rjshae

Yes, Vizima we excellent in terms of atmosphere and little details. It really added a lot to have the locals run for shelter when the rain started, or having the group of pigeons go flapping off the ground as you approached. The architecture felt very medieval. Another couple of cities I enjoyed for their architecture and atmosphere were Nadoret from River of Time and Ferdok from Drakensang. That old style European atmosphere really adds a lot to the game. The cities in the Baldur's Gate series, while enjoyable, didn't feel authentically medieval. They were too clean and modern looking. I like to feel like I'm strolling through narrow medieval streets with overhanging, half-timbered buildings, inadequate lighting, scruffy looking characters, and slop being tossed out the upper windows.

The image proportions actually look much better now. It's a fine image, but there was something about the original that didn't quite work. I couldn't put my finger on it though. Maybe the boobplate made her seem slightly stoop-shouldered? Shrug.

Yep, I agree. As the saying goes, a camel is a horse designed by a committee. There's some good discussion going on here, but in the end Obsidian be doing the designing and the coding. It succeeds or fails based on their vision for the product. Besides, if the first episode of this project works out well, they may sell enough copies to fund more and better functionality (and requested features) in the game engine. That's what I'm hoping for, at any rate.

You'd almost need a GURPS-like combat system to implement this level of detail.

Yes, you'd need some type of rock-paper-scissors scheme involving the game's weapons and shields. Maybe split weapons into slow/heavy and light/fast categories, then small or large shields have different defenses against each type.

Following up the souls concept that is central to this setting, what if the divine intervention took the form of granting you temporarily access to ancestral memories and abilities? Depending on what you did in a particular former life, you gain a set of associated skills, powers, or whatever. Perhaps these powers are even revealed to you through a divine vision?

I have not fought enough gelatinous cubes. I can say that comfortably. Yes, the quivering gelatinous cube in ToEE was one of the animation highlights for me.

I'd suspect that's probably the kind of thing that can be managed indirectly through game mechanics. If you're travelling then you'd spend part of your time acquiring food and drink. The more capable you are at that, the faster you can travel. Purchased food can be assumed to be some portion of the gold you acquire, which you'll never miss because it's already factored out of your rewards. A place where it would matter is in a desert, but that could be factored in by some type of lingering exposure effect that costs you resources to repair.

Spells probably add a fair amount of length to the development process; each spell requires some time to develop the scripts, build the effects, and test. From the standpoint of an economy of effort, would it make more sense to create sequences consisting of related and ever more powerful spells? Drakensang comes to mind, where there are fewer spells but you can spend points to improve them. Alternatively, there could be a chain of related spells, such as defense against the magical arts spells, that are cumulative in their effect.

This is not so much a spell, as a theme. I'd like to see spell names that provide a little arcane atmosphere. Rather than levitation, perhaps "rise as fiery smoke", or the latin "levitas".

Yes, if you get tougher foes you could probably expect better loot, so your non-level-based abilities would increment a little faster. That should give you some additional satisfaction.

It depends on how sophisticated a combat system they build. If it's a basic system then there's not much point in adding weapons that are not significantly differentiated. It also depends on how much weapon specialization they add to the character bulding system. If it pays to specialize, then most players are just going to pick the best overall weapon for their purposes and stick with it. I'd think I'd like a system that allows you to specialize in fighting styles, rather than weapon types: hence, swung or thrust, slash/pierce/bash, light/heavy/pole. A swing/slashing/heavy style should allow you to use a broadsword or a battleaxe with nearly equal facility.

Yes, I've come to feel a bit blah about owning a house in a game. You spend a ton of your hard-earned coin on the purchase, then even more on the furnishings, and what do you have... not much. I'd like a house that does something; where you can interact with NPCs and it can lead to adventures, or information. Like a Pub. Otherwise it probably won't be worth the bother. What might be kind of cool is an interdimensional house, or a house in the clouds; one that you can take with you on your journeys (in the form of a magical gateway) and where you and your friends can rest up when the going gets rough. Perhaps one you can stock up with a healer, a crafter, and so forth. Maybe a living house that undergoes random changes, or one that speaks to you.

The effectiveness of quick-firing, low-level spells at disrupting high level casting just seems like sensible tactics, rather than a flaw with the system. It just means the AI needs to be improved. For example, the enemy caster could counter this tactic with a quick mirror image spell or a blink spell, followed by a higher level spell that takes longer to prepare.

I wonder, will these divinely-touched characters come in particular types, or will each one be a "one off" with unique features? I.e. if it's meddling by a specific deity, wouldn't the characters look and powers depend on the deity and what they want to achieve? Will we have characters like Shandril in Spellfire?

Whatever the complexity of the lock, it still boils down to a single probability factor. It's the other factors around the attempt that matter: does the lock jam? does the noise draw the attention of nearby NPCs? do you have the right tools for the job? is a trap triggered? does it take so long to jiggle the lock that a guard wanders into view? can you make another attempt?

I'd just like for the game to take itself seriously, with no Monty Python references for example.

Nice, but umm... a helm would mess up her hair?

...with the pathfinding fixed.

Yep. I'm expecting they'll start off with a list of ideas, perhaps including many of those proposed here, then the list will get whitted down to a workable total. They obviously can't possibly satisfy everybody's wishes. One possibility is that they will implement a set of goals with the first episode, then add more as new episodes are developed. They may even back-port the additions to the older releases (depending on the financial success of the release). But still, it's interesting to read about everybody's varying preferences in a CRPG.

The wound system from DA worked pretty well, I think. Not enough of a consequence to make a game restore worthwhile, but enough so that it eventually needs to be dealt with.

To say the least.

Yes, obnoxious environments can be fun. But they are not implemented very realistically. Seriously, have you ever tried running through mud the way you could jaunt through the swamps in Witcher? That was almost laughable.

Roman coins had a weight of about 3.5g. That's around 386 coins per kg, or 130 per pound. If they use realistic coin masses then it should only start to matter when the total reaches 1,000s of coins. The weight will provide a motivation to spend some loot on magical bags of holding, but otherwise it's a nit except at high levels. For simplicity, there could just be a cap on the total coins the party can lug around. Or the game could apply a penalty to overland movement rates based on total coinage. In the case of treasure like huge dragon hoards, the game could switch to using gold bars that have significant weight.

Good points. A simple damage and healing system is usually best (although I do rather like how it is split into hit point damage and injuries in the DA series). One idea I've toyed with for table-top gaming is to make magical healing somehow less thorough than natural healing. The healing magic basically provides a scaffolding that allows the body to keep functioning, but it's really just a type of surgical glue. As more and more damage gets patched back together with magic, the overall bodily health becomes increasingly fragile. After a while the PC just has to go somewhere and rest for some number of weeks. You could model that process as just a cumulative count of the magical healing applied. That counter then needs a cool down period in a safe, cozy environment, such as the player's house. The higher the count becomes without suitable rest, the less the character is able to recover from poison, disease, and critical hits. It functions like 'exposure' does in the real world; after a long trip in the wilds, the body needs some time to recover its full stamina. This effect is also not something you could ignore by using a game restore because it gradually accumulates over time; you'd go on a long adventure, take your hits, then you'd have to rest up afterward. At that point, good food, healing herbs, a comfortable environment, and TLC help speed up the process.