Umberlin

The point was more that there likely isn't a time in history, or, place in the world, where people didn't do such things. The internet surely is a place, of sorts, and a part of Humanity's time table, but such truths are there with or without its existence.

I'm sure if, some of you, don't like the current direction you can send in your giant shoulder pad art . . . to get them right on whatever it is your minds perceive to be a track . . .

I think I may have killed him . . . probably around the same time I was contemplating letting Viconia throttle Aerie.

I wasn't arguing for or against the inclusion of monks. I was merely pointing out that wizards DID exist, regardless of whether magic (as in actual, functional magic - like what we'll have in P.E.) did or did not exist. Even in a medieval (or pseudo-medieval fantasy) setting completely devoid of functional magic, there should still be witches and wizards. It would be "unrealistic" otherwise. On that note, let's talk about, stories, throughout pretty much every culture, across all of history, in regard to any given 'person' or 'persons' that may, or may not, have done something fantastic, and had gossip and fantastic tellings of their deeds . . . and . . . blah blah blah existed. Many fantastic stories, everywhere, are based on real people. Fantastic ideas of what a Witch might have done? Sure. Fantastic ideas about what that martial artistic could do? Definitely. Fantastic ideas about what that guy standing by the King could do with fire? No doubt. Fantastic ideas about what those Monks up in the monestary could do? Yep, that too. People are predictable gossips, and you know how that whispering game works - exaggerations get out of hand, quickly. And that's any and every culture (at any and every given time). Some kid kicked a stone and took out a larger kid. Two years later the young man fought bravely against a gigantic abomination. A hundred years later It's the same story but a different culture with new characters and names. Two hundred years later the space aliens are scratching their head tentacles going, "If the people of this extinct civilization had four arms, as in this historically accurate story, then why did their skeletons only have two?" Aaaanyways . . . How true were any of these fantastic stories based on existing, living, people in any given time and any given culture? Doesn't matter. They existed regardless, the stories and the people. Point is, fantastic ideas about what "insert anybody throughout all of time" did isn't a new construct. Fantastic ideas of what a martial artist might do, might seem like a modern construct of games, to some people out there, but it's not, much like your Wizard or Witch, or, what have you, such fantastic ideas, however unfounded, still popped up. Why do things like that exist? Well, any number of reasons, I'm sure, but, personally I'm just glad they do exist. The world would get real boring real fast without a bit of imagination, if you ask me. Long story short, people see things and exagerate them. "Because."

Blargh, I didn't mean it like that! I know that Obsidian can do amazing characters, and pretty much every party member in all their games (Except arcanum, which was kinda lackluster in that regard) was awesome in their own ways. Hell, Mask of the Betrayer didn't have a single comic character, and it was still amazing. Its just that, I love the comic characters. And I love, as someone else so helpfully phrased it, "bro's", and I want to see an other character like Morte and Minsc who are able to fill both catagories, and maybe more. Capiche? Yeah but if I don't give you a hard time about it, who will? Who indeed. o_0

There's a thing in anime where sometimes a work gets associated with another work, by way of the animation, thus the artist behind the animation, alone, without being allowed to stand on its own two feet. I think, sound wise, and in other aspects as well, Eternity can benefit most from finding its own identity, creating its own feel and mood. I think that's more important than attaching a known name to the musical portions of the project. I don't dislike Jeremy Soule, mind you, I just think a lesser known, but still very talented, name might benefit the project more.

I wouldn't want it wholly about the scary elements, in a way that takes away from a truly horrific moment, if you know it's all saturated with scares . . . at least for me. Elements of horror, though, I'd welcome, to certain aspects of the game, just not to the main game as a whole, and definitely not as the main theme. Be it a sidequest, or what have you, I'm sure an isometric game can handle horror elements well, with proper direction and writing backing it. Such things have to be well handled though, as with pretty much any aspect of writing/pacing/presentation.

Consistency is something I appreciate, but I also understand why it happens. Still, I think it was playing the Sims and Sims 2 when I was younger that made me appreciate internal and external consistency of a structure. I couldn't actually stand the games though . . . I should just look into a game that lets me build neat houses, without the Sims aspect. Chances are probably low that an in depth RPG had that level of structure building and customization. .-. Boy did I digress . . . Anyways, it'd be nice if the internal and external structure was consistent, but, at the end of the day . . . like I said, I get why it happens. There are more important things for a developer to consider, obviously. Still, I can't say I disagree with the general sentiment.

