IndiraLightfoot

I join hands with Lephys in praise of this great idea! Cool!! It could be the price to pay for certain extensive shape-changing periods or perhaps to much changing within a certain time frame. Also, plenty of cultures believe that their shamans have got stuck in their spirit worlds after journeyed there via some trance rituals. Hence, killing their specific spirit animals were interpreted as killing the shamans themselves (while they, in fact, just OD:ed ) . The legacy of miniatures shouldn't be under-estimated in CRPGs. I still have quite a few painted ones in my possession, and I do love that legacy. Evidently, many PnPers expected similar combat mechanics when D&D turned into computer games. They early SSI games, as well as the IE games of course are certainly evidence of this. I mean, it all started that way in a basement in the 70s, when Gygax and his buddy began to play war games with their tin figurines a bit more freely than normal, while using a Tolkienesque fantasy theme. However, computers have a lot to offer when it comes to translate the fantastic and fast into digitalized beasts, regardless if the game in question is turn-based, RTwP or even some AAA 3D FPS. Come to think of it, even an ancient analogue boardgame like chess has the only animal moving in a more erratic and fantastic way: the horse carrying the invisible knight. Instead of having CRPGs present us with colourful monsters standing in line to be mowed down or exploded into smithereens (which is something that the M&M-series excel in, btw), it could make some of its denizens assault our parties with more speed, finesse and even unpredictability. Most animals put a lot of effort (and even ambush planning) into the first strike. Thus, many predators are almost spent after they have given their all in that first attack. A lion that misses a wildebeest may get kicked to death before any second wind kicks in. It would be nice if the combat system reflected this initial force in pouncing. And don't even get me started if there were beings intelligent like us, but much faster or stronger and also able to phase in and out through walls or just teleporting around. I mean, they would be so bad-ass that we need to be metagaming the system itself to even try to win or even escape alive, almost like that Neo and his friends in the Matrix series. And take a look how powerful phasing ghosts (in this case, they are twins - how cute!) would be in a worldly setting. A spell like Blur certainly comes in handy for one of Mr Anderson's agents (and he's pretty much altering time, physics and reality to stand a chance):

Nonek: Thanks for sharing that story. That's exactly what I mean. Some animal awe is in order! And your ideas are like sweet music to my ears. Just imagine how powerful the Displacer Beast and the Blink Dog would be (once again, from D&D? And even Diablo 3 had a few, for instance those Hulking Phasebeasts (which blinks around and teleport in a deadly fashion). Any creature that has such capacities surely needs a difficulty boost.

Yeah! Thanks for bringing me down to earth, and I realize that the theme of this thread is probably something that perhaps can lead to a discussion relevant for an expansion or something. However, it's also a discussion worth having, since I reckon animals and environments are under-used in CRPGs.

Or perhaps we get to pick up hitchhikers?

Playing IWD2, I come across a few animals (too few, I reckon), and they are not very adapted to their environment either, it seems. For instance, I've met great cats, leopards, panthers and giant snakes, and none of them seem to meld into their background when they attack, and they don't exactly surprise or pounce me either. Obsidian has a chance to start over, and thus they can make a few superb animals that are truly part of the environments and thus make them into formidable foes: fast, camouflaged and hunting in clever packs or attacking at the worst possible moment for the party. Some of the cats and snakes ought to be near-invisible. Let me show you what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC0m8qJ8gTE A favourite bad guy from the world of movies is the Predator, who has an uncanny ability to become one with the colours and shapes of the environment, something of an über-chameleon camouflage suit - stealth made totally deadly. It reminded me of the Skulk, one of my favourite baddies to throw at unsuspecting parties when I tried my hand at DM-ing: Which suggestions do you have when it comes to animals and foes really bringing their A-game to their environments? I just want to get rid of those cannon-fodder, sitting ducks, those rows of purple-green masses of humanoids waiting to be killed. In IWD2, Obsidian really proved themselves when it came to positioning opponents and their ranged units in clever places. Now it's time to do an overhaul of the use of the environment.

As someone who's enjoyed Euro Truck Simulator 2 quite a bit last year, something of a wish of mine is taking shape as we speak: SCS Software is making American Truck Simulator. Finally, I can get a whiff of that All-American trucker vibe! Image looks a bit compressed, but anywho, you get it anyways! .)

Although I've put RoS on hold for awhile, I have two characters that I think could join you (barely) at T2 and higher: my DH and my wizard.

Thanks for the heads-up! Now I have applied as well.

