Zeckul

He did, and one of these quests consists of killing an ogre and going back to town to tell an NPC, so nothing huge. However Josh did mention that the wilderness area shown in the stream was large and would offer lots of combat opportunities. Personally I'm expecting 2-4 hours of gameplay going through it the first time and being as completionist as possible. The point of the beta is mainly to experiment with the different classes and combat options if I understood correctly, so it's mainly about replaying it with many different types of characters and seeing how they play out.

That would SO skew the subsequent votes

I'm feeling it for December 18th.

I'll take a wild guess and say you should be fine, although you might not hit 60fps reliably. Your GPU is very slow, but the game shouldn't be demanding.

In the PC Gamer demo, one of the first things I noticed around the campfire was the absence of shadows casted by the fire. Characters instead casted a small shadow all in the same direction. Shadows casted from visible lights sources such as lamps, torches, fires, etc. (doesn't need to be dynamic sources necessarily, but that would be even nicer) would increase the impression of connection between the characters and the plane they're supposed to be on. Right now they still appear to float somewhere above it, although I eventually got used to the imperfect illusion and didn't notice it as much. If it's too late to add this now, it could be considered for future expansions or games based on the engine, or via a patch.

I immediately thought the animation looks very unnatural. Shoulders shouldn't be slumping like this during normal breathing. It's way overdone.

Pros: 1. Josh Sawyer 2. Chris Avellone 3. George Ziets 4. It looks like Baldur's Gate 5. I'm already getting a copy Cons: 1. They already got my money 2. Lots of it 3. When it actually releases they will also have my life 4. All of it 5. It won't help me escape death

Any chance we'll see the demo that was presented at E3?

You might be interested in - flocking behaviors (example) - ClearPath - Reciprocial Velocity Obstacles

Aside from my usual enthusiasm at these updates: - What programming language is the game written in? I would assume C# given that you're using Unity. - In the video, the waves sounded like low-bitrate mp3; I don't know if that's an effect of compression or how that sound is generated. This was immediately very distracting to me. - If I understand well, localization won't start before another 2-3 months? Well, you probably know what you're doing, but that doesn't leave a lot of time to translate, review and VO the reams of text this game contains.

I wonder just how certain and widespread that belief is in the world of PoE, and why. I'm sure at least some would come up with alternative hypothesis. I would find it unrealistic that there's only a single theory of the soul floating around. Anyway, it's not exactly clear that this is the case in PoE, but an endless cycle of reincarnations would be abhorrent. In virtually all conceptions of human life, there is an end to our worldly existence; in materialism, it is annihilation in material death; in Islam, paradise; in Christianity and Judaism, Resurrection. In religions that do admit such a cycle, they also say the ultimate goal is to escape it, i.e. the notion of Nirvana. If there's no equivalent to Nirvana in PoE, then individuals are trapped forever in a world of endless suffering and it's certainly a dreadful thing to think of. I think some form of desparate hedonism would be the only philosophy that could work in this context.

I trust Sawyer when he says the difficulty should be about the same as IWD or BG2 (although IMO IWD was much harder than BG2), assuming one understands the rules of the game. And that should be much easier in PoE than in the IE games; the combat system was designed from the ground up to work well in the context of a CRPG, be coherent and consistent, which should make the game much more accessible to new players.

Lol! This is what SCS2's "Increase difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings" component is based on. "At various points in the unmodded game, BG2 chooses the strength of the monsters you face based on your level. Typically there are four encounters, and which one you get depends on your experience level."

That UI is probably as final as the level portrayed in the screenshot. That said, I am a fan of a minimalistic design and would be happy with something stylistically similar.

That already exists

By the way, if you're in need of Medieval inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WupiCG9GhGE

Death is a core mechanic of Dark Souls. If there's a game that makes death relevant it's Dark Souls. I really don't see where you're coming from with the ideas of eliminating death or making the game easier, which I in no way suggested or implied. Nothing's easier (and more boring) than saving and reloading.

