IndiraLightfoot

Yet another mind-blowing update! Thank you, Obsidian, for all your talent, hard work and dogged dedication! So, druids are primarily shape-shifters in this game. Interesting. I think ItinerantNomad's concerns go beyond the problem of it being the default pose for a 3D model. I have to agree that there is room for improvement, and all of it, almost, has to do with making the cat look more animal, and less WoW, which the article in Eurogamer recently touches upon. Obsidian wants to achieve a more down-to-earth natural look, and not an exaggerated one. And so far this cat druid has been touched too hard by exaggeration. Another sentence of tough love, based on the criticism from curryinahurry; please, consider integrating the chitin growths more into the head of the Death planetouched. Well, the dark tendrils are pretty cool, even if they come across fluffy hairs at certain angles in the video. Perhaps you can make them more subtle, like steaming tarmac on a hut sunny day? The genasi in NWN2 were a few of my favourite CRPG races, so I really love the god-touched concept, and I have no problem with exaggeration per se. However, will it fit PE's over-all toned-down-fantasy approach?

Thank you for that great post! I probably have worried all for nothing here! I mean the more solid a system is, the better it can take the load when people start tinkering with it. Any system has fun loopholes to play around with. It's inevitable. Perhaps the thing that I fear the most is the classes and how flexible they will be. So far, they sound a bit rigid. Still, I don't know anything about the talents, for instance.

Even if 100% of fans wanted them, I don't believe we have the time and other resources to implement them well. I am not inherently opposed to romances, but I don't want to spend time implementing something I'm not confident we will be able to execute at a high level of quality. Very well said, and with fine reasoning to back it all up! If only these words had been guiding the dev teams that attempted NPCs doing romances earlier in the history of computer games. This is so true. Writing a romance well takes oodles of time (and of course talent in spades too).

POE nightmare chat up lines: 1) Me love you long time! 2) Nice beaver! 3) Your eyes are windows to a pure soul. Keep 'em coming, folks!

Or rather Goatee of the year. I'm totally gone pre-order this. I'll buy my entire family a copy. I'm praying for multiplayer/coop mode too. Let's wreck this town! Baah!!

Indeed. My blade dancer now, approaching level 28, and a few grand masteries later, is like a combine harvester from Hell!

I don't mind if romances are in or not, as long as they make sense and play out in a believable way. As it is now, I've only encountered Twilight-like belieber romance in games, if you get my drift. In DAO, after a few friendly and supportive words, I had Alistair all over me like a sweaty pig. I never knew what hit me! Almost all my favourite games had some kind of romance in them, but I certainly didn't seek those options out deliberately, so DAO pops up as an absurd memory. So, Karkarov is indeed spot on, when he says it's all a matter of how well written the NPCs and the romances are. So far, I have never encountered anything in computer games that approaches the quality of romance in good novels, for instance. Also, I deeply share Fluffle's hope that Obsidian will present us with lovely and engaging relationships with NPCs, regardless of romance, which in a computer game seems almost a mirage.

That's like Obsidian's hallmark right there!

Or make an official poll, like InXile did for turn-based combat vs RTwP. The turnout of KS backers was a huge success, IIRC.

I'm curious about the other end too: How much animosity can you muster in your companions? I think I read somewhere that they can leave your party if you treat them bad. But why stop there? Say you dump three or four adventure hall characters you made, and then they return (higher level and bad-ass) in order to exact sweet revenge. Or perhaps the Obsidian-made companions get really cranky in various quest-related ways if you let them down, and this in-game, and not just at the very end, like in NWN2 OC.

Hopefully Gfted1 or some other mod will merge the three threads into one! Keep on spilling your thoughts and beans! *Munches bird seeds*

Here's a recent excerpt from the latest interview at the Eurogamer site: "Pillars of Eternity will delve into themes like "racism and more pervasive racism than just bold-faced racism", explained Sawyer, "like social racism or institutional racism". Class problems will be explored, and there will be an ongoing struggle between the religiously minded and the technological." It seems Prima Junta's philosophy is embraced by the Obsidian team, and I like it. Bring on all kinds of politics, religion and science controversies!!

I think that Kaelyn the Dove handled the level of friendship perfectly. So, go, MCA, go!!

And Avellone was faster than Sawyer in spelling this out... EDIT: Cultist: What the heck is POI? Pillars of Inquisition? (Still time to correct your topic title, I think) And what's "BUTHURT"? Well, we should be glad it wasn't buttheart.

I just backed it as it is as of now entering "funded"-territory, and all that in one day!

Kjaamor: You make excellent points, and I find myself agreeing with all of them! Btw, even FNV had that, if you go take the wrong cardinal point, you'll die after three minutes, with no two minute warning.

I couldn't help it. I love DM!

Yay! And I'm getting deeper and deeper into the game. Apparently I've done things in a pretty weird order. I'm passed level 25, and I haven't even done some of the elemental forge quests (I had missed two elemental chambers - light and air, they were easy to find, but it was a darn dark level, that one. However, a certain crystal spider I did rather early, and then it was a tough fight. However, one spell sometimes seems to rule them all: Purge! When the spider casts the latter crystal cage, the one with a ticking bomb effect. Just throw purge on the bombs, and they get disarmed. Purge works against most bosses, too. I am deliberately postponing the free they lord of the mansion quest, as now I'm just going crazy with Shalassa and Ylath-content.

