Haerski

You are right. My memory betrays me, and I apologize for that. Still, it's been years since my last playthrough and I would like to point out that using PST in my avatar and banner doesn't mean I think it's the best and most perfect thing out there and everything it did should work for me in different game. Also that still doesn't chance my point about some descriptions being repetitive and useless. Your example from PST seems ok and actually tells you something about character you are talking to, something which I can't honestly say about PoE or quite possibly about much of the dialogue in PST if I started it again today.

No comment. You didn't read my post through with thought, did you? PST kind of verifes my point as it used description in very practical manner to counter inabilities of the engine. Lots of strange stuff was going on and devs couldn't show it to us in any other way. In PoE much of description is just stating obvious casual everyday things and they don't add anything to the stuff we can already tell by reading the dialogue.

Gameplay aspects of the beta have been discussed pretty thoroughly, but most I have seen said about dialogue is that it's great. While dialogue itself is indeed great in the beta, there is a small hinderance I find somewhat annoying: It's useless and repetitive descriptions during conversations. Describing situation is necessary at the beginning of dialogue, when you need to know who you're talking to and if there are some specific details about their appearance or environment that you want to press in following conversation. It's also necessary when you are supposed to see, hear or otherwise sense something that the game engine can't deliver to you in other ways. In Pillars of Eternity the game describes everything. "She adjusts her bandages", "He scratches his butt", "He nods/blinks/leans closer", "Character X frowns", "Character Y smiles", etc. Those are not necessarily exact quotes from the beta, but that's the basic idea. My point is that I don't need most of those. My imagination could take care of large chunk of the description that has been written in the dialogue and I would like it that way in a game that's so heavily based on written text. Pretty soon I was skipping most of the grey parts without problem, but by doing so I might also lose some of the important stuff. I'm roleplaying, not reading a book (Actually even many books don't do this as much as PoE in certain conversations). Tell me only if my character notices something unusual I don't already know or something important happens during conversation. Otherwise I would like to enjoy my dialogue as is and fill it in with my own imaginations as I see necessary. This problem seems to be worse with some characters and with others it's completely absent. Hendyna is burned, bandaged and in some pain, I don't need to be reminded about that during every line she says. Medreth seems to nod quite a lot. Dengler is an innkeeper and cleans mugs, I don't need to be reminded about that during every line he says. Lord Harond's silk gloves must be quite a fabulous sight considering how many times they have to be mentioned during the conversation. Most of it doesn't add much to the conversation as dialogue itself gives you the same information. For example "he nods" as gesture of agreeing is useless if it's immediately followed by "yes" in actual dialogue. Same goes if character is angry, agitated, sad, etc. I think this is something writers should keep in mind. Sometimes less is more and writing roleplaying dialogue should not be approached same way as writing a book. When roleplaying it's "me" whose talking to a person and when I talk to a person I'm not making obvious remarks like "he seems sad" in my head. Context given in the beginning of the conversation should be enough to set the mood and let imagination flow. What do you think? Am I the only one who's at all bothered by this?

To be honest I'm quite concerned about the soundtrack too. I understand it's still in unfinished and unpolished state in the beta, but it's generic and there is no question about that. Maybe it will be awesome in final game and maybe they still have the best pieces in reserve, but this criticism is for the beta and what we have heard so far. For me best examples of some brilliant soundtracks from recent RPGs are The Witcher and Witcher 2 OSTs and Divinity: Original Sin. Those OSTs really add something to the game's atmosphere and personality and aren't afraid to take some risks and explore unconventional ideas.

That's weird, because I think UI elements are always there just to break immersion. The more stylized they are, the more you are detached and distracted from actual handcrafted environments, so two things mentioned in this option are pretty much in direct conflict with each other. You can't merge something like selection circle in environment or it will lose it's entire point. For me this is mostly question of practicality: The circles have to be striking enough to give you enough information on what's going on, but still be as subtle as possible. I think original IE engine circles were perfect for these purposes. Simple, but brightly colored. I don't think toning color down and adding some decorations is going to enhance them in anyway. Probably just the opposite. But still I'm never against having options. Many FPS-games let you choose your crosshair, so why not do same thing with selection circles in RPG?

