PrimeJunta

That's a matter of point of view, you know. If you're used to having a wizard, then not having one will be perceived as a lack, of course. However, if you just look at the tactical challenges themselves, on their own merits, I'm pretty sure you'll find that having two divine spellcasters instead of one wizard and one divine spellcaster will have the advantage most of the time. Clerics and druids have lots of options for your mage suppression scenario, for example. Stuff like Silence and Hold Person (CLR 2) to take them out of the game straight out, single-target or small-area damage spells like Searing Light, Creeping Cold, Dehydrate, Flame Strike, and Swamp Lung, and area suppression spells that'll, among other things, bork spellcasting, like Spike Growth. Bottom line is I usually don't bother with arcane casters when I play D&D 3 based cRPG's these days. Divine ones are just so much more versatile.

If you're working in an engine that's suited for cinematics, then of course it's easy and cheap to make them. If you're not, you have to use some other engine for them, which immediately adds overhead. In any case, it's not a question of absolute cost; it's a matter of bang for the buck. If you already have groovy concept art, why not just make an IWD-style slideshow with voiceover? That serves the same purpose, is just as atmospheric, and a lot easier and cheaper to make than creating an animated cinematic from scratch. So yeah, I'm all for IWD-style slideshows with narration plus Darklands-style intertitles. No mini-movies TYVM.

@forgottenlor, yeah, you do lose out on area of effect damage spells, but you gain on area of effect buffs and de-buffs. The challenge is "how to deal with a mob." Either way will do it. In other words, I stand by my position that clerics and druids are just about as effective as wizards/sorcerers when dealing with mobs; it's just that the way they deal with them is different. (There are specific situations in which a wiz's fireball-lobbing capability really shines, of course, such as when there's a mob at the other edge of the map with no friendlies in danger of getting caught in the blast, but then that kind of situation doesn't present much of a tactical challenge to start with IMO. The converse is true too, of course, e.g. if the mob consists of undead.)

I disagree. D&D clerics have really good area buffs and de-buffs at just about every level. In low-level D&D for example a combination of Bless + Bane and, if necessary which it isn't, Cause Fear will make enemies go down like ninepins, and it just gets better from there. Blasting fireballs at them isn't the only way to deal with mobs. Druids OTOH have a crazy powerful mix of debuffs, area attacks, and buffs. Clerics/druids do need a bit more tactical thinking than wizards or sorcs, but IMO ultimately they're a good deal more powerful even when ignoring the melee aspects. Being able to wear armor is extremely useful even if you never pick up a weapon. I made a build like that in MotB who just waltzed through the tough optional fights; I was surprised myself actually. (Hint: Implosion. If you've boosted your spell penetration abiltiies to the max, it amounts to a Win button, generally speaking.) Druid is my favorite solo class actually, as they're quite decent in toe-to-toe combat, have a highly useful spell set, are provided with a handy meat shield, and have the most versatile mix of spells of any class. They self-buff like clerics, they heal, they deal area damage, they deal point damage, and of course nobody summons like a druid.

Because there are better, more atmospheric, cheaper, and less annoying ways of accomplishing the same thing? Personally, I go to the movies if I want to watch a movie. If I play a game, I like to be in control. I dislike it when the game suddenly locks my controls and forces me to watch something. I didn't like it in the IE games, and I won't like it in PE if they do it. At least most IE games newer than Baldur's Gate had skippable cutscenes and cinematics, thank goodness.

Personally, I think the Herp: Derp, Herp: Derp of Herp, and just plain Herp of Derp name structures have been overused. It'd be cool if they came up with something more creative. Thinking of good games with good names from days gone by... Fallout, Half-Life, Quake, Civilization, Icewind Dale, and of course Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden. So something along those lines.

Jesus, Amentep. Is that stuff for real? Maybe we gamers deserve our reputation as juvenile sociopaths.

Good catch. Someone ping Kaz to ask if he did actually see that, or if it's just coincidence. There are similarities for sure but also pretty major differences so it could be either. How many ways are there to make a full-body portrait of a cat-eared midget looking severe and investigative anyway?

