Stun

....to achieve an IE-like experience. (your words) So my question remains. How tough were Carbos, Shank, and the werehouse Rats on BG1's higher difficulties? Oh, that's right. They weren't.

Yes, lets look at the video again. http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07/24/pillars-of-eternity-seems-to-push-all-the-right-rpg-buttons At 12:25 is the first Glenfathan kill Josh scores.... and.... he drops a pile of loot. And in the second Glenfathan encounter, the party enters the ruins before any bodies disappear. At 22:20, the party fights an ooze. IT drops a pile of loot after it's killed. (in fact, all 3 do) And in Icewind Dale's tutorial, you can rest after every battle. And the enemies do a whole lot less damage. And Wolves don't punish you for disengaging them. And you've got party members that can cast cure light wounds. And there's a temple in town that will heal everyone. Maybe on very easy difficulty. No. On Normal, too (or 'core', as you call it). A Goblin's THAC0 is something like 19. An Orc's and a Wolf's is just a little bit better. Which means you won't be getting hit by them unless they get lucky, or unless you do something stupid, like send an unarmored character with an AC of 6 into melee. The Ogre is a different story. He's the prologue boss. But for that matter, we haven't seen the end of PoE's prologue. It could have a nasty, death dealing boss too.

I thought they looked fine too. And it's more than we got during character creation in any of the IE games.

At the start of Icewind Dale, you have a party of 6. And aside from the 2 Orc Shamen, none of those prologue creatures can do anything but hit you for straight damage...if they're lucky. In PoE, we saw enemies inflict your characters with knockdowns, prone states, acidic vapors, and AoE stun howls, in addition to straight damage. Besides, I don't think we saw the whole dungeon in those PoE demos. Nonsense. You can complete IWD's entire prologue without getting hit a single time. I doubt that will be possible in PoE's prologue Not sure how you came to that conclusion, since Josh did not click on their bodies in the demo.

For Dragon Age 2? Try this button:

Bioware says a lot of things when trying to get people to pre-order their games.

Don't they flutter in the video? I'll watch it again but I could have sworn there *was* cloak animation.

Yes, sort of. Wizards do not have a recovery time/penalty, but their spells are locked out for a while after they switch. Tim is going to add a recovery time (2 seconds to start with) when any character switches weapons (PC or AI). That seems fair. From a game play theory standpoint I have mixed feelings on the subject. It's logical that someone who's wielding, say, a Bow, would need some time to strap it over his shoulder and then unsheathe his dual axes. But, from a gameplay preference standpoint, Temple of Elemental evil, since it was using D&D 3.5 rules, implemented such weapon switching mechanics and I didn't find them very fun. Of course, switching weapons during combat took up an entire action in that game(unless you had the Quick Draw feat), so I think 2 seconds is a reasonable compromise.

Josh, just to be clear on something that's been eating at me... in the IGN video, there was a point where you decided to switch weapons, and then you made a comment to the interviewer... something to the effect of: "well I guess I won't be using my axes for this next fight" Is there a cooldown effect when you switch between weapon sets?

Or because it's the beginning of the game and you're a 1st level character who has not yet acquired a party of 6? Bg1 did it the same way. Once Imoen is handed to you, and you're in that first wilderness map, what do you face? Same single enemy simplicity. One wolf. And then one diseased gibberling (possibly 2), and if you scour the edges of the map, you might find....one black bear.

As a munchkin power-gamer, I feel compelled to ask: Will I be able to kill Calisca before the end of that tutorial and steal her Flaming Weapon?

Oops! lol nice catch. That dialogue option will probably be blacked out if you have no weapon equipped. Of course, if monks in PoE are even remotely like monks in any other RPG ever, you won't want to fight bare-handed at level 1 anyway.

It's an ooze. If Oozes in this game are anything like oozes in D&D, then it wouldn't make sense for them to display brilliant tactical minds. It is, in fact, normal behavior for an ooze to latch on to a single target and not let go of it until it's dead. And there wasn't a crowd of them either, so it's hard to say if this game will suffer the same exploitable AI that the IE games did. We will be able to better judge enemy AI when we stumble upon larger packs of enemies and see how they react. If we get the same behavior and the game allows, say, 10 orcs to swarm the tank (or your summons) and not deviate even as the rest of the party walks right by and takes free pot shots at them, then yes, we'll be able to say that not much has changed.