Update 14 gave us a first-person combat video, and the combat looks absolutely fantastic. Possibly, the best combat animations ever!

I've been pondering over balance. There are plenty of game features that need balancing, obviously. The question is: When's balancing going too far? When is it really needed, and when is it almost hampering gameplay and general fun? I began thinking about it a bit more yesterday, when I was approaching what I knew was an important opponent in Might & Magic X Legacy. I guess, the game dev term for that guy is miniboss. Well, outside his abode, two weird guards were standing ominously. To make a long story short; the guards turned out to be a much harder encounter than the miniboss. When I later googled that, I saw lot of angry posts about Ubisoft not having gotten the balance right. To many players, a miniboss has to be more powerful than his bodyguards. Well, I beg to differ! Why? Well, first of all. It surprised me, and made my day, almost. Hey, it even got me thinking about this! I realized that the best games don't balance everything so that there are cannon fodder, elites, mini-bosses and bosses. Disclaimer: I realize ARPGs need to balance stuff like this pretty hard, because they are following an arcade game recipe, where the actions you take are almost e-sporty and sometimes money and ranking in ladders hinge on such balance. But for CRPGs, I'd much prefer something of a balance light when it comes to encounter difficulty, and its pacing and frequency. For instance, two favourite encounters in NWN2 MotB, were unexpected and per se unbalanced: One with the gang on the docks in Shadow Mulsantir, and the other, a whole barbarian lodge in ordinary Mulsantir, which then takes a surprising turn for the worse, as a certain giant badger suddenly bursts in! Those are two of my favourite fights there. They were rather difficult and not expected at all. I'm pretty sure Obsidian will disturb the flow of balanced encounters every now and then, but I still fear that they have gone a bit stricter this time, as they are preoccupied with building a new game system. I don't want to know how bad or dangerous enemies are as soon as I see them, especially not via some colour-marking (*shudder*). Some subtle clues or something in advance is always nice, but not a necessity. I bet Harry Potter didn't expect a huge troll when he was going for the toilets at school, nor should we know when there is a tough encounter around the bend. Some other examples where too much balance easily can make the game drab instead of bad-ass: -Dividing character classes into controller, defender, leader, striker, like in D&D 4e. Don't overdo this! It's great that classes are distinct and rather different from one another, but don't make them into hollow men and women -Making all character classes good and most builds viable is commendable, but if taken too far it takes quite a bit of fun out of experimenting with different characters. -The same goes for spells -Making the areas in the game too specific for certain level ranges, or even blocking high-level content. I've already mentioned M&M X. You know what? You can take like 100 steps and stumble upon cursed ruins with horrors that wipe out your party in a heartbeat. Me like a lot! TL;DR I fear that Obsidian is balancing various game aspects too hard, since they are building a new system

I'm absolutely fine with Josh's attribute division for PE. I've said it before: To me, this gives me a definite Aang: The Last Airbender-vibe in so far as how magic is affected by strength, dexterity and wisdom in that TV-series. And I actually adore that setting and how magic takes on a slightly different gestalt than in typical western RPGs. This is going to be so much fun. PE couldn't come soon enough!

For reasons unknown, I never got to see "Road to Perdition" until yesterday, and what a treat it was. A true masterpiece! Compared to Tarantino's action scenes - violent and bloody - I watched in this film perhaps the best shootout scene in the history of film, the one on the street, when it's raining, and all the umbrellas, the beautiful cars from the 1930s, the music - sheer perfection and so much finesse! If you haven't seen it, then your in for something else.

You guys are far too specific on how the game should do this. I'd love to see it all. Let me explain... If only done a few times, and in varied locations, such super-hidden items just lends the game a few more surprises, and that is always good in my book. That said, I really like to see clues like you describe them as well. There are room for both kinds of super-hidden items, I reckon. I'm one of them OCD-exploring every little bit of maps in CRPGs. I've always loved doing it, so to me, this is usually a fun feature, and not a chore. It can be frustrating at times, but I will keep on doing it, heh! Pixel-searching hidden items, if done sparingly and varied, is like I've already said fun to some of us. A "Z" button highlighting some stuff, like Josh described, sounds like a perfect compromise. However, your example of secrets, where we get to use our head and then get rewarded for piecing together clues and then make some wonderful little discovery, is the best of all, so yes, please. As much of that as possible! Heck, I even like them riddles and puzzles you have in Might & Magic, even in its last iteration. tl;dr: I want it all, not just some.

Fighter - John Doe with armour and a weapon Wizard - Pocket ball fondler - also called Pokémon player Ranger - Runaway transsexual bride Barbarian - Juicehead Rogue - Inglourius basterd Paladin - Your Average Psychopath Boss - "Follow me! Into the fray, death to all!" Priest - Quack Monk - Coprophagist - The ****, also called Port-a-John Cipher - Me, myself and I - "I can't get out of this echo chamber of a soul prison. Help!" Chanter - Dopehead - smoke and hum and sucks on smoked ham Druid - Animal hoarder, embedded ASPCA-maniac

The last avatar of Sarex was an owl. That's why.