Beautiful use of the brass section, I always enjoy that. Baldur's Gate music was basically a theme and many variations with different moods and orchestrations. If you listened closely you could always hear the main theme in some form, be it in the night on the plains, the darkest dungeon or even in battle music. Icewind Dale's music was less connected by themes and more by mood and texture. Also Icewind Dale featured comparatively little battle music, so it was a much more atmospheric approach. I think both worked quite well although I personally preferred the music of Icewind Dale. Which one of these approach is closest to what you're doing for PoE?

In Dark Souls when you revive the enemies respawn thus you can just farm them for souls (xp), in IE games you have a finite number of enemies and thus XP. So no I would say it's not the same. Especially in the IWD series. In Baldur's Gate when you rest in a wilderness area or dungeon, random enemies often spawn. You can do this an infinite number of times. Even without using this mechanic, if an encounter is too hard you can usually leave it and come back later when you've become stronger. So it's basically the same concepts. Yes, it's a lot more complex in BG, and the whole focus of the game is different, I'm not trying to say the games are the same, only that the heavy reliance on save-and-reload found in BG is not a feature of every RPG.

Sounds great! I have a few questions though: - Except for battle music, the IE games did not continuously loop music. There were several minutes of silence between each iteration. The IE games also had great ambient sound - wind, birds, indistinct banter, etc. - and these music pauses allowed the player to really enjoy them. I hope the same approach is taken for PoE, which unfortunately this seems to contradict: "Music will always loop, but it will be longer in areas where the player spends a lot of time (like quest hubs) and shorter in areas where the player doesn’t (like some dungeons)." - The Kickstarter included live instrumentation - why spend so much time on articulation for synthetic soundtracks if it's going to be recorded by real musicians anyway? Or will it not be? I'm confused.

Dark Souls is an action rpg, and there is no "gameover" in Dark Souls, you just spam encounters until you grind enough souls to be strong enough to pass the boss with your skill, or until you learn the pattern of the AI. It's still a cRPG, and he said "every cRPG". Your description would apply to most RPGs actually; either you get stronger by getting a ton of xp (which more often than not involves killing a lot of stuff), or you learn how to counter exactly what the enemy is doing. Even in Baldur's Gate that description applies. Other RPGs mitigated the save-and-reload issue by disabling characters usually instead of killing them, i.e. NWN. It's addressed differently by different games, but BG2 is certainly not an example of how not to rely on save and reload.

Your math is a wee bit off. And so is your head. I can help you with the former. 50% would suggest that half of both the bestiary and the encounters are mage battles. This of course, is beyond dishonest. Beyond grotesque hyperbole. It's a flat out deliberately false statement. The bestiary doesn't need to be 50% mages for 50% of the encounters to feature mages. Besides, most of the bestiary boils down to creatures that cast spells (i.e. "mages") and creatures that don't; only some have any special ability. I don't know what you were trying to achieve by listing the entire bestiary. Anyway, 50% is probably an inaccurate, hyperbolic figure, but you miss the point which is that mage encounters (i.e. encounters with creatures that cast spells) were very common and all involved the same repetitive mechanics. Again, missing the point: character development. The ability to choose from many classes at the start of the game does not provide meaningful character development. What do you do on a level up in Baldur's Gate? You click Ok, Ok, Ok, done. Sometimes you get a proficiency point, and some classes - Sorcerers, Thiefs - get to spend points or choose a spell. If you're human you get to dual-class once in the entire game. That's the extent of character development. This is exacerbated by the fact that classes define every weapon you can wield and to what proficiency level, every armor you can wear, etc. Once you've chosen your class, there's not much other choice to do but to watch your character level up throughout the game. Dark Souls would be a counter-example to that claim.

Indeed, but I didn't argue that they innovated because they were popular. I said they innovated because they set new standards. You don't set new standards by doing the same thing everyone else does. At the very least, Baldur's Gate invented a real-time adaptation of D&D that was very successful and influential.

Lolwut? Baldur's Gate is widely recognized as single-handedly reviving the CRPG genre and both games were universally acclaimed for setting new standards and raising the bar.

I have the R4 - and can recommend it without reservation. The window is entirely for aesthetical purposes, I prefer no window for better sound insulation.