Eiphel

Also having this, any news on if it'll be fixed next patch?

Just FYI, I am a trans woman, and I was pretty displeased with that memorial, and was writing to Obsidian about it when I saw this update. I knew immediately which text they were talking about because, no, it's not just one crazy person on twitter - That joke was hateful and mean spirited. Guess I need to be raked over the coals too. Kind of horrified at the bile that's come out of this community in response, too. I may be a fan of the same games, but evidently that is as far as common cause goes.

I got really excited until I realised my Wasteland 2 key was included with my Torment pledge not my Eternity one. Curses!

The ability to mark your map and write your own notes is definitely something I'm wanting.

The only thing that really perturbs me along this line is more the race side of thing - It seems like there'll probably only be one companion of any particular race (save maybe human), which would be a little sad (but unavoidable). Still, other NPCs should be nicely fleshed out along the way, so I suppose we'll still get to see the contrasts between different characters of the same race.

Good meaty update, though this line seemed strangely offhand. Revising the whole theme of the game seems like something pretty significant.

Whilst almost everyone in New Vegas counts, this morning Vulpes Inculta sprang to mind. Your first encounter with him can't fail to make an impression.

I think Arcade actually had a lot of good material, but it was all very very end-loaded. If you stick with Arcade through the For Auld Lang Syne quest chain, I think he's got the same depth as Veronica. Veronica's background is better paced and parcelled out though.

Isn't a level up system a staircase normally? The gain of experience between levels is the sweaty, fumey part. But I see what you mean. Rather than a staircase of +0s and +1s, you're envisioning a sort of +0.1, +0.1, +0.1, +0.1, +0.1, +1.5 type progression? It's interesting, but in terms of actual gameplay effect I'm not sure it'd really be noticeable to devote the resources to. If you want to go down that path, I think a more rewarding area to look into would be in revising and adding nuance to the way skills are learned itself. Like you, I've given this a bit of thought, but my dinner's ready. I'll post more later.

Point being that you liked the characters that you picked up, someone else would probably pick up different characters, thinking that the others where boring. That is my whole point in this thread, no one is going to like all the characters, but the more characters there are, higher the chance that someone is going to find some they like, regardless of how deep and engaging they are. That wasn;t my point at all. My point was I had absolutely no feeling about ANY of the characters. ? Well, ok, I didn't pay attention to the original team either. What I meant was once I had a team of six I couldn't be bothered swapping anyone around because none of them felt characterful. I picked my party out based on their combat mechanics and that was that.

Point being that you liked the characters that you picked up, someone else would probably pick up different characters, thinking that the others where boring. That is my whole point in this thread, no one is going to like all the characters, but the more characters there are, higher the chance that someone is going to find some they like, regardless of how deep and engaging they are. That wasn;t my point at all. My point was I had absolutely no feeling about ANY of the characters.

Yeah, I was talking about liking them more. So you played all the characters in BG in one play through? I never did that because I would only lose xp on them. I've played BG1 now, and honestly, no, I barely paid any attention to the slew of companions beyond the team I initially set up. Why? Because they were so shallow I wasn't invested in any of them. They get a paragraph of backstory, a few lines of meeting dialogue and some combat barks. That's not a character. I was really surprised how utterly characterless they were.

Looks like I just got the email address thing confused.

You gave them when you pledged. Not that I know of. kickstarter doesn't have my address (except as part of paying british projects but there it is for verification of the payment and is not recorded (if you believe ks is operating correctly)). Amazon knows my details but I'm pretty sure that amazon won't give those details back to KS projects (they would be violating EU privacy rights). I was under the impression that Amazon Payments gave your address as part of your payment details to the person you paid, and this was in the T&Cs.

What I don't understand: Without fullfillment site how can they already know your details that you want to change? Or did they already ask us and I forgot? You gave them when you pledged.

I believe that's because the in-engine dynamic lighting hasn't been applied yet. Dynamic lighting will add several layers of shadows.

Another one I thought of: Captain Kirrahe in the Mass Effect trilogy. He only gets a few scenes, but they're really characterful and memorable. Yes, a lot of that is hinged on a pretty basic 'gimmick' (his 'hold the line') speech, but that's just the hook - he has a complete personality. In fact he gets two of my favourite interactions in ME3 in his short screen time. (These are playthrough dependent):

You know there was one tiny aspect of Dragon Age which I quite liked (I mean it was tiny and I liked it, not that I only liked a tiny amount of the whole game), albeit it was heavily underdeveloped. As the various subfactions were brought into your army, their representatives would appear at your camp, and each had a certain class of item that would help their group prepare for the battle. It wasn't a quest and it didn't have a specific number assigned, it was just something you could do with the relevant resources and it felt flavourfully implemented (though pretty bare bones).

