honkytonk

Well I guess the publisher would try to sell the games in more stores and might even get some marketing going... you know: get Obsidian some sweet Gamestop Pre-Order DLC deals and stuff. I don't think it would have been THAT bad of a deal since they would get the opportunity to sell more copies through shelf presence. I don't expect PE to get a broad release to be honest, at least if Obsidian tries to handle that on their own. But I'm really glad they didn't accept the offer. By now this Kickstarter is more than a simple way to create a game, it's also a statement. I'm glad they showed backbone.

I don't have anything against graphical violence or violence against children, so they don't have to shy away from anything for me, BUT I don't want it to be like been hit with a sledge hammer in the manipulative ME3 way. The whole opening sequence of that game with the child was one of the worst things I've ever seen in any game. I didn't see a scene and was forced to think for myself or feel an emotional impact because of prior decisions or relationship to certain people. I saw a child dying and was supposed to feel sad, because said child died. This child was 2 minutes earlier introduced with 20 seconds of dialog.... why should I care? In my eyes it was just handled poorly and that's what I don't want to see with this game. Don't show gore or violence because you want to show gore or violence and for the love of <insert name of your deity here> don't try to force a emotion onto us. The brutal slaughter of a npc you learned to know over the course of a portion of game will have an impact regardless of the music you play, it doesn't have to be the sad sad music that tries to make you weep. If the character was well written I either grew to like or to hate him and different people tend to have a different perception of characters, so some will say it was sad and others will be pretty happy, but the player should have to make up his own mind about that. What I'm trying to say: no hand holding in the emotions department please.

I hope and think the intention is to give the player an opener for a fight: you fire your handgun once and after that you go into melee since it'll take time to reload your weapon. I assume we won't see someone going all rambo on the enemies with a mg or even a revolver. I think revolvers were invented sometime in the 19th century and it would make sense if you only get a single shot weapon with a long reload. Maybe even with a fuse and good luck trying to use it during rain :D

If you take a look at the BG series or BG2 in particular, I think I would like it a bit like those. Usual encounters ranged from "slaughter" to "look out or you get burned". That was when you finally had a Party or at least a companion to help you out, but when you started as a Mage in BG ... it could get ugly real fast and then you were stabbed after a 3 minute sequence of *miss* messages by the first encounter in candlekeep . While I've never played D&D, I heard that was just AD&D 2nd Edition stuff ("You respected high level mages in AD&D 2E!" comes to mind), but yeah... it was kind of "hardcore". But the usual difficulty in those games was just entertaining in my mind. There were so many encounters that forced you to take a step back and think ahead before acting. The mass encounter in the north of the sewers in Athkatla with all the mages and fighters for instance. Or those encounters you had to prepare for a lot and plan out entirely... killing Drizzt and his Friends or the Kangaxx encounter. Damn, the first time Kangaxx stopped time and instant killed two or three of my companions was a jaw dropper ; ) But overall it was a good mixture that kept you on your toes and forced you to use a methodical approach instead of running through a dungeon weapons swinging.