PrimeJunta

Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough, because what I was hoping for is very much like what you're describing. No automatic "get out of battle free" card, but escaping battle as a gameplay challenge in and of itself.

I want to be able to shave with a torch. That would be manly.

Ouch. Does that really happen in Skyrim? Haven't played it...

Maybe I've been watching too many nature documentaries lately. It's been cool to see the way prey evades predators, among other things. Like a mountain goat finding a spot on a cliff face that's too steep for a snow leopard to reach; after a while, the snow leopard goes away to find something else to eat. I disagree with you about case (a). I believe that bears -- and most other creatures -- defending their lairs or homes would not normally pursue you once they've chased you off, if for no other reason than that it would leave their lair undefended against the next band of murder hobos that comes along. I agree that case (b) ought to be rare. That said, there have been area-defense scenarios in cRPG's. Redcliff Village in DA:O to pick a relatively recent example; that one wasn't even story-critical. I can't see any logical reason the party couldn't have just snuck out from that if it started to go badly. (Well, other than that it was unlikely to go that badly since it was a pretty easy fight.) With case ©, you don't necessarily have to be faster. There are other ways you could escape a fight. Maybe you can retreat behind a door and bar it. Perhaps the monster can't climb as well as your party and you can get onto a ledge it can't reach. Maybe you can cast an invisibility spell and tiptoe away while it's looking for you. Maybe you even have teleport magic that'll let you pop out of trouble. Maybe you have some smoke grenades that'll distract it long enough for you to get out of range. Perhaps the monster is too big to squeeze into a hole you can fit into. Perhaps there's a magical barrier it can't cross but you can. Perhaps if you scatter some caltrops or something else to slow it down a bit so you can get away. Just to pick a few ideas at random.

How's that? I'd say most of the time combat happens because (a) you're attacking someone else's territory, (b) they're attacking your territory, © they want to eat/kill/rob you or (d) you want to eat/kill/rob them. "Stupidly violent" covers all of those (or not), I think. The magically programmed assassin (e) is, I hope, a relatively rare occurrence. Otherwise it would be banal. None of these are necessarily "to the death" scenarios. In case (a), the defender would want to repel you but probably not pursue you once you've retreated, in (b) there's no reason for them to pursue you once you've retreated, in © they would give up the pursuit if you're too much trouble to catch, and in (d) combat would end once you stop pursuing them. Even the magically programmed-to-kill assassin might want to give up on an encounter and try again later if you evade it long enough.

...lives to run another day. There's a pretty strong convention in cRPG's that every combat encounter is to the death. Once combat starts, only one side walks off the battlefield, unless there's a specific circumstances that defines the encounter as nonlethal (e.g. arena fight or duel). Roguelikes with permadeath are the major exception. They pretty much have to be. I like that mechanic. Escaping an ambush or a fight for which you're unprepared can feel like a real accomplishment, and coming back to, ahem, sort things out feels that much sweeter. I would like to see a "disengage from combat" mechanic in P:E. It would make Trial of Iron and other higher-challenge modes that much more feasible. Even cooler if sometimes enemies took any knocked-out party members prisoner instead of killing them outright. So you could regroup, lick your wounds, and mount a daring rescue. That would probably be pretty hard to write in as a mechanic, and would certainly not be universally applicable. A wolfpack, for example, isn't likely to take prisoners. Thoughts?

No zoom, then. Huh.

I just realized I have to turn down the saturation on my monitor to zero to play this entirely in black and white. Even changed my avi accordingly. Looking sweet. Moar plz.

Minsc started out as fun but he started to grate on me plenty quick. There's only so much "Go for the eyes, Boo!" a man can take. I thought Morte and Sulik (FO2) did the comic sidekick thing much better.

They could also declare you a "not really a woman." An honorary bro if you will. I've seen that happen. Also, Kronar.

Dark fantasy is really hard to do well, though. Most of the time it just turns into dork fantasy. (See: Origins, Dragon Age.)

I would very much like to see sexism, racism, and all other flavors of human iniquity in societies in P:E. It would add a lot of depth to the setting. However, doing it well means a hell of a lot of work, as they'd have to write most dialogs in two versions to reflect this, and ideally entire plot branches that only happen if the player is male or female. Never even mind the intra-party chatter. Given that, I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if they did do it.

Franz Kafka. We need an adventure where you wake up to discover you've been polymorphed into a giant cluckroach. And another one where you need to find your way out of a giant labyrinthine bureaucracy where everybody keeps calling you 'K' and makes you fill out forms in triplicate. Also, Edit: I hereby formally submit the giant labyrinthine bureaucracy adventure as a proposal for a level in The Endless Paths.

Mm. I lived in a city with limited electricity and barely any streetlights (Kathmandu, 1987) for a year, and it was pretty damn dark at night. People don't light lamps just for the hell of it, and then they use the bare minimum, if they have to use a fuel. It was pretty exciting actually, trying to find your way around after dark...

I like the way it works in NetHack.

J.E. Sawyer has said that he's a total history nerd. I don't think we need to worry on this score. (Another history buff here.)

I'll be saving manically instead. Unless playing on Trial of Iron.

It's more likely that torches will be "obsoleted" at higher levels as more convenient magic becomes available, methinks. But yeah, lots of mechanics you could play with once lighting is involved. I for one would enjoy that sort of thing.

Total pitch blackness could be frustrating, yes, if there was no automap to keep track of where you've been. I'm pretty sure they're aware of these kinds of issues though, having done a few games of this type. However, I would expect torches and other carried light sources to serve some gameplay function if they're going to the trouble of putting them in, and not be there just for the pretties. My crystal ball is showing a cavern rendered in deep shades of bluish-gray, with a pool of flickering golden light surrounding the party's torch-bearer. Beyond the torchlight, shadows move...

Can you imaging walking around talking to people to find out if they have anything interesting to say? How boring and tedious and time-consuming! Wouldn't it be much more convenient if they had, like, a ! hovering above them so you'd know who to talk to? And hey, even better, they could mark the quest objective on the map and put a little arrow on the screen so you could go straight there without having to waste all that time exploring! Even more convenient, and you'd be even more certain of missing nothing! Anyway, from the interview linked above, it appears torches and other light sources are already in, so presumably also darkness. So looks like you'll be disappointed on this point at least. You can always wait until someone mods darkness out, naturally, or mods the loot-highlighting-key in (if that's not already there).

It would make him easier to see, silly.

You may also be underestimating the amount of work that goes into the simplest of demos. Where I work we have a sprint demo every month; just deciding what to demo and making sure everything's there to demo takes a non-trivial amount of time. (Worth it, though.) If I had to make a video of it and plop it on YouTube every week, I don't know how I'd manage to get any actual coding done.

Can't believe nobody's mentioned Fritz Leiber yet. Kids these days. Swashbuckling barbarians, mad priests, deadly spellcasters ruling underground kingdoms, suave dueling rogues, gods playing dice with the lives of mortals... what's not to like?

Doesn't sound hard at all, desaturating or otherwise playing with the color isn't any more difficult in principle than playing with the brightness. It would certainly look good.

Why not just use whatever weapon mechanics are already in? Treat the torch as a one-handed flaming club -2 with a timeout. You could wield it with your off-hand instead of a shield, or with your main hand as a weapon (see Rings, Lord of, encounter on Weathertop.) What torches do imply is a dynamic lighting system. That's a lot more than torches: it means modifiers to skills depending on light levels, creatures that function better in the dark or by daylight, and all manner of other fun stuff. If that's in, torches and other light sources are an obvious part of it. I think that woudl be cool, although by no means indispensable, of course. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff they could do instead.