anek

Why not just this: Xaragos begins to cast fireball as the PC has placed the fireball sphere where he wants it tossed. The player knows what Xaragos is going to do since he/she initiated it and knows to press the pause key and direct the other companions to move back to not get singed. Fireball is cast and the enemies who remain are now toastified for your party members to go back and bash.

If your spells don't hurt your own party, it will take all the fun out of having companions with hight evasion ability like rogues and monks in IWD2... Regarding a toggle, I disagree. Friendly fire should not just be a "hardcore" option - the normal first-time-playthrough mode should have it and be balanced for it. If the game is properly balanced for it it won't add any overall difficulty (if that's what worries you), but it will add lots of tactical depth and fun. See here for a general explanation of why I dislike the "People have different opinions/preferences? Just make it and option!" knee-jerk reaction.

You've forgotten to add the last part of your sentence: "......to me." Plus one more part: "....in the particular games with the particular party compositions I've played."

I agree. It is telling that the OP had to go so over-the-top with the satirical exaggerations in order to make the satirized viewpoint look silly... The reason is that a moderate version of it is not silly at all. If you answer each and every design decision during the creation of a game with "All of the above!" and "Lets make it optional!", the end result will simply not be very good. One example is the idea of bringing the game to consoles in addition to PCs. The problem is, that you can either have gameplay that is optimized for mouse+keyboard and gets the maximum benefit out of them, or gameplay that is optimized for console controllers and gets the maximum benefit out of them. If you dumb the gameplay down to the point where it does not make much difference whether it is being controlled with a console controller or a mouse/keyboard, you loose something. Other examples are features that can affect the game balance - like item durability, having to keep characters fed, or multiplayer. You can either include the feature in question and then balance all the NPC hitpoints and dropped items and whatever for that scenario, or you can exclude it and then balance the game for that. If you're just blindly going to say "I don't care, lets make it optional so players can decide" then some (or, in the worst case, all) of the players will have an unbalanced game. And of course, there's always the issue of limited developer resources. So to sum it up, I think it is perfectly valid to express concerns about how features requested by some fans will adversely affect other features or the overall gameplay experience. And it fact, fans expressing such concerns can function as a much-needed corrective against the selection bias in forum threads/polls discussing such optional/additional features: If those who don't want the feature in question for themselves simply don't participate in the discussion (like the OP seems to demand) and those that do want it participate aggressively, then it will give the impression of 100% community support/demand for the feature, even if the group that demands it is actually a small minority.

How does Edair manage to keep his armor this spotless? No cuts, bruises, remnants of bloodstains...

In IWD2, I would not have managed to get through the Fell Wood maze without the ability to add map markers.

How could the backers even make this decision, if they don't know the details of the game's story, setting, characters, etc.? No, the developers must make this decision themselves (the same goes for every other important decision regarding the game, btw). Let's trust them, and let them surprise us!

Haha, yeah... I too found it a little annoying in the InfinityEngine games, that even after many times of using a scroll or spell or shopkeeper for identifying the same mundane low-enchanted item, my characters could *still* not identify more of the same by themselves. Heck, even I, the player, learned to identify some of the items sooner than my characters, just by looking at the icons... In general, I'm in favor of requiring item identification though.

But do those countries actually ban offending games completely? I thought they merely restrict them to be sold to adults only?

