Osvir

A Mage in Baldur's Gate had all these spells I never really used... Ghoul Touch, Vampiric Touch, Cold Touch, Burning Hands... all magic that required to put your mage in a melee situation (cus the mage enchanted his hands). The problem when you did this was that the Mage was dead almost instantly the second he got in close (SCS, enemies target the Mage as long as he is in range of their sword/bow in any situation).

I personally prefer the mini-portraits (used in Baldur's Gate with mods), we'll see if EE is using it or not (On/Off button?). Guild Wars 2, edit:

And you need kung fu pants and a bare chest to do that? "Wise teachers" like Liechtenauer or Ringeck would probably just laugh him out of their studios if he came to them dressed like that. Sure, he may have studied martial arts in PE's equivalent of Kara-Tur, but that doesn't explain why he's still wearing the clothes. Depends on the setting, maybe it is super hot outside where he is, and he is practicing by a tree. We have no idea about the setting where he is (maybe in a desert, forest, hut?)? Is he going to be a companion at all but a "V.I.P"? (Don't remember where I read it but something about the Companions maybe not being Companions but Important Characters) Maybe his upper body is so elementally hot that from training that anything he wears on top of his torso just burns up. I've got a pair of those pants, two pair actually. Most comfortable pants ever, jeans weigh so much. He has as little possessions, either by faith (strong believer in mortification) or because he simply moves so much faster. Those pants he is wearing aren't providing any protection at all either.

One thing I brought up in another thread was enemies being able to use the same tactics you can, of course. Can the AI be designed into the game by the Developers/Beta-people actually play a mock-up AI internally and just record it? (like playing chess, not multiplayer feature but simply within the development interface) or is AI always built with scripts and code? (e.g., externally, is it possible to build an AI internally?) So an enemy will use a barricade, they will light torches and they will cast Grease spells at you and now you are locked inside a room. Wizards teleporting through walls... enemies knocking you back and overwhelm you if you get too comfortable at a choke point. Enemies on walls that you can't reach but have to fight with some other type of method.... getting flanked, falling into traps and falling for baits (why am I always pulling the enemy to me? Can't they do that to me as well?). Flying beasts? Shadow of the Colossus beasts/boss(es)? Quick defensive spells... make some combat skill based and with skill shots (A Fireball is a Skill Shot because you need to aim it). When your Wizard recites aloud some common spell or whatnot I want to see enemies move accordingly (If I am doing an incantation of a Fireball spell I want to see my enemies react to that and scatter so that not all of them take damage... this is all difficulty level though). League of Legends has tons of fun skill shots EDIT: Being able to disrupt the Attack Motion or even dodge an attack. In League of Legends when I play Janna, the opponent carry that I am laning against attacks my guy that I'm supporting and I see the bullet in the air but I react and throw a shield so I manage to negate all that damage that would've been done. With pause functions that method is going to be easier to do but it still requires reaction on the spacebar. Reaction is always fun in combat scenarios in any game. APM, Hotkey, Micro-management.

Could "Alchemy" as a craft be its own type of "Grimoire"... in sense? E.g., an "Ability" book with powers that you use on a fly instead of hoarding 100 potions in your inventory you make potions "on the fly". There is not Alchemist class though... a type of Rogue? Monk? Wizard?

Exclamation bubbles, question mark bubbles. A teardrop etc. etc. In one game the teardrop kind of falls down into the talk bubble, the exclamation flashes into view and the question mark kind of wobbles, all part of the "effect" and a representation of a feeling of expression. Body movements would be fun to see. Even if you are top down isometric I think if applicable onto the companion even things like this could be noticed and seen:

I'm fine when you click on a merchant or a quest NPC and a dialogue window with their mug in it in a corner pops up, or whatever. I just don't want to feel like every time I click on someone to "speak" to them, or every time my companions decide they want to have a chat, that I'm tossed into/stuck in some special window. Totally situational and for V.I.P's if anything. NPC's, some merchants (not all), when an event happens in the game, for story, etc. etc. Commoners and the like would and should stay true to their roots (like in BG, only in the Log window) if a dialogue thing is considered to understand your companions and the world.

Giving Forton black skin colour doesn't make him less human, actually... It seems I don't get that joke. Bah, people are people. And it wasn't a joke what if Forton could be one of the Godlike races? (Name of the attachment is Godlike ). When I choose the hue I was thinking more towards "Golem-y" rocky and rasp skin (there is only one race, humanity, brother).

Which makes me think of talking with a Dragon requires a specific... Skyrim already did this and no one seem to like it right? Nvm...

Some more examples. Tales of Destiny PS2 (takes up the entire screen, you can see the in-game sprite in the background): Folklore was commended for it's approach in a review: Odin Sphere is a Side-Scrolling game but it pretty much uses the Folklore method as well, but in more of a flowing way (characters express themselves with facial expressions etc. etc.)