There are boring ol' technical considerations too. Making all NPC's killable drastically complicates scripting. You have to deal with the "player killed plot-essential NPC" situation somehow. In a sandbox game like Morrowind where most of the stuff for you to do isn't connected to the main plot, it kiiiinda makes sense to just pop up a notice saying "by the way, you can't complete the plot now that you whacked Vivec so early on." Because there is still plenty left for the player to do, like I dunno trying to become the head of the Telvanni or something. (Been a while since I played it, you probably can tell.) In a plot-driven one like PE OTOH, that doesn't work, so the remaining options are all kinda crummy. You can just show a "Game over" screen, making killing them defeat conditions. You can bring in Biff the Understudy to stand in for them. If you're feeling really feisty, you can script in some alternative NPC's for the same chokepoints so the game will only end if the player whacks all of them, but that introduces some pretty major QA complications as you'll have to test all the combinations. None of these strike me as significant improvements over just flagging some of the sorry sods unkillable and getting on with it. It hasn't bothered me overmuch in any similar game until now anyway.

Vailians should definitely gesticulate wildly whenever in conversation.

You have something there, TrashMan. I think immersion in a game is a combination of zoning and suspension of disbelief. That makes games particularly tricky, as they have to both craft a world believable enough to live in, and mechanics workable enough to pull you into the zone. Few do both well.

Oh, and about the topic? I'm hoping no cinematics and no cutscenes. I like the intertitles with Kaz's ink art, and hope that's they way they're going to go all through. Of course I'd be happy to see their concept art used elsewhere too. It gives the game a really nice hand-crafted look and feel.

@Karkarov: I wonder, is there any way at all that could get you to admit you're wrong about this? Would a standard textbook do, like, say, Introduction to Game Development? Or The Game Localization Handbook (Deming/Chandler)? Or hell, even a major industry site? Over five million Google hits for the terms, or 75000 or so hits for the strict phrase? If not that, what? Show me something like that and I'll happily admit I was wrong. (Okay, maybe not happily but still.) Y'know, evidence instead of just "that's the definition pout stamp." (Also, shuddup Hormalakh. This stuff is important.)

If I had to name one quality that makes anything immersive for me, it has to be 'coherence.' If a game, book, movie, or whatever has an internal logic and sticks to it, and if it has something at least a tiny bit interesting to say, I find it pretty easy to become immersed in it. The specifics of that internal logic don't matter much at all. Consider the original, theatrical release of Star Wars trilogy. It had really tight internal logic, in everything from the fundamental laws of its universe, to its history, to the characteristics and motivations of the people in it. All of this was expressed in dialog, in the visuals, in costumes, in special effects. Every little bit supported every other little bit, and the instances that violated this logic were really rare, and often unintentional. George Lucas's "enhancements," however, were for the most part jarring, and many of them broke immersion for me. For example, the furry critter that does the rock'n'roll number in Jabba the Hutt's lair. He's visually completely different from the other critters; his musical style is different; the way he moves is different. When he hops on-screen, it's like someone's poking me in the eye with a finger. I'm suddenly reminded that I'm watching a movie, and my immersion is broken. The same applies to games. If they hang together and respect their own internal logic, and if they have relatively scarce instances that remind me that it's a game, I get easily immersed. To start with of course the game has to communicate its internal logic to you; you're sort of half in the game and half out of it. If you get over that, all it has to do is stick with it. "Do it well, or don't do it at all" would perhaps be a good maxim to follow. I'd rather play a game with fewer but coherent and well-developed systems or content, than one with lots but incoherent and half-arsed content and systems. Shadowrun Returns, for example, is a pretty neat little game because it's coherent. There would've been room for any number of other systems in it, but given a limited amount of resources, I'd much rather play it with the system it has now and the level of polish it has now, than with two or three times the amount of systems and content but with it hanging together that much more poorly.

You know, I may be wrong about this, Sharp_one, but I get the feeling that now you're just being stubborn for its own sake. I mean that insistence on immersion being entirely and totally subjective, with no possibility of identifying features or qualities that promote or detract from it. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it just makes conversation a little... well, unhelpful and meaningless. Good design, by the way, is more than just simple rules like that. There are known and fairly widely accepted general principles of good design; parsimony for example. I'm pretty sure that we could arrive at similarly high-level yet still meaningful qualities regarding immersiveness, should we try. Anyway, I think I'm about done with this discussion, unless you have something to add? Thanks for your patience in explaining your point of view; I appreciate the trouble you took with it. In the future I'll try not to participate in derailing threads with meta-discussions like this. Since you considered my previous suggestion helpful even though you disagreed with it, I'll dare to make another one: would you, in the future, consider simply stating your disapproval of a topic, and not pursuing that branch of the discussion any further should someone react negatively to it? That would be considerate of people who don't share your views, and wish to discuss the topic at hand.

