Karkarov

You guys really don't understand how the real world market works. The average consumer is not replacing his pc monitor but maybe once every 4-5 years if even that often. HD tv's have been available since the early 2000's but now near 2013 they just within the last year maybe two got to the point where the average consumer can actually afford a decent one. More telling there is still a good percentage of tv owners in america who even now don't own an HDTV even though they literally don't make SD ones anymore. The average consumer will not have a retina monitor in 2014, you are kidding yourself if you think they will. It will be a bare minimum of 2016 before even 40% of computer users actually have one. Windows 8 is not a trend in monitor design, it is a trend in that people are using their phone and their tablet more than their pc because it is designed for tablets first. PE isn't going to be played on a cell phone, and maybe not on tablets either. We are in an economic slump, people are not going to be diving in on new tech unless they are rich or enthusiasts. The other 90% will wait as long as humanly possible and avoid spending anything until they absolutely have to or the price comes way down. They want to put in a DPI switch, sure whatever floats your boat. But that should be a bottom of the barrel priority at absolute best. Meanwhile this thread is about resolution, not DPI, and D3xter already wrote a great response on what the difference is and why resolution is still more important for the foreseeable near future.

Concur. I would gladly help out if I could. I don't know unity for example but I have awfully good recording equipment and wouldn't mind doing things like throw away lines for generic bandits and what have you.

Uh identifying items is just a boring chore. "What about the risks of a curse Kark?!?" Uh, what risk? You mean you actually equipped something before you identified it? I know I never did, thus there was no risk and there was just chore. Leave it out please. There are far more intelligent and interesting uses for a lore skill than identifying random items you find.

Yeah Alpha Protocol is a massively under rated game. It just had one problem in that some builds sucked and others were godly. Give me a character with high pistol skills and I will cremate every encounter in the game. Heck I killed the last boss in about 40 seconds. It also encouraged replayability really well and even gave you a reason to gimp yourself by choosing the weakest starter "history". Because once you beat the game on that mode you then got to pick the "veteran" where you were basically Solid Snake and Sam Fisher with a dash of James Bond rolled into one and could literally break certain story choices cause you were just that bad ass.

True, there were reasons not to like the NCR and it was reasonable to not get along with them too. However they still fail step 1 and 2. Much like Caesar's Legion they never actually do anything to "you". So "you" never have a personal stake in what happens to them. If you have no stake in their fate then they weren't much of a "villain". See the trick with a good villain, or any good character for that matter, is you as the player have to care about what happens to them. If you don't care about them then they failed as villain, or a companion, or a love interest, or a mentor, or whatever else they were supposed to be. I didn't care about the NCR. Mr. House on the other hand was a joke. In my game I literally found him on accident just by sneaking around his casino and hacking things. When I realized I could pull the plug on him and all he had for me was threats and an idiotic scheme I just said "no thanks" and hit the off switch. Game over Mr. House, so much for your masterwork manipulation. I was left wondering why he hadn't died decades ago. Either way New Vegas (made by Obsidian or not) is not a good game to hold up narrative wise. It is way too open ended to have much depth in the "villain" department. In fact I could really argue all of the people you could help were "villains" even though none of them other than Caesar was really any good at it and he was only a wannabe of the real Caesar. Fair enough. The question is this though. If the Transcendant One had been a better villain would it have hurt the game? The answer is clear: No. But it might have enhanced it a little. So while you might not need one it most certainly won't hurt either.

That's because Alduin is a crap villain who never presents any real threat. His motivation is also a laughable cliche "I want to destroy the world.... cause that's what I do". A good villain is always marked by a few specific things. 1: You encounter them early and are given reason to not like them quickly. 2: They continue to show up regularly and actively work against you through the whole game, not just part of it. 3: They have a motivation that makes sense and can be at least partially related to, and their goal has to be something sane. 3.5: Due to their motivation they may not consider themselves a villain, or possibly just think "the ends justify the means" and aren't worried about what it makes them. 4: By the end of the game the player actually WANTS to take them down. Make your villain fit that mold and be it a faction or an individual players will love the dude for it. New Vegas is a horrible example because other than Caesar and the bums who directly screwed you no one is actually a real "bad guy". Also Caesar never actually did anything to "you" personally, you just knew he was a bad guy that was bad news for basically everyone from simple observation and common sense. You were never given a reason to personally go gunning for him.

Being as I once held an actual replica of the original sword used in "Conan The Barbarian" I have to ask.... You do know it was only about 3 3.5 foot long right? The only reason it was heavy was because the handle was much larger than it needed to be and the blade was very thick and wide. The blade itself was no longer than a standard arming sword. So please stop saying the word "Conan" because "Conan" did not use some gigantic over the top weapon that required two hands. Arnold even uses it one handed in many of the scenes in the movie. Thinking back other than the one guy who used that ridiculous hammer and maybe the basketball player in the second one the only thing unrealistic about the weapons in those movies is how ornate they were.

