IndiraLightfoot

This really makes a difference in order to achieve a teeming world where people go about their lives and businesses, as it were, and in Divinity: Original Sin we'll see a return of this Ultima depth of a CRPG. However, it's quite time-consuming for the Devs, and does it really enchance gameplay that much? A harsh question, perhaps, but I'd say MotB and it's attention to story and varied environments with unique events meant much more to me RPG-wise. It was too railroaded at times, but still, wow! It was fantastic, literally, it was like being in an exciting series of dreams, at times. P.S. And yes, Witcher 2's combat, just like Kingdom of Amalur's, made me stop playing the game, and that's not a good thing. I'd much rather have much less encounters that are very varied and unpredictable. Hopefully, Torment Numenera will get that right.

Well, folks, here's the last and final call for backers over at the Lords of Xulima KS! And you can always throw in an extra $4,44 and join the 5th Lord of Xulima pledge club.

That sounds like a dream team! The perfect combo, IMHO.

Haha, I can picture it already! That is so cool. Imagine if you get a pray mantis, and then you have to box against him in order to win him over as a soul mate. Boox: You have truly improved my idea and made it much more appetizing for a CRPG. Problem is: Now I want to play it your way, let's just hope Obsidian reads this and implements it.

So many great posts here, and I doubt I can come up with something that is even more prioritized than any of those. Which one should I pick? Well, I will pick LunaticPandora's post, as that would make one heck of a difference for a CRPG!

Mazhlekov: Great effort in just three hours! But yeah, that boulder looks like pumice at best.

samm: I know, that is absolutely terrible! I really hope that is a mistake or something, but it has happened before. Let's hope it won't happen to Lords of Xulima, which asks for much less.

Boox: Your ideas and compilation of other ideas gave me *surprise!* yet an idea! :D In certain Native North American cultures, there were initiation rites, where the young men (and hopefully women too) went out in a deep forest on their own in order to find their soul animal, their special animal companion of sorts. They were out there for days, until they had a vision (encountered an animal that responded to them/stared at them), and voilà! You got yourself a soul animal, and it even affected your name in some cultures. Imagine if this was in PE. At some point, in some setting, a ranger has to go out in a forest on her/his own, and I find her/his animal companion. In that way, we would not be able to choose, though. I bet that I would get for three days and nights of stumbling through the sticks a warty toad.

I just found this one with merely 24 h to go - Xulima: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1446315704/lords-of-xulima-an-epic-story-of-gods-and-humans It's a party-based and turn-based CRPG in 2D, and with the stretch goals, it now has almost 70 h of gameplay and counting. Give it a whirl, if only just to support CRPGs that are vast in scale and exploration. They have nearly 300 % of their pledge goal, so it's going well for them. The game will be out in about Feb 2014.

Jarmo: It would be great if NPCs reacted appropriately to whatever animal companions you have in your party!

I mean, the idea of finding traps is pretty neat, but when it stops being fun and the system is just plain cruel. It has to be chucked in the bin. I really hope there is a smoother and more automated way to do this. They do plan to have everyone having these skills, so imagine swapping a character, and then you have to be constantly bothered about this trap-checking hell. It would be such a pain.

JFSOCC: I already like rangers a lot. It's often my starting PC class, and the way you present them here, with all the animal companion options, makes me want to play one so bad!

Great, Sensuki! Somehow you've made a map that transcends the border between fantasy and reality, mapping the devs' areas of responsibility and where the two big cities are. Next you will crack the ecology code and show us where the various monster types have their habitats.

Great art update, but of course a downer if you, like me, anticipated so much more. But waiting is a virtue, I suppose. Personally, I really like that Obsidian are making characters, NPCs and monsters that don't pop too much vis-à-vis the background. Far too many games are doing that, and it always ends up looking a bit cartoonish and meta-fantasy too me (fantasy on top of fantasy). I like what Company of Heroes 2 and Path of Exile are doing with their animated models, which are just as small as PE's will be. Obviously, the dragon skellie and all this nature needs quite a bit of a 2D-brushup to become mossy and worn and beleaguered with all sorts of creepies and crawlies, just like the bridge by the waterfall. I really hope that the environment's will keep that ominous and foreboding quality that the waterfall scene carries. Several other screenies have indeed been a bit too much Google Maps or at least Sancho Pancha, Don Quixote-movie, kind of scenes. Too sunny and sightseeing-y to me. Twin Elms falls a bit flat to me. That Viking theme doesn't really do it for me (and again? After half the CRPG-fans has OD:ed on Skyrim?). Glanfathian just took an arrow in the knee, and I wont remove it! I will make them my mortal enemy in-game! As for the trolls. They are far too short and slender, I reckon. They are almost what I imagined old Amauan people would look like. Whence I come, this is a troll:

