Liora

After starting the game, and choosing to load a game from the main menu, the time on both of my saves is "0 seconds" . I would expect this value to reflect the number of minutes/hours I had played. I had made the first save a minute or so into the game, and the second save around 16 minutes later.

A piglet on the west side of Dryford village has a generic bark string. Only one of the two piglets here can be "spoken" to by left clicking on it, and when you speak to it, it says "I'm a bark string! Bark bark bark bark bark". It also says this randomly on its own as it wanders around the pen.

It looks beautiful!

I don't know if this was adressed somewhere else and I missed it, but I'd like to know more about this too.

I assumed (and I'm hoping) it's the latter I don't think you should be "stuck" with a party though. I would hope that you could ask members to join and leave and even rejoin later if you wanted to (as long as you didn't upset them in some way). Personally I prefer building one party and leveling them all up at the same time, only asking a member to leave if I find someone with better skills for what I need in the party.

The problem is, where do you draw the line on "realisim"? It has always struck me that in nearly all games, even when badly hurt, characters wil fight at 100% effectiveness until they fall down dead... don't you think if you were close to death you may start to fight more slowly, or your attacks would impaired in some way? Also what about weather? If you're exploring a frozen mountain top, don't you think you would have to have a warmth rating on armor/equipment so that you could dress accordingly for that climate? I hate it when I see, characters (they do this especially with female characters) running around in skimpy armor in very cold places.. I'm thinking "HELLO! She would die frome the elements alone!" How about the fact that in games, parties often run for many kilometers at a time without stopping, and they run wherever they go? Those are just a couple of examples, but if you really wanted to make the game "realistic" (despite the fact that you're fighting imaginary creatures with magic spells etc.), it would get very complicated. Also, at what point does realism just become tedious? I like the idea of having to eat, but it needs to be well balanced.. as the OP said, eat automatically, have a "pool" of food that the party draws from, allow hunting.. I don't know about having a skill for that, I think shooting a deer or rabit should be good enough, if you see one. I just don't want to have to constantly worry that my party is going to starve to death if I'm not buying food at every inn, or constantly making sure my party members eat something. Resting is fine too, but I prefer to have the option to camp in the wilderness, rathing than having to travel to/pay for an inn. As far as inventory goes, I agree, it's unrealistic for one person to be able to carry 20 swords and 10 pieces of different armor, and 1000 gold coins (how would you physically manage it, let alone bear the weight?). However, personally this is where I perfer to suspend my disbeleif quite a bit. I find inventory management can be very tedious, and I don't like encumbrance.. at all I think it would be great if there was an option to turn encubrance ON or OFF. I do like the idea of having donkeys or pack mules though. Those are just my thoughts/opions... I guess I'm all for a little realism, as long as it doesn't start to make the game feel tedious.

Yeah, well, but that's honestly not the point of this argument. We aren't arguing about how to tell a great story (and quite frankly I don't even think we should, let's put some faith in Obsidian, they know how to handle this stuff), we are arguing if the story should be the core point of a game or not. And I'm all for "not". Even in Planescape: Torment what made the game enjoyable wasn't strictly the story (while very good) but all these mechanics about choices and consequences, the world and the characters reacting to your actions and so on. I realize that it's easy to make the mistake that many are doing in this thread and claim "Well, but in Torment you played just for the story!". But NO, actually I didn't. I enjoyed the story very much? Yes. I loved the setting, the mood, the atmosphere? Sure! I played the game because of the story? No, not at all. I played it because I was engrossed by the active role I played in it, I felt the fascination of making choices and experiencing the outcome over my companions and other NPCs, which is an entirely different thing. I enjoyed the "investigative" part about who I really was once, and so on. But isn't your interaction with the game and your "role" in it actually part of the story, in a way? Although you say that you didn't play for the story "at all"... the choices that you made and the outcomes that you and your companions experienced were all part of the story... the story that you shaped for yourself in the game. They were your choices, but they were set before you to shape your part of the story. If there was no story, or not much of one ... well it would all be about about combat and mindless running into dungeons to fight and collect loot, and you wouldn't care about your character or the companions. That can be fun, but it's not a true CRPG, in my opion. I think an RPG needs to be be more than just combat. I want an RPG to be immersive, so that I feel like I'm stepping into another world, and playing a part in it, and the story is a very important part of that. As far as difficulty goes, I think if you asked me on the spot, I would say that I play for the "story", more than the combat, for the reasons I've already mentioned. The "story" is more than the main plot though... it's the choices you need to make, and the character/party that you build. I play because I want to see the story unfold, I want to explore dungeons, find hidden areas, or even see scenery that ties back into lore somehow (like finding old ruins, "off the beaten track" that aren't necessarily part of the main plot), I want to solve "puzzles" and do side-quests... That's why I play RPG's, and a lot of those things tie back into the story that the developers are trying to tell. Is the combat important? Absolutely! Do I want it to be a "cake walk"? No, and I would like it to be difficult enough that you can't use the same strategy in every situation, or for every type of mob. HOWEVER... I don't want it to be "uber-difficult" either. I don't want to be constantly saving/dying/reloading in areas that are reasonable for my character to be fighting in. So, I understand the OP's concern, and I think I know what he means by "I play for the story". Just because you think the story is important doesn't mean you don't want ANY combat. You just don't want to be in a situation where your party leaves town, and 10 minutes later you're thinking "Great... I still haven't beaten this pack of rabid fire dogs, two of my party members are dead, and I'm already out of potions... " In that case, if that's not your cup of tea, you might want to turn it down to an "easy" mode to make the game more enjoyable. Why not? Those who like battling rabid fire dogs are not affected, and everyone wins.