BasaltineBadger

No. You misunderstand. The whole room would be "drawn" at a different perspective. And it isn't consuming. Everything is already done from a camera anyway. The 3d modeling of the landscape is already prerendered. You set your camera at the direction you want, the zoom value, and the angle at which it is projecting and whatever your background renders, you just set your 3D models to render at that same camera angle. The monsters are 3D models, so you can see different angles. Your party is at a different angle automatically. and any 3d models also render at that new camera zoom and angle. It should be pretty easy to do. The question is, does it make for a better and more engaging narrative if you do mess with camera angles and zooming? I think it can be effective in certain situations and locations, like small rooms. But there is a 2D hand-drawn image on top of the 3D model, wouldn't they have to have the that image drawn again?

Just make the main boss reasonably difficult and make a few hidden bosses, possibly extra boss granting a new ending for more experienced players. The main antagonist doesn't have to be most powerful man in the game.

The project is pretty low budget, I think that Obsidian shouldn't experiment too much. Besides, every change in perspective would mean drawing the whole map again which is time consuming.

I predict that there PE will not be protected by any DRM besides Steam. Obisidan doesn't have enough money to develop new DRM and most people who would be interested in pirating PE are smart enough to bypass anything they could licence. The other reason is that the game is going to be put on GoG and online distribution without DRM is one of their main selling points. You can stop talking about DRM now, as it is meaningless.

The Keep was actually pretty enjoyable, I consider it one of the best locations in BG2. Mainly thanks to great variotion of locations and monsters mixed with pretty surreal atmosphere. It wasn't as good as ID dungeons but it sure was better than most dungeons in BG2. I can see that many of the RPG fans who focus on plot find them a hassle, but that's why so many of them are optional. Perhaps the enemies from the main ToB storyline should have been easier while the ones in the Watcher's keep harder. This way people who don't like long dungeons could skip them without worrying about being too weak to beat the game. The problem with fake urgency was related to all subquests in BG2. You were hunting dragons and looking for treasures either while Imoen was being tortured by Cowled Wizards/Irenicus (and you had enough money to pay the Shnadow Thieves) or while Irenicus' army was slaughtering people in the Suldanessellar. The main problem with extra dungeons is that you can either be too strong or too powerful to properly enjoy them. I think that Megadungeon should be accessible from outside of the main game. Player would start at level one in front of the dungeon, level up quickly and reach max level at the lowest floor of the dungeon.

Is there even a consensus regarding what exactly is an RPG?

Most of the things on the list are pretty meaningless and some makes me wonder if people know anything about PE. People seriously thought that here is a possibility that there will be lockpicking minigame in a IE inspired top-down RPG? Or that gods and religion won't play prominent role in a game about souls and stuff? What the hell.

Depressing stories are vastly overrated.

Romances are not minigames. This is a piece of dialogue: This is a minigame:

The opening video makes it clear that it's not just some random chip worth 20 caps. Benny also hires thugs and take time to make sure nobody finds courier, with is not something someone does for 20 caps. It's pretty obvious that the chip is very important and valuable. If someone hit me on purpose, not trying to get him punished would be pretty stupid. It's not like Benny shoot you by accident. You knew that the cargo was pretty valuable which is enough to expect someone to want to take it. Knowing about other couriers or the chip being a technological artifact or even knowing that Benny wants the chip would save the courier from an ambush. This is not true. Goodsprings residents flee from Legion if it gains control of the Mojowe. Why not get help when it's offered? You are playing the game to have adventures, it's not the game's fault that it pressumes the MC is an adventurous type. It's not the problem with lack of motivation but with you not liking an NPCs. No matter whet they'd do you'd still be unmotivated if characters are not to your taste. The main plot is pretty much the same in F1, 2 and NV. Big army/organisation trying to do something horrible to the wasteland. The only difference is that the location you start in is threatened. It's not like Aroyo or Vault 13 are even important in the lategame. You are basically saying that you didn't like the plot and NPCs in NV and if you don't like the game there is nothing authors can do to keep you motivated. They can add 1,000 romances and it still means nothing if you say that NPCs are shallow and stupid.

