obsidian will break from the mold set by other RPGs that have you pick your weapon of choice while your character is still in swaddling clothes, to which you are married for the rest of your character's career if you don't want your specializations to go to waste. The ability to use the weapon that suits your circumstances is important to me. Not even William Wallace would opt to stick with his greatsword while fighting goblins in a cramped cave system just to take advantage of his weapon specialization. I'd sooner see a system built on different combat modes and styles that aren't tied to a weapon, than one that encourages you to invest exclusively in one particular weapon type.

Have to completely disagree with the OP. Dragon Age 2 was visually awful. Compare it to the WItcher 2, which launched in the same year.

The differences between Bioware and Obsidian continue to multiply.

Respectfully, I must disagree with this line of argument. You reduce relatability to its absolute most shallow low. A person's (or character's) identity is not who they have sex with, or their hair colour, ethnic background, or facial hair preferences. Who you are is about the whole picture, not individual aspects of that picture. If you don't relate to a specific character whatsoever, but then suddenly found that you could relate to that character if it shared your sexual orientation, that makes you shallow. Just as it would be shallow to only relate to a character because of ethnicity, eye colour, or cheekbone structure. That sort of tribal thinking, that fixates on one shallow characteristic and elevates that characteristic to being of singular importance overiding everything else, is unenlightened no matter which you apply it. Characters should be seen as people. Not as being representative of a particular group of people in order to try to boost the franchise's popularity with real life demographics. I sympathize with why you feel this is important, but all it does is compromise the integrity of the narrative with out-of-universe concerns.

I think the Witcher 2 found a good balance on the issue. In general, it is important to me that a franchise is frank and open about there being very real, authentic darkness and suffering in the world. Seeing horrific things happening on screen is important is important from time to time, but you don't need to see a simulated rape to know that it happens in the setting.

What if the focus stayed on the actual storyline rather being distracted by clumsy attempts at doubling as a romance simulator? That way no one is excluded, and the game isn't bogged down by trying to substitute for people's real life emotional needs and can simply focus on telling a story.

I love faction mechanics. I'd much, much rather have reputation mechanics for factions than shallow, polarizing morality bars. Without knowing the cultures, conflicts and themes of the world it is difficult to think of what factions to hope for, but I'm a sucker for martial orders, both religious and secular. Just so long as their ideologies are suitably complicated and interesting, and the act of choosing between factions is difficult and rewarding.