tajerio

Mature writing in the context of the IE games was touted, and it being Obsidian I would've been astonished if it was anything less. Unfortunately (for me), I'm getting the distinct impression that PoE's "maturity" is going to come in the form of another hopelessly bleak setting a la New Vegas, Game of Thrones and what seems like two thirds of fantasy of any form since 2010. And while I enjoyed New Vegas and, up to a point, Game of Thrones, the reality is that grittiness gets very draining. While I sincerely hope that Obsidian and others benefiting from kickstarter can break free of the creative shackles of the big publishers and create games as an art form, it's not unreasonable for me to also expect to be entertained. Being hammered into depression against the anvil of dystopia is not what I had in mind. I really sincerely doubt that Obsidian's going to hand us a dystopia. The premise of the Fallout series is postapocalyptic, while the premise of PoE is a Renaissance-esque age of discovery and exploration. Dystopia's far more appropriate in the former setting than it is in the latter setting.

Exactly. Make the game make me think about things other than tactics and build optimization, please.

Every time this comes up I shake my head. The community on here isn't representative of the backer base for PoE. Pretending otherwise is silly. Honestly, you can't even really say that the polls, given the totally slapdash method in which they're conducted, are even representative of this community.

I think that's really fair. Having a story that winds up being "kill the ancient evil" without any subversion or nuance doesn't work that well. DA:O tried to mitigate it by having Loghain as another antagonist, but Loghain kinda goes over the moral event horizon right at the beginning of the game by not supporting his king and countrymen against the obviously evil giant horde. If there's gonna be that kind of "save the world" quest, there needs to be some doubt concerning either a) what/whom should I actually be saving the world from? or b) am I really saving the world? I don't think that's a worry for PoE, thankfully.

I'll give the poor "heretic" this: for my part, I enjoy DA:O's characters more than I enjoy BG2's characters by a long shot. Totally subjective of course, but most of BG2's characters bore me to tears, especially since I'm spending about a hundred hours running around with them.

Nothing, unless you listen to the Bioware fans who got outraged when Dragon Age 2 was called Dragon Age 2 instead of Dragon Age: Trapped in the Box. #3 jab at Bioware/its hardcore fans. I'm on a roll today. Even if it was called Dragon Age: Exodus, it would have caused outrage. It ought to have been called Dragon Age: Yeah, We Should've Thought About It Some More. On the topic of discussion, I oppose the use of subtitles generally, except when they're for long scholarly monographs. Having them in videogames always sounds a bit cheesy to me.

The argument KaineParker has been making the whole time has been about roleplaying games as distinct from other types of games. Not everything else in the world. Games. This level of dedication to trolling on your part, Stun, is really remarkable. At least I hope it's trolling.

All that romance-supporting probably takes it out of him. He needs the weekend to rest up.

True enough, but there are grades of consequences, which I think is KaineParker's point. In the first case, some choices merely have as consequence that you picked them, and they let you define your character. In the second case, some branch only to reconverge later, so the consequence is achieving the same objective but doing it differently or seeing/hearing/reading different things on the way. And some, thirdly, give mutually exclusive end results. Choice without ANY of those consequences is meaningless, and a series of choices with only the first consequence gets boring quickly. But not every choice needs to have the third kind of consequence in order to be meaningful.

Yep - choice and consequence should be the foundation of a good rpg but have all too often been put to 'choice A or B' ('Good' or 'Evil') and then 'Same result' but pretty graphical effects while doing so. (Or 2 endings with the 2nd ignored for the sequel, which, admittedly, is harder to do).You misunderstand me. These terms have such a high value now that no game can ever come close to attaining what players want. Alpha Protocol had way more choice than The Witcher 2 did, but nobody cares about AP because TW2 locks you out of half the game. I think that particular generalization is a bridge too far. There's definitely a vocal minority of players who say "this game sucks!" if they're not on mutually exclusive pathways by halfway through the story. But for the more realistic crowd, which I trust is the majority, choice and consequence of the desired level are definitely attainable for a conscientious developer.

I can't envision a universe in which Obsidian would make a game based on their own IP and NOT make it reactive to race and gender. My guess is you'll see more reactivity to race, but I'd be shocked if you didn't see both.

