Karkarov

Mass Effect wins. While there are some terrible companions such as Mr. Generic Kaiden Alenko... they are the exception not the rule. You just had way more good characters, with interesting backgrounds, distinct personality, and unique presentation in that game than in any other on this list. Especially if you consider it as an entire series of characters to build off of. Every other game on your list has "some" good characters.... well almost all of them. But the thing is they were out numbered or at least matched by the generic walking cliches, the whiny emo's, and the idiotic annoying comedy relief characters (Minsc being only exception there).

Only according to people who can't handle being talked to like they are an adult. I read the thread, I just thought you had some kind of actual point or something I was missing. There are already plenty of characters being developed for the game with actual back stories and personalities. In fact if you count the characters from the baldur's gate games.... then toss out the ones that were one dimensional cliches... I would expect to come up with around 8 or so characters tops. I am sure there is at least one person in the hand made NPC's you will be able to tolerate.

Wonder why I bothered making a undead alt on WoW, log off, and do something worthwhile with my time.

Wait a minute.... you are complaining about the number of companions but just admitted to ignoring characters you don't like and making character choices purely on who is the best character skill wise? You are literally complaining about nothing. Based on your own words you care about skills and variety. Skills and variety are already covered by the Adventurer's Hall. If personality and character development are not concerns for you and you are satisfied with characters like Yeslick, Ajantis, and Kivan, then you should be just fine with those customer characters from the Hall. I commiserate completely.

Okay aside from you being wrong, that's not it at all. In the original Baldur's gate for example there was a massive crap ton of characters. But few of them were actually characters. Like Minsc, Jaheira, Imoen, etc, they actually had personalities maybe changed a little or had things to say over the course of the game? Then there was the majority of characters... Like that dwarf priest I always used who was such a great character I can't remember his name (looked it up, Yeslick) was not a character, he was a dwarf you rescue in a cave and that's all the development he gets. If you want a "character" of that caliber (aka a walking cliche who only has the thinnest reason for even being in game and meeting you) guess what, you are who the adventurers hall exists for! It has all the "variety" you could ever want. Because really whats the difference between the Ajantis you create in Adventurers Hall, and the one in BG? The only difference is in Baldur's Gate you had to walk to a farm road and talk to him for recruitment, the other one you just created in the adventurers hall. After that? Not any difference to speak of.

The game isn't going to use a lot of voice acting due to cost and size constraints. Those spoken dialogs take up space. As for getting free voice work? Many people on this forum are highly negative of the idea, personally I have seen plenty of people out there on youtube and other sites who could easily do voice work and it be just fine. It isn't like the op is talking about people doing it professionally as a career. That said they aren't going that route and it should be fine. No VO at all? Bad idea if you ask me, it works okay in Shadowrun Returns, but SR is also a much shorter game than PE and rides quite a bit on the editor and community content... the single player game itself is not meant to carry the game alone. With PE the single player game is meant to be the main feature, even if there is modding it is going to be a "bonus" not the focus. It needs some VO.

To be honest I don't remember how many they said there were, if it was 6 it is still fine. I was merely using the number from the thread title for the sake of argument.

9 fleshed out, well written, interesting characters that develop and change based on actions in game is more than enough. Quality over quantity, anyone with taste will tell you that. More companions means skill and class overlap and more work. Even the coolest most interesting character will be left in the gutter by 80% or more of players if they aren't the best at what they do. It is hard not to get skill overlap when you are talking 9 different characters.... it is pretty much impossible at 12 or more.

Yeap, anything relating to a backer reward (even forum badges) hasn't happened yet. So you aren't late to the show... Obsidian is ! But they got bigger fish to fry, we can wait for it.

Actually, that's incorrect, because Larian's game is mostly self-funded. They have their own money in addition to what they got from the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter funds are purely a bonus. Yeah seriously, that game was mostly done before they even did the kickstarter. They were just looking for some extra cash to fund a few little side things and help ease dev costs. Even if the kickstarter had bombed the game still would have seen release.