I've been playing through a game that's been on my backlog, namely Consortium, which I supported over at Kickstarter like last summer. It recently got Master-updated, so I finally got to play it for real, as it were. In fact, it was very entertaining, like a bizarre Star Trek episode. The writing and the VO were often excellent, and the action was decent (I took a very violent route through the content, if I may reveal as much): It was well worth KS (despite ending with a big cliff hanger). It's one of the best games I've played that I've kickstarted so far.

Great choice of aesthetics, if you ask me! And this perhaps also explains the overly shiny armours. Because of the small size of the characters, it needs more than occasional glints among grimy dirt to convey that it is plate mail or whatever. I see.

Elmore and Caldwell. Mmm...

And here I am, hoping for them to get a bit more shoddy and less shiny.

Starwars: I reckon that the rock is limestone, and that kind of odd formations is well within the scope of limestone by the sea. Messier-31: You can say that again! The same goes for that entire camp, with the fire place and the lot. If the frothing sea is anything to go by, it wouldn't even be there anymore in 24 hours. Most cultures, throughout history, have built even simpler huts and sporadic camps farther up from the shoreline. Possible exceptions are participants in Survivor and a few Western tourist villages in the last fifty years.

That response expressed more a general frustration on my behalf, and wasn't aimed at you specifically, Gromnir. And I can see that you really know your stuff, and yes, if not in so exaggerated words, there have been plenty of problems over the years in games Obsidian have produced. Still, and that is my main point, why focus on the negative? I just don't get it. Pointing out shortcomings in order to help making the games better in the future is one thing, but just trash-talking in order to be kewl is something entirely different. Overall, they have made a few fantastic games with enormous scope, replayability and entertainment value (the writing in them alone is mind-blowingly good at times). Like you said, the beginning and middle of KOTOR2 is a gem.

Heh! I just read this as "there will be an 'I am fat' companion that you can get in the hall".

Last I heard the cool kids were talking about proccing Ahem. See my post right above yours?

The two dork commandments that we see all too often in effect on these forums: 1) "If you love a game you should not and cannot fault it for anything. It's just a relic and a canon." 2) "If you criticize a game, you cannot love it. You should leave it alone, and your opinions on it are invalid." I am a fan of several Obsidian's games, I admit it, but I'm also happy to provide long lists of faults, bugs and inconsistencies in said games. However, regardless of them shortcomings, I have played the NWN2 series and F:NV for hundreds and hundreds of hours, and I still enjoy them when I pick them up, that should tell you something of how good Obsidian are at making games. However, more or less the same goes for BG1 & 2 + Planescape Torment. I've replayed them all in recent years, and they have plenty of issues and outright annoyances. In my replays, the three games that hold up the best after all these years are MotB, PST and FN:V.

We all have our spells of entitlement now and then, but sometimes I wish we could take Obsidian's PE for what it is: a brand new isometric party-based CRPG, inspired by and in the style of the IE-games.

All those screenies are great, but that beach is extra, extra fabulous! The sand textures and paint over? in itself is brilliant, and then that water and the surf. I feel a Beach Boys tune coming on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ChADh1zt5I

And then we have procs, which has nothing to do with proctology, but perhaps it should have? Proc coefficients *shudder*.

Don't forget ticks, and I don't mean them awful bugs.

Welcome to the forums, and thanks for that great virgin post! I agree almost wholeheartedly!

This got me thinking. Early on, I played on NWN1 servers and enjoyed persistent worlds. Even weirder, now and then people referred to their D&D characters as toons in 2003 on those servers. It was invariably Americans, it seems. More than a year later, a well known MMO came out: World of Warcraft. Hence, I can say with some certainty that the "toon" nomenclature came from young US D&D players, and then it migrated over to the WoW crowd, and all of the sudden it got a bad name. I don't go through the roof when I hear it used. I even use it myself, but then almost exclusively in the context of ARPGs like D3 and Torchlight, since your characters do look cartoonish in those games. Enoch: Your squad CRPG idea certainly has my approval. I really hope we do get to see something like that, but with Humanoid's reservations in effect.

Indeed. Those two - dare I say blemishes? - need to be blotted out from this new iteration of IE-inspired sweetness that is PE! And enemies out of thin air, tell me about it! Those war drums outside the goblin fortress and in that weird cave right by it which was a mixed bag of everything in there, even a spider-eating goblin that was explicitly good), well they showered you with goblins on worgs, orcs, bugbears, ogres, whatnot.