Jasede

The best man who has ever lived on this beautiful planet Earth, clearly. Suck it down, promancers. Chris Avellone is going to make you his - (Can I write that? He'd write that, if he posted on forums. But if I get banned I can't heckle you guys anymore so I guess I'll play it safe.)

First romance blood!!! Called it.

In before "Then why are romances bad? They are optional!!!"

But that doesn't matter because it clearly wasn't made for people like you. It's simply there for the Wizardry, IWD and Might & Magic crowd- a crowd, might I add, that no big developer caters to anymore. It's completely irrelevant what you prefer in this regard because it has no bearing on this. It's exactly like saying "I don't like rollercoasters" while going to an amusement park. So what? There's haunted houses and balloon popping or whatever it is you desire; you don't have to like the rollercoaster.

Because of the *idea* of a cursed item. What if the item actually gave you powers that would make it worth wielding? What if it was scripted, for example, to alter your dialogue options because it is influencing you in some way? What if it actually, in-game, aged your character and altered the way people perceived him in return for, say, incredible magic power? There's a huge potential in the idea of cursed items. They've been a staple of stories since not long after we began telling them. Maybe the execution in the past has been flawed but that doesn't end the dream, the idea of cool cursed items with flavorful, interesting curses. Deals with the devil, given form.

Realism doesn't matter if it makes for a better gaming experience. In the end the entertainment value is more important than adhering to some (often arbitrary) realism rules. That is not to say they can't be used to add to the game. You could have a game with "realistic" healing where resting only helps marginally and you'd have to spend days to heal anything substantial but then you'd have to make the quests time-sensitive and alter the entire premise of the world. And that's not the kind of game they set out to make.

You'd make a good Obsidian RPG villain, except they used this type of villain in almost every of their games before so it'd be a bit redundant. Evil done in the name of something noble is often the greatest tragedy, especially if the rewards of such deeds warrant the gravity of the offenses. It's a question and a theme we have struggled to come to terms with for a long time and as such makes for fine stories.

It's a feature. It won't influence your regular gaming experience of pre-made companions one iota. It's explicitly there for people who grew up on dungeon crawlers and wouldn't mind playing the game with their own, self-created party of puppets. Your opinion regarding its merit or its immersion-breaking qualities is irrelevant as this will do nothing to interfere, diminish or alter your experience of the game in any way. Have a nice day.

I'd be fine with kobold gangrape as long as it's handled in a tasteful and mature manner.

Not a fan of trees myself. Would prefer pre-reqs that need to be met, like in Fallout. With a tree it's too easy to be led to believe you ought to follow certain stretches to the end, to get the most out of your investment. I feel a pre-req system like D&D Feats or like in Fallout gives you more freedom.

I'm the troll? I never knew posting in a forum would be like watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie. But then- who was phone!? Also typing in riddle answers is awesome. I haven't seen that in an Obsidian game before so it might be fun. One of the best parts about Betrayal at Krondor were the riddle chests- riddles are great.

"Wonderful" certainly wouldn't be my first choice of word.

If you'd played the RPGs that came out in the last five years you'd hate everything about RPGs as well, especially if you also played the good ones back in the day and realize how much better things could be.

It's right next to the "deactivate passive-aggressive moaning" button.

You should think of the inability to un-equip as an abstraction rather than as a narrative fact. Maybe putting the cursed weapon away for more than, say, a minute leads to unending physical pain or something like that. It's like D&D hit points: they're not literally your vitality points. They're more of a weird luck / constitution / skill potential that you use up when avoiding hits. As with most things in pen & paper, cursed weapons the way you described them are an abstraction. Obs. can probably come up with something more interesting anyway rather than having some random cursed weapons with nothing special about them strewn about.

Occasional terrible posts are a staple of any good forum. Not liking terrible posts is liking onions only for the ketchup.

I really don't think people or children unable to understand something like "2d4" or unable to figure it out within seconds of using a weapon in-game and looking at the combat log should be playing this sort of game and neither should any design decisions take their ignorance into account. Designing for the ignorant leads to too easy, too simple games, stripped of all complexity. When you streamline something too much it becomes unrecognizable. Examples? New X-Com, Civilisation 5, new Syndicate, every modern RPG ever. A collection of watered down mechanics, so simple a child could do it. The irony being- when we were children we played far more difficult and complex games, such as X-Com Enemy Unknown, Theme Hospital, Might & Magic and so on. We didn't have any problems with them. So why would we want to play games now, as adults, that are simpler than the games we grew up with? It boggles the mind. Does the industry assume our intellects deteriorate as we reach adulthood?

As a certified genius I hereby declare this thread open season! Games that aren't challenging are for casuals. Casuals ruined video games. In PE I expect the opposite of the casual Bioware experience and I'm confident that - at least in the writing department - they'll deliver. Tags don't bother me but if you're going to say that without them you wouldn't be able to infer what skills are being checked then I have to honestly doubt why you are playing this kind of game in the first place. There's already a billion games to satisfy shallow tastes and hopelessly low skill levels, no need to water this one down one iota.

Wait, what's this about farm animals? I know Arcanum had a sheep but I haven't yet heard anything confirmed about an animal romance in PE.

We can only hope.

Troll with a capital 'T'... I see what you did there.