@J.E. Sawyer, @Auxilius: Most circulating literature about the European witch-hunts still relies in part on outdated and incomplete research, based on sporadic evidence and lots of extrapolation. (Much of it based on primary research that was done by pre-20th century historians, who did not apply the same scientific standards as are established today). Just a few years ago, though, historians from several European universities completed a big original research project, in which the phenomenon was investigated truly comprehensively and thoroughly for Europe as a whole for the first time. They unearthed and processed lots of new primary evidence, and managed to actually map out the phenomenon area for area and decade for decade quite well. Several of their results are quite surprising, in that they contradict a lot of popular belief about the phenomenon. For example: It did not happen in the middle of the dark ages, but actually peaked during the very late middle ages and early renaissance. The percentage of women among the victims was previously over-estimated. They account for roughly two thirds on the whole, so still the majority, but not anywhere near 90%. The total number of victims was largely over-estimated by many earlier reports. Still many thousands, but not millions like some postulated. It was not spread evenly across Europe. Not even close. Most of it happened within what is now Germany, and a considerable part of that within a single diocese, while many other areas remained unaffected. It was in most cases instigated by independent itinerant preachers, whose extreme scaremongering and incitement against alleged witchcraft and the like was rejected even by the leadership of the Catholic church (or at least, the higher levels of leadership)[1]. In fact, in several cases the church sent out inquisitors to hunt down the instigators. However, the local church authority of affected towns more often than not chose to become complicit in the murders, even against orders of their superiors. Once the phenomenon got a foothold in a town or region, it quickly grew beyond fanatical religious believers. Traders and craftsman denounced their competitors (plus their families) as witchcraft users, authority figures (both secular and church authority) their rivals, commoners their neighbors, etc... Once an accusation was made, it was often "guilty unless proven innocent", and in many cases a straight death sentence. Which led people to make even more accusations against their fellow citizens, out of pure fear that otherwise the latter would denounce them first. Women were an easy target, due to the mythology of supernatural practices associated with women as J.E. Sawyer explained above, and because they could rely on even less protection from the law than men. It's truly scary to think that a local community can turn on itself like that, but it happened in many, many towns and regions, and spread like fire. ----------------- [1] This does not, of course, exculpate the Catholic church's rule during the middle ages in any way. It instigated its fair share murder, torture, and oppression alright... just not in this case, or at least not for the most part of it.

No logical fallacies, just an incorrect premise... ) Gender inequality in human societies did not arise due to differences in average muscle mass, but rather can be traced back to the simple biological fact that it is not men, but only women who can get pregnant and birth children and breast-feed them while they're young - and that this (pregnancy and child raising) takes a long time. In ancient tribal society, the death rate was very high, so in order to survive, a tribe needed to "employ" every single one of its women for the purposes of producing offspring and put a lot of effort into keeping them safe as precious "property" of the tribe. Men, on the other hand, were much more expendable and could thus be "deployed" as hunters, gatherers and warriors where they would get killed easily. Over generations, this became very ingrained into the fabric of most cultures. For women, it meant that while their lives were highly valued and protected, they were given almost no choice about how to live it. For men, the opposite: They got much more decision power and could make more varied experiences and achieve more personal "dignity" - however, their lives were given little value and they were sent to their deaths by the thousands (and later, millions) without much consideration in dangerous jobs and brutal wars. This duality is also why characterizing those societies with the catchphrase "misogynist" (direct translation: "hating women"), does not really provide an accurate and full picture. But I digress. Anyhow, nowadays the basis for social gender inequality described above no longer applies: Advances in medicine and nutrition and technology and economics and politics allow societies to survive even with few pregnancies, and allow women to contribute to society in any imaginable way even during pregnancies and after. However, it is still propagated through cultural norms to some extend. And again, it still goes both ways: In various circumstances even today, women find themselves having less options and less of a say than men, and being objectified as sex objects. Objectification of women in films and games - the topic of this thread - is one example. I don't think I need to give more example, this theme is thoroughly covered in the media and on the Internet. In various circumstances even today, men find their sexuality, their presence, their bodily integrity, and their lives being valued less than those of women. Look at pretty much any product of Wester pop culture... While female sexuality is idolized and portrayed as beautiful and valuable, heterosexual male sexuality is only ever portrayed in one of two ways: As something to be feared (rape etc.), or as something to be ridiculed. Menial and exhausting jobs that ensure an earlier-than-average death are still almost exclusively performed by men. The "Women and children first" protocol in life-or-death situations has more or less survived into the present day. We are taught to feel outrage about violence against women, and indifference about violence against men ("boys don't cry"). You can do a simple self-test: When watching TV, look for 1) a scene in which a woman slaps a man in the face, and then b) a scene in which a man slaps a woman in the face, and note your impulsive emotional reaction. In my case it is this: a) "Meh, maybe he deserved it." b) "[shock].. Ah wait, they're just actors [Heart rate slows down again]". Why? I can't help it. This is how we have been raised in today's societies. What does this all have to to with Project Eternity? One of the (honorable) functions that art can have is to bring attention to, or reflect on, pertinent social issues - and this of course includes the aforementioned modern remnant of prehistoric gender inequality. But it has to be the artist's choice to do so - it needs to fit in with his ideas for the particular work of art in question. And it simply doesn't always make sense. Bullying artists into superficial "political correctness", especially when pursuing a very one-sided and ideologized perspective of the issue in question (like in my opinion Anita Sarkeesian and others are doing), is not helpful in any way.

