Stun

I thought you said you were a DM. Did you used to just skip the dozen or so pages in the DM's guide devoted to random encounters tables and the whole "Surprise" mechanic? Besides, those encounters you're talking about were a direct response to a major gripe/flaw leveled at BG1 - specifically the faceless, nameless, storyless, rewardless and overly frequent random encounters that occurred on map travel in the first game. Here in BG2, you get waylaid by a group of named enemies and that leads to one of Chapter 2's major questlines. Not to mention the loot! (Arbane's sword, anyone?)

Nope. There isn't a shred of evidence that suggests Irenicus knows anything about Aluando's prophesy or that he even cares. He does not mention it to you, or Bodhi, or Elisime, Or Yoshimo, or Saemon Havarian, or the matron mother. It's not mentioned anywhere in his journals. And the PC's part in the prophesy has nothing to do with his motives and actions anyway. He only knows that you have Bhaal's blood. And even that only matters to him because Bhaal is a god and God essense = immortality, according to his strange scientific theories. (which is, in itself proof that he's not familiar with Aluando's prophesy, since Bhaal DIED to start the whole thing) Bioware LITERALLY put the whole Prophesy on hold to give us BG2. And, By the Way, that was the intent. Throne of Bhaal was not originally planned to be an expansion pack. It was supposed to be the 3rd game in a trilogy, but since their new Publisher (Atari) was pressuring them to get Neverwinter Nights out the door, they had to cut things short.

This isn't true at all. BG2 is the biggest red herring in RPG history. It's one giant side quest. The BG story line is about Aluando's prophesy, remember? Specifically, the Chaos that Bhaal's progeny will wreak upon the world. Well? BG2's plot has nothing to do with that. It's a pit stop on the road. An uninvolved, peripheral meddler (Irenicus), with his own totally unrelated motivations, temporarily halts the road trip...with a kidnapping. It isn't until Throne of Bhaal that the BG plot gets continued.

Hey Junta. You've brought up points that would take hours and hours to properly respond to. Maybe when I have more time I will. But this morning I only want to focus on the "cheesy 15 year old DM writing" part: And you're guessing. (probably a safe guess, but still a guess) This beta does not actually showcase some huge difference in writing quality. Lets take a look at the quests in it. -An Ogre is stealing my piglets! -My daughter is missing! -Hey, can you do me a favor and kill one of my faction enemies?! -Go fetch me a dragon egg please! This is no different than the Copper coronet quests. It's the exact same complexity level as: free us! (Hendack's quest), Or Help me secure my noble lands (Fiirkrag's quest) Or, I need a hero to drive the trolls out of my castle (Nalia's quest). never mind that at least these quests are filled with twisting plotlines and tons of fleshed out content once you actually start doing them I do find it someone ironic, though, that you would cite BG2's main plot as an example of overly simplistic, flawed writing. It's about someone experimenting with (and stealing) your soul. Maybe PoE will approach that exact topic in a more mature, complex manner, but that will only account for about 50% of what *good* story telling ever is. A more important question is: Will PoE have a more memorable villain than Jon Irenicus? We can always fantasize, hope, pray etc. that it will. Because that's a pretty tall order.

So your definition of a game's depth is.... character skills and attributes...?

All ES games after Arena project that tourist vibe. I'm not seeing the distinction between Morrowind and Skyrim on that front.

Boomerang! ^_^ Some of the most memorable weapons in BG2 and IWD2 were the "returning" type. BG2 had the boomerang dagger, firetooth, Azure Edge, and a few more. And Icewind Dale 2? Just about every weapon type had a magical throwing version. axes, daggers, darts, hammers. There was even a 2-handed axe and a halberd that could be thrown. And... a phantom quarterstaff with a 15m range. Good times! That said, I'm not miffed about their absence in PoE. Since weapon-type variety is one of the few things this game does better than the IE games.

Don't be silly. There are only 2 purposes for Romances in an RPG. 1) to stroke the player's ego. 2) to stroke... something else. I've been lurking the BSN to try and get a feel of the rabid fan base's opinions of this latest Dragon Age. And I discovered the strangest thing. Even the biggest promancers there seem a bit jaded by the romances in DA:I. Which means they must be really awful.

Boots of walking.

