Death Machine Miyagi

One reason to worship a God is to have them do good things for you. Another reason is to keep them from doing bad things to you. I would agree Gods who are worshiped primarily because of the latter are fairly classed as 'malevolent.' I would not agree any worship surrounding such a deity necessarily turns that faith into an 'evil religion', not even if it involves stuff like human sacrifice. This is because the ultimate aim is still to avert bad things, not cause them. You don't worship the God of Storms and Earthquakes with the hope he'll give you lots more storms and earthquakes; you worship him with the hope you'll get clear sailing and he won't smash down your house. More likely, you don't even properly worship him; you just give him an offering and keep your distance. Maybe there are a handful of individuals who would worship Mr. Famine God with the hope he'll make everyone starve to death, but such people would be a lunatic minority and would certainly have no real luck establishing a major church or gaining lots of followers. People want fewer famines, in general, not more of them. One thing that's funny about AD&D is that priests depend on the Wisdom attribute for their power. I would think this would mean that, the more powerful the Priest of Evil, the more likely they would be to sit down one day and think to themselves, 'Now, wait just a second: I'm worshiping an entity who actively encourages screwing over others to advance one's own power, and I'm expecting this entity to be grateful for my service and reward me for it when the chips are down. Wouldn't I have better luck being rewarded in the service of some god who disapproves of screwing over people the moment they cease to be useful? What am I doing with my life?'

Pretty much. The typical depiction of an evil religion in D&D is a bit like the theistic equivalent of the Captain Planet villain who goes around polluting everything because...hey, pollution is awesome and look how evil I am! *mad cackle*

If there were a real-world Bane, my guess is they would do it very secretly and that Bane worship would be an accusation hurled at people, not something you'd wear on your sleeve. I haven't followed Forgotten Realms in ages, but last I recall there was Zhentil Keep, a city openly under the rule of Bane worshippers. I can't imagine what having your city administered by followers of the God of Evil, Strife an Tyranny would do for the tourist trade.

historically, you are incorrect. is more than a few malevolent gods in real world mythology that followers attempt to placate. sedna is a good example if you is wanting am example. ... am hesitant to mention as it no doubt will cause problems. is a good argument that the judeo-christian God were a creation of jewish scholars as kinda a metaphor for chaos of the universe. ever read some old testament stuff and wonder why G seemed like such a wanker? anywho... lots of malevolent gods in rl mythology who gots "worshipers." HA! Good Fun! The difference between an 'evil religion' and a religion in which the god or gods in question come across as ***holes is important. Almost all 'real world' religions of any significance fall into the latter category. You don't worship the God because he's malevolent and go around doing horrible things for him so as to make the world that much worse; you fear him and try to appease him so he won't turn his malevolence on you. Most RPG 'evil' religions depict followers who have basically embraced being a malevolent ***hole as a way and philosophy of life, actively working to make the world a worse place to live.

I would call that a 'non-good' religion. The god still makes the crops flourish after a suitable sacrifice, no? Now, show me the historical religions with followers who activately tried to sabotage the crops. Who try and make as many people starve because its the God of Famine or some such. Forgotten Realms has gods who represent like Tyranny and Poison and so forth. Note that people aren't presented as offering things to the God of Tyranny to prevent Tyranny; his followers worship him to spread tyranny and go around spreading hatred and evil, explictly. That's idiotic.

My view: fewer religions, more responsiveness to your religion. If it takes a card from NWN2 and even allows for selecting our faith, which is hardly clear, then no list of twenty gods or something that has no impact on gameplay. Instead, lets say a list of three or four gods/religions/whatever (preferably including 'non-believer') which has various dialogues from people reacting to it, or changes in your own dialogue. Diversity in religious practice would also be welcome. A religious faith which is strictly regimented like the Catholic church alongside a faith which has no hierarchy at all, a religious faith which is intolerant of opposing views and a religious view which does not judge other faiths, and so forth. And please, no 'evil' religions. Only an idiot worships a god they believe to be actively malevolent. I really hope I don't have to explain why.

Supposedly, Mask of the Betrayer had some changed dialogue if your character was a Priest of Kelemvor.

I'll say this: I'd be really curious to see the reaction to a Kickstarter for the P:E sequel if the game delivers what it promises. They were able to raise $4 million based on some words, some art, a reputation and a screenshot. If they genuinely release a game featuring the depth of Torment with the exploration of BG2 and the tactical combat of Icewind Dale, as they intend, and then start seeking money to make the next game even bigger and better....? I'd just...really like to see what the final number of pledges would be.

