IndiraLightfoot

I hate to be that guy, but when talking about CRPGs, sure "dwarves" is to be preferred over "dwarfs".

They'll change it when/if ever they'll get the budget to make Skyrim of Eternity. Given what Feargus shared as his dreams and hopes a few years earlier (source needed), I have the feeling you maybe quite right about this assumption of yours. Although I prefer the isometric approach for party-based CRPGs, I wouldn't turn down a PoE 3D game similar to, say, Skyrim, but it will be another kind of bag of fun, then.

It must be set in the Deadfire archipelago then. Woot! And I have this CRPG dream of mine; except for some Dragonlance CRPG from the 90s (nr 3?), I've never went beneath the waves in any SP CRPG campaign to speak of, only on NWN1 servers. So, if PoE2 happens to include some aquatic exploration (go, sahuagins, sorta) and water breathing abilities, it would be frigging awesome. And it should be teeming with adventure. I don't want Skyrim's almost empty lake and sea beds, heh.

You're one convincing, man, Gromnir! After your colourful write-up, I'll heed the warding and not touch Arcanum with a stick, even. Now I understand why MCA never did live up to his KS promise of an Arcanum playthru. @Nonek: Granted, I do love myself some juicy idiot-proof exploration, but the rest just seems off-putting, to say the least. I happened to read Gromnir's post first, and I googled around for a bit, and watched two Youtube clips, and I didn't enjoy what I saw.

Arcanum is one of the few CRPGs, I haven't played, it seems. The more praise I read, the more I wonder if it would tickle my fancy. I hope to get around to play it someday, for sure.

The lines above are considered homophobic statements in many parts of the world, and I highly doubt Obsidian wants anything like this on their forums. Like many others have said in this thread, it's natural and very much normal, and among almost all known species, see the Bagemihl study, for instance. Any claims that it would be underdeveloped and negatively deviant or misformed are at best described as ill-willing misnomers. The very idea that your sexuality would be a career move or hampering in any parenting capacity is offensive enough, and it just sets certain sexualites apart and besmears them. Why alienating folks that are just like you? People are people. And, besides, every individual is somewhat unique. Describing certain categories of people as "absolutely different" is a dangerous road to set out on, history has taught us that in spades. This is an old view with no scientific support whatsoever. It's basically just waving a red herring to all attempts to create societies where we all are considered equals. I do understand that most of these posts are trolling or that they are tongue-in-cheek, but still, enough is enough. Where are your X-mas spirit, guys? INB4 "Haha. You took the bait. I was just joking." I vote for closing this thread and any future threads similar to this debacle.

"Oh, dear! Have you contracted sithilis? That stings straight into my queer midi-chlorians. May the force be with you, young Padawan!"

Dishonored 2, easy! A fantastic game!! Civ6 is really nice, but it has nothing on Dishonored 2. My early access to Torment: Tides of Numenera felt promising, but that's just me plugging for a game that won't be released until Feb 28.

Just go ahead and do that stuff now if you want, it's perfectly fine to do so. In my opinion, a certain dungeon beneath the hangman tree is more challenging early on, well with one clear exception, but I won't spoil anything for you.

Nobody puts Backpack Baby in a corner!

Aaah! Der Kapitän Arschloch ist hier!

Hi y'all! With the recent surveys, our anticipation for the next PoE has transformed into a definitive "It will be made and soon it'll be announced"-state. And I also got this itch to write a bit about how I felt the explorative aspect of PoE went, and how I'd personally like it to be. The lore and such were excellent in PoE, but since it was made in such an efficient manner, because of budget/time-restraints, its explorative nature was not always that exciting. Overall, the game was pretty linear, with a few acts, and where the last one was short and underwhelming. Add to that rather empty and smallish maps, and you can see that an exploration buff like me suffered somewhat. Given all the great lore, there would've been plenty of room for great side quests, lots of details and "secret" areas, but there wasn't any time for that, based on the production resources available. And the stronghold, serving as a typical hub for a substantial part of the game, wasn't much of an exploration deal either (well, a bit unfair, given all those floors beneath it - but I'd much rather have seen all those resources spent on the stronghold itself, making it Raedric Keep-big at least, and with a plethora of stuff to poke around in, preferably developing over time, like Obsidian did with the stronghold in NWN2.) Or, truthfully, I'd skip a stronghold or a hub for PoE2, if I could get more exploration complexity and better map diversity and content. I do understand that you have to make CRPGs pretty linear at times, but what I'm advocating for is the BG1-approach, rather than the BG2 (which, disregarding the great city adventures, was far too linear for my liking). However, BG1, had the right size of the maps, but several of them were still rather empty. Discovery density on a computer game map is indeed a tricky thing to get right, but even linear games can do it really well. Look at games like Dishonored 1 and 2, where you have huge maps with loads of exploration and several side quests lasting for hours, if you play diligently, like me, and those maps fulfil the function of being replayable as well. And the attention to details is pretty stunning (although sometimes lacking, still). Since PoE2 is an isometric CRPG, as opposed to Dishonored, I'd imagine it would be easier to make each map more sprawling, irregular and detail-focussed. Sure, it would be nice with bigger villages and cities, and lots of "this is a lived in place"-thingies, which PoE had problems with (not to mention the absurd backer-created golden NPC-loot-piñatas), but I'd argue that it's even more important to set up a goal for PoE2 that makes a city a jumble of complex inter-quest relations between NPCs, locations, items, and so forth. Moreover, just because there's an old ruin in some forest on a map, it doesn't have to be empty except for a few lion prides, for instance. I'm not saying it should all be pixel hunting, but at least, I'd like to see an attempt to make it lush in a explorative sense. Side quests - they can even be quest-cul-de-sacs, I don't care - shouldn't be blatantly so. I'd rather have a game where I have to take every detail seriously, and where the main story isn't advertised a mile away. I'm not saying: please, make a big, confusing mess of a game world. Rather, make it intricate enough, with several layers of things to delve into and deal with, rather than the "hollow NPCs on scarcely populated maps"-approach. For once, horror vacui is a neat thing, and less is more a bad thing. The devil is in the details, and in a CRPG, I'd like to see more LE bad guys, if you get my drift. What are your thoughts on exploration, side quests and details?