I believe it would not let us reach meaningful conclusion. Just like "why (insert food here) is tasty" discussion would not. Okay, now I think we've reached a level where we can talk concretely. I can give you some examples of things that I think create or break immersion. I'll start with a few common immersion-breakers: Lack of artistic coherence. Specific example: armor and weapon designs in Oblivion. They were all over the place and didn't hang together. You ended up wearing Gothic plate and wielding a katana. Poor characterization. Specific example: Leliana in Dragon Age: Origins. The romance minigame completely wrecked her as an independent character with a personality. (Same applies to most of the others, with or without a romance, except Dog.) Poor or inconsistent user interfaces. Specific example: firearms in VtM: Bloodlines. Poor voice-acting. Specific example: the original English VO's in The Witcher. A lot of them sounded painfully like what they were, a bored actor reading from a paper in a studio, half-heartedly attempting to get some emotion in there somewhere. (I actually played the game in Polish, with subtitles, on my second round, even though my understanding of Polish is extremely limited, as the closest language I can make any claim to speaking is Ukrainian.) Would discussing any of these fall within your acceptable parameters? If so, would it be valid to discuss them from the point of view of, say, how they contribute/detract from immersion? Yet design is a subject that is taught, studied, written about, and discussed in great depth and volume. There are entire schools devoted to design. Is all of that pointless?

What if a discussion allowed us to reach some kind of meaningful conclusions about more concrete things that create immersion or break immersion? Would that be helpful? Would "What constitutes good design?" be a valid topic for discussion? If so, why would this discussion not end up as a demand for fanservice, whereas the related discussion "what contributes to immersion?" would? Why would such opinions not be "dependent on player not designer" in some way that, say, "immersion" is? Good. That's what I do too. In my opinion, attempts to shut down discussion are, generally speaking, both meaningless and unhelpful if not downright harmful. Now that I've stated this opinion, are you more or less likely to cease such attempts? Put another way, was this attempt to shut down such shutdown attempts helpful?

Not fully true. i believe forum should be: a) to give feedback about released content b) giving feedback and ideas about elements that would be beneficial and meaningful for the game. You probably could argue that this immersion discussion could be at b) but I don't find it neither helpful nor meaningful. Thank you. Followup questions: Why do you think specifically immersion is a non-meaningful, non-helpful topic? Can you give examples of topics that would be helpful or meaningful? How do you determine whether a topic is helpful or meaningful? Do you think it's helpful to make a call to shut down a discussion that doesn't meet your criteria of helpful and meaningful (rather than, say, just not participating in such discussions?) If yes, in what way? If not, am I misconstruing your intent, because I do read many of your posts as precisely such attempts? Thanks in advance for replying.

@Sharp_one, call it a difference between influence and control. I don't want control over PE. I would like a measure of influence. As in, I would like them to listen to our concerns, consider if there's something there that might have a point and might fit the ideas they have about the game they're making, and if so, maybe work it in somehow. This is in fact pretty much how they've been proceeding. They've been throwing ideas at the wall, listening to feedback, and adjusting. I'm a software designer myself and that's more or less how I work. Giving the users control over the design is a bad idea and usually leads to disasters, in games as much as any other type of design. Giving them a measure of influence over it while retaining control can lead to good things. Another thing is that IMO the function of these forums isn't only to talk to Obsidian. We're also talking with each other, about any number of things related to PE. These discussions can be entertaining, educational, edifying, or whatever. I would still like to hear your answer to my question, by the way. If making a topic here is tantamount to asking Obsidian to address whatever is being discussed in the topic, and we shouldn't be asking Obsidian to address our concerns because fanservice, then what purpose do these forums serve? What's left for us to do that you would approve of?

Sharp_one, I re-read what you've said and I can really only extract one meaningful opinion from all of it. Correct me if I'm wrong about it: You believe discussions like this amount to demands for fanservice, and you believe that fanservice makes for poor games. Conversely, you believe that Obsidian is more likely to produce a good game by pursuing their ideas of what it is, after which each of us will play it and either like it, or not, depending on our personal preferences and whatever mood or state of mind we happen to be in. I agree with the second part of that sentiment – i.e., that fanservice makes for poor games. What strikes me as beyond nonsensical, though, is the other part – that merely discussing topics like "what makes a game immersive?" or "what features of Stephen King's writing turn us on or off to it?" amounts to demands for fanservice. That... just doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, if we can't discuss stuff like that, what can we discuss? Why are we even here? Serious question, by the way. I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I was a bit irritated at you earlier, but that passed.

