Jarmo

Crap! Sigh. Move on. It's not like there wouldn't have been a bunch of "can't possibly fail" games that have turned out major letdowns. The first ARMA after OP Flashpoint, CM: Shock Force after the original Combat Missions, and maybe the biggest one for me, NWN2 after the first NWN (and NWN only needed a graphics update to be the perfect game). Also, notice how all the biggest disappointments I mentioned were actually good games, just not what I expected or wanted.

It's not leather armor. How do you know that? If it is metal, then sitting down or squatting will be difficult. The design isn't very practical for metal armor. I actually think it's modeled after this guy: I think that's brigandine, or plated, coat of plates, or whatever it's called. Basically those leather "stripes" have a bunch of metal plates inside. Flexible, resonably comfortable, good protection. (and then mail shirt below, will there be layered armor, I bet not)

With character models this detailed, faces will be clearly discernible (unlike, say, in the Infinity Engine games). ---- How will Project Eternity solve this? Will the character creation screen give users so many customization options for the protagonist's 3D character model, that one could, say, create a 50 year old fighter with a rough and scarred face and steely glance? Or a 19 year old mage with a soft, tri-angular face, narrow eyes, and an appeal of playfulness and irresponsibility? Or will we simply get a few fixed 3D models to choose from? My guess, a couple of standard faces with a choice of hair, beard and the colors of those and skin. One might hope for body types, but I'd call that a longshot.

I'm probably pretty much alone with this, but I'm a bit disappointed the character models are so high polygon. Means we probably won't be seeing really big mobs of enemies, tribe of goblins having 100 warriors coming at you at once (instead of coming in 5 waves of 20), or fight a group of 75 mercenaries. Which would have been something I'd have liked. I was a bit disappointed when NWN2 didn't improve on this compared to NWN (about the same amount of creatures seen at once on both, only in NWN2 with higher detail.) (and way disappointed in Skyrims fight for the city battles where armies were about 10 guys on each side) Oh well, it's not like I wouldn't appreciate good looks anyway.

Of course, it's mostly grinding only if there's a lot of magic items in the loot. If you find a magic weapon (you can't lore immediately) only a couple of times during the whole game, it's not such a big effort after all. Maybe ID spell could be just a divination that gives a circumstance bonus to the lore? Maybe 2 guys with decent lore skills could compare notes and ID an item cooperatively?

There definitely is an adjustment phase when starting a decade old RPG with old graphics and old gameplay. If you've played the game before and liked it, you're kind of, sort of vaccinated against this. If you play a game frequently enough and there's no direct comparison with better gameplay and graphics you play alongside, you might not suffer any ill effects whatsoever. It's the worst if you pick up a game you've never played or touched before, there's a mighty high cliff to scale before the enjoyment begins. I've tried Arcanum twice in the past few years, but haven't passed the initial adjustment challenge. I almost couldn't replay Fallout 1 at all, but then passed the phase, barely, continuing to enjoy the heck out of the game afterwards.

I'd prefer ID'ing of items was mostly through lore, might take time as should ID through spells or divinations. Definitely shouldn't take much player effort, just one click and wham, the bard as ID'd all party items her skills are capable of identifying. And definitely allow the use of unknown items, whats the fun in cursed items otherwise, give bonus to lore check if the item is tried? "Aye laddie, thar's an inscription in elder speak saying "Ye Olde Ringe of Stryngthe +1" and wearing this makes me feel strong, so I'd guess it's ring of strength plus one." Or something...

On this we're on the same page. Speaking out and condemning is good and might be effective. It's not freedom fighters against greedy nameless corporations. And while it's not greedy immoral pirates against pure hearted starving developers either, that is IMO closer to the mark. DRM though, is to me more like realizing many customers are shoplifters and deciding to spray tear gas on all customers so the shoplifters would have harder time at it. Though this too might err on the side of hyperbole, as examples go.

Shortened that to highlight my point. I'm all for fighting piracy in all reasonable and effective ways, but not in ineffective or unreasonable ways. Not DRM and not blackmail letters to suspected pirates. Basically it's a job for authorities, as botched job as they're doing of it, it's still their job.

Witcher 2 was pirated and up on torrent sites the day it was released (or before?). The game was distributed in DRM-free version on GOG.com and in DRM versions in Steam and other online and non-online stores. The version on torrent sites was the DRM-version, with DRM cracked. DRM does NOT stop or hinder piracy at all. Not at all. DRM can, and has, hurt the sales of used games, but that's all. -- One caveat. The Diablo 3, World of Warcraft kind of DRM where big chunks of the game code are not given to you but reside on developers server can stop piracy. Meaning always online, limited lifespan for games. I think that's where the industry will be heading. Which is sad. Understandable but sad.

A minigame that fit the setting and was actually a good thing that made the whole game better: Red Dead Redemption, Poker. A minigame that was sort of ok and which I kind of liked: Kotor and 2, Pazzak. A minigame that needs to die horribly: Kotor racing, Jade Empire, Shoot'em up. A minigame that was so annoying I gave up the whole game just because of it: Alpha Protocol, Hacking. Basically, I'm ok with well done minigames I can skip without major difficulties, or partake for minor (or major) gains. I'm against minigames that take place of a skill roll or are plot necessary. Overall, I'd say skip them and spend the effort elsewhere. It's an unnecessary sidestep and flavor at best, major source of annoyance at worst.

I wouldn't. NWN2 had some combat actions without animation, great cleave, (whirlwind attack?), don't remember what else. And that didn't work at all for me. Imagination wouldn't fill the blanks, all the blanks were just full of disappointment.

After a bit of info on how PE Paladin is going to be and a bit of rethinking, I'm not going there soon. Maybe on a create a whole party playthrough. Rogue or fighter, most likely a fighter.

