rjshae

Another approach would be to role play a character, have him or her rise to a position of relative power and wealth, choose a mate, settle down and have some children. Time in the game then moves forward until the children become young adults and you start playing again as one of the offspring. At that point there may be some calamity that thrusts the young character into an adventuring career, leaving behind your old character. This would give the game built-in level limiting while allowing the tale to continue onward with a whole new character. The actual character you get would be based on your original character intermixed with the mate you select, along with some optional choices.

Remote, harsh, uninhabited wildernesses are kind of dull. Unless you're building a survival simulation, I think they'd get old pretty fast. Most of the interesting role-playing activities are based around intelligent life forms. Even a brutal artic setting is more interesting when there's a barbarian tribe to visit or an old crypt to explore.

Personally I'm waiting for the giant half-dwarves.

Hey, if they ever end up building a modder's toolset then we'll be able to create our own. Until then, I'll be happy to see what they come up with.

Mysterious ruins of an ancient civilization, about which the locals know very little. Otherwise, medieval Europe will do just fine.

Cannon-fodder monsters that aren't just clones of each other.

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.