@Karkarov, sorry, but I'm still not buying. From where I'm at, a cinematic is a pre-created sequence that uses cinematic techniques to convey a message. Whether it's pre-rendered or rendered in-engine is fairly irrelevant. This Revan scene, for example, uses a ton of these techniques. Intercutting, panning, zooming, rotating camera, so on and so forth. It happens out of flow of events: it's a flashback, not something that's happening to you in sequence as you play the game. It is most definitely a cinematic sequence, and a pretty good one at that. A scripted event, OTOH, happens in-flow. You're doing something, and then something scripted happens. The game may or may not freeze your controls and force you to watch it passively, or it may just start happening and you may or may not stop to watch. So in BG, the bit where Sarevok whacked Gorion was a scripted event. The opening movie where he threw that poor knight over the balcony was a cinematic. Yes, indeed, in that case one was in-engine and one was not, but that's simply because the IE doesn't let you do cinematics in-engine, being 2D and sprite-based. The KOTOR engine, OTOH, being 3D, is perfectly capable of being used for cinematics, and while the game also featured (rather bad IMO) pre-rendered cinematics, it used in-engine ones as well. So, again, Karkarov, where does your definition of "cinematic" that makes "pre-rendered" central to it come from? It doesn't make any sense to me. A feature should be defined by its function, not by the technique used to create it. A cinematic is a cinematic. If you have to, you can always make an additional distinction between pre-rendered cinematics and in-engine cinematics, of course. Edit: Oh, look what I found.

@Karkarov, whose definitions are those? 'Cuz the distinction seems pretty artificial to me, especially as in-game rendering gets closer and closer to film quality. By that narrower definition, though, I guess that makes my list of games that benefit from cinematics an even zero.

I have real trouble thinking of any game where cinematics contributed in any significant way to my experience. Wait. There is one. Knights of the Old Republic. The cinematic where Darth Revan removes her mask. That did do something. So it's not completely inconceivable that they might help. But that's about it really. In PE specifically, I think cinematics would be a complete and utter waste of resources. I trust they won't be doing that to us. I really like the look of those ink drawing-like intertitle panels. Tell the story with those. It worked for IWD, it'll work better for PE.

@Silent Winter, I didn't vote and don't intend to. I'm cool with any of the options. It all depends on how the whole thing hangs together.

No, sweetypie. I listed a few other things right in the paragraph you're quoting. But what if a significant number of those people agree? 'Cuz, you know, by and large they do. As in, most people agree that Torment had great writing, memorable characters, yadda yadda yadda, and Icewind Dale had great setting art and great combat encounters, yadda yadda yadda. Hell, even the disagreements can be meaningful. Once more: we do not need perfect consensus in order to be able to say something meaningful about what makes some particular game/book/movie tick. Um... understanding? Implementing those ideas in your own work? Being able to make more informed choices about what you do read/play/watch? Rather funny, coming from someone who's probably one of the three most argumentative and generally negative posters currently active on these forums. I just listed some reasons above. Attempting to browbeat Stephen King into changing his writing style doesn't figure very highly among them. I would like Obsidian to listen to my concerns, though, that's for sure. I think a meaningful discussion of "immersion" could help with that. It could also help my own creative efforts. Aww, a romantic. How sweet! I certainly hope so! "Listening to what the fans want" is not the same as "giving them what they say they want." You have to take it one step further, and infer from what they say what really pushes their buttons. I'm quite sure he -- like Stephen King, or Obsidian -- does just that. Giving them what they say they want is fanservice. BioWare does that. It is, indeed, a road to nowhere. Wow, you really have NO IDEA of what Shakespeare's audiences at the time liked, do you? I have no idea. I only watched the first season. It was already tedious and repetitive at the end of that. And finally -- you have succeeded in pretty effectively derailing this discussion. I was interested in discussing what kinds of things make a game immersive, and what kinds of things break immersion. You, on the other hand, have succeeded in turning this discussion into a meta-discussion about whether such a discussion is worth having in the first place. I'll take it one level further: why do you feel this meta-discussion is worth having? Does it increase your understanding, knowledge, or ability to make informed decisions? Does it help Obsidian make a better game? Does it serve some other purpose? 'Cuz I sure lost track. From where I'm at, it would be much simpler for you to just STFU about topics that don't interest you, and leave the rest of us to our discussion. Why do you feel differently?