Death Machine Miyagi

The update says there will be two stats for taking damage: stamina and health. Lose all your stamina and you're unconscious, lose all your health and you're either maimed (in standard gameplay) or dead dead dead (in Expert mode, or as an option in standard gameplay) with no possibility of coming to life again.

'Raise Dead' is in-universe. Reloading is meta-gaming, which doesn't need to be acknowledged by anyone in-universe. And honestly? Knowing that it was mostly a chore of running back and forth between town, in the BG series I tended to just reload anyway when a party member died and I didn't have a Raise Dead spell prepared.

I, for one, am looking forward to being leeched in-between adventures.

I've mentioned this in other threads, but the treatment of 'Raise Dead' in other games has always slightly bugged me. It diminishes the impact of someone dying when all you have to do is drag them down the street to the local temple, throw a few hundred gold in the donation bowl and walk out with your dead buddy now as good as new. It also turns plot-line deaths into a farce; when Khalid or Yoshimo or whoever get killed permanently in BG2, they have to dance around the question of why you can't just grab their body and revive them ('Oh, his body has been....ummm, defiled! Yeah, that's the ticket! Can't resurrect defiled people!) It also raises all sorts of philosophical questions about just how radically the ability to reverse death would change a society, questions which are of course never really answered in most fantasy settings. Rather than again not answer them here, I'm glad to see they'll just set the issue aside entirely and leave us with appropriately pseudo-medieval levels of healing. Though it does raise all sorts of questions about the specifics of how healing will work in-game....

Because if there exists a clear-cut 'right way' to do things, the objectively 'best' path that leaves everyone satisfied and everything set to clearly the best outcome, then the message sent is that this is a world where all that is needed for everything to turn out all right is for you to do the right thing. There is no conflict except whether or not you feel like being a d*ck. Take Dragon Age. You've got the quest where the little boy is possessed by the demon. The options, as I recall, amounted to 'kill the little boy or let someone sacrifice him or herself to save him.' Quite grim, as originally presented. Immediately shoots up to fluffy when it becomes clear there is a path in which you can save everyone and get rid of the demon at the same time. If you do anything other than that, you're not making a hard choice; you're just being a d*ck. The game itself remains rather fluffy for allowing you the easy out without the hard choice.

I do think its too easy to say 'it should depend on the region or player choice or insert other thing here'. Eventually such choices and regions add up, with the sum total of grimness vs. cheer marking where the game as a whole lands on the scale. The very existence of clear-cut player choices which end with everything turning out really well and all set to right marks a pretty sharp shift towards the fluffier end of the scale, while the lack thereof marks a shift towards grimness.

I grew up in the supposed Dark Age of Comics. If there was anything I learned from that era, it is this: More sex, violence, profanity and 'controversial content' =/= more mature. Not unless your definition of 'mature' is that of a 13 year old boy. Sex, violence, profanity, and 'controversial content' is only adult when used proportionately and appropriately to advance the story or give the world character. If you just shove lots of T&A and people exploding into bloody gibs left and right for the sake of it, then regardless of whatever rating is slapped on it, your game/comic/whatever is actually less mature for it.

My Little Pony 40K: Exterminatus is Magic?

On a scale of...say, My Little Pony on one end and Warhammer 40K on the other? I suspect both of those two extremes will only appeal to a minority, but the fact is that P:E will have to land somewhere on the sliding scale of gritty vs. fluffy.

This operates under the assumption that every NPC will disapprove of you being a manipulative bastard. Perhaps the lie will not be called out at that moment by whoever you're lying to, but later an NPC you meet will see what you have been doing all game and will be impressed with your ability to keep your followers under your heel and the world around you twisted around your little finger. Perhaps you will win an ally in such a way. Really, though, the 'Lie' label is secondary. I think its helpful for alerting the game to your real motivations, but I can see your objections against it. Its not really my main point. My main point is that dialogue spoken in-game should not be assumed by the game to be your true feelings and/or intent, however that is accomplished, and I think on that we agree. Having agreed to do something, the game does best when it takes into account any number of the varied and twisted motivations that might have led you to agree to do that thing, with corresponding dialogue options as your quest continues and a corresponding ability to completely betray the people who originally put you on the quest. Having said something, you should be allowed to make it clear later every word was pure manipulation, nothing more than pretty words to further your goals. Obviously they can't do this for everything; the amount of writing would be impossibly vast. But the more flexibility the character is allowed with the dialogue the better.

