PrimeJunta

I hope it is something like Malazan. That setting rules, even if the last volumes of the Book of the Fallen got a bit boring due to epic overload.

From what I've heard, I'm loving the bejeezus out of it. It sounds just about perfect. It's not the same at all--because there isn't one "right" reputation to gain. No rewards or penalties are involved. Instead, you have the world reacting to your choices as you go. It adds depth and meaning to your roleplaying. Which I will. As I've said, I much prefer narrative-related mechanics to be under the hood (unlike combat mechanics, where I do want to see the numbers). Nope, nor the other influence rewards. Not the same. Again: my problem is with the reward aspect. Having people treat you differently if you have a benevolent, rational, passionate, or cruel reputation is not a reward; one is not (generally and systemically) better than the other, only different; sometimes a cruel reputation might help you (intimidating someone into giving information, perhaps); sometimes a benevolent one would. Without the reward, this is qualitatively different from mechancial bonuses or "succeeding" in a romance. Not the same at all. Edit: IMO MotB's party interaction system would have been just fine if they had removed the mechanical rewards (and the extremely awkward romance dialog), and the "DING!" notifications during the dialogs. The characters' attitudes changed subtly as their approval shifted, which was nice. Again, the rewards are the problem.

FWIW I don't like party interaction minigames in any form. I felt that the approval mechanic in MotB cheapened the whole thing, for exmaple. "Safiya approval +6 DING!" was... not good, even if you were angling for the (highly tangible!) mechanical relationship bonuses rather than snu-snu. I would much prefer party interactions to be left purely to the writing, with only "story" consequences (e.g. a disapproving party member quitting the party, betraying you, or dying, depending on your choices). Anything else turns it into a minigame where you're trying to "win" rather than... well, roleplay. The exception to this rule is if the game is set up so that manipulating your party into doing what you want is a core story and gameplay element. KOTOR2 did precisely this, and it worked well there.

BTW, @BruceVC -- you still haven't addressed the points you said you would once you have the time: (1) The effect romance subplots have on the rest of the writing (exhibit A: Normandy turned into Love Boat, with it simply being impossible for Shepard to play it as a hardass military commander demanding discipline and adherence to protocol). (2) The objectification inherent in BioWarian romance. It turns your "romance options" into prizes to be won by playing the game right. Exhibits B, C, and D: the romances in Jade Empire, all the Mass Effects, and both Dragon Ages. And to reiterate: I am not opposed to romance if it is central to the storyline (exhibit E: Deionarra in Planescape: Torment).

As a tangent, I freakin' love the St. Waidwen incident. Fantasy religions fighting each other because reasons is such a cliché. Giving an actual, tangible and understandable reason for the animosity is a brilliant twist. Blowing up your god will do that.

:must: :resist: :arguing: :with: :volly: ... :fail: Of course it's illogical. Human emotions aren't always logical, and enjoying something has to do with emotion, not logic. You know what ruined the original Star Wars trilogy for me? Which I really, really, really liked? Midichlorians. Now that they told me what the Force is, the mystery is ruined. Luke and Leia are just individuals with a peculiar blood chart. I can no longer enjoy those films the same way as I did before. I didn't particularly care for ME, so I can't say the same is true for that trilogy. I just finished ME2 as a matter of fact and I quite liked it for the cinematics and enjoyable popamole gameplay--I just feel that it's a missed opportunity because it could have been so much better with deeper and more consistent worldbuilding and plot. Especially as BioWare clearly does have the talent: the dialog was, for the most part, very well written and there was some good story and plotting there too, especially Mordin's story arc. If they cared, they could do so much better.

@Mannock, who exactly is treating you as if you were totally out of line? We're simply expressing our disagreement with you, and pretty politely at that, for the Internet.

Then pick two things with comparable resource costs. Your hypothetical question doesn't reflect a meaningful trade-off. It's pointless. Since you insist, though, I would pick BHM, because it has no negative impact on the rest of the game.

It is a silly question. I refuse to answer it.

@Tsuga C none of the godlikes can wear helmets.

@BruceVC, Josh said that a romance would cost a minimum of 100 times as much as BHM. I do not find such lopsided hypotheticals particularly interesting.

@Mannock: IME when devs put in easter eggs, things are going well. It means they're in good spirits and somebody had a bit of slack waiting for somebody else to do something. No project has gone over schedule and over budget because they were debugging one of those. In a pinch, they'll just remove the checkbox from the settings UI and make you enable it from a console command. I.e., there are better things to grump about. Big Head Mode is cool.