Pontificate all you want. You can't have an RPG without a leveling mechanic. Period. It's what separates an RPG from any other game. Or to put it another way, simply playing a "role" does not by itself make a game an RPG. If it did, then there wouldn't be a such thing as a NON-RPG. Even Pac-Man and Street Fighter would be RPGs, since you're literally playing a role in those games. I don't classify my genres that rigidly. If a game offers me choices about how to build my character, and offers my character choices in the course of the story that have different consequences, then that's an RPG to me. Levelling up isn't intrinsic to that definition. I'm not saying that you're wrong in your appreciation, but the definition of an RPG is going to see a lot of idiosyncratic variation between people. There isn't just one.

I completely agree with your first sentence. I think that game would be cool as all hell and I think it skews more towards Josh's personal preferences than PoE does, in terms of system. That said, I don't know that I'd prefer it mechanically. I think they'd be a little too different for me to compare in those terms. Edit: @ Stun Last I checked, levelling is not intrinsic to playing a role in a role-playing game. People tend to equate them because there's levelling in just about every RPG, but that's not because of a dictate from on high.

So, you're against characters wearing armor before they are engaged in combat? They shouldn't put on the chainmail when entering the dungeon, but rather when they encounter the monster? Likewise, that they shouldn't use a shield if they are equipped with a helmet--because they already have an armor rating provided by it? How about that shield only being usable against three attacks, then wearing off? I think you have a conceptual issue. Magical defenses are just another type of armor. That is it. Don't glorify it. It's armor. Being that it's magical, the effects it can protect against are more varied than mundane armor. That's really the only difference. Think about what would happen to the balance of offensive (martial weapons) if players couldn't wear armor until combat began? Think about the ramifications that would impose on not just the weapons themselves, but any and all abilities associated with their use. In a world of magic, magic is every bit a threat a a blade, claw, or tooth. Venturing forth into dangerous environments where combat is expected without such protection is innane, whether that protection be a magical veil or an iron plate formed around your torso. I think you are missing this perspective entirely. Taking this angle on it is slipping down the gamism vs. simulationism rabbit hole a bit. Yeah, sure, the characters in the party would want to be maximally prepared and would probably cast buffs beforehand. But, to take your armor point, they also wouldn't hike around wearing their armor the whole time. And they'd probably have pack animals to carry a lot of their gear. But do you really want to micromanage pack animal loading and the fatigue penalties your characters would incur from wearing armor while moving in order to be "at the ready"? Some games I wouldn't mind that, but not in this game, please. The intent of the design here, I think, is just to provide more meaningful choice--since meaningful choice is central to enjoying a good cRPG. It really can't be denied that there are buffs in the IE games that aren't meaningful to choose, because they're useful in nearly situations, can last a goodly amount of time, and as a result fights are balanced with the idea that the party has them on. There's a few different responses to that--eliminate universally useful buffs but retain prebuffing, allow short-term buffs only in combat, remove buffing entirely, etc. All of these have their own pitfalls. Josh has clearly taken the second option, and if you want to dispute that on gamist terms I think that's fine. But disputing it on simulationist terms is moving the grounds of the argument to a place that's irrelevant to the way the decision was and will be made.

This is just not true. Psychology and Sociology have advanced quite far as sciences, and cults and religion are extensively studied subjects in the field of behavioural sciences. Group psychology, cultural and learned behaviour, and human psychology are all aspects important for the advent of religion. The only part of this I would contest is that psychology (as a historian I don't even want to talk about sociology) is still going a bit back to front. It's still almost entirely reasoning from symptoms to causes. Reasoning from cause to symptom is in most cases nearly impossible, because we don't know enough about the brain to make it a two-way street.

Fixed. Ahhh, such exquisite trolling. Goes down a treat after dinner.

