rjshae

you know, I've heard and seen this come up a bunch of times, and I don't think it's true When you break up an asteroid into a lot of tiny little pieces, you increase the surface area by such a large amount, that I believe it would burn up a significantly larger portion of the meteorite in the atmosphere, rather than if you can one big chunk with a limited surface area. I'm pretty comfortable leaving this whole scenario in the hands of rocket scientists. It probably should be in a different discussion than "funny things"...

^^^^ I remain skeptical about the reality of that one. You'd need an audio exploit on the remote system to break in, and the audio components would need to support ultrasonic transmission and reception.

This. You're busy trying to control two sets of actions--body movement and head facing--that are normally performed by different sets of muscles. Trying to control both just through your hands will always be less effective than how you do it IRL.

From a budgeting perspective, it might make sense to implement a point-and-click map on the initial release, then think about something more sophisticated for the enhancement release. That will give them an extra selling point and give us something to look forward to.

Choosing the Right Name for your Story Pretty good advice.

I do like the rotatable isometric view in Wasteland 2 though--it has the viewpoint advantages of 3D games with a minimal level of camera management frustration. (Just use the arrow keys to turn.) If future publishers could combine that CRPG approach with the artistically enhanced details in IE and P:E, it could make for some very nice game play.

I think they can simulate an overhead canopy fairly readily by using moving shadows/light patches on the ground and just presenting trunks that fade with altitude. Some streaming, shifting light beams would help as well.

Dang it, now they're going to make me replay it yet again...

I concur. Last thing I want is a game with a bundle of strange words like, oh I dunno... Wrath of the Kul'fon I mean, how dumb is that? Mmm, yeah... like "Baldur's Gate" or "icewind Dale". We wouldn't want that.

Wasteland 2 is adopting an overland map for world travel. Possibly that might have some influence on the developers at Obsidian?

That initial stronghold curtain wall could be made to look a lot more dilapidated and abandoned merely by adding more accumulated dirt and debris along the tops. Right now it looks much too clean. Various leaves, animal droppings and wind-blown debris should have accumulated along the surfaces and corners, allowing a few scattered weeds to take root.

"Pillars of Eternity" has a solid, epic feel to it. I find the name reminiscent of ancient Greek legends, and it speaks of a grand scheme to the Universe. Most importantly it's a name that takes itself seriously.

It's probably the better style for a squad-based game. But it also worked pretty well for the Torchlight series, which did quite nicely in the market place.

As non-typical as it seems, try to think of the fact that certain enemies are going to have "super high Deflection" as their thing; their difficulty. So, even amongst higher-than-average Accuracy folk, that range is going to shift towards a lot of missing and grazing. Hell, imagine, even a 50/50 between those. (Well, 50/45/5, because of the "you can always Hit" thing). If you can increase the 45% chance to Graze to, say 75%, that pushes the miss chance down to 25% from 50. You're missing HALF as often as you were. So, as strange as it is (again) for Grazing to be your almost-best-case-scenario, it kind of is, there. Hits would sort of become your crits. Basically, think of those enemies as being "immune to crits," just like others are immune to certain damage types or elements, etc. Then it makes a little more sense, I think. It's still very much not what we're used to seeing in existing games, though. 8P Oh I get the scenario. It's just that (1) the actual situation may be uncommon at higher levels, (2) you're missing less often with your least damaging result. The net effect is you may slowly grind down the occasional enemy a little less slowly than you did before.

Thanks for the update, guys! The finished stronghold section looks fantastic. But somehow I was expecting the ruined stronghold to look a little more, well... ruined. But we're not seeing the entire scene so maybe the walls are more disintegrated elsewhere. Anyway, keep up the good work!

It doesn't seem like this would be all that beneficial: if I understand correctly then it's mostly useful against enemies that have a much higher Deflection rating compared to your Accuracy rating, and even then it only gives up to half damage in the infrequent cases where you would normally miss completely. I guess I'd have to try it to convince myself.

Note that it's graze, not gaze. As in a glancing blow. You're not wearing out your foe with a dirty look.

It does require a certain willingness to delay satisfaction...

As with all art styles, there's variations in quality level. Some anime can be quite outstanding; others, not so much. The same is true of American animation.

I completely disagree. Lephis is correct. I don't just want to play out their personalities in my head or write it somewhere that I can click on occasionally. I would like it if I can completly design a companion, including a personality which actually manifests itself in the game. There's no reason they couldn't do both: allow a limited set of basic, pre-configured personalities, plus a tabula rasa option. They would then need to insert various trigger points to cause a custom companion to blurt out one of a fixed set of responses. E.g. "Tis' something most unnatural here, and I want no part of it" or "I've got a bad feeling about this". A tabula rasa character would simply say nothing at that point, leaving it to your imagination.

The Adventurer's Hall could start out in a similar fashion to a Veteran's Hall--a place for war veterans to hang out and trade stories. It naturally acquired a bar and a lounge, then gravitated toward gambling and sparring--often combining the two activities. In time then, the Hall attracted those with a penchant adventure, brawling, and recklessness. The original purpose of the Hall may have faded, but it still possesses many of the old war trophies contributed by the veterans. Some of those old soldiers still linger, providing tips and advice about how to stay alive during battle.

It would be good if the Adventurer Hall personalities could be given some personality, either through the Wizardry 8 approach above or by selecting back stories. However, I don't know that there will be sufficient resources available to develop it. I suspect that most of the writing effort is probably going to be spent on the recruitable characters.