Hiro Protagonist II

The start of the IE games never bothered me. Now Fallout 2 had a bad beginning with the temple of trials.

It's not so cut and dry like that. You have to abide by the law as well. Bartimaeus highlighted the lawful part in his post. A judge or policeman may not like to tolerate evil but they can't go around killing people without proof. Suspicion alone isn't enough because that person comes across as a 'bad' or 'evil' person. What your Paladin is doing is not 'lawful'. As Volourn said, there are cities with all alignments. You're going to come across temples with an evil alignment. That doesn't mean the Paladin should go in and kill everyone who worships in that temple. The same with shop keepers with mixed alignments. Some shop keepers will be good, some will be evil.

Well, another odd thing I found about it is that you reloaded the game to kill them. You had a dialogue with them and then the game wouldn't allow you to kill them. Even after the dialogue, there was no suggestion they were up to anything bad. They wanted to go to Nashkel and offered a healing potion as payment. Instead, you still choose to kill them. So to 'get around the game' you reloaded and then killed them first without the dialogue. That's not roleplaying since your Paladin just killed two people for no reason other than they had an evil alignment. Even the meta-knowledge told you nothing bad they were up to. Reloading a battle is okay because when you reload you go back in and initiate dialogue with the enemy or the enemy attacks you first and your characters know they're bad. Reloading to kill people without the dialogue makes the character as murderers with no justification than 'a spell told me they have an evil alignment'. If you're going to play the game like that to 'get around the game' then you can expect some criticism from some people with your roleplaying aspect of it. I would say there was little roleplaying for your character even with the meta-knowledge.

You reloaded so you could kill them? By reloading, all the dialogue that happened prior didn't exist and your character just killed them for no reason other than having an evil alignment. As Volourn said, the dialogue from both Xzar and Montaron would be about the Nashkel Mines and they would have asked to join your party. When you have NPC's asking to join your party, that should tell you they are companions, even if they have an evil alignment. Not something to reload and kill them. Also, the game wouldn't let you kill them after you talked to them? Are you playing BG:EE? Because I don't recall something like that happening in the original game, but then I never tried to kill them either when I decided not to take them.

It's probably a good idea to question NPCs in BG1 before going on a murderous rampage along the country side. Also, if the game as in an NPC tells you someone is acting suspiciously, it's probably telling you to talk to them. Not detect their alignment and kill them. Best to talk with them first. Otherwise, you'll probably be killing a few joinable NPCs as well as stuffing up quite a few quests. And I'd think a Paladin would be questioning NPCs first. Also, some of the best NPCs in the game (ability wise) are evil and have some funny quotes. There's 25 joinable NPCs. I recall Xzar and Montaron were part of my party when I finished BG1 the first time with Imoen, Jaheira and Khalid. There's probably going to be a lot of NPCs in the game you'll walk by and won't even know. There's quite a few hints in the game to tell you who all the NPCs are though. Sometimes the game bangs you over the head while other times it's more subtle.

I'm with Volo on this. It feels out of place for me for a Paladin to attack and murder people because a spell was cast on them. Even if the game gives you limited options, murdering people as the first option doesn't seem like something a Paladin would do.

^ I thought that was China. Didn't know it had the same meaning in Japan. Googling reveals quite a few east Asian countries has that meaning.. Anyway, I think I'll try and keep all my party members that I come across and not swap them out on my first play through. That means I'll keep NPCs like Calisca in my party.

I agree with others. Having light text on light wood makes it hard to read. Different contrasts is what's needed.

As PrimeJunta has said, this has been argued for over a year and I think most people can't be bothered arguing anymore on either side of the argument. You're not saying anything that hasn't been argued for and nothing is going to change so close to the game being released.

If I hadn't bought DA:O billed as a spiritual successor to the BG series (their marketing worked on me) which I never finished, then it would have been more than 10 years since I bought a Bioware game. So I won't know if DA:I does it better or not and I won't care when I'm playing PoE.

I didn't forget about the engagement/disengagement mechanic which is why I said it depends on how far you're away from the enemy before they change weapons, a mechanic that's not in the game. This is all hypotheticals so it's all a bit moot until we play the game and see how much we can exploit the A.I.

A good question would be how far would the melee character have to be before the enemy changes weapons? I can imagine having a few of you party members with ranged weapons shooting at the enemy. Send one in with a melee weapon, enemy changes weapons and is delayed for 2 seconds and your melee character runs away before he reaches the enemy, enemy then changes back to ranged weapons and delayed another 2 seconds. Then have your character run back in again.

Yeah, the enemy A.I. does need work. I mentioned it in another thread about the ooze and other enemies. Although, if the enemy changes weapons, there will be a 2 second delay as per Josh's post. So while the enemy changes weapons, you'll have a 2 second window to exploit that. eg. Have a couple of ranged attackers shooting at the archers while a melee fighter runs in, enemy changes weapons and can't do anything for 2 seconds and dead enemy!

Is there any feats or talents that allow you to swap weapons without penalty? In 4th ed, you had the Master at Arms Feat which allowed you to do this.

ROFL. I wonder if they'll touch up his portrait and give him red hair as well. They'll probably just change the description of Odema in the dialogue.

We'll have to see when the beta comes out if more enemies and the A.I. are exploitable. From the video we know mundane enemies like oozes are. It wouldn't surprise me if other enemies and enemy packs will be as well. EDIT: Okay, I'm just going through this video and the first encounter did the same as the ooze. Both wolves attacked Calisca. The PC was attacking from behind with a pole arm. Calisca goes down and the two wolves keep attacking her. The PC keeps attacking one of the wolves. Calisca gets up and runs away and both wolves follow her while one of the wolves who was getting whacked by the PC ignores the nearest enemy which was the PC. The PC keeps attacking one of the wolves. Confirmed. Even the humans will target one person even in packs. You just need one person in front to tank. Send in your other party members and they are ignored by the enemy. We'll see if this is 'fixed' later, if enemies can change from attacking one of your party members to another. Not sure how that would be 'fixed' though.

We do know we can exploit the enemy AI. I posted this in the Giantbomb video thread. It does seem you can kite and exploit the enemy A.I. I noticed the ooze at 14.25 ignored two of the party members when it went by them while going after the other party member that triggered it. And the ooze kept attacking that character that triggered it and still kept ignoring the other party members while those other party members were hitting it. Ah, it wouldn't be an IE games without the exploits.

It does seem you can kite and exploit the enemy A.I. I noticed the ooze at 14.25 ignored two of the party members when it went by them while going after the other party member that triggered it.

Welcome back. Glad everything is ok.

I always liked the stonework look from BG1. Although I don't mind the wooden look from the IWD games.

Less bitching and more praise for Obsidian.

Yeah, I also get a ToEE vibe to it as well with the characters and portraits in the bottom left corner. And I did notice the same spell icons from IWD2 which is good to see.

The areas looks like BG. The inventory, character creation and dialogue box has an IWD feel to it. One minute It feels like BG and then it feels like IWD and then back to BG. It's like the two games have been blended into one.

Well I did say bringing up other media like movies, tv shows, comic books ,etc won't help people's arguments. If anything, it destroys their argument. This is about video games. Leave the rest for the off topic forum. We don't want to talk about movies or books. It's off topic.

Zwiebelchen, I thought you were out of here. Welcome back. Even books can't do it? I didn't realise you could choose what you did in a book? Or are you talking about choose your own adventure books? Never seen romances in those types of books. Faulty analogy. That's why I said discussing other mediums is just plain bad. But you keep believing I have feminist views.