eimatshya

Initially, I was in favor of having a composer whose work I was familiar with and had enjoyed write the game's score. I figured that this would be the best way to insure that I loved the game's music. After reading all of Justin Bell's posts on the various music threads on this forum, however, I'm changing my vote in favor of him instead. While he would be more of a gamble than choosing an established game composer, his ideas on what to do with P:E's music are interesting, and I enjoyed following his back-and-forth with people on these forums. Given his passion for the project, it seems fair to let him work on its score (and a kickstarter does seem like the best place to try out a new composer, without the need to satisfy a publisher by choosing a "big name" for the job).

In a recent interview, Adam Brennecke said that it would be sort of a middle ground between BG I and BG II style. Some exploration, but not to the extent seen in BG I. Here's the quote:

It could be somewhat similar to paladins in Icewind Dale. I've been replaying that game with a paladin as the party spokesperson, and there have been a couple of times where evil people have tried to pass themselves off as wholesome individuals in conversation. However since the character being tricked is a paladin, and paladins can detect evil, I keep getting a dialogue option along the lines of "You cannot fool me, I see your evil aura." If anyone other than the paladin takes the dialogue instead, that option does not come up, and the party is deceived.

Visually, Sagani is my by far my favorite. I kind of like Forton, as well. I find his bedraggled appearance to be kind of endearing; he could be sort of a Yojimbo/Sanjuro sort of character (if you haven't seen either of those movies, go do it now). Since we know so little about them other than their concept art (assuming these even are companions and not a rival adventuring party or something), it's a little hard to choose a favorite beyond that.

That's pretty much what I want from "mature" content: to have my world view challenged and to have to examine interesting philosophical or ethical quandaries. I'm more interested in fantasy as a genre for the exploration of ideas than as a way to translate real life problems verbatim into a world of elves and dwarves. That's not to say that real life problems can't be represented, I just tend to be more interested philosophical exploration than in punishing rapists. I mean, I enjoyed slaughtering Caesar's Legion in Fallout:NV, but I found PS:T, KotOR II, and MotB to be more thought provoking and, as such, ultimately more memorable and fulfilling in the long run.

How are they supposed to know that there is rape in the game? They know going in that there is traditional fantasy violence, so people bothered by that are unlikely to buy the game. But unless Obsidian announces that it includes rape, there is no reason for the person buying it to assume that it would (it's not a standard feature of the genre, after all). This is especially important to note since rape is pretty common in real life, so there could easily be a significant number of rape victims playing the game.

Well in one of the interviews with Chris Avellone during the kickstarter, he said that he was more interested in writing personal stories that revolve around the main character but have great consequences for the world around him or her (as we saw in Torment and the Sith Lords, for example), so that might indicate that they're taking such an approach to P:E's story. That said, Josh Sawyer and Adam Brennecke are the project leads, not Avellone, so they may want to take a different direction with the narrative. Time will tell. *EDIT* I had forgotten about the second quote that Ieo posted above. I guess that does in fact suggest a player centric plot.

For me, story is paramount. Story is what gives context to my actions. When I play a game with great gameplay but an uninteresting story, I quickly begin to lose interest, and the feeling that I'm wasting my life comes over me. I begin to feel that I could be using this time to do something productive. When I play a game with an engaging story, however, I don't feel like I'm wasting my time. I feel like my involvement with this great story is a productive act. I am creating my own story (I'm not actually, of course, since it's all predetermined by the writers, but it gives me the illusion that I am). This is why story-based RPGs have become pretty much the only games I still play, even though their gameplay mechanics are usually pretty dull (I find RTwP combat to be very tedious, for example, but I slog through it because the story has given my actions context; the otherwise boring combat sequences become interesting because they have become part of the story). As such, story is definitely key for me. A game must give me the feeling that I'm telling my own story--that I am a character in this fantasy world. If I can get engrossed in playing a character, then all the game's bugs and the tedium of its combat become marginal inconveniences. Without that contextualization, however, even the greatest gameplay mechanics quickly devolve into a timesink, and I find little motivation to keep playing.