Perhaps not funny, just adorable and also a lesson that one should never give up, coz this dog certainly keeps his spirit up, and watch how free his balls are, it's an emancipated jingle bells for the great outdoors, no doubt!

"And who was the lucky bride?" you ask. She was turning 33 in about a fortnight, and had raven-black hair, braided into gnarly prongs, hanging limply on each side of her dry and elongated countenance, in the midst of which green eyes were burning with malicious intent and an insatiable appetite for gullible men of decency and pride. Her name? Zarasthra Funcheon, or just Zara for short. It had been only five weeks since she picked me in a weird baptism of fire over at the local pub just after midnight.

Very nice idea for a thread! I'm looking forward to the backer portal, of course, and all the digital goodies that may eventually land there, especially Cooking with Tim. And some gameplay footage with Justin's brilliant music would be absolutely fantastic! But all that pales in comparison to the Forum VIP-badge! I mean, we're here for the forums first and foremost, right?

All of it: story, maps, secret areas, monsters and NPCs. All the dialogue, a complete and thorough walkthrough, an exhaustive crafting guide. Every music track and sound effect, each script, all the code, triggers, loaded objects, delays, the lot... ...NOT! :alienani:

I expect the same culture in PE to be present us with names such as Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan.

Walshingham: It seems you're onto something. A name is repeated in the wattle-n-daub, embroidered with used floss: "Michael Fagan", and a faint scent of red wine covers the whole basket.

Raithe: Ah, but there you are mistaken, my good fellow! His basket is placed on a satin pillow on the main dining table in the castle. It's still a conversation piece, because of its huge size and its intricate wattle-and-daub. You may say it's a hut, really, Jabba the Hut. But that's a story for another time.

I usually liked them too, and I do agree that NWN2 had several annoying characters, unlike MotB, which was a gem in that regard. And Mr. Magniloquent is right that sometimes you got locked up in annoying yapfests that were too long and included a few characters you'd rather not have there at all. Teenage-bratsie Neeshka got on my nerves big time, for instance.

imatechguy: Those are very nice ideas. Thank you for sharing!

Walsingham: It sure does! If genealogy teaches you one thing, then it is that there are so many lucky dice rolls over the ages and through the eons that have made it possible for you to come to existence, so being thankful is just not enough. You just have to embrace life for what it is: a complex game of chance, almost like a good-old PnP D&D session with a stern DM. And like with so many other people with traumatic memories from any war, my parents opted to stay quite about most of this, not wanting their kids to pick up to much from the bad stuff. I only learned about that Gustloff-thing five years ago.

Believe it or not, but I've been doing genealogy since I was nine. I used to sit in the library pouring over microfilms with old handwriting and Gothic script for hours on end. The interest probably stems from my diverse background. My father was a French-German war child escaping death many times during WWII. The last time being when he stood in line, wanting to get aboard MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a German ship which a few hours later got sunk on 30 January 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic. By one estimate 9,400 people died, which would make it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking ever. My mother was a Swedish-Norwegian Walloon with Belgian and Breton roots. I have mapped large chunks of my family tree, often going many centuries back. Some of my deepest roots creep into Wales and Bretagne, as well as Liège and Lyon, and this about a millennium ago. I have 15th and 16th century roots in today's France, Belgium, Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, Finland, and Germany. I have, like most others, plenty of ancestors involved in agriculture, but I also have quite a few fishermen, artisans, tinkerers, shopkeepers, musicians and barber-surgeons. Genetically, it turned out I was mostly Western-European Haplogroup R1b and Nordic Haplogroup I1-M253.