Are they though? This is an actual question... I understand that romances these days tend to consist of romantic dialogue, something that no Non-Romancer should be interested in certainly, but how much content do they get in comparison? Look at Jacob Taylor in Mass Effect 2. I haven't particularly taken the time to count the lines, but the amount of dialogue a Player receives for simply romancing him is un-freaking-believable. It is almost double the dialogue content than you get if you remain strictly friends with him. The same can be said of Subject Zero, Jack, from the same game. Do you know how much dialogue you get with Alistair in Dragon Age Origins if you romance him? Almost double. The only game Bioware haven't effectively shafted a Non-Romancing Player Character, to my personal knowledge, is in Hordes of the Underdark. And before anyone jumps on the Bioware Bile Band-Wagon. Obsidian also did this in Neverwinter Nights 2, the Original Campaign AND Mask of the Betrayer, though it was definitely to a far lesser degree than Bioware. Yes, it's purely "romantic" dialogue and it's perfectly optional. But "optional" doesn't necessarily make it okay. /Opinions. I agree. And this practice of funneling nearly 100% of the NPC's personality/dialogue lines into the Romance arc has the added effect of making people think that Romances are the best/only way to create deep characters. But anyway, there are other ways that the argument of "They're optional, so what's the problem?" doesn't sit well with me. Often times, the choice to not engage in the romance is designed to be excessively harsh on the player. In BG2 for example, the romances are imposed upon you and the only way to opt out of them is to be a total Prick to the NPC. And in other games you won't even realize you're in a romance until that dreadful moment when the NPC corners you and says: "I love you....do you love me too?!" (HoTU, NWN2, MotB) I particularly dislike this kind of situation in video games. It's ham-fisted, It puts the PC on the spot, and it's just plain uncreative. And then there's the Budget argument. Which is probably the best argument, but also the one with the most counters, since if you tell a promancer that you'd rather spend funding dollars on improving core mechanics like Combat, character development, and level design, they'll usually fire right back with: "I value Romances more than those things!"

Well that sucks.

Yep. It's a toggle. You can choose a solid stone bar across the bottom if you want. Just like Icewind Dale 2 and Planescape Torment had.

Rofl! And just imagine if they let Chris Avellone write the epilogues.

Only if that arc happens to be: looking for love in allll the wrong places. Since, you know, there are no romances in PoE.

Oh, don't be like that. It's all in good fun. Besides, isn't this realistic? In the real world, there are no guarantees that you'll find romance simply because you decide to look for it. Consider what Obsidian is doing here as exploring the other side of the subject: FAILURE.

Prepare to be disturbed, then, Bruce. Not only will there be no Romances in PoE, But from the Demo footage released today, it appears as though the Devs are taking great pleasure in letting the Promancers down. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66501-giantbomb-quicklook-on-the-24th/?p=1469905 lol

LOL Yep. When developers troll, it's a marvel to behold. Well, what are you guys waiting for? Take this info to the Romance thread and show it to Bruce already!

In other words, it's exactly like the IE games, which were also balanced around party play. Since they were, you know, party based games. Not really. Playing with a party of 3 in the IE games was actually much easier than playing with a party of 6. Mainly because XP was shared (as it will be in PoE, btw), which means the smaller your party was, the faster you leveled. And if you soloed, you leveled... 6 times faster. Wait, isn't that what I've been saying since about page 3?

And did I hear josh correctly in the IGN video.? There's a cooldown period when you switch between weapon sets?

Just watched the IGN video. It's far more detailed. More info on stat based dialogue options. Shows more of the opening dungeon. Actually shows the Barbarian sprint ability in use. You know, I can't wait to see Magic in action, and the grimoire system.

Just to confirm that I saw things right.... we get 8 points to spend on our stats at character creation?