While I don't understand why you'd want to turn them off, from a "you shouldn't have to work at something that your character already intuitively knows" standpoint, I guess something like that could be toggle-able, just for more challenge? But, just so you're clear on it, the suggestion isn't for your character to simply always know where everything is because it's harder for the player to figure such things out. It's to have things that your character WOULD intuitively know be marked for your character (to represent the idea that you already know it, rather than having the player spend 15 minutes searching, with mouse-and-topdown-view, for something on the ground, or some identifiable marking that your character has easily been able to see for the past 15 minutes). If it's done right, you shouldn't really ever feel the need to turn it off, at least not for the reason that it's arbitrarily taking away your need to actually discover and search for things. You'll just only have to search for things that are unknown in location/aesthetics, rather than having to do it for EVERYthing. I was assuming more that they wanted them off/togglable because the actual visual UI aspect distracted them/broke immersion and they didn't like that.

This seems like an unfair criticism. The two games people tend to cite, KoTOR and New Vegas, as being symbolic of their bugginess were both the victim of heavy publisher meddling. Bethesda, particularly, really haven't ever heard of quality assurance. I don't think Obsidian are any worse than anyone else.

There's a bunch, but the one that immediately springs to mind from Coaxmetal in Torment. In terms of amount of impact relative to his significance in the game, he packed a lot in. Everything about him was utterly unique and fascinating, and every one of his lines was utterly enthralling.

I quite like the system of a button you hold which highlights named interactables, with them being unmarked the rest of the time.

I strongly believe you should be able to pick up and get into the game immediately. Manuals should act as a reference, not as a required 101 course to study before you can play. And this doesn't mean the game needs to be dumbed down or simplified; it is perfectly possible to deliver the neccesary information on the game's fundementals within the game. Beyond this though, a manual does offer the ability to serve as a comprehensive and in-depth reference document. That's a useful function. It can also be a flavour document, and I really like that. But my one strong feeling is that all the information available needs to be accesible from within the game - even if just in the form of having a copy of the manual attached to the options menu. Having to exit the game to look something up sucks.

I actually feel like all of these approaches work and can be done poorly or done well. They just fit different narratives and styles of game. New Vegas did a great job of starting you as a blank slate character and yet ultimately making your background of great importance, and so - of course - did Torment. It depends a lot on the narrative that the game will have. Some narratives neccesitate a set starting point for your character, and I think that's fine - I'd hate to throw out all of those narratives just for that fact. And besides which, when handled well, a set origin can be really conducive to a great roleplaying experience because it gives a clear starting point by which to measure your development and change across the game. A blank slate opening or one that is heavily player-defined usually tends to feed more into the character being a constant throughout (though by no means neccesarily). The only thing I'm opposed to is the game telling us what SORT of person we've been prior to the game. I'm not actually against this as an absolute rule either, but clearly for Project: Eternity it wouldn't make sense with the game experience that's been developed for us to be locked into a particular nature beforehand. On the other hand I don't mind if it tells us where we grew up, what past events we were involved with, and so forth. From a game mechanics point of view, I would be wary about two many character creation options devoted to defining things like this - vague traits can be good, but you run the risk of simply ruling out certain possibilities by not supporting it. A blank slate or simply an undefined opening might not offer much support in the very early game for your character concept - this is certainly a common issue - but it doesn't negate concepts in the way that a mechanic player-defined background can do.

Whilst it's slightly at a tangent to the OP, I think it's relevant to say that more than anything I think it's important that if your character is meant to know where something is / who someone is then the player should also know. Whilst I don't object to 'Find your own way there' or 'Work it out yourself' sentiments on the whole, I don't think they make any sense when we're talking about somewhere/something that the character, in-universe, is supposed to be already familiar with. In addition, I think it's worth bearing in mind that the nature of the game is that we as players can't actually research and look things up the way our character really could. Yes, we can usually ask NPCs for directions, but we get one set response and maybe there's something we're not clear on. In reality we could get a map, we could ask someone to write something down for us, et cetera. Quest markers or other UI aspects can, ultimately, simply suffice for an abstraction of such.