The Wise Alaundo

Fair enough. It feels so wrong maxing Might when I don't want to RP my caster character as a beefcake, but perhaps that's just something we all will have to live with!

Hmm, yes I see what you mean. I'm not wanting my main to be the primary damage dealer, more focusing on CC. So maybe Int > Res > Might > Per > Dex > Con?

Is Might still useful for a pistol cipher? Or is it worth trading it for something like resolve for dialogue options...

Hmm, a fair few people saying "I'd be happy with the level of VO that was in 10+ year old IE games"... Personally I hope that we get more nuanced and generally a larger amount of NPC dialogue. In particular, I've always believed that more work should be put into variety and context-sensitive NPC 'barks', because I hate that in RPGs party members only become characters in conversations - out in the world they're just gameplay automatons who parrot out a variation of around ten stock phrases.

Every now and then, for specific events, being able to recount tales of your exploits in taverns. You get options of how to tell your tale as you tell it, maybe unlocking certain options depending on your stats. Intelligence but low charisma will be really matter-of-fact and bore the pants off everyone, until there's only the old drunk left in the corner snoozing. Charisma - Full of wit and exaggeration, a bard might come in and start taking notes. Strength - Lots of hand gestures and thrown objects Wisdom - Contains words of caution, advice and insight. Dexterity - Act out certain scenes And so on! You could have your companions chipping in as you tell it if they think you're being boring, call you out for lying etc...

Updated my journal!

People silently doing your bidding is also pretty unrealistic though, and lack of feedback for your orders would also add nothing to the game. Instead of getting rid of what doesn't quite work, I'd like to see efforts made to make it worthwile, realistic, satisfying and something that enhances our gaming experience. I disagree completely. Silence is much more realistic. I'm a player in front of a computer screen, and they're characters inside a gameworld. Why the hell should they be responding to my orders like that? Don't you think it's kind of silly though hearing characters comment every time the player clicks to move them...? Well, I interpret the barks as party members responding to the Player Character's orders, rather than myself as an 'omnipresent authority figure' . The PC him/herself... yes, you're right there of course - that's one of the quirks of the genre I suppose.

People silently doing your bidding is also pretty unrealistic though, and lack of feedback for your orders would also add nothing to the game. Instead of getting rid of what doesn't quite work, I'd like to see efforts made to make it worthwile, realistic, satisfying and something that enhances our gaming experience.

*Shiver* 'Barks', that's the one. I knew there was a proper term for them! Yeah, it's always seemed strange in RPGs like Dragon Age that the devs put so much effort into making companions feel like real people, and then undo all that good work when you're actually in the gameplay environment travelling around listening to them spout same couple of phrases over and over again.

I've always thought it strange that, in party-based RPGs, while lots of time is spent recording dialogues and conversations, there's always only a tiny pool of audio cues that are used when selecting them / giving them orders. Why is this? A large percentage of the player's time is spent clicking on their portraits and giving orders, so why is it that we're stuck with hearing the same 'I stand ready' phrases over and over again? Given that OE don't need to worry about full voiceover for companion dialogue in PE, what I'd like to see (or rather, hear), instead, is greater variety and nuance to the audio cues we hear when giving orders to the party. Here are a few examples: Location specific: relaxed quotes when in Taverns, wary ones when in a new and threatening area, urgent when in battle, whispers when in a crypt, that sort of thing. Emotion-affected: It always jars for me when I've had, say, an argument with a party member in a conversation, or an emotional reveal has taken place, and then when you're back in gameplay, you're back to the standard sets of chirpy responses. It would be amazing if sometimes that could affect the voice sets as well. 'Huffy' or 'distance' responses after an argument, for example, or cheerful after a humerous exchange. If you wanted to be really interesting about it, you could use this as a cue to the player as well. If a companion's audio phrases suddenly sound pensive, or sulky, talking to them might open up a conversation. Level / story affected: This is a big one, but wouldn't it be good if, say, a character's voice set became more confident as the story progressed / levelled up. A character might join the group and be quite non-expressive and professional when being given orders, but as time passes and he's travelled with the group and becomes more relaxed, his tone may change. Or a cheerful character, after being witness to an evil player character's awful deeds and derision in conversation, would become more downbeat. When you've got the voice actor in the studio, given the lack of need for extensive recording, I wouldn't have thought it would be too hard to get them to instead spend a bit of time recording different nuances of responses? I asked about this in the reddit Q&A, but unfortunately didn't get a response. What do you guys think?

I think one of the interesting things to consider here is - what would it mean to kill a companion in a setting in which souls can be returned back to existence immediately with the possibility of their memories intact? (I think I'm right in recalling that it stated this can happen). Or what if you met them again, and they could sort of remember you, but something was niggling in the back of their mind.... Could make for some interesting consequences if it was implemented well.

Interesting that there aren't many votes for music & sound - perhaps because everyone takes it for granted? The ambient environment sounds and music really made PS:T and the BG games shine, so I'd definitely like to think that would be an area where a chunk of extra money would be allocated considering we've already had a fair amount of 'extra content and companions' tiers.

Elves are mentioned in one of the Stretch Goal comments as well - I'm with the OP though, creating a new IP and then going for the standard Tolkien archetypes would be a tad disappointing. No biggie of course, just... always frustrates me a little when we keep going back to the same ol' same ol'.