For those lies, what's the point in a mechanical distinction? It's exclusively in intent, a value of no worth outside an alignment system. Because by marking it as 'lie', even if no one else notices, the game itself can make note that your character is being intentionally disingenuous, which means that the follow-up from both your character and NPCs can change accordingly if necessary. Perhaps an NPC is able to tell that you're lying and calls you out on it. Perhaps the lie comes in the form of soothing flattery, telling an NPC what a valuable part of the team you think they are when you actually have no such lofty opinion of them. The game can then make the distinction for future interaction that in reality your relationship with said NPC is not based on genuine mutual respect, but manipulation and empty words on your part, which could then come out in some way later in the game. The marker of 'lie' is, in short, a way of allowing the game itself to know what kind of person you really are deep inside, even if the practical results are similar. This isn't as important as it would be in a game with a karma system, but for particularly clever NPCs who can see through you, or for particular circumstances in which being genuine or false has an impact on how the game plays out, it is a nice touch.

Depends on the lie. With some lies, the words itself are what is important. With others, the action that follows it defines whether it is a lie. The example you cite is the latter...so long as the game recognizes that you promised to save the children and did not do so, and NPCs respond accordingly. In the BG series, unfortunately, your actions were usually inseparable from your words. If you said, 'I will save the children', then the game would proceed under the expectation that children saving would be coming up. If you did not save the children, and instead just walked away, all it really meant was that you didn't do a quest and didn't get the reward. You wouldn't be called on it if you didn't do it. The only time you would be called on it is if you said, straight out to begin with, 'No, I hate children. Let the children die.' This actually got worse over time, in some cases, wherein the words were often all that was needed for a bump on the karma meter and for the game to railroad you into saving the children as you said you would.

The thread about NPCs who lie to you, give contradictory accounts or otherwise mislead you in various ways reminded me of this feature of Torment. As a feature, it has suffered more terribly from the move to fully voiced dialogue in newer RPGs (and the consequent restriction of dialogue options) than any other. The feature in question being, of course, the ability to be a bold-faced liar. To have dialogue clearly marked so that the game knows when you're only saying something to twist the NPC(s) around your little finger, to manipulate them to some greater end, or just to let them down easily. In Torment, you could lie quite a bit. When complimenting a companion, you could lie to flatter them, or say the exact same words as truth. You could lie to Mourns-for-Trees when he asks you for help in believing his trees will grow strong and hardy again, instead inwardly imagining them burned and twisted...just for sheer evilness. You could lie to Deionarra towards the end of the game, spinning the same manipulative scam the Practical Incarnation was running against her by telling her that he truly did love her but that her sacrifice was necessary. In all these cases, spinning the lie resulted in a different result than telling the truth, even when speaking the exact same words. In the morality thread some pages back, I mentioned that I love manipulative villains rather than baby eating villains...both when fighting against them and when playing as one. It is impossible to play as a clever manipulative villain without a very generous number of dialogue options for lying, lying, lying. Lying to your companions, lying to your allies, lying to your enemies. Lying about your motivations, lying about what you've done, lying about what you will do. The more we're offered the chance to not only be manipulated by NPCs, but to also manipulate in turn, the better.

If anyone knows people who might dig the idea of an old-school RPG and hasn't yet donated money, now is the time to get them donating. I want my second city, dammit!

Only if the 'unwinnable' aspect is achieved honestly rather than through cheese. A foe with stats so far above your party combined that beating it is impossible or near impossible can add a nice touch of humility. But I've never liked it when, for example, Lothar the skull guy in Torment could kill you through dialogue, without a spelled fire or a weapon swung. Even worse is things like the first fight with Malak in KOTOR, where you beat the crap out of him, usually pretty easily, and his getting the crap beaten out of him is the game's cue for him to instantly win the fight. So Bastila has to jump in and save the party from an enemy you were wiping the floor with moments before. That's just plain obnoxious railroading.

I've got severe doubts about the $3.5 million goal. It would be awesome, but...doubts. That is a lot of money to wring out of people in 5 days.

Very, very nice. Man, it feels good to go back to the days when the background of an RPG is a work of art in and of itself rather than just being cut and paste duplication of some generic dungeon.

...you're second-guessing your commitment to a project because you don't like the premise of a thread on the project's forum? This thread was not made by the developers, you know.

An example of the kind of 'evil' I like in RPGs: Torment's Practical Incarnation. Look inside and he's a monster through and through, but he's a shrewd and manipulative monster who knows how to get what he wants by pretending to be something he isn't. He knows when to be cruel and when to pretend to be kind. He knows when to kill and when to stay his hand because sparing someone will prove more advantageous to him. He plays the long game, and despite all of his horrific acts, if he had not done what he did the game would be unwinnable. If we could have a PC who could act like that? Who we could play 'long-game evil' instead of 'eating babies evil'? Awesomeness.

