eimatshya

Hmm... yeah, I don't see how you could do an episodic, open-world game. I mean if they can pull it off, great, but it seems conceptually problematic (although I'm not a designer, so who knows what they could come up with). I guess we'll find out what they decide some time next spring.

I don't have my kickstarter "K". Not really a big deal, but If you could fix that it would be appreciated.

Yea, I can see how that'd work for them really well, a bit more concerned of how it works for me. Uh, isn't the benefit for you that you get more RPGs? I don't see why people are on the fence about this: Obsidian has a long track record of making a specific kind of RPG; it's not like there's a lot of ambiguity about what we're going to get with Eternity. I assume you're here because you like their games, so why wouldn't you be up for another one?

Why would you rather have one company making CRPGs instead of two? I don't see the benefit in merging the companies. Obsidian's been doing a great job on its own, and inXile has a lot of potential.

Yeah, while I think Eternity is looking pretty cool, I would like to see more RPGs outside of D&D style fantasy. There was a squad-based, sci-fi RPG in development about 15 years ago called 3rd World. It got cancelled, but it looked pretty cool. Something like that, where we send our squad around doing jobs on different worlds could be pretty cool. If they were going to do another fantasy thing (which I doubt since I imagine their fantasy focus will be on Eternity and its sequels for the near future), it would be nice to get something a bit out of the ordinary. Something similar to Spelljammer or the Barsoom novels would be a neat change. Ultimately, what I'd really like to see would be some kind of urban fantasy. Even though I'm not a huge vampire fan, I loved Bloodlines in part because it was so cool to play an RPG set in modern day Los Angeles but with a bunch of hidden supernatural stuff going on behind the scenes.

I don't know a lot about how this sort of thing works, but wouldn't using unpaid voice actors in a commercial product make the project non-union, making it difficult or impossible to get any professionals on board?

I enjoyed the music in the trailer, especially the first minute. I'm not a huge fan of "epic" compositions (like what we get starting at about 0:58) in general as they tend to all blur together in my mind and end up feeling samey. In this case, however, that style fit perfectly. It is a teaser trailer, after all, and that sort of bombastic score is appropriate when you're trying to hype something up. I'm looking forward to seeing more pieces of Eternity's soundtrack. Keep up the good work Justin!

I'm apparently in the extreme minority here, but I actually liked the animations in the trailer. They had a nice retro feel to them that made me nostalgic. That said, I'm sure the improved animations that come in during the polishing stage will look more natural, and that's fine too.

Like many of the other posters, my initial response was, "no new stretch goals; just polish what you have." After reading through this thread, and especially the quotes from SA, I think I'm cautiously going to vote for more stretch goals and trust Obsidian not to stretch themselves thin on companion writing (while a large cast of companions is good in some ways, it also can lead to them feeling shallow and unreactive; this was a problem in the BG games but not in PS:T with its small, focused set of companions).

I played it with keyboard and mouse and thought the contols were fine. The only problem is that the game assumes that you are playing with an x-box controller and gives all the info mapped for that control scheme. For example, it will tell you to hit X + back to dodge (or something like that), but it means whatever key on the keyboard corresponds to X on the controller, not the X key on the keyboard. This means it takes a bit more trial and error to figure out the controls (or you could look them up online).

Yeah, what GhoulishVisage said. Also, as part of the streaming process the industry's been going through to make all games appeal to a wider audience. The whole isometric thing is mostly found in niche games while blockbuster games like Call or Duty and Uncharted rely heavily on a character centric view of the expensive 3D environment surrounding them. Since publishers apparently want all their games to be huge blockbusters (however illogical that goal might be), they want all their games ape the visual experience of their flagship titles. Personally, I do enjoy games with first person or over the shoulder view, but I am glad to see a return to the 90s style, isometric RPG. We definitely need more diversity in gaming.

I'm fine with having voice acted invocations, but I would prefer that they weren't in Latin as the whole "Latin is the language of magic" thing irritates me. Also I think Latin sounds kind of silly.

I actually think Latin sounds kind of silly, especially the classical pronunciation. I also dislike having a language that was once a vernacular used for magic incantations. If there is some special language that exists only for magic, that's one thing, but to randomly decide that speaking a language that was once an everyday thing will help work magic never quite computes in my head. I guess you could argue that the fact that it's no longer spoken gives it a mystical connotation that helps the invoker get into the mind set to work magic, but even then, Latin wouldn't be necessary; it would be an aide: something that would give you a bonus to the roll, rather than an obligatory reagent, and speaking the words in Sumarian or Sanskrit would have the same effect.