Actually Fighter is a darn fine class name. Their role is fighting people with weapons after all. To get more specific implies something. Like "Barbarian" oh so now they have to be some uncultured clod who screams a bunch and probably isn't well educated? "Mercenary" so now they all have to be dirty sell swords who work for money? "Soldier" oh okay so all these dudes served time in the military or the town guard? You see where I am going with this? A "Fighter" can be anything from a farmer who mastered fighting with a staff, to the dirty mercenary out for themselves with a sword and shield, to a former military scout who is a crack shot with the long bow, and even a effete snob nobleman as well educated as any mage who fights with a saber and dagger. PS: Sorry for double post

A Flagellant is just someone who beats themselves as a means of expressing their faith. There are people who do this even today and most of them aren't bad ass fighters, martial arts or otherwise. You don't even need to be a priest to be one and many religious psycho's in medieval times went around as self declared prophets beating themselves with spiked whips and all sorts of screwed up crap. Long story short, no. Flagellant in no way equals Monk. The comparison is an extreme stretch based on one NPC who is likely a little wrong in the head. If you want Monks to be something other than "martial artists" just make them traditional monks. Dudes who use staves, wear robes, practice european hand to hand combat, make lots of wine, etc etc.

One hand weapons already get the benefit of having a shield or additional weapon, two handed weapons don't need to be slower too.

In defense of the story I would have recommended avoiding the Manga entirely actually. What takes like 250-300 pages of pretty par stuff in the Manga is cut down to 1 25 minute episode in the anime then it just cuts straight to where the story actually starts getting good. I will admit straight out that if I had seen the manga first and started at the beginning I likely would have dropped it. As for the guy being human... uh no not really. He was a child mercenary from like 5-6 years old and has in fact been "cursed" by the "gods" and has a bevy of other things going on. So yeah you are right, there is nothing "normal human" about him, christ sake he has a cannon on his arm. There is a part of the story where he is just a really really skilled normal human fighter but that doesn't start until like volume 3 and ends around volume 12. Even though it is the best arc of the story it is actually a small part of it. Either way I understand why you would come away not liking it from volume 1, to each their own.

I am afraid I had to go with the final option. In all seriousness I have no problem with the forced Surname if I get to choose the first name as it adds a little more... feeling to it? At least for voiced bits. If voice won't be common anyway though they may as well just give us separate first and surname options so long as people have the choice to have no surname if they so choose. Numbers and non standard symbols should probably be forbidden.

it looks personal to me. Would i have liked more meaty answers? Sure, but they probably save those for the likes of Gamebanshee and Sorcerer's Place. I was happy to even get my foot in the door so to speak. Our website hasn't been able to get an interview with a developer for years. I wouldn't worry about it dude. Yes a lot of the info was "already known" but it was still a good interview. I also seriously doubt gamebanshee etc will get any more out of him than you did. If I were Obsidian I would do all big announcements through my own website/social media pages and only give exclusives if some major site or mag paid me to do it. Like Gamespot or IGN.

Well considering they give you the option to outright make your own custom party of hand crafted characters I am pretty sure this isn't going to happen. That said I think it should be a simple, they are not in your party so they.... aren't in the party scenario. In other words not only do they get nothing based on what you do, but if you try to hire them back later they may not even be willing to go with you. The cliche "I will just hang out at the stronghold and put my entire life on hold" bit is very old hat and it would be nice to avoid it.

Little harsh but nice post. The problem with any forum dedicated to any one developer or game is that most of the people on it don't understand that not everything the dev/game touches is actually gold or a massive success in the grand scheme. Out of curiosity other than the extreme violence and highly adult themes of Berserk (both of which would never work in a American release without seriously being toned down) what was the issue?

Simple approach works best, honestly it should probably be a combination of the two. Either way there isn't any reason to discuss the D&D implication which it sort of feels like that is where this is heading. The reason being is that PE won't use D&D rules, they don't have the license. So they will need to come up with their own mechanics on this.

A console port is a bad idea but not for 90% of the reasons in the thread. Simply put, they gave themselves 18 months and they are making the game on a limited budget. Some features are must have, some aren't. They would be better served by making this game android/iphone/tablet compatible than putting it on a console. Know that I hate myself for saying this cause I hate those games. But porting over to a console just requires too much work and too much money for the budget and schedule to allow.

Just to throw this out there but AwesomeOcelot is right. 3D is basically a gimmick. Until it can be done with no need for special glasses, all monitors and tvs support it, and having graphics hardware that doesn't support 3D is considered highly unusual 3D doesn't need to be supported in any widespread way. It definitely is not going to be a "needed" feature in a isometric view rpg even if all of the above was true.