Could be, at the end of the day, I can see that view. If a person really wants to use a weapon, they have that option, in quite a few classes. That said, don't kid yourself, Monks are still going to use gear of some sort, we just don't know the extent or of what kind. I've seen enough Monk styled classes, in D&D and otherwise, had had various weapon options, as well as fist weapon options, for hand to hand combat, that it seems obvious. Check the art of the group, the Monk's fists are alight with energy. It's as believable as a Wizard frying something with a Fireball, which is to say, it fits perfectly within the game logic of using souls to superhuman result or the explosively magical. The idea of a person in the P:E setting using their soul to enhance their body, to superhuman extents, was presented even before the Monk was announced. We have a lot more to learn about all the classes, but, really, the second someone says that someone enhancing themselves magically to punch through plate armor isn't believable is the second they might as well start saying, "The Monk, Priest, Wizard, Cipher, Druid etc etc etc aren't believable please change them to be more realistic please." Spells to grant a person super strength, speed and other super Human abilities aren't exactly unheard of in Fantasy settings, not in the least. In the case of the Monk, it might not be a spell, but he's obviously enhancing himself, somehow, using his soul, as the other magical or superhuman classes all note the use of the soul, in some way, to superhuman or explosively magical result.

Thinking about it, in Quest for Glory, you had yoru sneak, walk and run movement settings. Running, in Quest for Glory, at least, tired you out faster though, and this was a game you had to rest, eat and drink, or, suffer and die for the neglect. However, knowing that time and movement, in some cases, could be too slow, you actually had a setting that would increase these things beyond running. The time passage increase was linked to the movement speed increase so that you'd still be restricted to the same range of movement, per unit of game time, even though by your own time (reality) you were getting where you were going faster. I don't know that it was the right way to handle things, especially not in the context of modern game development, but I thought it might be interesting to mention. Gaming history, as it were.

0_o Maps . . . http://oi50.tinypic.com/dagg.jpg http://oi50.tinypic.com/2uq0mq9.jpg

So, here's hoping people realize Obsidian don't have to copy paste characters/character archetypes from previous games in order to make worthwhile characters in a worthwhile game.

While I'm not fond of bringing up what is essentially a Dungeon Crawler, when talking about an RPG's looting system, I do think Titan Quest actually found a compromise between the 'random drop factor' and, 'if you see it on them, they drop it.' It was still random, all in all, but somewhat appropriate for what was doing the dropping, and, obviously, the random things actually showed up on the enemy. If they were going to drop a really nice spear, the game spawned them using that spear, for example. The downside of that being they'd be using that really nice spear on you, or, the upside, depending on how you look at it. So, yeah, they might not drop everything that's on their base model in TQ, but if you saw something out of the ordinary, be it armor or weaponry, equipped on an enemy, they typically dropped it. Just not that 'base' stuff they'd always wear/use by default. That said, I'm hoping most items are fairly mundane, instead of magical items everywhere all the time.

When it comes to ME, I can fault them for taking steps backward after the first game, each further entry was even more linear and even more boxed in than the last. When it comes to DA:O, I can fault them for claiming it to be a successor to the BG series, which was absolutely insulting when you experience the result of said claims. I can fault them for DA2 not even managing to be as, heh, open as DA:O when, in itself, was quite claustrophobic. It's different in something like BG, or Planescape, where you don't have a lot of that visual 'wallpaper' feel for the backgrounds. Looking straight down, isometric, you just see what's there. It's a lot different from some modern games that paint these vast, impressive, sometimes highly populated, backgrounds in the distance . . . that you can never get near. All that artistic effort spent on nothing, literally nothing, it's essentially, "See this really really cool thing over here? See it? It's cool right? It's awesome! What? You want to what? No you can't go over to it. That'd be silly." I don't really need a large open world game, the closed in space, in itself, isn't my problem, I just need a game that spends its resources on things I can actually 'do', places I can actually go, and things I can actually interact with. Experiences like Planescape, the BG series and so on works for me, where something like ME3 or DA:O/DA2 completely fall on their face. They're obsessed with this eye candy that never really mattered. The graphical complexity means very little, especially in the long run. Again, I have to say it, I'd rather more be done with the graphics of yesterday, with the systems of today than using the systems of today to make that one meaningless pixel look better than ever (only to have it look out dated within a week).