I think you guys are missing my point. Assuming a late fall-winter 2014 release they have basically a year and a half to do nothing but putting the game together, applying final touches like graphics passes, and then the unfun probably most time consuming part which never really ends... bug testing. My point is if they are delaying the game past the original projection they need to be upfront and honest not, well... lets delay it and let everyone assumes it is some unspoken delay... yeah.... This isn't the same as other game development projects. The reason many indie games get pushed out fast is because of Unity, it isn't like it is an unused engine. The list of games being developed with it and have already been put to market using it is enormous. A very large part of dev time in Obsidian's past was dealing with their own engine, or the highly buggy and unstable engine from someone else. Gamerbryo anyone? Unity is neither buggy, or unstable, and they don't have to spend any of their own time developing it. Many of the tools they need for this game (if not all of them) are either already in the engine, or have already been made for it and just need to be added in through expansions which Unity does support. Trust me, that takes a chunk out of the cost/time pie.

You guys are insane. I expect the game on time or an official announcement saying that won't happen. If it isn't out by fall-early winter 2014 someone is seriously dropping the ball. Once you finish making the resources, creating the story, and making sure everything "works", all you have to do is assemble it, add final touches, and do some bug testing. I am pretty sure they are on the "make sure it works" part right now with the vertical slice.

Uh can you say not enough information? Way too vague to form any kind of solid opinion. Though personally I see no reason to think it is a bad move outright. Maybe they just went with a new stat concept, like each class has unique stats. So a Fighter has "Strength, Agility, Constitution, and Dexterity" but a Mage has "Spirit, Willpower, Cunning, and Constitution" Con being the only constant across all classes or something. Basically if the stat doesn't apply to the class then they don't have the stat.

I am not sure this is how it works in the real world to be honest. I am going to be direct, people don't "suddenly" get better at their job. Companies have this problem, it is called short term tracking. Over the short term an employee may have seemed to suddenly get massively better... but if you look at the long term, last year, or even two... No, they had ups and downs and overall on average consistently got better until they got as good as they were going to get. All this aside many leveling systems already simulate this. Such as WoW where you only get new skills or skill ranks on even levels. Or D&D where you gain new feats in 3.0... but only every 4 levels.

Actual info on the game is constantly released? What? Uh most of what we discuss on this site is based on tidbits from kickstarter updates and short parapraphs with almost no details that Sawyer says on other forums and sometimes here. We don't know jack about the hard mechanics of the game other than that you have stamina as hp, wounds as a real health bar, and every class is fully featured up to level 5. That said name one skill a fighter has? We know they have passive stamina regen and can "control" the space around them. But what are their actual class abilities, how many are there, what are their names, what level you get them at, how much HP do they get a level, and so on. The game has "proficiency" style talents in game it but what are they? We only know for sure that Crafting isn't one of them. We really actually "know" very very little. We "guess" at almost everything.

Alpha Protocol had plenty of development issues, but again, it wasn't just Obsidian, SEGA was equally involved there. That said the reason the game flopped is because people played it like a shooter, it isn't a damn shooter, it is just like ME1, an RPG that happens to have guns for weapons. Trust me, you skill up your pistols you won't have any issues killing anything. The games only real flaw is the skill balance, some skills literally were broken either because they were so good (pistols) or just sucked (smg's).

I believe that's because the in-engine dynamic lighting hasn't been applied yet. Dynamic lighting will add several layers of shadows. Yeah seriously, those are like alpha, possibly even pre alpha screenshots. You can look at what was showed in the recent live stream demo and see the graphics already look better.

It has been so long I don't even remember the details of what my pledge got me anymore, other than the game itself. Hopefully the fulfillment site will finally come into being around the time they start releasing actual info on the game officially instead of through early alpha screenshot leaks on some german site.

Obsidian has released some buggy games no doubt about it. Fallout New Vegas was easily the buggiest game I ever played and was even worse than Fallout 3, which is saying a lot. That said it was still a good game. I am sure PE will have some bugs, it is pretty much impossible to release a PC game without a few due to all the different hardware it will have to run on, different OS versions, etc etc. As long as it is nothing game breaking like having an entire ending be blocked off because of a glitch that happened off screen hours ago that I never even saw a cause or effect of until it was too late.... then it should be fine. Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege 3, and various other games Obsidian released games were pretty much bug free on day one outside of a few small issues. So let's hope PE follows that route. As for spending? Don't make me laugh. Double Fine is the most over rated over praised developer out there next to Valve. They haven't made a game better than "slightly above average to average" in years, always go over budget (some of their fans actually say it is good they do?!?!?), and never release games on schedule. The fact that they didn't meet their kickstarter promises and are breaking the game into two releases cause they have no management or organizational skills doesn't even surprise me a little bit. Obsidian may make buggy games here and there, but the worst Obsidian games are at least as good as a normal Double Fine release, don't go over budget, and are normally on schedule. Their best games though make Double Fine's best look like a joke, unless you are just a hard core adventure game fan.

