Keyrock

Is there no mortal in this world that can match Chris Avellone's unearthly strength? I also must know this.

I'm really glad all the Sierra alum Kickstarters have been successful, that company holds a very special place in my heart. I was a fan since the days they were called On-Line Systems. As others have mentioned, Roberta Williams seems to be completely done with the gaming industry, so her doing a Kickstarter is highly unlikely. A man can dream though.

Barbarian is my 2nd most likely choice, but I'm only allowed one vote (technically 2 split between the 2 polls).

Wait, there are people that voted "no"?

I'll agree with that assessment of NWN2 companions except for Neeshka. Neeshka is awesome. All the other NWN2 companions I didn't much care for. If the most recent Obsidian games are anything to go by then I'm feeling quite optimistic as I think Fallout: New Vegas has several memorable companions. That point about companions is a fair one, but in my opinion doesn't apply that much to the first playthrough as is does to subsequent playthroughs. None of us are going to know which companions are interesting when heading in to the game for the first time anyway. I suppose we could go by looks, but books and covers and all that jazz.

I'd like them as piled up bloody corpses beneath my boots.

I voted priest since I'm the type to usually play fighters or priests but there's a part of me that really wants to make a chanter. I will most likely make all the previously mentioned classes and more at some point, but for my first character it's looking like: Priest: 35% Barbarian: 30% Chanter: 20% Fighter: 10% Other: 5% Note: Subject to change when more info on character classes is revealed.

And the final total is... ... 409,150

Yes! It made it, and with 5 hours to spare.

The Herman Cain gif never gets old. NEVER.

With exactly 1 day left they need 39k to hit the goal. That's slightly over 1.6k per hour, definitely feasible. /crosses fingers

I've played through DA:O twice and didn't use Zevran at all in either playthrough, not even to do his personal quest. For whatever reason, I really really dislike him.

I too think they will get it, hopefully with a bit to spare. I'm definitely nervous, though.

Jumped back into a NWN2 game I started months and months ago. I'm currently making my way through the escape tunnel into Crossroads Keep.

What I'm looking for is for the characters in Project Eternity to entail the full spectrum of attitudes, motivations, reactions, justifications, and prejudices that people have in the real world. There are very few, if any completely "good" and pure people in the world, and very few completely "evil" people. Most people lie somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and where that lies is often up for debate. Even people that are mostly kind and generous are prone to give in to vices or temptation sometimes or even lash out in anger given the right circumstances. There are people with good hearts deep down, but that are driven to commit deplorable acts because they have a substance dependency and are desperate to get their fix. There are individuals that had noble goals and ideals, but in the face of resistance and difficulties they turned to more and more extreme approaches to achieve their goals with the "ends justify the means" thought. Along the way they gave in to power lust and their original ideal got lost. Some people may have been lured to a life of crime at an early age by the thrill and easy money aspect of it. As they got older and matured they tried to turn their life around and turn a new page but their former life keeps seeking them out and pulling them back in. I know those were a bunch of cliches I just listed, I just pulled stuff out of my backside for sake of example. My point is that I want the individuals and groups in the world to have real, complex, justifiable motivations for why they act the way they act. When things are cut and dry choices don't present much of a dilemma to the player and thus are not very memorable or exciting. When you really have to rack your brain over a decision and even after you make it you have doubts in the back of your head like "did I really make the right choice?" or "should I have backed this person?" or "I fear when they come to power it may be even worse than it was before", those are the type of choices that you wind up remembering. Sometimes it may be "better" to side with a deplorable noble who mistreats his subjects because he keeps things in order and the economy booming. The alternative may be people with great ideals and noble goals, but they have no idea how to effectively rule the region nor the political or economical ties to keep commerce flowing. Sometimes seemingly "good" acts can have negative consequences and sometimes you may have to get your hands dirty or deal with insidious individuals to get things done.

I agree, Cantousent, not everything in the game needs to be morally ambiguous, there will be some people or groups that really are greedy or even evil while there may be some truly good groups and people. Like you, I don't want everything to be so cut and dry. I want shades of grey as well as some black and white.