I don't really think the WOT was devoid of religion. I just think it was all a bit more intertwined with culture, is all. Which is a little weird, because there weren't like... oodles of various temples and organizations and such. But, the individual cultures were already separated in the same way that organizations are, so it wasn't such a big deal. The Ogier, for example, almost never mingled with people anymore, so it wasn't like they had to say "okay, since we're all just people and live in this country together, we're going to have to distinguish ourselves by saying that we're such-and-such religion, whilst you guys are something-or-another religion, u_u." Well, religion in all human societies has been a major component of culture, so that's not really an excuse for WOT. For example, the various peoples of the former Yugoslavia, who are not enormously different from one another in language and custom (some different, but not as much as say, Turks and Kenyans), nonetheless all have very distinct cultural identities, and a major part of that is their differences in prevailing religious belief. Mostly my beef was that, as is the danger in almost all fantasy universes, there are ideas for religions/belief systems, but they never get the substantiation of doctrine, custom, and practice that any real religion/belief system would get.

I don't think that claim is broadly accepted at all. Certainly not in this community. I'm very forgiving towards claims of spiritual succession, and even I don't buy that one. I suspect also that all but the most committed skeptics would agree that the PoE apple is not going to fall nearly as far from the tree as the DA:O one did.

I'll have at it. ROLE both intellectual foil and comic relief. I'd like to see an NPC who's highly sensitive to all the absurdities and contradictions of life, who switches between benevolent amusement at the lesser ones and a resigned acceptance of the greater ones. To my mind, mechanically this would work well with something like a cipher, ranger, or wizard, but the class doesn't matter so much. KEY ITEM would be a bow made for the NPC that was never strung, that the NPC uses as a walking stick. First time the PC asks about it, the NPC would say something about how a bow without a string is just a staff, and ask what the PC thinks that means, trying to prompt some philosophical BS response about unintended consequences. And then the NPC would just say, "No, it means never pay anybody before delivery if there's a war on." APPEARANCE is never something I'm too fussed about, but I think I'd probably want this NPC to be female, short, stocky, and given to a slightly swashbuckling style of dress. FEEL--the appeal here would be that I'd have an NPC in the party I could depend on to think about things critically without either being "plot exposition chick" or "everything must be interpreted cynically dude."

Something that credibly captures the spirit of what went before. Which this doesn't. That doesn't mean it's going to be bad... but it does mean that Obz were being a bit lawyerly with their pitch. Then it depends on what your definition of the "spirit of the IE games" is. It was pretty clear from the early days that Obsidian were going with a broad definition of that spirit--a fantasy isometric party-based combat-heavy RPG with lots of reactivity and lots of text. It's also been obvious from the beginning of the campaign that a number of the backers have had a more specific idea of what that spirit entails. Neither of those views is objectively right or wrong, however.

All depends on what your definition of "spiritual successor" is.

That's the way to do it. I would argue that the wheel of time was ripe with religions. You had the Aes Saidi who believed in the creator and the wheel of time controlling all events. You also had the dark friends who worshiped the dark one as if he was a god. Additionally you had the Whitecloaks who seemed inspired by both the Christian crusaders and the Christian inquisition and they were heavily religious and powerful to have rule over Arcadia much in the same way as the church ruled Britain at some points of history. You also had the Maesma's Prophet of the Dragon cult who worshiped the dragon reborn as a god. Finally you had the Senchan who seemed very inspired by the old Japanese God-Emperor model. There were definitely systems of belief and culture that verged on the religious, without a doubt. But there wasn't much of, if any, what I'd call communal worship, sacrificial devotion, prayer, preaching, or scriptural tradition. Each of those things have been critical to multiple major real world religions, and I can't think of any religion in history that was without all of them.

You could make that argument I suppose. It certainly wouldn't be the most substantive religion around. But in any case, why then is there only one? it's not that a setting requires gods and religion to be fantastical. It's that religion has been an integral part of the human experience in almost all times and places. And when there's a setting, like that of PoE, where people behave more or less like people do in reality, it would be very very odd for there to be no religion, or only perfunctory systems of belief.

Without a doubt, but that wasn't the only reason. I was wondering the entire series how he could have so many characters and not have any of them actually have a religion. Not a point that I want to see designers missing out on when constructing a fantasy world.

That's just about it, yeah. I'd add only that if there's a lot of people out there who can conjure up fireballs, use telekinesis, and project illusions, then the cRPG designer needs to take that into account when figuring out how the world works.