I generally find limitations to be irritating when they both feel artificial and have serious repercussions for my character(s). Something like an invisible wall at the edge of an area doesn't usually bother me because it normally doesn't have serious negative effects on my character. It just means I can't go that way, which isn't a problem unless the game decides that something I need to get to is past the wall, but won't let me go through it. As I mentioned in another thread, I kept getting annoyed in Bioshock because there were plenty of low hanging balconies that a regular person could have climbed up to in order to get around certain obstacles, but my character couldn't do so because he apparently has no arms (in addition to being mute). As such, I was forced to take extremely roundabout and dangerous routes to get anywhere. Cut scenes, however, are the most infuriating limitation I find in games. They limit you from being able to interact with events that may have serious ramifications for the story. Usually they just force you to stand around like an idiot watching while the bad guy slowly (and it's usually slowly) carries out his sinister plan. Then once he's done, the cut scene ends and you, the player, get to clean up the mess that might not even exist if you could have acted in a timely and rational manner. For example, [ALPHA PROTOCOL SPOILERS] in the museum, I always choose to go after the bomb rather than the hostage. After defusing the bomb, Marburg always stands out in the open, making himself a very easy target. He then lets his hostage go, points his gun at her, and says something like "God wills" (my Latin is pretty basic). To me, it seems fairly obvious that the professional murderer in front of me, the man who was trying to blow up a museum full of innocent people just one minute prior, is about to shoot her. So clearly this would be the time for me to start shooting at him to try to redirect his attention. Instead, the cut scene makes you stand there and watch him shoot her. Then to make matters worse, you have to watch your character run up to her corpse and start ranting impotently instead of, you know, staying behind cover and shooting the people responsible with THE GUN HE IS CARRYING IN HIS HAND AND HAS BEEN USING MERCILESSLY ON THE EXACT SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE UP TO THAT POINT. The ridiculousness of the situation is further aggravated by the fact that in most of my playthroughs I don't get to know the hostage at all, so while my character did say that he'd protect her, it seems bizarre for him to completely lose his head over a more-or-less stranger's death when he's spent the last week knifing people to death. [END SPOILERS] Anyway, this narrative imposed limitation keeps the player from acting sensibly or in keeping with his behavior up until that point which has negative repercussions. As such, I find it to be a rather annoying segment in an otherwise excellent game.

If you're referring to that quote of mine, that is me referring to the fact that the 2E/3Eism of the Figher being a higher flat damage class than the Rogue is. a 2E/3Eism that many people enjoyed. The P:E Fighter design is more tank/controller oriented and is based off the Fighting style that J.E. Sawyer's 4th edition Earthstrength Warden character employed. The design is still very fightery, but it's more the style of a Fighter that takes the Expertise feat rather than a Fighter that goes for max whoop-ass. I'm allowed to not like the fact that the Rogue and Ranger are the highest damage classes, just as I am allowed to prefer the older style Wizard, Pre-buffing (which I think is out), and save or die effects. Despite the Class Design not being my 1st preference, I think the overall design is good and I'm keen to see it in action. Fair enough. I wasn't trying to prevent you from voicing your opinion.

A Fighter can beat a Rogue in a 1v1. But of the characters in your party the Rogue will do more total damage to enemies than your Fighter would. Yeah, but again, I don't see how this makes the rogue the "best fighter". It makes them the best at dealing damage but not at fighting overall. Best in one area of fighting doesn't mean best fighter.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does having a higher single target damage output automatically make a rogue the best fighter? I haven't played WoW in a long time, so I don't know how it is now, but back in the day, my defensive warrior could beat most rogues in a one on one fight, even though they had a higher damage output. Admittedly it varies from game to game, but there's potentially more to fighting than just raw DPS. The rogue may specialize in precise, crippling attacks but would lack the versatility and resilience of the fighter.

Nice summary. Thanks for compiling all the info.

Cinematics are expensive. Something like the intro movie from Icewind Dale would be OK, but I don't think full 3D cinematics are all that important, especially not in a 2D game.