You forgot to explain why. Because! Duh! u_u He did actually explain why just in a strange way. I still find it odd people think on a 16x9 display ratio that a vertical ui is best. It isn't. In fact.... it sucks. It isn't ergonomic, there is 1.7 times more horizontal space than vertical so no a vertical ui DOES take up more space, it isn't even good to look at as it results in lots of screen scanning and potentially looking farther away from the action. Even if you put the ui in a corner at least then it is still grouped with everything in one spot and the corner moving left or right will still put your eyes and mouse closer on average to the actual on screen action than having it on the far left or right side of the screen.

I must be weird, I would rather this were not in the game. I am sure it will be, but be real, 99% of people who use it won't be doing it to get around a bug. It will be to make themselves have infinite money, max level, the best weapons, etc etc.

Hence my usage of the word "ideology". There is more to being a paladin that just being a fighter. A knight in the kings guard might be a fighter while there could also be a knight in the king's guard who is a paladin. They have will have different skill sets and their "mentality" is different. A paladin lives by a code or creed that typically makes them part of a greater organization or order, they are dedicated to something bigger than themselves. A fighter can live by a code or creed too.... but it is not their whole life, and their creed could be to just live by their own personal code or other things it doesn't have to be to a religion, organization, or anything else. A fighter can choose to live for number 1, a paladin can't. But this faith and dedication also manifests itself in other ways too, a paladin is more than a martial warrior, they have "holy" powers and their own version of "faith". A barbarian is someone who "lives on the land and grew up outside society", they have chosen to live by their own means and focus on survival and instinct over discipline and training. A fighter is someone who "lives by the sword" for lack of a better term, they have to chosen to make martial prowess their be all end all in life. A paladin is someone who "lives for their code or order" they have chosen to live for others and to be a champion of something greater than just themselves. Three very different concepts that do not necessarily co relate.

I have nothing wrong with romance options in the game as long as they extend beyond just party members and make some modicum of sense. I have nothing wrong with getting married in game. I don't have a problem with kids either. So long as it plays out over the course of a long time.... like more than one game, and it is built in as a concept from the beginning. Like in PE:3 your main character from 1-2 is now older and no longer adventures and is teaching their kid/orphan kid they look after about their trade etc etc and the kid becomes your protagonist in PE:3 with the torch effectively being "passed on". That would be kinda cool, but the kid does not need to be a plot device in either of the first two games, unless it explains why someone has to leave your party for the rest of the game, much less an inventory item. Oh there is one other thing that romance has to have. It must be 100% optional, should not be forced by any means. Even if marriage is forces for some story reason you should have the option of not getting along with your spouse and you are married in name only.

The only NPC jumping out at me is the one in Two Worlds 2 you meet in a bar and he still talks like the characters in Two Worlds 1 did and your MC makes some quip about "where the hell is he from, he sounds like an idiot". Minor NPC's are only really memorable when they are there for comedic purposes, otherwise they are just "generic NPC #500" and you forget them.

Like I said in another thread, blank slates are great. It let's me make the character I want and do what I want. Sadly that also means no structure exists for the game to react to my choices or my character background.... because it is all in my head, not in game. With a blank slate the game doesn't understand that I sided with the Imperials against the Nords in the war because I am in fact an imperial and loyal to the empire and that it allows me to get closer to the elves who killed my friends in the war so I can strike at them covertly. In fact it doesn't even attempt to assign me a motivation at all for fear it would be the wrong one I guess. So I can have all the glorious backstory I want but best case scenario the game won't react in any specific way, worst case, it will try to assign me a motivation that is totally wrong. Which happens more often than not. If you go the DA:O route and try to force some restricted backstory choices you at least have a basis for a character driven story. The game knows these specific events happened in my past so it can work off those. It knows I made choice X in character creation so when situation Y pops up it can have a better understanding of my motivation. Yes this limits my character options, yes it limits some story segments, but it also makes for a considerably more interesting and personal story and gives me the chance to build my own path through the game. Blank slate characters simply can't do it, because regardless of what character you created, your character concept does not exist in any tangible in game way. We need a balance between Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect. That's where the potential for a great Role Playing Game through PC and console exists.