Actually you can get Unreal 4 for 19$/month and 5 % cut from profits as simple standard subscription and I have heard only good things about it's usability. Also using Unreal Engine doesn't mean you have to make AAA quality game with it. It just has been too expensive and too much hassle for indie developers so far and that's part of the reason why Unity hit the jackpot with their engine. I'm glad Epic and Crytek smelled the money Unity is making and jumped on the indie bandwagon with reasonable pricing. Little competition is never bad.

All aforementioned bugs observed first hand by yours truly in various games over my years of gaming. Few of them actually in GTA IV featuring that Euphoria engine of yours. Didn't look quite as good in action as on that promo video though. But yeah, well done ragdolls like Euphoria are awesome and I don't mind them in action games like GTA, where you run around stumbling at other people, getting hit by cars and falling off helicopters. That's still probably not something you will be doing a lot in PoE...

I must admit I had forgotten some of The Mountain's best moments. I'll add him to my list, even if he is in constant pain and on top of that most of the time on drugs. I also agree that Slaver's Bay could have been better as more morally greyish, instead of society of outright ***holeness. But still my point never was to revise list of everyones sins. They are all bad people of course, but still I find every one of them interesting and understandable as far as fictional characters in fictional world go and few wild cards like Joffrey, Ramsay and the Mountain add their own flavors and surprises to the story. I don't even think they are that far fetched: Give some mental patient suffering of constant pain, free hands to wreck havoc around countryside along with few words of encouragement and who knows what will happen? Better still give that one whole country to rule over. In the end this all seems to boil down to where everyones personal limits of good taste go. I'm yet to find out, but for you ASoIaF has already crossed that line in some parts and I understand and respect that.

I understand this viewpoint, but for me only real ***holes of the series are Joffrey and Ramsay. They are vile just for fun, while others usually have some reasons behind their deeds, be it greed, self-preservation, old grudges, lust for power, etc. Even Cersei gets some sympathy from me as she just happens to be bad combination of stupidity, pride, jealousy and paranoia, which in a way makes her not responsible for her actions. She's just lost in a game that's bigger than she can handle and aforementioned qualities make her incapable of realizing her true situation. I often feel bad for her even if her misfortunes are mostly her own fault.

@Elerond, PrimeJunta Traditional Finnish thread hijack. Non-Finnish users surely appreciate these memories. But just one more from Chinatown: "Lousy cold I can't seem to shake." --> "En voi kätellä flunssan takia." Lucky mistake as that actually makes sense.

Other: I'm Finnish and I don't want Obsidian to waste resources to bring me localization I won't be using. I also doubt localization would bring any more potential buyers for PoE as here in Finland everyone really into this kind of games already has to understand English well enough to survive without translation. Dubbing by Finnish actors would also be pretty much my worst nightmare. (Agapio Racing Team, never forget!)

@PimeJunta That Wiki quote was very interesting, but leaves lots of things still under interpretation. ASoIaF could be classified either way, because even if some could say it's aiming for realistic world where unnatural things start to occur, the world still has strong roots in high fantasy, which just has been sleeping for a long time and is now waking once again. This is why I'm generally against all genre specifications. They just never are specific enough. They may point you at right shelf in library or bookstore, but IMO they should be left there and enjoy or hate the book by it's own merits and especially not judge whole shelf because of one or two or hundred books. I don't want to generalize (that means I will:P), but in my experience people who have strong negative opinions about certain books, music or movies often seem to be more likely also stuck with genres and I can't help but think that these presumptions might sometimes be cause for that negativity.

It might be everyone's just more or less trolling on this thread right now, but I still find it pointless to say things like "I want the combat to be better than DA:O", "I'm going to be disappointed if it's not at least five times better" or "it's ok if it's equal to DA:O." How do you define that kind of stuff? What does it even mean or is it just attempt to mask personal preference as some kind of fact? All I can say on the subject is that I don't want PoE combat to be like DA:O. It was good system and I enjoyed playing with it a lot, but now I simply want something different more along the lines of IE-classics. Better or worse, that's matter of taste, but I'm pretty sure I can squeeze some fun out of it no matter what the outcome.