The reasons for it aside, it still is what it is. I'm not going to forgive it because the companies in question made the choice to develop for said systems. The thing is, they could have sacrificed some of that supposed, 'pretty' to make those games more open. I know I'm in a smaller group when I say this, but games got to the point where they were good enough looking for me a long, long time ago. I can't understand or relate to the people that go back to an older game, and can't play it because of supposedly lesser graphics. I'd be in heaven if more developers would learn to do more with the graphics of yesterday, on the systems of today, instead of spending every amount of effort on making that one pixel look better than real life, and surrounding it with a dozen bloody loading screens. I can't agree, in fact it felt even more closed in than entries like ME1. When it comes to those 'backgrounds' meant to give a game more scale, I don't agree, because they're backgrounds and you're still boxed in, it's just like cutscenes to me, I don't want to sit there and 'watch' the cool stuff, I want to go 'do' the cool stuff.

When it comes to DA2, that wouldn't really be hard. I do understand what you're getting at though.

Actually I imagine a made up language, properly handled, could be a neat addition. If properly handled. If. I stand by my earlier commentary in the thread though, despite this admission. Then they'd have to hire linguists, like Bioware did for The Old Tongue in Jade Empire (which still felt very rudimentary and unnatural, even for an artlang). Not something Obsidian should sink their resources into IMO. Although, I guess they could always crowdsource it... Honestly, Bioware just lost something along the way, creating a language isn't that hard, it's something I've done several times, over the course of an afternoon. It's not complicated. Then again my majors are all language based, and my masteries fine arts and creative writing, so, then there's that . . . Still, you don't even have to go that far, a gibberish language, as you noted, can fake it readily if it's well done. Again, though, I stick to my original post despite any such notes: I still, to this day, play text heavy, and text only, games that having zero voice acting at all wouldn't even result in the batting of an eyelash. I'm rather fond of such games, actually.

Actually I imagine a made up language, properly handled, could be a neat addition. If properly handled. If. I stand by my earlier commentary in the thread though, despite this admission.

Honestly, I felt DA:O's environments were pretty claustrophobic. The world felt closed off, and contained into little set pieces, made to 'look' big, but never actually being big. It's one of the things I dislike most about modern day games, they all try to do that, these big supposedly eye opening backgrounds . . . that you can't ever actually go to or interact with in any way. Just these closed off little areas, with backgrounds to make them look bigger than they actually are. DA:O, DA2, ME2, ME3 and countless other modern games are examples of this, and it's not impressive, it feels like you're going down a hallway, even when it's not an actual hallway, I still get that closed in - 'most of this may as well be wallpaper' - feeling. For all its flaws, the TES series has actually delivered on wolrd, open worlds, rather than claustrophic nonsense like DA:O. DA:O is a terrible example, in my mind, of a game that feels large, because it doesn't feel large to me, it feels boxed in.

I doubt we'll have anymore than BG/Planescape, but, really, I'd be fine with no voice acting at all.

I can't think of any either, myself, at least that weren't supposed to be better for some reason (usualy because they were temporary/going to leave/going to die/going come back to kick your butt later). Reminds me of the thread asking for companions to insist on an equal share/just taking things and not wanting to give them to you, depending on their personalities.

Pirates haven't made a better product. That's bull**** and I'm going to call you out on it. Pirates duplicate a game and release that duplicate for free because they haven't invested in time and money to make the game in the first place. Competition would be for a developer to make a similar game to PE and sell it at a cheaper price point. If you want to argue that pirates give better service, then you should also realize that their competition would be places like gog.com or a brick and mortar. Those companies still pay the developers/publisher for the product that they are selling. While I don't disagree with you (in fact I wholly agree that pirates have not made a better product), necessarily, I'll point out that this is exactly the principle Valve operate on these days, and quite vocally. They compete with the pirates, offer rewards and deals and service to the legitimate user, rather than punishing them while attempting to squash pirates. Many forms of DRM falter here, in that, honestly, some of them do hit the legitimate user, and barely effect the pirate, if they effect the pirate at all. Valve's approach, thusly, is to ensure their service to the legitimate user is something that the pirate cannot offer, rewarding the legitimate user, instead of punishing them in a quest to thwart the pirate. The issue is that when a game has been cracked, and distributed, free of its DRM, versus a DRM ridden game that has issues because of its DRM (which does happen, though, obviously, some forms of DRM don't really effect the user much at all) you can see the basic idea of the point in light of what it really is. Not a better product. Not a better product at all. The same product, stripped of the things that, really, tend to hinder the legitimate user more than any pirate. It's a tightrope walk. DRM doesn't have to be a negative thing, but too many companies go too far, and make it so. Valve's Steam, no matter how you twist it, is DRM, but, as someone who has experienced DRM that actually keeps me from playering games . . . I look at Steam fondly. It's DRM that works from a company that rewards me as a legitimate user. This is acceptable. However, on Steam, you'll find products that think, "Steam and Valve's policies are not enough" and thus you get things like Anno 2070. I love the game. I really do, but when I bought it on Steam I didn't realize something. That the game would require I be running both Steam and Uplay in the background. Really? And it's not the only example, there are examples that also, again, don't think Steam is enough, so I have Windows Live, or some other nonsense, also running. It's incredibly counter productive, and not user friendly in the least (especially windows live). Anyways, like I said, I don't disagree with you, I simply do think there's something to be said for offering the user a reason to use your product, rather than punishing the user, potentially, in an attempt to squash pirating.