This is actually a really nice idea. Other than that, I think the way BG2 does it is good.

I pity the people who do. There is great satisfaction in completing such riddles on your own, even if it takes a while. I found it an important part of the overall game experience in the InfinityEngine games. Although I will agree that most riddles should be contained to a single area, in order to not be annoying.

They're going to use it to make the game, of course. I doubt the original kickstarter goal was meant to cover all expenses all the way through the development of the game. There's a reason it's called kickstarter and not kick-100%funder. They're obviously also factoring in Steam sales, but the more money is available early, the better.

How can you judge this, if you have no idea what they will be like and how the game will be designed around them, and how it will be like to play it? From the hints Obsidian has given they clearly indend to innovate a little in this departement rather than making companions exactly like jonable NPCs in the Baldurs Gate series. So, give them a little credit and trust that they know how to implement their vision for making a great RPG, rather than thoughtlessly naging them for "More companions! More races! More everything!" without having a clue about how it will fit into their concept and whether or not it would improve or maybe ruin the game.

Orchestral recording of the background music.

So true. And it's not just fights, also the little things. For example remember how in Icewind Dale II, in practically every city/village you reach you are sent to talk to the ghost of some deceased person and do some fedex quest for them so they can rest in peace... I always thought, wtf? I'm an adventurer, not a traveling spiritual counselor! Can the villagers not take care of their own friggin' dead? In fact, that goes for fedex quests in general. Its pretty silly that all progress in a village/town would come to a halt, because NPC 1 needs to get an item from NPC 2 three houses away, and of course no-one in town can play the deliveryboy role except for the stranger and his adventuring company who just arrived in town.

If they are going for pre-rendered isometric backgrounds, they will look 100% identical no matter what engine is used to place them on the screen - a 2D pixel image remains a 2D pixel image, nothing for the engine to influence there. And even if they are using 3D, they can make it look however they want with any modern engine (although, in this case it is true that different engines may make different "looks" easier by providing certain default lighting/shader effects while others have to be manualy coded by the game developers). In general, I think people don't quite understand that the Unity Engine (or, in general, all modern low-level engines) are not nearly as game-specific as the Infinity Engine (which was basically itself the game, while the games based on it were little more than mods). Instead, Unity is basically just a technical framework and toolset for creating all kinds of different games which can have any art and gameplay style which the game authors want. It provides common functionality like loading 2D sprites or 3D models, storing and connecting them with each other, calculating physics interactions between them, and putting them on screen - but the actual game code will have to decide how to make use of this functionality (to produce whatever results it wants).

+1 for adapting dialog trees based on who is (or is not) in your party, but that is nothing that is specific to soloing. -1 for items you can only wear if you're solo, and cheese like that. As others menitoned, the fun of soloing in the InfinityEngine cames came from beating the game in a way it was totally not designed to be beat. (Of course, one would only try it after finishing the game normally at least once!)