I don't think ragdolls would be good idea for PoE. I'm no developer, but I'm pretty sure making the effect work well with character models and smashing every ridiculous physics bug (breaking the immersion since the release of Source Engine) would not be such an easy job as some might think. I think I can do without weightless corpses stuck inside objects, falling of the map, launching randomly in the air from slight touch, getting stuck into my characters leg and being dragged around the area... The more I think about it the worse it sounds. Of course I don't know how good is Unity's support for ragdolls and physics overall, but for me this still sounds like unnecessary pain. I like my enemies to stay where I killed them. EDIT: Yeah, and there's always the question of how would all this work with 2D environments.

Will it be possible to move those individual elements around on screen or do we have other options regarding the UI placement? For example can I move portraits on a vertical column on either side of the screen and can I change size of UI elements? Design sounds nice as it is and option to have solid background surely makes lot of people happy, but more options are always more options.

First thing from top of my mind is that in IWD you create every character from scratch and they appear in the story only as bunch of random adventures with no real backstory or history in the world. That gives the games it's own touch, which I can appreciate but is detrimental to the depth of the story. If we again draw comparison to Planescape: Torment, there you had party of which everyone was part of the world with their own backstories and maybe even some history with your main character (Amnesia, such a perfect excuse in video games) which was uncovered by conversing with them. People on street might remember you from previous encounter and meetings may have different outcomes depending on which characters you have in your party. When Planescape told story about it's main character, The Nameless One, in Icewind Dale your characters were more like random bystanders getting involved in events by chance.

Martin is an excellent example of someone who confuses "dark and terrible" with "realism." I don't especially like it when games aim for realism, because it's usually code for "everything is really awful for everybody all of the time." That's not realism, that's just a different kind of fantasy, and usually a worse one, because it's so self-conscious. Tajerio: How much have you read A Song of Ice and Fire? You know it tells about kingdom in very turbulent conflict between several of it's noble families? It's not gonna be pretty that's for sure, but "dark and terrible" is far from it. Also I highly doubt Martin ever meant Westeros to be "realistic". That's just his way of crafting and telling a story: Getting into details and going deep inside characters' heads instead of focusing on big picture. There was surely lot of gritty stuff happening in Middle-Earth too during the war of the Ring, we just never saw most of it. Sarex: What appeals to me most in ASoIaF is it's characters who have real motivations and mostly react understandably to situations presented to them. That's not something you can say about LotR for example, where characters are mostly just perfectly honorable good guys doing good stuff or treacherous bad guys doing bad stuff. That's why I liked Boromir most of all characters: He was one of the few character who really showed some inner struggle about his motivations and openly questioned the goal of the fellowship and their plan's rationality. Aragorn then again is good example of traditional fairytale hero with his infinite bravery and infallible honor and of course he gets his princess at the end and, not half, but whole kingdom to rule. I'm not saying Tolkiens style is any worse, but it definitively is much more superficial. What George R.R. Martin has achieved in my opinion is creating completely believable fantasy world inhabited by real people. It means there will be some stuff about tax policies, but mostly it means you are getting bunch of maybe the best dialogue ever, interesting tensions all over the place and as the story progresses even some high fantasy starts to raise it's head and seeing these characters you know encounter it is just facinating. ASoIaF is kind of like reversal LotR: In LotR magic is dying; In ASoIaF it has been dead for a long time and is coming back with a bang. EDIT: Oh, I forgot we were talking about PE here. Here goes: In my opinion some amount of fairytaleness is ok in fantasy-rpgs. LotR would definitively make better Infinity Engine rpg than ASoIaF, but depth of character is also very crucial to my enjoyment. If you only have options to be that fairytale hero or evil **** to challenge Sauron himself, I always find it too limiting. Choices should be first of all rational and have real consequences instead of being different only in the way they affect your karma meter, prestige or such. This goes for side-characters also: Less polarization and more real motivations and rational thinking. I think Sheikhs BG-example is valid, even if that didn't bother me so much.