Unique Class/Discipline defining powers for Psionics (i.e. I'm just picking a few, they aren't the only ones): So... Psionists have different spell lists? Compare, difference between D&D Clerics and Wizards: Clerics can use more weapons and armor, tend to have less combat and more healing magic than wizards.

Have to say, when I read of Black Prince in his namesake black armor, I was thinking a lot less rainbow like appearance.

I'm not too hopeful. Seems it's going to be a kind of mage, with some mind reading abilities. And I bet the possible mind reading wont feature in every conversation like it should, or not widely enough. The rest of the abilities... a kind of wizard. We'll see if it's over- or underpowered compared to the regular kind. Could be great, but I have a feeling it's one of those things that feel much better on the first thought than later on.

Most likely some fighter type, I tend to like arcane companions better but who knows how it'll go here. Also, on my first try I tend to go goody-goody on all choices, so I might just go and pick a Paladin. Or depending on the mood, might go with a scoundrel rogue just as easily.

Especially as Dragon Age lore said darkspawn blood is poisonous and horribly kills every non warden it touches. And then it's all forgotten 5 minutes later and every non warden in the party doesn't even. Even!

Slider toggle in the options. Maximum gore. But only splatter when appropriate. Nobody should explode when hit with a dagger. I'd say no arms or heads cut off with an arrow, only it was such a neat scene in Princess Mononoke I'm kind of pro arrow-decapitations, if it's a real wicked bow and bowman combo. Mostly when it's human strength fighters beating each others, there should be only blood. Fallout 3 eg. was real stupid about this. If I hit someone between the eyes with a small calibre sniper rifle, I want to see a nice little hole (with maybe a bigger splash on the other side) not a bloody decapitation!

Oh, that's one of my favorite Elmore paintings as well! XD I wanted to play in Forgotten Realms so bad when they advertised it with that one. Too bad the pic has almost nothing to do with the campaign world. The quality in itself wasn't my point though. It's how the whole BG style seems to be exactly Elmore style. Anyway, this being a pic thread now, here's one of my favorites. Pretty neat armor designs btw, usable, realistic and all, but still with clear fantasy flavor. Even without all the dudes being undead.

Permanent corpses can be real stupid. Skyrim does have this and it's real immersion breaking to assassinate someone in a tavern and loot their stuff, only to find the body is still the floor a week later and nobody seems to mind it anymore. A while yes, and it's nice to see passerbys start wondering what's happened or guards to raise alarm when seeing the body, but... Fallout 2 was real good about this actually. All bodies remain as long as you're there, but when you come later there's only stains on the floor alongside the loot. Actually I'd prefer the loot to disappear as well, in a few days, as well as everything you drop on the ground yourself. But I'd like the discarded stuff to reappear in the local pawn shop or some other location.

In nostalgy fumes, I went to browse Larry Elmore's homepages (which seem to be down now) and I must say I'm pretty amazed. It's not that he'd be better than I remembered, actually a lot of his stuff is not top notch and even at best he's no Frazetta, mostly he's a clear line type, but at best Elmore is pretty darn good. Like in this classic http://fantasy.mruga...lmore - 002.jpg which is the first D&D image I saw and largely the reason I brought the red box. But the reason I was really amazed, is I never actually realized how much his style and images is the D&D style. And the style of BG. It's all right there. http://2.bp.blogspot...ntwilight_I.jpg From the pretty realistic armor, influenced by history but still clearly D&D with big horns and ornaments here and there, to the less realistic style of boob plates, chain bikinis, downright silly evil armors, thieves wearing leather and female thieves showing way more cleavage. I'm not quite sure what to think at this point. There's nostalgia, stupid designs, awkvard poses, but there's D&D and BG I loved, there's this whole beautiful world full of color and style. --- And hey, bracers for everybody. And those neat folded longboots.

There's a couple of things that annoy me to no end in this. The first is the gaming company that sees players having fun and learning to do new things (drain health 1s vs damage health) and the company immediately decides the players must be stopped from having fun. Play it the way we intended and not the way you'd like! Much the same with acrobatics, Skyrim was filled with these platforms you can't jump to but have to go around, if you could jump like in oblivion or morrowind, you could bypass much of the caves (and miss out another 40 meters of corridor and 4 draugurs). But that'd have been fun! The second is the players, who remind me of little children with dolls. They go around twisting the head of the doll until it breaks, then they'll go crying their doll is broken. Yeah, you can probably break a freeform game in some way. But who the hell told you to smith 4000 iron daggers in the first place? Your exploiting the game and then complain when the balance breaks! Don't break the balance unless you want it broken! ---- Not meant as a personal attack, but as a general rant. No idea how Pipyui plays ES games. I know I liked my "damage self 1pt" fire spell practice, followed by !heal self 1pt" restoration practice. But I didn't damn well complain afterwards it was too easy to level up.

Not in favor of totally randomizing things, but this could be pretty cool if done well. Leave a companion to later found out he went on to this expedition but never returned (new expedition quest), or get a note he's been captured by the bandits (try a rescue or pay the ransom). Find him badly wounded in the inn telling about this wyvern he tried and failed to kill (kill wyvern quest). Or maybe jus find him a vampires thrall later on, as a corpse on the lair of the trolls, or on the opposing side having hooked up with a mercenary company (talk him to switch sides?). Could be a bunch of things for different companions. And would be a reasoning for them to gain XP on their own.

Quick and easy tutorial for me. I can easily spend 200 hours reading 1000 pages of text from a game forum, but I almost certainly can't make myself read a 20 page manual. But then I can spend another 10 hours asking & answering questions and reading tips from the same forums. Still won't read the manual. Cant remember the last game manual I actually read. Though I have an occasion searched an answer to a particular problem, I used to read them when I was less crazy and senile.