I think it will depend on how detailed the in-game character models are. For me, the character models in the BG and IWD games had so little detail that having a picture that didn't match up didn't bother me. In NWN2, however, with the more detailed character models, I think the painted BG style pictures would have seemed a little off. I suspect that P:E will not have that much detail in their character models, which would make the painted portraits seem like the better choice. So for me, it all comes down to how detailed they make the character models.

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Sounds like it could be pretty cool. And it would make more sense than the guards trusting some random person to solve their problems without any supervision.

Honestly, I usually make the same choices every time I play a game, so reactivity doesn't necessarily enhance replayability for me (not that I don't like having meaningful choices, I do, I just tend to make the same decisions each time). Usually what makes me replay a game is its story. I've played through KotOR II at least 10 times because I love the story. That said, it isn't always the plot that makes a story great; often it's the little things that add up to make a game a memorable experience for me. For instance, I've played through Alpha Protocol probably six or seven times because there are so many little things I love about the game (e.g. every part with Steven Heck). Basically, if it's an adventure that I'd want to go through again, I'll probably end up replaying the game.

According to the talk that Tim Cain gave on the development of Fallout 1 (posted on Obsidian's Facebook page), that game cost around $3 million dollars (although that was in the mid 90s). I think they had to build their own engine for that game, however, so that would push the costs up. Also, the folks at Obsidian have lots of experience making this sort of game, so that increased familiarity should help keep costs down for them.

Very nice OP. I hope more people post their P:E inspired creations here.

I believe they said somewhere that all of your companions would have a vested interest in your quest (or something to that effect), so I don't know if convincing them to join you should really be a challenge. If they have the same goals as you convincing them to work with you doesn't seem like it would be a hard sell (in most instances, anyway). In games where the companions don't have a clear reason to join you, however, it does usually seem a bit odd for them to just drop everything and follow some stranger into death and danger.

Personally, I'd rather see it like in Arcanum where you have an enormous number of backgrounds to choose from, but the game starts the same way for everyone. While the origin stories were my favorite part of DA:O, the system in Arcanum lead to a lot more possibilities for creating your characters, and it would be easier for Obsidian to implement. Also, as other people have pointed out, P:E's racial integration and the variety of cultures available for each race makes a DA:O type system seem unfeasible (at least if it was based on race). They've said that you will be able to choose your race, culture, and background, so I imagine you will have more than six possible combinations to work from.

I really like the lore behind the chanter class. So maybe I'll play as one of those, depending on how "bardy" they end up feeling (not a huge fan of D&D style bards). My chanter would probably be a human male, but sometimes I get inspired to take the character in another direction when looking at the options at the level up screen. Usually I play as a human fighter, though. This is especially true in party-based games. I like being the one up in the front getting pounded on while everyone else cowers safely behind me. I tried playing a mage in DA:O once, but it just didn't feel right. I couldn't figure out my character's place in the story when she was always hiding in the back but was supposed to be leading the party. That sounds really silly now that I type it out, but at the time it was something I wrestled with and eventually led me to quitting and rolling a new character. So, whatever I end up going with, it will probably be melee centered.

Knights of the Old Republic spoilers (in case someone reading has somehow managed not to learn about the plot twist over the last nine years):

I don't mind gory deaths as long as they're an occasional thing. In Fallout 3 and Fallout:NV, it seemed like people exploded every time I killed them. I would hit a guy in the arm with a pipe, and it would explode. It just got annoying. I liked it much better in the early Fallouts and BG games where gory death animations were a treat that you got from time to time to show you that you had scored a really good hit.