Icewind Dale series is certainly most fun of Infinity Engine games (haven't finished it yet, but I think I can already quite safely say so), but I still think it lacks exactly the thing you call "experience". Deep gameplay takes a game far and keeps you entertained, but experience is what you remember afterwards. I would say latter should definitively be stressed especially in RPG's, but of course there is time and place for every design choice. If we take Infinity Engine games as example, I think we have quite perfect collection of everything. Planescape: Torment has the most ambitious story that sticks with you long after you finish the game, but they had to sacrifice some depth of usual IE gameplay to achieve that. Icewind Dale then again focused on making combat the best it can be and achieved that goal perfectly, while still having it's own shortcomings in other areas. Baldur's Gate fits in my opinion somewhere between these two, but also offers most freedom of exploration and adventuring to distinguish it from others. That said, I would say my personal favorite of these is Planescape, as you might have quessed based on my avatar, but I think PE would benefit most of BG-like approach, with emphasis on exploration and feeling of grand adventure. Gameplay is of course very important aspect, but it should support experience instead of leading whole design. But who's saying it's impossible to have the best of all those games in one package? There is pile of experience and years of technological advancement behind PE compared to times of Infinity Engine. I would not rule out possibility of few miracles happening.

They are both soft string orchestra pieces. It's not a genre which offers much room for variety or originality. Other than the genre I can't really hear any similarities... actually I can't hear any clear differences either, so I guess they are similar in a sense all generic background music is. It's not meant to be memorable; it's there to establish peaceful atmosphere to the scene and these achieve that goal just fine.

I hope you still have some of those nice green K's left, cause I'm afraid I'm missing one too?

That's funny cause you ended up describing one scene from The Witcher almost from word to word. So in a way you just spoiled part of the game for yourself. Actually as Witcher you are not very much liked in any place you go, but rather just necessary evil which has to be tolerated to avoid getting run over by monsters. Good news are, from what I have heard many people from P:E team have lots of respect for their colleagues at CD Projekt RED and are aiming for pretty similar goals concerning narrative and morality of the story. EDIT: Also few people from the team worked on Planescape Torment, which might be one of the most interesting universes when it comes to differences of culture and moral flexibility. Lots of bizarre moment to be found in there.

I had to read the first post three times before I understood what you were saying... err, or maybe I'm still not 100% sure I did. I don't know if English is your first language, but whatever your background is, you should at least be able to get basic punctuation and capitalization right. I'm not trying to insult, but honestly that post doesn't present you very well and I'm sure you can do better if you give it some more thought.

They have too big of an audience to make "the game we want". I'm pretty sure there are lots of disagreements even within the team and suddenly POOOF! you have 74 thousand more opinions to be taken in account. Any head would explode if it tried to make some sense out of that mess, but developers have been very very brave to stick theirs up here from time to time and take part in conversations. Sadly that's about the best they can do: Listen for feedback as much as humanly possible and leave it or take it based on their own instinct. I have heard this is not the first time they are making this kind of game...

Dropping famous names even as "inspiration" is always dangerous business, because there are passionate people who lose all their comprehensive skills after hearing the name of their all time favorite. When they finally discover the truth - even though it was right under their nose from the beginning - there is going to be lots of complaining, but after all I don't think they have anyone else to blame than themselves. We had whole month for all the information to sink in and Obsidian's direction became more than clear, but some just listened to that ghost of IE whisper "Baldur's Gate three, Baldurs Gate threeeeeeeee..." softly in their ear.

I pledged for original concept they had on Kickstarter site and I'm completely fine if some stretch goals get dropped for good reasons. Of course they have to tell us exactly why that is, cause that's nature of crowdfunding, but I won't get angry if we don't get all extra races, classes or if The Endless Paths doesn't have all 13 levels, as long as reasons for those cuts are acceptable. If Obsidian decides to use last million of funding to fly whole team to Bahamas for launch party and that would mean no Big City 2 for us, then I would be pretty pissed.