Yeah, I know. See my second post in the thread. This is just an intellectual exercise to see just what people's attitudes are towards publishers; i.e. whether they are the Great Satan or whether they could be a positive in the right circumstances.

And yes, I just read the interview where they said they would probably try to self-publish a future sequel using the profits from this. We're just playing a little 'what-if' here. For me, btw, this comes down to: 1) Does Obsidian still control the IP? 2) Did the first game sell well enough that Obsidian has a tremendously improved bargaining position, allowing them to avoid unwanted changes or arbitrary decisions of the publisher? If the answer to both of those is a 'yes', then great, bring on the funding.

What would be your reaction? Annoyance that a publisher now has a say in the development of what was once purely controlled by the designers? Happiness that the sequel will have access to more funding? Ambivalence until you see how it effects the game, or until you see exactly which publisher is funding it? EDIT: This keeps getting brought up, and its my fault for not being clear, so to clarify in post one: this is more an intellectual exercise to gauge people's view of publishers; i.e. inherently evil or arguably a source of good things if approached correctly? I'm aware that the Official Word is 'self-publishing', if anything.

A time limit on the main quest itself is a bad idea. Even way back when, I remember the first question I asked on the official Fallout forum was, 'where can I find the water chip so I can get rid of the damn time limit and just explore?' Didn't realize at the time there was an additional time limit on top of that. I hate being denied the chance to look around at my own pace. So whatever the main plot is, whatever dramatic events are coming, let it be plausible that they can wait. With New Vegas, for example, you could run around doing quests and not feel any time pressure because you could just say to yourself that the NCR and Caesar's Legion are still building up their forces for Hoover Dam. How long will it take for them to do so? Days, months? As long as you like. But as for smaller quests? Oh yes. If it says URGENT, let it be URGENT, and if you don't get there on time you fail. In addition, Baldur's Gate II did something that bugged me. From an in-game POV, at no point did I ever feel entirely comfortable just running around doing random sidequests. This is because, if you run around doing such sidequests before you go to Spellhold, then you're basically coming off as a heel for completely ignoring that your little sister is being tortured by the Cowled Wizards and/or Irenicus. It's like the game is saying, "Shouldn't you be heading out to save your little sister ASAP, you ****?" Yet, once you come back, your frigging soul is missing and Irenicus is busy laying waste to an Elven city while you mess around. Now the game is saying, "Shouldn't you be trying to get your soul back and save the elves, you ****?" There was no point in the game where the main questline allowed you a bit of guiltless exploration. It didn't mean much, since you could spend two years doing nothing and Irenicus would still be attacking the city when you arrived, but that only made it all the more jarring from an immersion standpoint.

Since when getting additional funding = betrayal of fans? Fans want great game, and for me doesn't matter how Obsidian will get funding for this game if needed. The whole reason people are excited about this apparent Kickstarter Revolution in game development is that it means the developers are not beholden to anything but their own creativity. Aside from the IP issue, there are no publishers in this model to come and tell them how to make their game. Neither is anyone in a position to withhold funding if they don't like the direction the game is taking, or if they find it doesn't have enough 'mass market appeal.' They have their funding. The sky (or...well, the budget) is the limit as to what they do with it. If they add a publisher into the mix, I suspect it will generate ill-will, as it sabotages the whole idea of what this new model can be.

Which raises the concern of what happens if that period comes to a close and the game needs to be delayed. The Kickstarter crowd almost certainly wants a finished game rather than an early release, but where do they get the funds to finance extra work, if its needed?

BG series is badly written...or at least written in an extremely sloppy fashion, filled with poorly explained retcons and other such plot irritants. That doesn't mean it isn't a fantastic series, which it is. It just isn't fantastic because of its writing. As for Bioware as a whole, the Bioware that made BG and BG2 is dead and buried. It died of a severe case of EA. RIP.

I also want to see the Kickstarter thing leading all the way to the little castle at the end. Get on it, Obsidian.

