PrimeJunta

Maybe Josh can slip Adam a can of Raid. Would get a bit further...

Nostalgia's a part of it I'm sure, but even so... I can't get over just how lush and lovely the game looks. They've struck just the right balance between restraint and effects; that firebally thing really stood out there for example, and also lit up the landscape beautifully. Hype level is now over 9000. I think they hit this one out of the park. (If this was Easy, though... poor Gfted1.)

@IndiraLightfoot Yeah. This just looks dopey. Bad case of FX inflation too; if everything looks like Paris sky on Bastille day, then nothing makes an impression anymore.

I'd expect it does.

This. Is. Looking. FABULOUS! Also nice touch with the wandering deer. But Y U NO PICK LOCK? (Also LOL@Adam.) :drool:

Underwhelmed at the idea. As a game system Pathfinder sucks and as a setting it's a "kitchen sink" thing that doesn't make any kind of internal sense. That's two strikes against it. In PnP Pathfinder makes more sense because it's compatible with the vast range of DnD stuff, which individual DM's can use to build a world of their choosing. Obsidian can't do this because, I assume, they have to avoid violating canon. That's not a showstopper but it is a significant problem, and one serious enough that they brought it up when pitching P:E. Of course the "kitchen sink" thing means they can find an area in the setting to put in whatever they want, but they could just as well develop their own setting and avoid the constraints and problems of a licensed IP, and they're going to have to redo the systems anyway due to d20 licensing restrictions, so it's not like Pathfinder will stop them from making a good game. But if this turns out cool, it's going to be despite it being Pathfinder rather than because of it. If it's a Kickstarter I'll back, but I would have backed an original IP triple.

There is more to it than romance, y'know. Like kicking. And punching. (Let us know if you manage to get the threesome though.)

No, and no. You can also buy a beta key separately for $25.

Haha no way I'll be able to resist temptation.

Nah, plastic. But it is from the original D&D Basic boxed set...

Mine hasn't fared as well.

A big bestiary was one of the project goals. They've shown us a bunch already, and I'm sure there will be more. Just how big it is we don't know yet and probably won't until release, as they're likely to keep some stuff under wraps until then.

It would be comparable to a localization in scope, I think. All of the PC's lines would have to be dumbified, and a significant number of NPC reactions would have to be added. I'm sure it would be technically doable, but it's a large feature and I would expect a somewhat low-priority one.

And if you only put in one romance, but it's a girl dating a guy, or a guy dating a guy...?

OK, well, that is more interesting. It stands or falls on the control scheme though. If done well, it could be fun to play. If not, it'll be horrid. I briefly checked out the pitch and frankly it sets off my alarm bells though. Great pitch with some clever and innovative ideas, but they'll have to pull some serious rabbits out of hats if they want to actually make it with that kind of budget. If it does come out I'll happily buy it, but this does look like a high-risk project.

I doubt it. They'd have to rewrite all the dialog everywhere, which would be an enormous amount of work. Given the constraints of the project, I'd be extremely surprised if it's in.

I don't really have a problem with the species being humanoid and "relatable," that is after all pretty standard space opera fare. I thought however that it was a missed opportunity to have all of the Council races be culturally so similar. Take the Asari, for example. Yeah, they were female-only, had the maiden-mother-crone... uh, matriarch lifecycle, and lived really long, but they lived in shopping malls, operated a stock market, had military units organized among familiar Earthly lines, and so on and so forth. Basically just transplanted standard American capitalist/consumerist cultural assumptions there with surface exoticism added for flavor. It would've been a lot more interesting if someone had taken the trouble to think about how a thousand-year lifespan with mothers having a string of children across the centuries would shape a culture, and come up with some more interesting ways to organize it. The same goes for the other races too. I could go on with specific nits to pick, but I don't know if there's any point. (It is also true that a lot of sci-fi in general shares these problems.)

This is true. It's also why I think that if BioWare really cared about writing, they would have at the very least "franchise czars" who are tasked with maintaining overall setting and story consistency and continuity in each franchise. Otherwise they'll just go all over the place.

Why d'you think the antimancers should pledge anything? There are already AAA games with romance. Can't you guys let us have at least our little niche games without insisting that they're just like the AAA titles? Please?

Uh... there's a guy on a beach awkwardly swinging a stick. I don't get it. What am I supposed to be impressed about?

He did but he didn't really do space opera. Solaris wouldn't have made for a great shooter. I think space opera needs more familiarity than Lem, which includes relatable races. However I think if the races show less diversity in culture and behavior than, say, Europeans--a single, small, geographically distinct cluster of cultures--then they're doing something wrong. The species of the KOTORs were a good deal more interesting already, and I'm sure you could do even better if you tried.

It's a shame this only came out now. Would've saved me some typing... http://youtu.be/S5_mHgxSRzQ

I would add "general lack of imagination." One of the poins of space opera is that there are wild, exotic, and above all different planets and species to discover. Almost all of ME's locations looked frankly boring, and the visual style was entirely uniform across the whole galaxy. I can find a lot more variety in a five-minute walk around my neighborhood! I also thought most of the species--especially the council species--were not all that interesting. The cool and exotic ones--hanar, rachni--were on the sidelines. I liked what they did with the geth in ME2 and to a lesser extent in ME3 where they overdid the 'they're just misunderstood' pathos thing. These are second-tier problems, though, compared to the general lack of consistency and overall plan you point out.

@Orogun01 I agree, except that I'm not sure MCA is so much better than others who know that craft too. Fallout 1 and FO:NV and TES: Morrowind are all extremely good in this respect and he didn't have all that much to do with them. What they have in common is solid, broad, and deep lore, with the writing squarely anchored in it. I also think CD Projekt Red's writing shows a lot of promise; while it has its problems I thought both Witchers hung together much better than most computer games.

@Nonek I did actually read the first DA novel. I thought it was kinda cute actually, sweet and childish and enthusiastic, like something written by a clever 13-year-old. I even reviewed it (sort of). (It was a total rip-off of Ivanhoe, though. I'm surprised nobody else seems to have noticed.)