Sez who? Says anyone who knows anything about good world buidling or design. PE is not based on the real world, it shouldn't use real world designs. That isn't a large leap of logic. I don't want to see a German Landsknecht wandering around an elven ruin, it would straight out make no sense and be lazy to boot. I am also sure Obsidian is perfectly capable of looking up authentic real world armor/weapon designs on their own so I don't know why all these pictures keep getting spammed. Why don't we trust them to do their own research and let their art team create their own original gear designs to bring their world to life? If we put you on a room on your own, would you still start a fight? Sheesh, find another thread to haunt. Morale Vampire. Or better yet, let him haunt the Romance thread Or better yet, you guys can stop acting like butt hurt 5 year olds cause someone doesn't agree with you.

Would be better if the character you play had some form of backstory. The "blank slate" tends to work better in open world free roam games. Just try to stick to a Mass Effect or similar model and give us some level of control on the "details" and make those details matter at some point.

Right, and to quote the guy who replied to me and underlined my point about not copying historic real world designs. sez who Anyone who knows anything about the internet knows how to and can find all the reference material they want to look at pictures of medieval/renaissance arms and armor. If discussing medieval arms and armor, or sharing pics of them, is what you want this thread to be about you need to start a new one. This thread was clearly about asking Obsidian to make arm's and armor in game more realistic when I read it. Considering you are the OP I would think you would know that. Not that Obsidian ever had any plans to do something else, their own concept art shows they don't. This isn't Lionheart, it is based in fantasy not reality or a fantasy take on reality. Using any real world military unit designs would be, in short, a really bad idea. Your own reply to me even says you would like to see a real world Germanic Mercenary in full historic attire show up in game. So maybe you should stop quoting other people and be an adult by admitting that is exactly what you are advocating in this thread.

Sez who? Says anyone who knows anything about good world buidling or design. PE is not based on the real world, it shouldn't use real world designs. That isn't a large leap of logic. I don't want to see a German Landsknecht wandering around an elven ruin, it would straight out make no sense and be lazy to boot. I am also sure Obsidian is perfectly capable of looking up authentic real world armor/weapon designs on their own so I don't know why all these pictures keep getting spammed. Why don't we trust them to do their own research and let their art team create their own original gear designs to bring their world to life?

I literally own every book ever written for the planescape campaign setting. I am fully well aware gods can die in D&D. However when it happened in an actual D&D "game" it was always DM driven and based around a larger story that normally meant other gods "helped" the PC's quite a bit. As in the PC's were just glorified gophers doing the Gods work for them whether they knew it or not and any other group of stooges probably could have pulled it off just as well. That said John Smith the average DM can do whatever he wants, but if you expected an actual TSR/WoTC employee/sanctioned DM running an official campaign adventure to let you kill a god you were going to be disappointed. Even when it did happen it was never because "random group of strong mortals wanders into Gods own plane of existence and in a non planned encounter beats them mano a mano." That doesn't happen outside of VERY poorly run games that have nothing to do with official anything. Also did you notice but your link is Forgotten Realm Deities only? That is just one campaign world out of dozens, hardly a complete list of anything. Either way the conversation is off topic enough as it is so if you want to get in the last word go ahead. I don't want to derail further and will simply close saying that the idea of the "PC and Company vs God or Gods" is a bad one and there are a lot of other stories to tell that don't involve over the top power trips.

I am willing to bet it will be ready around April 2014. No idea why I have such a specific guess, it is almost like they advertised that as the release date they were aiming for or something.

Nowhere near the same thing. In the "Time of Troubles" the Gods were forced into their Avatar forms. Avatars are just really freakin powerful mortal bodies, they do not have their full power in those forms. Also as a special rule in that time period when the gods died in their Avatar forms they were not allowed to return to their true realms, they were forced into true mortal death. That is why so many of them died, they were forced into mortal shells. This was done by the High God Ao also, not some silly mortal plot. Fighting the Lady of Pain in Sigil would have been the equivalent of going to the top of Yggdrasil the World Tree and calling out Odin. You were fighting a Greater God (aka one of the most powerful beings in the D&D universe) and you were doing it in their own territory/plane of existence. By D&D rules that makes the Lady of Pain when inside Sigil literally omnipotent in so far as the cities boundaries. She could know all, see all, and do all and kill you with absolutely no effort. Not even a finger twitch would have been needed. Not quite the same thing as killing an Avatar stuck on their own in the middle of nowhere with no one to back them up or any resources to call on. Avatars died all the time in the D&D worlds in fact, it is just normally the God would just lose a small part of their power and that would be that. The Time of Troubles was a VERY special circumstance, hence it's name.