The combat scenarios in GTA IV are simple enough when the system works correctly... when it works correctly. The frustration of the game stems from getting killed due to the system going wonky, which happens far more often than is reasonable. For example when going into cover your character suddenly turns around on his own facing the opposite direction you just were because... because? Running toward a target then stopping to take a shot at them when your character decides to turn 180 all on his own and you get sprayed in the back. Going into cover and the character just freaks out all on his own rapidly turning back and forth all on his own like he's on crack or something then wanders out into the open all on his own and gets mowed down. I hate how the view rotates when you get to the edge of cover. I'll have my crosshairs on a target ready to mow them down, then I get to the edge of cover and the view rotates 45 degrees on its own and I have to adjust my aim, meanwhile I'm getting shot at. I could keep going. What's worse is there is no checkpoint system in the game so you have to start from the very beginning when you die, and not just at the beginning of the fire fight, you have to do all the driving to get there too. On top of that, many of the later missions are like a half hour long or longer so you have to do a huge chunk of game over when you get killed because the game went wacky. Maybe the game didn't have these issues in the 360 version? Edit: Sorry for double post but I could no longer edit the previous post.

SIE is also my favorite character in the game. She is easily the most interesting of the 4 possible romances and the most interesting character not named Steven Heck. I loved the playthrough of Alpha Protocol I just finished a couple days ago so much I considered jumping right back in and playing the game again immediately. Instead I opted to play some other games for a while then I'll jump back into Alpha Protocol likely sometime early next year. Next time I play I'm going Recruit and I'm going to be a complete a-hole to everybody and always take the slimy/shady/greedy way out of every dilemma.

Well, I remember in an earlier update, way back during the Kickstarter campaign, one of the devs, I forget who it was, mentioned that the game will be less about alignments and more about factions. I hope that the way the factions are written makes them a bit morally ambiguous and it's up to the player to decide which faction is right or wrong or worth supporting. Rather than just having a faction that's "Grrrrrrrr we're a a bunch of psychopaths and we slaughter innocents for fun and drink their blood" and another faction that's "We're the noble elves of the woods, keepers of the light, defenders of justice", I'd rather that there may be a way of looking at things where both factions (I'm only using 2 for example here, I hope there will be more than 2 sides to some conflicts) could be right and both sides could be wrong rather than the aforementioned clearly evil faction and clearly good faction. For example there may be a religious faction that may look saintly on the exterior but when you delve deeper there is corruption within the organization, misuse of funds, mistreatment of people, cover ups, shady dealings with less than spotless individuals and groups, and so on. Still, not everyone within the faction is corrupt, some really do mean well, and the group does provide worthwhile services to the community. There may be another faction of brigands. When you delve deeper you find that the leaders are the remnants of a family of nobles that were brutally slaughtered and chased off their lands. They are stealing from and attacking those that deposed them as revenge and just as a means of surviving. Still, innocents often wind up as collateral damage from their raids and their actions cost the kingdom in blood and money, as well as destabilizing an already precarious political situation that can send the whole kingdom into chaos. Also it seems some of them are more interested in bloodshed than justice.

I personally thought San Andreas was the apex of the GTA series. It was by far the most interesting game for me to play and it's the only one I've beaten multiple times. Plus, it had by far the best soundtrack, and I'm not even that into hip hop. Anyway, I'm jumping back into NWN2 to finish it up, then moving on to MotB.

With a bit over 3 days to go they need about 90k to get to the goal. I'm starting to get a tiny bit optimistic, I think they're going to just make it. I'm guessing they end up with 425k. Here's hoping.

Oh, the story is great, no doubt, but the combat is so unbelievably awful that I just can't bring myself to play it any more. Somehow they managed to make the combat even worse than in the previous games, if that's even possible. I think it's because they added sticky cover. In theory that should have been an improvement, however it's implemented extremely poorly and the game relies on it a lot. Plus, the controls in combat are even less responsive than in previous GTAs, which, again, is an incredible feat. Also, as with every successive GTA game, they focus more and more on combat and this only increases as you get later in the game. I like driving around, I love the story, but I just can't deal with the combat any more, it actually hurts (both physically and emotionally) to play the game it's so bad. I'm just going to watch the final few missions and cutscenes, and the ending, on Youtube and save my sanity.

Man, this one is going to be a really close call. I really hope it makes it.

I attempted to get back into GTA IV yesterday. I knew I'd regret it but I'm so close to finishing. I'm at the part where I have to choose between revenge and money, that's gotta be at least 90% of the way finished, right? Anyway, not a half hour into playing and I was ready to throw my controller through my monitor. Then I had an epiphany: Why am I putting myself through this abysmal combat when all I want is to see the cutscenes and ending? I can just do that by watching Youtube clips. So it's screw you GTA IV and hello Icewind Dale II for me.

For the record, it's almost impossible for a RPG story to be too political for me. I much prefer power struggles, conflicts, and betrayals both within kingdoms and between them, than "save the noble world from the awakened ancient evil".