Dead Horse beat'n time. Another example of the Wizard castration process in PoE. HASTE. The perfect spell that can be used to accurately measure how things have become. In BG1, Haste was admittedly overpowered. It was a 3rd level spell. It was an AOE spell that doubled the attacks and movement speed of the entire party for 1 round/level (ie. 30 seconds for a 5th level caster) Then came IWD1's version, which had the exact same effect, except the party was stricken with fatigue once the spell expired. Then BG2 came, and Haste was dialed down. It was still 3rd level, it still doubled the movement speed of the party, and still lasted 1/round per level (maxed out at 20'th level IIRC, which = 2 minutes in duration) but instead of doubling everyone's attacks, it simply gave everyone 1 extra attack per round. IMO this was perfect. Then IWD2... Haste doubled movement speed, gave an extra attack per round and lasted 1 round per caster level... but now only affects 1 target. Yuck. Fast forward (pardon the pun) to Pillars of Eternity. Haste (Deleterious Alacrity of Motion) Is still a 3rd level spell. BUT: 1)the caster can only target himself with it 2)it lasts a whopping 12.5 seconds 3) it increases movement rate and decreases recovery by...er.... decimal point values....which can be easily negated by what you're wearing. 4) it drains your friggin Endurance. Give me a break.

LOL Or... the 'speed' property will be an activated 1/encounter ability and last about 6.2 seconds and then inflict 480s of fatigue after it expires.

It's the same with every trap. There is no option to disarm it once you find it. In fact, the game won't even let you come near the trapped object/spot, which means the option to just take the hit is closed off to you if you actually detected it. So the solution is to not search for traps in the first place? Yikes.

There are several. But here's one that I think serves as a decent warning to Promancers to be careful what they wish for. http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/10388/article/an-interview-with-chris-avellone-on-project-eternity/ A choice snippet...about what he would do if forced to write a romance in the Pillars of Eternity universe: ^I would love to see if the Noisy Promancers of this forum...you know....the ones with the mindset of "Dude! Any romance is better than no romances at all!" would still be happy if the romances they got in a PoE sequel ended up having such morbid, mad scientist-necromancy themes like the ones Avellone is describing in that passage.

There was also Kotor 2. And NWN2 OC... or have our minds blocked out the painful experience of the Elanee and Casavir romances? :::shudder:::

But enough about BSN. lol

Yes. It does. You're not that familiar with Josh, are you.

There's also this: As in: More classes; Better-sounding music; A 15 level mega dungeon; A second city; Linux and Mac support; A stronghold; Crafting; French and Spanish Translations; Extra difficulty settings; and Chris Avellone forced to play Arcanum. If the Developers see these things as more important than Romances, Bruce, then your hope-filled prediction of a Romance-endowed PoE2 does not look too likely. Does it.

And for normal people, this would constitute finality on the topic. But not for Bruce. Oh no. He is, quite literally, reading this statement from Josh Sawyer and responding with: "Please do it anyway! I'll take nauseating, bad-fan-fiction romances! Even if they turn the only IP you own into an industry joke!"

Oh, you got me there, Bruce! It's all about stress. Indeed, Obsidian has never released an RPG before, let alone an RPG with romances. And so they've decided to Play it safe for Pillars. And by safe, we really mean *SAFE*. No crazy risks, like 15 level mega-dungeons, Ciphers, 2 cities, and a built-from scratch combat ruleset. No no. Nothing like that, because... stress. lol I can assure you, Bruce, that as long as Chris Avellone is Obsidian Entertainment's creative lead, "Better" will never = "Lets add Romances". In fact, There's a far greater likelihood that a financially successful PoE will motivate Obsidian's writing team to do the exact opposite: That is, twist the knife even deeper. Look for Romance mockery. Again, have you read some of Chris's blogs and interviews on the subject?

I imagine for the same reason Obsidian decided that PoE will be a PC exclusive, even though most gamers are console users.... You know, the whole 'lets make a game for the under-represented, anti-majority, pro-niche peeps" and not, for example, "lets make a game for the masses who can just buy a new Bioware game every year to get their romance fixes." But lets face reality now, Bruce. The fact that Obsidian's Promancer fanbase wants romances doesn't make a lick of difference. Never has, and you know it. You guys wanted romances in PoE way back during the kickstarter. You publically begged for it on every single available medium. Obsidian heard you and STILL turned you guys down cold, even as PE was breaking the KS funding records. That should tell you what you need to know...about both the present and the future.

I certainly hope not. Obsidian's never done a romance that didn't suck monkey balls. It would be stupid for them to follow up PoE1's financial success with a sequel that contains features they can't do well. If PoE ends up being a super-profitable game, I'm hoping Obsidian reacts intelligently, by pointing to its sales numbers and saying: "See that, Oh misguided RPG industry? RPGs don't need gushy soap opera elements to make money."