Speaking of KOTOR, the first game offers another moral: Snidley Whiplash villains suck in any story which is meant to be taken semi-seriously. This feeds into the whole 'grey morality' thing, but is slightly separate from it. Its perfectly acceptable to have bad guys, people whose behavior is overtly villainous. Just don't turn them into caricatures. No matter how violent or cruel or barbaric a group is, it must have internal motivations that make some sort of sense. For example, Caesar's Legion was cruel and barbaric, but its internal logic was that just as Rome forged the Pax Romana through being more ruthless than the next guy, so would Caesar's Legion unite the waste and prevent tragedies like the Great War by bringing a uniformity of culture and thought. Its methods were extreme, Caesar himself was a hypocritical douchebag, and the outcome it sought was probably chimerical...but internally, it had motivations which made sense. By contrast, the Sith of KOTOR repeatedly struck me as complete idiots who shouldn't have been able to run the local McDonalds, much less a galactic empire composed of a thousand thousand worlds. Despite the occasional lip service to social darwinism, I never got the sense that there was anything to KOTOR Sith philosophy beyond 'be as much of a **** as possible to everyone you meet for no reason except that you can.' Even Darth Vader tried to justify his actions by claiming to 'bring order to the galaxy'; Darth Malak just seemed to enjoy moustache-twirling exercises in 'oooohhh look how evil I am.'

As I recall, the main reason I didn't see the KOTOR twist coming was because I wasn't dumbing myself down enough for it. Revan was the savior of the galaxy, I reasoned, a galaxy which presumably has the equivalent of mass media. I was pretty sure that, when he/she was a Jedi, he didn't go around wearing the scary Sith mask and Sith robes. I was pretty sure plenty of people knew what the guy/gal looked like. Certainly the game never indicated to me, at any point, that no one outside of a very, very select few knew what the most famous Jedi in the Galaxy looked like. So I considered the idea and discarded it because it was nonsensical. Silly me. I forget. What is it that Zez-Kai-Eli says?

To be fair, I think they fall into that trap because gamers themselves have a bad tendency to encourage it. A game can be a huge hit, sell truckloads of copies, and still have an utterly abysmal storyline, bad acting, banal characters, the works. I think many game companies still operate under the old John D. Carmack philosophy that plot in a video game is like plot in a porno movie: expected to be there, but that isn't what the audience shows up for. Obsidian is one of the companies that is pushing back against that philosophy, fighting for the idea that plot and gameplay are equally important and there is no reason why a fun game needs to skimp on telling a good story. Which is why I'm guessing most of us pledged our money.

If memory serves me right I don't think its ever spelled out explicitly. All it said was he lied somehow and it resulted in TNO's death. Now, which death it was, and what the lie was, is never specified. For the best, IMHO.

Another important thing: plan ahead. Consider Mass Effect. The game series introduces a race, the Reapers, who are so uber-powerful that just one of them is enough to nearly fight off a whole armada of spaceships in the end of the first Mass Effect. And there are, as the ending of Mass Effect 2 shows, probably tens of thousands of them or more. Since they obviously intended to continue the story, the writers should have set to work ahead of time, thinking: 'How can we allow the player to fight and defeat an enemy so overwhelmingly superior to anything the known galaxy could possibly throw at them?' The answer they chose, incidentally, was 'we'll think of some half-assed Deus Ex Machina when the last game rolls around.' Really lazy, sloppy writing. They should have been laying the ground for the eventual solution from the first game onwards. Set the stage for the eventual victory and it becomes that much more satisfying. Plan ahead, at least when it comes to the major plot points, and foreshadow things. Its an extremely elementary writing tactic and yet so many video games do such a horrible job of it.

That's the thing, though. When this was discussed over on the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition forums, there were a number of fan wank explanations for writer sloppiness. The one I liked best is that the Celestial who is showing you all of this is purposefully manipulating you for her own ends and the ends of the gods she serves. It doesn't matter. All are very clearly fan wank, attempts by fans to cover up plot holes that wouldn't have been there if the writers had just checked what was previously written.

They should take the Torment approach: any woman with breasts smaller than my head is probably a zombie. Always wondered what they were putting in the water around Sigil. Some freak growth hormone or something...

For me, what undermines that explanation is that the letter mentions how she was his friend and, on occasion, lover. Now, lying that she was his friend to soften the reality is one thing, but why the hell would a Gorion who is trying to ease your pain make casual reference to how he banged your mom when he never actually did? Is that supposed to make charname feel better? Does a man trying to comfort his foster child from the grave routinely throw in details about his wild sex life from when he was younger...fake details, at that? And he doesn't even present it in a 'your mother and I were very much in love' kind of way; the implication is that he is lying about basically being f***-buddies with Charname's mommy. So yeah. If Gorion is lying, then he's was a dirty old man with a warped mind.

This thread has inexplicably turned from an apology thread into a U.S. vs. Canada nationalistic pissing war. Anyone who has ever spent any time on the Internet, particularly those who have ever attempted to follow a YouTube comments section, should not be surprised.