Just one? Yeesh, there are so many great writers out there. I mean you have Terry brooks, with the Shannara novels, taking place in a fantasy world that seems to have a distant technological past. Then you have Piers Anthony with the Xanth novels, and, let's face it, if your puns don't grow on trees then you're doing it wrong. H.P. Lovecraft with a grand mythos written in that almost clinical old style that, in a way, makes them even more a joy to read. And let's not forget Philip Pullman, with his Dark materials works. Donald Moffit and that gloriously far thinking, though probably not very accurate, life beyond the life of humanity account that is Second Genesis. Gibson and works like Idoru and Mona Lisa Overdrive. The hilarious, and yet sad, Monster Blood Tattoo series from D.M. Cornish and so many more great reads . . . Still if I had to narrow it down, I'd probably come down to one of these two: 1. C.S. Friedman, who, being a writer of both Fantasy and Sci-fi and mixed/other works, spans a great deal of genres well, and writes them with thought. One of their best, in my mind, being This Alien Shore, which, I think is one of my favorite science fiction stories ever. Still, as I said, they have a great hand in fantasy as well, and I wouldn't be sad at all to see a similar style. 2. Then you have one I find very few people to have read, S.D. Tower, and, specifically, the Assassins of Tamurin, a low fantasy setting novel, for the most part, that I've read again and again. Most every one of the usual fantasy tropes is missing, like Elves and Dwarves, with various Human races instead - and not our Human races. It's a fine book, and one I always feel needs more attention. However, all that said, having played enough Black Isle and Obsidian games by now . . . the truth is, I know exactly what sort of writing I'd want an Obsidian game to resemble even more specifically. Their own style of writing, that I've experienced again, and again, and have come to love quite dearly.

Hhmmm . . . oddly, Five is actually considered the lesser of all the entries, typically anyways. I don't think it's terrible, not King's Quest VIII terrible anyways, but I'd definitely recommend 1-4 . . . though, I guess, knowing how the series ends, it might seem pointless. Anyways, yeah, QfG often made mini games work, because were still part of the game, working with the skills and abilities you had. Mage's Maze, for example, required you to have acquired specific spells to even play, and your ability in them, and your mana pool (thus your other magical stats) factored in. Or the rope walking mini game in II, again, a Thiefy thing. A Fighter getting good at the Spear Throwing, Balance Bridge and other mini games, mini games none the less, but games that factored in on advancing your abilities, and eventually in the story for Fighter and Paladin characters. Just the same, the Wizard could sit and play Awari with the Yesufu, to increase your inteligence in Quest for Glory III, at the same time, you could talk to Yesufu about things, while playing the game, he wouldn't talk about otherwise, thus gaining information about the game world, characters and things of interest/relevance while increasing your stats.

If they have a dual purpose things work out too, you could increase your Thief's throwing skill to get better at the Dagger Throwing game in the Theive's Guild, in Quest for Glory 1. And, obviously, that helped you anytime you were throwing something. Just the same, taking part in the game was a way to increase your money, and other little bells and whistles, which also played a part in the larger game. Not to mention the whole thing just felt very 'theify' It worked there. In other games such attempts don't work. it was gambling, throwing daggers for money, but the variance was on the skill of your thief - your investment into the character and the game paying off, and your character feeling like a thief, and part of the theive's guild. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, really, as I thought it was a good example of such a game done well, simply because it fits your character and his place in the world. Just the same Mage's Maze, better implemented in the VGA remake though it may be, was still a part of being a Wizard, and betting Erasmus' old butt at it netted you a spell. Part of the game, a gameplay experience, sure, but more importantly, part of your Mage character and part of the Wizard's place in the world (though you don't become an official Wizard until Quest for Glory 2, and taking part in W.I.T.'s challenges). Mini games done right in an RPG, that was also an adventure game . . . and maybe done right in an RPG 'because' it was partially an adventure game, with puzzles and such.