If you want to see the absolute worst way to do it, look at Bioware's track record, starting with Baldur's Gate. What is involved in an evil playthrough of most Bioware games? - Extremely petty evil. Mugging peasants for insignificant amounts of gold and being really rude have been hallmarks of Bioware 'evil.' - Fewer rewards. The idea of evil is usually supposed to be that you compromise your morality for the sake of material gain, at least in the short-term. But if you're evil in most Bioware games, more often the rewards for doing the 'good' thing are far better, the rewards for doing the 'evil' thing singularly unimpressive. - Active punishment. This was the case in BG and BG2, anyway; get too evil and you get to face constantly respawning guards who, even if you beat them, end up turning everyone else on the map hostile and thereby sabotaging the game. And the friggin' shopkeepers would charge you more, much more! I don't know about you, but if I were a shopkeeper and a man with a reputation for mass slaughter of innocent people steps into my shop, I would probably not mark up the prices in front of him. - Your villainy is almost unacknowledged by NPCs for much of the game. I rolled my eyes on my dark side playthrough of KOTOR when my party was shocked....shocked!...that I turned to the dark side near the end after an entire game spent murdering, torturing and betraying everyone I could conceivably murder, torture and betray. Basically, card-carrying Snidley Whiplash-style villainy that ostracizes everyone and never pays is stupid. There should be Stupid Evil options available, I suppose, but mostly I would like to see the chance to play a character who is a manipulative, cold-blooded a**hole and knows when to turn on the charm or when doing something 'good' will advance his selfish goals better in the long term than clubbing a baby to death. I want my 'good' characters to be challenged to do the right thing when it will cost them some really nice reward, or when it may actively anger allies and friends. And if I spend the entire game acting like Anton Chigurh with superpowers, killing people with scarcely any real reason for doing so, I want NPCs I meet in the future to be scared sh*tless of me and act appropriately.

Yep, this is the problem with crowd funding. You can say that your only obligation is to the fans, but the fans have a billion different diverging opinions. You really, really can't please all of the people all of the time. What 'rubs you the wrong way' is actually the only stretch goal that has me excited. My suggestion to Obsidian: ignore people who don't agree with me. Its the only way to produce a quality game.

There's an important difference here: with a traditional publisher, there is no need to raise pitchforks and hell. They just say 'your release date is Christmas, even if you have to ship the thing as an obvious beta. Our money, our decision.' We humble pledgers have no such power. People may get disgruntled, may whine and complain, but so long as the game is eventually released I'm pretty sure no one has any power to make Obsidian do anything. And so long as P:E isn't the RPG world's Duke Nukem Forever, I'm pretty sure the majority of pledgers will not grow so disgruntled that they rebel against the project. People will bitch and moan because people always bitch and moan, but whining without power is just noise. The noise will stop when they have a copy of P:E with finished content and which doesn't CTD every two minutes.

I still remember when I faced what was supposed to be an extremely challenging enemy party in a BG2 mod with three mages in my party. A couple of time-stops and about six castings of Abi Dhalzim's Horrid Wilting later and I was picking through the remains for cool items. I looovvveeeee Abi Dhalzim's Horrid Wilting.

Adding new, proven writers is exactly the kind of stuff that gets me more excited for P:E. And Mask of the Betrayer was one of the best RPGs in ages. Bumped my pledge accordingly. Even though I'll have a hard enough time explaining my existing pledge. *sob*

I'm not worried about 'how far they go'. I am ambivalent about the direction. What I think most people here are donating money for is a game made by the designers of Torment, Mask of the Betrayer, Arcanum, etc. which is unrestrained by a publisher demanding certain things be done a certain way because of 'market demographics'. We want to see rich characters, a gripping story and an awesome game world behind it, all told by developers who aren't obligated to water things down so it can be sold to twitchy 13 year olds. All of these things can be achieved without tons of classes or races or dungeons. Barbarians, hall of heroes, dungeon levels and so forth aren't the kinds of things I care about, and using them as selling points doesn't interest me. If they could cut all those things and use the money and time saved to make a deeper, more polished game, I'd want them to do it in a heartbeat. Which isn't to say that they aren't focusing on the things I'm hoping they focus on, and of course its much harder to make concrete selling points for those things than it is to add a new class or a new race. Still, though I would give more money if I could, I would do so because I want the game made by the people who propose to make it, not because I want another level in a megadungeon.