Players will always employ whatever tactics they think will work, based on what's going on in front of them. The inclusion of an engagement mechanic won't change this, except maybe limit many of the options they otherwise would have had with movement freedom, which isn't really a good selling point for a game that claims to offer deep tactical combat. More to the point: if the problem is that the pesky player keeps trying to kill the squishy mage in the back first, then perhaps they should design enemy mages themselves to be a little harder to kill? Or, craft encounters that contain more than one mage? Or here's a crazy thought: set everyone else's AI to protect that mage with their standard fighting skills (knockdown, barbarian rage, crippling strike, healing etc.) Don't need an engagement mechanic for that. I define good AI as enemies who use their abilities the way a player would. This includes employing Focus fire, or bull rushing the PC's mage, or trying to surround the party's 'tank' with summons; or moving their rogue around to find flanking positions etc. Incidently, the engagement mechanic will, in fact, render most of these UNDOABLE by the enemy as well.

You mean Black Isle? I doubt the team that worked on IWD2 was any larger than the one that's working on PoE. And they certainly weren't more experienced. Plus the development tools are so much more powerful today than they were in friggin 2002. In the end we'll probably get our answer when the game comes out and we can play the whole thing. IWD2 wasn't very content heavy. It was very much a linear game with small maps, not much NPC interaction, and loads of filler. I'm sure PoE, by contrast, will *feel* like a game that took 2 1/2 years to make. Still, if I'm forced to choose between "more gigantic companion dialogues" and "more dynamic spell choices for wizards", I'm going to choose the latter.

^You mean, like cooldowns? Ugh. No. Kill it with fire. Get thee away from here, ye modern gamer. Scourge of my gaming life. Cooldowns serve no purpose but to keep the action 'actiony'. True role players appreciate the planning and strategic use of their spells that the per-day system gives them. Anyway: True. It'd be silly to claim that mages were exiting to play from 1st-4th level in the IE games. The mere implementation of rods and scepters *alone* already insures that you'll get more meaningful gameplay out of your newborn mage in PoE than you got out of him in BG1 and IWD1. Still, for people who place value in specific role-play themes in their character building, IWD still does it better early on. IWD gives low level mages the option to theme their spell choices. For example, if you wanted to create a necromancer build, The game instantly presents you with a meaningful choice of spells for such a build right at the outset. Thus your 4th level Necromancer can have a spell book filled with: Chill Touch, Larloch's Minor Drain, Ghoul touch and Horror. While an Evoker build would have magic missile, chromatic Orb, Burning hands, and Aghanazzar's Scorcher. etc. The end result is that your mages feel and play differently. But that's purely a matter of taste, and kinda an off topic tangent. The bottom line is what you noted: Mages in the IE games are worthless at low levels and then party superstars later. And frankly, that's the way it *should* be. One who plays a mage should have to earn the right to be the most powerful guy in the room.

That's an interesting observation. But I don't know whether we can come to an accurate assumption from the kickstarter numbers alone. Lets remember 2 things. First, Kickstarter is a relatively new vehicle for game development and we simply don't have enough precedent/trends in it to confidently conclude that the high number of low, individual contributions (about 70,000) = Broad, Underrepresented Audience. We could just be witnessing Kickstarter's blooming popularity in the gaming world itself, instead of anything specific to PoE. After all, POE set the video game funding record.... and then just a couple months later another title beat it out. In fact, I believe the KS record was broken 3 times in 2012. This suggests fast growing popularity of the vehicle itself. Second, my gut is telling me that PoE's backer numbers may have more to do with the Obsidian name than most people think. Would some of the millions upon millions of people who loved Fallout New Vegas donate $20 to help fund the Next Obsidian game? Sure. Why not. And I suspect many did. That being said, I don't think Obsidian is mis-profiling PoE. They're marketing it as a spiritual successor to the IE games. That's a pretty safe plan. The IE games were big sellers as far as PC exclusives go. BG2 sold 2+ million copies. I'm sure Feargus would be positively giddy if PoE came close to achieving that number. The only real problem that can arise from such marketing is if the game ends up looking, feeling and playing decidedly different from the IE games, because then we'd see nasty stuff come forth, like shattered credibility for Obsidian, or worse: bad word of mouth from the fans who were expecting an IE spiritual successor but ended up getting a cheap, low budget attempt at a modern AAA title instead. And a final note: PoE was, in fact, envisioned as a niche title, for a niche crowd. Nothing else was ever an option. Otherwise we'd have seen Xbox and Playstation support as one of the stretch goals, yes?