vv221

Throwing in my humble opinion, ’cause I’ve not seen a lot of people agreeing with it… There is an awful lot of quests in chapter II, too much for my taste. Maybe not really too much, but quest-giving is poorly handled. I played BG2 right after completing BG1 + TotSC, and seeing every NPC jump on me to force-feed me their quests after dozen of hours spent on a much slower paced game just turned me back. I actually stopped playing and spent a couple days without touching BG2 before coming back to it. I really needed to let some time go between BG1 and BG2 before fully enjoying the second… It is not really the number of the quests that disturbed me, but the way NPC go spontaneously toward you to give you their quests. « No Nalia I can’t help you to save your castle now, like I already said you the last twenty times I entered the Copper Coronet I’m busy dealing with some shady cult under the Temple District! » It gives me the impression the city would crumble to ruins if I wasn’t there… I prefer the way BG1 handled the quest giving in the city of Baldur’s Gate: it’s up to you to look for quests, finding the right NPCs, and they won’t chase you when you’re already busy with some other quest. I truly hope that PoE will handle the quest-giving in a non-intrusive way, like BG1 did. This way there can be an awful lot of them, without diverting the player from his current involvements.

Didn’t know about beta being Steam-exclusive… I’m now locked out of the beta! It’ll make waiting for the release all the harder Bah, my choice, I’ve to bear the consequences.

I've not been following development closely these last months, so some of my points might not be valid. Pros: _objective-based XP It was one of the features that made VtM: Bloodlines so great in my opinion, giving you full freedom as to how you want to play your character. _3D characters in a 2D world Hand painted backgrounds can be astonishingly beautiful, and it protects us from any case of camera hassle. _team-based I have much more fun micro-managing a full party than playing one character assisted with bots. _low-level campaign I've no fun playing godlike characters (not referring to the playable race). The best part for me is when you turn slowly from rookie to hero. _text heavy I like to have reading pauses in between my fight sessions. And I want them to be well written. Cons: _very light interface I do love the heavy stone-like interface from Baldur's Gate, and will be missing it a bit. _companions gaining XP even when you don't play them Sounds artificial. But I'm going to stick with a defined team in each run, so I probably won't notice it. _stronghold Sounds disconnected. I just hope it is fully optional. _Hall of Heroes I prefer real NPC full of interactions with a good backstory. But nothing will force me to use it. _too hard to find a fifth one, sorry As you see, most of my cons are not real ones, but I tried hard to go further than the interface.

Woah, just fell in love with "pe-portrait-female-human-580.jpg"! I still don't know which class will my first character be, but I definitely know which portrait she will use I'd go as far as to say that people thinking she has anything disturbing about her looks just have utterly bad taste… (no offence intended, it is your right to not see the beauty even when it is that obvious)

A K is missing here too. Is it cosmetic only?

Sounds like the PS:T way, in which it works great! Displaying skill values in dialogue lines would be an immersion-breaker. And a gameplay-breaker, telling the player which line is the "best" one.

This situation is one of the rare where I find level scaling a good idea.

You should try the campaign of Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (the first). The ending is surprising, the total opposite of what you were trying during the whole campaign.

I agree with Hormalakh on this point: you should see xp like "experience in adventuring". A sixty-years-old character starts at level one because he did never adventure before. Age should be nothing more (and nothing less) than an aesthetic, roleplaying choice! So, Josh Sawyer post is very good news for me!

I'm OK with a customizable age, but I wouldn't want it to mess with characs. It should stay a roleplay option, not a gameplay one !

PS:T, no hesitation about it! Having quite half of the game being presented in text format is what makes it unique and unforgettable. Half game / half novel / half heavily narrated RPG… Yeah, PS:T is made of three halves! Maybe even more! Please : use our imagination!

Please stop with all the 2.5D stuff! Half-dimensions don't exist… Project: Eternity will have 2D backgrounds and 3D characters. That's the best way in my opinion to make a great team-based RPG! I don't mind if they include a zoom, but I won't use it: I don't think it adds anything to the gameplay.

I think it would be simply too much… P:E is not going to be a simulation!

Reasons, sure, people have opinions that's not new. But that doesn't change the fact that it does not ADD anything to the game, only takes away the choice of what companions to have at any point. It adds the feeling that any companion choice is meaningful, even in a long-term approach. Having to choose from a pool of companions for every quest (like in KotOR 2) gives me the feeling that the NPCs are nothing more than mercenaries. Companions off-party gaining XP would make your companions choice tactical only. I choose my companions because I like them, their background, their reactions, their dialogues, not because they have +2 to hit with a longsword! Switching companions anytime would break all this old-school RPG stuff.

I would love to have a lot of places for exploration, but they don't need to be empty ones! I go for "high density exploration areas"!

Easy-switching tricks like that are immersion-breakers. Choosing a team and stick to it is part of the game, and helps replayability! My opinion.

Could be a nice idea to have recognizable classes with alternative names! Like warmonger for fighter, arcanist for wizard, etc. (these are bad examples, I lack in vocabulary, but I think you will grab the point)

I want an epic ending, and have to wait for P:E 2 (to where I will be able to import $CHARNAME) I don't feel frustrated at the end of BG 1 when I kill Sarevok and the game ends: my task here is done, everything else is trivial! If I had felt otherwise, it would have mean that's the ending was not perfect. If there is something I missed in this playthrough, I will still able to do it in the next(s).

@ Infinitron : You still need the Steam client running to install them. That's not what I'd call DRM-free!

Have faith in Obsidian: We're going to have quality AND quantity!

It may be nothing for your 16Gb-computer, it's clearly huge for my 512Mb-one !

"AAA" is an empty term : big budget doesn't mean great game ! I'm sure this $4M title will be far better than a lot (most? (all?)) of $20M titles from the last years...

I don't consider to turn off either Trial of Iron neither Expert Mode on any of my playthrough... Path of the Damned won't be for my first playthrough, but I could try it on the next ones.

Just doubled my pledge : we'll make it to 4M!!

I thought we all were micromanagement freaks on this forum, aren't we? I'd love to have the possibility to fully micromanage every guy from my party, with some simple (or not so simple) AI scripts to assign to some of them, like BG does well in my opinion, to avoid headache.