Sarog

Skyrim style player houses are silly novelties, in my opinion. If it isn't a Baldur's Gate 2 style class stronghold with its own storyline, I don't think it is worth wasting development time on.

Disagreed. I'd welcome guns so long as their place in the world is intelligently considered, and I'm more than willing to give Obsidian the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I'm keen to have guns, if only to distance the game further from traditional Tolkien fantasy. If they are present however it needs to be sensible, in the way that Warcraft absolutely is not. If the setting emulates the renaissance and real world history where guns, swords and plate armour were used in the same era, then I don't think the game needs to go full steampunk to pull it of. Guns and cannons would be welcome, so long as it isn't a moronic Warcraft crucible wherein axes, arrows, submarines, and orbital cannons coexist seamlessly together without any intelligent consequences. Seconded. If Obsidian gave me a plate-armoured, gun-wielding conquistador, I'd be too distracted by novelty to complain about anything else.

There are few things that I miss so much from RPGs as thick manuals that describe setting lore. Sitting down with one of those while installing a game is a treat in itself, especially when you keep reading even after your install progress is finished. I love learning lore in the game through the world's own perspective more though. I enjoyed hunting down books in BG and Arcanum immensely. Much as I love tactical combat, RPGs are more than just kill simulators, and being able to enjoy yourself by finding a new book and stopping to read it does a lot to add to the experience.

XPacks are also more transparent, in that you know that they constitute something separate from the original product's development phase. Companies that make use of DLC are more and more getting into murkey waters where they sell you content that is already on the disc you bought with the original product, justified with vague assurances of how the content that is already on your disc would never have existed if they hadn't allocated post-disc development time to it.

Having your different combat modes change your combat animations to reflect your fighting style would be awesome. You can extend that quite a ways beyond just dirty fighting.

I feel the same. If the tolkien races are drastically different it could salvage them somewhat. I liked some of the ideas in Eberron's campaign setting, where gnomes were a police state rife with espionage and elves were either death obsessed Aztecs or militantly aggressive horse nomads. Though if you are prepared to deviate so drastically from the tradition in a new IP, why bother sticking to those races at all? It does run the risk that traditional elven fans will expect a traditional elven race for their traditional elven preferences, and then complain bitterly when their elves aren't elven enough as happened with Dragon Age. Traditional races come with a lot of baggage; both in the expectations people have for what the race should be, and in the new and innovative things that other franchises have done with them that you then have to compete with. It would be so refreshing if they were just ditched entirely.

Just from a narrative point of view alone, I much prefer XPacks. A handful of episodic DLC adventures aren't nearly as satisfying as a singly lengthy chapter added to the primary storyline.

I assume there are elves, because there appears to be concept art of an elf in the video. Either an elf or something so near to an elf as makes no difference. Original races would be nice, but honestly I'd prefer if there was just a greater depth of culture within humans. I'm rather bored of the idea of lots of physically different races who all have only one language, one religion, and one umbrella culture. Especially if they are all associated with some element or another, like dwarves being the "earth race" or elves being perpetually associated with forests. We'll probably see tolkien races. I don't see myself ever being enthusiastic about them, but I can live them so long as they aren't too front-and-center to the world narrative or too derivative of Tolkien or D&D.

I like the idea of activated modes for fighter characters. The likes of power attack, combat expertise, etc that can address how your character chooses to engage his enemy in the particular moments, but that aren't spell-analogue maneuvers like a whirlwind attack or whatever. I always play warrior classes in RPGs cRPGs and MMORPGs, and while it does get boring to just click and autoattack, I'm not too keen on going too far in the opposite direction. Dragon Age 2 made me feel way too much like I was aping a dps rotation. If I'm tactically managing a party, I don't really want to jump between my melee guys every few seconds to make sure that they are firing mortal strike, heroic thrust, and ragey blow in the optimium dps order. Ideally for me, playing a fighter could be made more dynamic through adding a depth of combat modes that you don't just sit in, but stance-dance with for maximum effect. Especially if the system can encourage you to play with more than one weapon, rather than just max out greatsword perks and stay married to to that one weapon for the duration of the game. If a combat experience could involve keeping foes at bay with a polearm while party members position themselves, switching to longsword and buckler to close in, fighting defensively with the shield while party members take down foes, taking the longsword in two hands for an aggressive stance as the enemy numbers dwindle, and then using feints and precise strikes on a heavily armoured opponent... even if it just auto-attacking while I just concentrate on switching my combat modes from minute to minute, that's great. A great depth of hotkey abilities is less important to me than a depth of modes describing how I am fighting in a particular situation and what tactical benefit I derive from it.

Hoping that elves won't be cliche. I'm thoroughly bored of the elves/magic/nature combo meal. Especially if the elves are angsty about the changing world / the decline of their civilization / humanity's environmental footprint. It is old, tired, and unimaginative. Since elves seem to be a given, elven mages will undoubtedly be prolific and they will probably personify some kind of message regarding the whole connection between magic and souls. I just hope that they aren't another cliche closer-to-nature ideal-standard-for-humanity elder race suffering the bumbling disasters caused by their lessers. I think fantasy in general has spent more than enough time on themes of "ugly=evil", "virtue=elegance" and "bad guys litter", so a more mature and less derivative incarnation of elves would be very welcome. Same goes for dwarves, if there are any. And if there are elves, there are usually dwarves. I would hope that they break free of the "hard drinking angry craftsman" mold. Fantasy's eternal presentation of dwarves as being honest, loyal, practical, stalwart, stubborn, or any other trait that seems "earth-like" isn't that interesting anymore. The elf-dwarf frenemy cliche of always growling at each other but being the first to come to the other's defense is also old. Tbh I'm not sure why anyone would want to cling to the old tolkien races if they had the chance to make a fresh IP, since I reckon they've been milked for all they are worth, and each new incarnation of them is going to have to deal with the issue of how to make them different enough to be interesting compared to other franchises while keeping them close enough to standard that they still have their traditional appeal. But they are a deeply established expectation in fantasy so I'm not surprised to see elven concept art. Avoiding genre cliches would be good though.