Like this, you mean?

@Arouet: here's the vision for P:E: "Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment." Combat and dungeon diving are one-third of that vision. Josh has said on multiple occasions that the game is going to be heavily combat-focused. It's not going to be an adventure game in RPG clothing (like PS:T or KOTOR2). Ziets and Avellone aren't lead writers; they're doing areas and companions; Josh has overall control of the lore and story. I.e., this is very much Josh's baby, not MCA's or Ziets's. I have extremely high hopes for the writing; what we know about the coherence of the lore has had me whooping with joy already. We also know there's a personal angle to the story, and that there's a lot of text in the game. So that's all good. But combat is still going to be the main gameplay mechanic. I'm not sure how enjoyable it's going to be if you just want to click past it, although with the difficulty options and the console I'm sure it'll be possible. But a big, big part of the effort will have gone to making good combat.

@Stun I agree about the megadungeon. Swatting beasties for XP is kind of the thing in dungeoneering. I'm pretty sure they're aware of this, though, and am interested to see how they addressed it. Lots of phat lewt, maybe? I'm also interested to see how the megadungeon's power curve plays, if it's designed to get harder faster than you level up. That could turn out to be fun or frustrating, depending.

Inb4 someone brings up seamen... oh, I guess I just did.

I disagree. Yes, good writing does take time, but if you have some decent writers on the payroll, it doesn't cost much -- and laying out the groundwork is not tied to production at all. I.e. if BioWare really cared about writing, they would have a bunch of high-level concept writers working all the time. Triage the ideas every once in a while, pick the promising ones, and have them lay out the groundwork in world building and main story arcs. If they had, say, three people like that, they could easily come up with three solid, interesting, well thought-out, and original settings and stories per year. That'll build a backlog of them to draw from. When the time comes to actually make a game, pick the most promising one from the stack and ramp it up. You wouldn't have to, like, start making a trilogy without having any clue about the main antagonist's motivation, or have plot holes big enough to drive a dreadnought through. Once a franchise picks up, assign one of those writers to developing it. So yeah, that. I guess it just bugs me that BioWare are so often praised for their writing, when their writing is rubbish. There's just more of it there than in most other games. From where I'm at, two buckets of turds are not better than one bucket of turds, unless you're a gardener.

@Stun: Absolutely. And if you like, we can also compare voice acting, animation, production values, cinematics, and graphics. I've no doubt DA:I will excel in all of those areas. How much that matters remains, naturally, a subjective preference. Again, what really bugs me about BioWare isn't even so much the streamlined/simplified/twitchy/dumbed-down mechanics -- I can enjoy those perfectly well, if they're well executed, and BioWare's by and large are. What bugs me is that it would be so. simple. to make BioWare's games playing, like, before they hit the bargain bin -- all they'd need is tighter, more coherent, and more creative writing, and coherent, logical, and diverse worldbuilding. Neither of these would affect production costs one bit; they'd still need the same amount of writing and same amount of modeling and animation. It seems like such a colossal waste to put all that loving effort to bring to life a world that's fundamentally boring and lacking in consistency. And when I really want to cry myself to sleep, I remind myself that BioWare is generally considered to be good when it comes to writing for games.

Wow, this forum just keeps getting better and better. I thought the breathing anim in chargen was a bit exaggerated, and I also noticed that the paladin's breastplate appears to be made out of rubber. I'm also sure that neither of these "problems" are going to be noticeable in the gameplay. (And yes, I still think that going with the 3D toon in chargen, at least at that size, was a minor mistake -- although one that's probably not worth changing at this point.)

@Zitrual Why not add a "decay" mechanic while you're at it? Corpses stay corpses for some time, then turn into skeletons, then into a pile of bones, then disappear. I agree that this kind of thing would add flavor and atmosphere. However, I would not consider it a very high priority. Put that effort into polishing up the quests and combat, I say.

It's not a hardware issue I'm sure. It would be yet another thing to keep track of though. If it was up to me, I'd vote for "until area change, and not included in savegames."

​@IndiraLightfoot I loved the idea of barbarian aristocrats. Vercingetorix: Boudica: Harald Fairhair: Sevt III of Thracia:

Well, at least the fade tears make more sense than the we-must-kill-all-organic-life-to-save-organic-life Reapers. Er, a little. I wish they'd do something that's NOT just a grab-bag of tropes and clichés shaken vigorously and then dumped on the floor. (There will come a day when I stop grousing about BioWare's writing, but today is not that day.)