Normal person would be curious why the hell is one chip worth killing someone. On an **** who shot you in the head. It's not like shooting you for business reasons hurt less or something. House didn't know about the trap and you don't even know what information did House provide except the fact that there are fake packages and that the chip is some ancient super-software. It's not like knowing it would save you from the trap. There is also that courier agency you are working for. People in your village will probably die or become slaves if you don't stop Cesar. You can get power or defeat super evil-rape squad and courier is an RPG protagonist not middle aged woman so choice between adventure and becoming a bum is obvious. It's not like there were no people to care about. There were companions and every fraction you encountered in the game. It's possible that you didn't cared about what would happen to the Brotherhood, the Boomers, the Kings, Cassidy, Boon or Veronica. Veronica but most people did, Boon and Cassidy actually were very similar to standard romancable NPC except they didn't want to **** protagonist. I support romances but if you actually need romance subplot to care I think there are other games that would interest you. More details here: http://vndb.org/.

Getting revenge, knowing why the hell were you shot in the head and finishing the job you was supposed to do is a pretty good motivation. After killing Benny there was no reason not to go further either. After all why settle down when you can be one of the most important people in Vegas by siding with one of the factions.

Exactly. Brought back some memories. Some black-skinned, clearly evil and murderous chick tied to a pole and a crowd of lawful citizens waiting for the the start of righteous barbecue. Goody-good character, hesitating about slaughtering the whole crowd if he walked through BG1 with her? Not really. If he not? It's not like they are any different than other people player slaughtered through BG 1 because they crossed him. If it's a Bioware game I will save the family because I'll obviously get the information from different source and every good character will bitch about not saving that family until the day i die. If it's an Obsidian game I'm going to save the prisoner because otherwise family will bitch about saving them instead of saving more people. It it's the Witcher it doesn't matter what I'll do everything is going to end horribly. If it's a Bioware game I save the girl because she's obviously a party member and have a hart of gold, while family is evil and will try to murder me the second I turn my back on them. It if's an Obsidian game I save the prisoner and kill her later when she turns out to be a mole for the main enemy. If it's the Witcher I save the family because Letho is going to rescue the girl. If it's a jRPG I can't reach the family no matter how hard I try and I'm forced to rescue the girl to progress further. I believe you confused me with some other poster. It happens. No matter what you will do in the end romance subplot is just a string of dialogues with an optional subquest. It's not a matter of choice. If you admit that romances made by Obsidian are not the thing you complain about why complain about people wanting romances made by Obsidian.

Where "good" and "evil" choices can define and diversify the character, the plot and the story, romance minigames don't add anything beyond those dialogue sessions and a cutscene or two. They don't serve the plot, other than what goes on in your head, and they are too sappy to not feel artificial. Romances are as much a minigame as any other quest and piece of dialogue. Because they are just dialogues and quests. The only difference is theme. If we use your logic to cut romances we should also cut most of the subquests because killing Firkraag didn't have anything to do with BG's main plot. Neither did the troubles in Trademeet. The main plot doesn't change if you do them or not. Also romances in MoTB didn't feel sappy so unless you are suggesting Obsidian will hire Gaider to write them this argument is invalid.

I think they meant stuff like hatemances, where you try to get some character to hate you, just like making Marburg hate you enough allowed you to kill him in Rome.

Memes have no places in game such as this. There were no pop-culture references in Torment for a reason.

I never got why people in this thread spent more time trying to demonize their enemies than talking about good/bad sides of romances. Nobody wanted to force romances on you.

Helmish religion unlike some other religions worship a guy who has repeatedly been proven to be real not evil and answer prayers. There are much better than other video game religion that usually consist of people who just worship some random creature and then are surprised when it doesn't do anything or turn out to be evil and/or actually not god. And Paladins fits pretty well in fantasy most setting. It's difficult to always fight for good in real world but not in the one where meeting physical personifications of evil it's not. I'm also for different paladins. IIRC in some DnD variant/edition/supplement every alignment had their Paladins so you could meet LE paladins who want to spread tyranny, or Neutral paladins who believe in balance.

The only thing the video proves is that proper voice acting + written text cam give better atmosphere than the whole cinematic approach where dolls wave around to pretend they are people and the result is usually pretty laughable because people behind video games are usually not good directors. Maybe some other games did it well but certainly not Bioware RPG's.

Contrary to your vast knowledge of the genre not every jPRG villain is Sephiroth. Lavos and Odio were pretty neat by the way. @Failion She was neither a villain nor Russian.

It's doubtful than they'll do it since the game is inspired by IE games which is based on DnD where all classes are useful in combat, except maybe thieves who sacrifice some of their combat potential for other skills.

The game should be made by Obsidian, not some random people.

Putting some generic backgrounds/locations in the game would probably help when I think about it.

They don't make good adventurers. It's not like you are using siege engines and catapults while exploring dungeons.