Personally, invisible walls or getting stuck on doorways doesn't usually break my immersion. I'm able to process these as part of the game without breaking my connection to the gameworld. The same goes for seeing the numerical stats for items. What does normally break my immersion in a game (or any other story for that matter) is noticing something incongruous on the narrative level or in the story-gameplay interface that inhibits my ability to empathize with the setting. That is to say, when I lose the ability to connect with the events in the game. For example, I was able to get immersed in System Shock 2 but not in Bioshock. In Bioshock, the first thing I learned about the world was that there was some magic potion that people had been drinking that gave them super powers but that also drove them violently insane with extended use. I was then promptly told to drink some of this madness-inducing, mutagenic substance so that I could continue my journey. This made my brain go, "wait, what? Why on earth would I want to do that?" I could see balconies and stuff, and it seemed like I should be able to climb up to one without ingesting something that was clearly not safe to imbibe. But no, the game insisted that I drink this noxious substance to continue, even though I could think of ways that I should be able to continue without doing so. As such, my connection to the world was broken. I could no longer understand the logic of the narrative. In System Shock 2, on the other hand, I never felt like I was being forced to do anything insane in order to continue. The levels were fairly open, and I could always get to places that I could see (I think; it's been a long time since I've played it). As such, I could get immersed in being a dude exploring doomed spaceship overrun with crazed, killer mutants because I could understand why I was doing it. In Bioshock, it felt like I was being forced down a linear route that made no sense to me. Another example is from the first Knights of the Old Republic game (MINOR SPOILERS). When you're escaping from Malak's flagship, my party was mowing down all threats with no real problem. Then, during my fight with Malak, I was clearly winning until a cut scene forced me out of the fight. Then instead of cutting my way through the blast door to rescue my captured party member, the game made me run away, and all the NPC's were like, "oh, we can't go back for her, it's too dangerous. She sacrificed herself so that we could escape!" But that isn't what happened in the game. In the game, we had devastated all opposition and could easily have fought our way to rescue our captured companion. (END SPOILER) This sort of situation is what breaks immersion for me because the basic logic of the game world breaks down, and I can't empathize with the events, meaning I struggle to remain invested in them or their outcomes.

They definitely can help, but I don't find them to be particularly important either. I had no prior experience to the forgotten realms setting before playing Baldur's Gate, so the title was not at all evocative or informative for me. I got the game because the pictures and description on the back of the box made it sound cool (at the time I was super into Tolkien, Warcraft, and the Elder Scrolls and Fallout had got me hooked on CRPGs, so BG sounded like the perfect game for me).

I'm guessing we won't see a lot of the building process. That seems like it would be resource intensive to create, and I suspect the devs have more important things to focus on. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be cool, just that I imagine it's low on Obsidian's priorities for the game.

I'd love to see a greater diversity of fantasy settings. Even though it wasn't the deepest fantasy world, Jade Empire is my favorite Bioware game because it was so refreshing to have something other than Forgotten Realms style fantasy. In general, my preference is for anything Near East related (I like deserts, which is why I'd also love to see another Dark Sun CRPG), so I'd love to see an RPG set in a fantasy setting inspired by the ancient middle east. I also wish someone would make a CRPG set in a fantasy version (or even a straight-up historical version) of ancient mesoamerica. That said, I don't mind European fantasy, I'm just a bit burnt out on the whole "robed wizards and plate-armored knights fighting dragons" thing. For that reason, I'd rather see a dark ages setting rather than a high middle ages one (and yes, I know P:E is set in the late middle ages; I'm just talking about what I'd most like to see in a future, non-P:E rpg). A setting inspired by medieval Iberia might be pretty cool: a land where dry, hot tableland gives way to rainy, forested mountains in the north; where European and Middle Eastern cultures meet; where warring kingdoms are as likely fight their brothers of the faith as their infidel neighbors; where pagan hill people ambush those traveling through their mountains; where battles are fought between lightly armored skirmishers instead of near-invincible noblemen in the midieval equivalent of a tank. You could even mix in some Basque mythology and have the Gauekoak, or "night ones", come out after sundown, making it dangerous for humans to leave their homes in the dark. Anyway, my point is, the vast majority of fantasy is inspired by midieval England/France or by the Roman Empire. I'd like to see a bit more diversity in that area because I'm getting bored with those two settings. There is an amazing variety of historical settings to draw inspiration from; let's see some of them!

Yeah, Project Eternity's the placeholder title. Basically, they had to announce the game before much of anything had been done on it, so they had to give it some arbitrary title to use in the pitch. Since there was no story at that time, they didn't want to commit to a permanent title and went with "Project Eternity" as a callback to the Infinity Engine that inspired it. They will presumably announce the final title eventually, like how Double Fine eventually decided to call "Double Fine Adventure" "Broken Age".

The Icewind Dale portraits are by far my favorite. I usually use them in Baldur's gate as well (not that the BG portraits are bad, it's just that the IWD portraits are amazing).