Yeah, if that music is indicative of what Justin has in store for PoE2, we're in for a real treat!

How terribly generous of you, Fenixp! The one that gets ETS2 is in for a vehicular treat.

No kidding! Tell me about it. I started playing it, and now like 40h later, I noticed I grew lyrical already after Mission 1. Here's my review I did for a Steam promo thingie: Alright, I already loved Dishonored 1, and I completed that game and all the dlcs several times in various cool ways. So, my expectations for Dishonored 2 were high, obviously, and now, having almost completed my first playthrough on Hard, using no violence, and trying to get by undetected, I am simply taken aback by this masterpiece of a game. Cheesy praise, I know, but I really do mean it. This is easily one of the three best games I ever played, and I started playing in the early 80s, and I have dorkily played literally thousands of video games. The city environments are the best I've ever experienced - the maps feel like living and breathing cities, where you get to be and moving about in them, experiencing the streets and alleys and apartments, listening in on conversations, reading about blatant social exploitation, watching bored guards fiddling with their weapons, and so forth. The sound effects and the music - top notch stuff. And each mission is huge, leaving you with tonnes of difficult decisions, and often you get excited, in the sense of surprises and chills, or even scared, when hiding behind a curtain or beneath a desk or something. This time you get to pick your protagonist, and both are beautifully voiced. It's just unbelievably good. You may craft bone charms, you may forfeit all supernatural powers - play it whichever way you want. The replayabilty factor is crazy. I redid a few sections of two missions just because I felt like it. Dishonored 2 is literally so great that I've put it on hold in order to save it and savour my longing for my next gaming session. As for graphics performance, I had a computer perfect for its settings, and after a quarter of an hour, I managed to configure my mouse in a really pleasant way, but I know others have suffered far worse in that department. A timeless classic. Play it, already!

I still listen to that inn music, wonderful stuff!

I sure do, but not that kind of huge rigs, and just driving a van when moving house is enough to give me the jitters. This is all relaxing: "Oh, I caused a traffic jam, and now I totalled three brand new cars. *Shrug* It's just make-believe."

This is more or less what happened to me a couple of years back. I bought the game for my kids, and got one copy for myself, and I just found that it was so relaxing. I learned that I could add my own music in the Steam music playlist format, so I just chilled when I played this game. I have yet to buy American Truck Simulator, but I'm sure I will. It's a weird surprise. I don't know how to drive big trucks in real life, so yeah, weird. I forgot to mention: I soon started to compile truck songs, similar to tunes you know rub you the right way while on the road. It's so darn cosy when rain hits your wind shield and the wipers are going.

Hmm, I just got a weird idea: If, for some reason, it doesn't work. (Perhaps not necessary: "Either uninstall and reinstall entirely, or at least verify game cache,") and then uncheck Champion Edition content, and see what happens.

Interesting. On Steam, when my dlcs misbehave in any way, I just uncheck them, then check them again, and they will usually automatically re-download, and everything will be fine. No need to restart Steam, just uncheck, and check, and watch if they're re-downloading.

What Suen said: In my folders, they appear as pdfs, so you need to install them first.

It's easy. Just open your Steam folder (C:, Programsx86), then pick the folders Steamapps, Common, Pillars of Eternity, and hey presto: There you have it all in neat little folders.

The draught and those chilly winds up in the ivory tower of ivory towers would drag anyone down, but we're dealing with extra-terrestrial intelligence here. Our minds dwindle in comparison. This is the anti-Davy Jones' locker, where the combination lock alone corresponds to Alan Turing's Enigma-decoder.

Oh, "ought-to-have-been-NIPped-in-the-bud-SENsei"-nipsen. The memories...

This is what I feared, I probably won't be getting it. Not that I always stay away from that kind of content, far from it - but in this isometric party-based CRPG format, I'm not exactly chuffed to bits, enduring choices and consequences in a 20h stream of contrived evil deeds. I'm looking forward to Torment (Ironic, given its title, no?) and PoE2.