I'm not really sure what I would want from a game's story. There are so many things that contribute to my enjoyment of a story. There's enjoyable companions, a great plot, an engaging dilemma (moral or otherwise) that your character must face, a great setting, a great antagonist, fun dialogue options, a high level of reactivity, and probably other factors as well. Plot twists can be good or bad, depending on the game. Jade Empire's plot twist was the thing that really made the game great for me. KotOR I's plot twist, on the other hand, sort of ruined the game for me. Maybe ruined is too harsh a term, but for a couple of reasons (one of which is brought up by Zez-Kai-El in TSL), its plot twist has made replaying the game unappealing to me. I think the one thing that should unequivocally be remembered is that computer games are an interactive medium, and this should apply to the story as well. ME3 suffered from this since its writers seem to have forgotten that it was a game, not a movie; it was full of irritating cutscenes where your character suddenly becomes an incompetent halfwit so that a bad guy could look cool, preset reactions to most things (you don't get to choose how you feel about a number of plot events; the writers TELL you how YOUR character feels), and a general disregard for the player's choices (e.g. the Rachni, the "inevitable" conflict between synthetics and organics that may have already been resolved before meeting the RGK, everything else about the ending). The reversion from an interactive story to a predominately non-interactive one is the main reason why I disliked the game even before I got to its abysmal ending. TL;DR There are too many factors that contribute to a story to single any one out as critical. However, stories in CRPGs should be interactive and it should be up to the players to decide how their version of the protagonist responds to events. It's a game not a movie.

Glad I'm not the only one. OT, I have to admit, I've never really "got" the Morrowind soundtrack. I remember reading an article in PC Gamer back in the day about how great Morrowind's score was and how we'd get a copy of the soundtrack with the collector's edition, but when I started playing the game, the music never really stood out to me. Don't get me wrong, I think it's pretty, but it isn't the kind of soundtrack that I would buy. It just doesn't stand out for me. It's nice enough while I'm listening to it, but then it's gone as soon as I quit the game. Still, I always hear people talking about how much they love it, so maybe I'm just odd. For me, the soundtracks that really live on after the game is done are Final Fantasy Tactics, Planescape: Torment, the Mass Effect games (the music was the only part of ME3's ending that wasn't a botch of epic proportions), KotOR II, the Witcher, Jade Empire, Arcanum (or at least its main theme), MotB, and probably some other ones that are slipping my mind at the moment. *EDIT* Added some examples: Final Fantasy Tactics: Jade Empire (the Water Dragon): Oh, and oddly enough (especially since I probably haven't played the game since the 90s) the theme from Killer Instinct Gold still randomly pops into my head from time to time.

Fallout 2 for me, as well. Fourteen years of playing that game, and I still love it.

They had firearms in the middle ages. They just weren't advanced enough to become the dominant weapon type, as they would in the renaissance. By the time full plate armor came into use, firearms were in use as well.

My limited familiarity with the Forgotten Realms setting prevents me from making any in depth comparisons, although other posters have asserted that there are firearms in the Forgotten Realms setting (in Lantan, I believe). That said, I don't have a problem with limited use of ancient firearms, like what Obsidian has indicated will be the case in P:E. By the time full plate armor came into common use, firearms were around, so I don't see anything too anachronistic about them being in the game (although as I understand it, a matchlock mechanism would be more period appropriate than the wheel locks that will be used in P:E; still, close enough in my opinion, especially in a fantasy world).

I thought they were using the increased budget to hire more people (maintaining the same schedule), not to keep the same amount of people working longer. In one of the earlier interviews with Feargus (I think it was a podcast, possible the Neverwinter Nights podcast or the Pure Sophistry interview) he said that the release would probably be pushed back as the scope of the game increased with each stretch goal. As such, I suspect that we will be looking at a later release date than April 2014. I think it was in one of these, but it's late and I don't feel like listening to them again to double check right now. Pure Sophistry interview: http://www.puresophistry.com/2012/09/21/project-eternity-radio-interview-with-feargus-urquhart-ceo-of-obsidian-entertainment/ NWN Podcast: http://www.nwnpodcast.com/nwnp/2012/09/29/nwnp-podcast-episode-168-obsidian-entertainment-project-eternity-kickstarter/#podPressPlayerSpace_1