Is Forton even Human?

You can look at his picture and deduce his stance. Pictures speaks more than a thousand words. If you look at Forton, how do you imagine him being? Let's say... make up a character, personality and appearance, how would Forton and this characters relationship be? What would Forton have to say to you, based on what he looks like in the picture? EDIT: Thanks Dr. Explosion. Imma go play with Photoshop now <3 (inspired)

Took a little smudging there, a pixel or two. I barely did much to provide with the examples (on a touchpad mouse). A professional would probably be able to dish these out like.. like... uhm I don't have a good analogy... like a professional would. Took me about 5-10 minutes on each of the examples (on a touchpad mouse). I do agree, I am just curious if it could work.

But 5 threads isn't enough to warrant a complete category. It would be better to remove the thread limit. Actually, 500 posts are... 30 pages or so? Instead of having an entire book with.... 150 pages it is less intimidating with "Chapters" I guess. Each Chapter is different, even if many of the comments go round and round and round. Same thing I noticed with doing the Collection (check signature for the thread), each of the "Lists" I did in the posts (categorizing per class) is each their own game. Like "Chapters". The point is only management and ease of use, but it requires passion, serious engagement, ambition and a strong willpower. But the point isn't important for a community like this and we've discussed that it'd be best for a more internal, closed off to a few, premium/beta forum where the purpose would be (if it is) to discuss what should be in the game. Also I'm probably never going to use that invisionfree forum, I just threw it up in a few seconds/moments for inspiration.

Ugh, want to make a poll but too lazy and can't think of anything right now. Harassed this thread about this for a bit, because I didn't want to make a topic on it. There's many ways for expression to take place in the game. A pixel can do a lot. Text, Animations, Voice and still pictures/portraits. All tools for a more "representative" experience of the expression the Companion (or your character) is doing. In the attachments below there are some Examples of what I'm flirting with. JRPG's and Anime use lots of "emoticon" stuff that might not completely belong in Project: Eternity (I'm personally not ruling it out, perhaps there is a way to make it super goed in a realistic and acceptable way). Should the Character portraits included with the game also have a facial expression when you are "Choosing"? Instead of a "Red Text: This is a Renegade choice" versus the "Blue Text: This is an Alliance choice" it would be choosing your Dialogue Choice 1 through 3 depending on the expression of your character. Does he look menacing when you want to choose "I'll gut your stomach and stomp on your flesh!" versus having a more serene smiling facial expression next to the "Hey how are you?" choice Thoughts? EDIT: Less voice-acting required as the bodily language is conveyed through the facial portrait expression, however it could reduce a few sentences of text in the Dialogue Log because the Writer wouldn't need to write the characters "expressions" every time.

To a start I was all against Forton, then he grew on me and I'm not sure why. There is wisdom, and concern, in his eyes. He could just be an emotionless master assassin as well *shrug* EDIT: Resolute.

Hmm... so Maturity is in the way you express, or how it is written? Maturity isn't necessarily a "theme" but a presentation, a representation of... experience, wisdom, time? EDIT: Thought that it might be a good idea to look at the definition, just to get on the same page.

Stop including my screen name in the same sentence as Romance\Sex. I don't want the Sex part, I do want the Romantic part. Art doesn't need to be a movie, but just like you say, in text (like BG presents it). Novella/Novell/Short-Stories is Art as well.

What you can do in photo-shop is different from whats possible in game...I'm not saying it would be impossible to have portraits change or use text like in PST or something, but it's not easy, and it's not all that expressive either way. Look at some of Quantic Dreams' games, they pretty much lead the industry as far as facial animation is concerned and their characters come across as very emotive, but that kind of thing takes a lot of work and simply isn't feasible in a game like this. Your probably better off with just having good voice actors, who like you said, allow you to imagine the body language of the characters. Eh wha.. voice acting? Imoen conveys her feelings in text, and I imagine her "expression" myself (without any voice acting). Voice-Acting versus Making "Facial Expression" on a tiny portrait (like I did) requires less work, less polish, less time than voice acting. I'm sure it costs less to do as well. Also I want to go at the "Photoshop" argument but... *sigh* another time jezz

Which jrpgs have you played? My own few that I can think of that are, imo, really great: * Lufia 2 (SNES) * Grandia (PSX) * Final Fantasy 1-9 (PSX) * Disgaea (there exists an anime that does the story more justice than the game ever can do) (PS2) * Star Ocean (Super Nintendo, later re-mastered for PSP) * Soul Nomad and the World-Eaters (PS2) * The World Ends With You (DS) * Chrono Trigger (SNES) Heck isn't largely the SNES Era mostly JRPG's?

I might be misunderstanding the phrase "Mature". At the same time I feel that many mature things can be viewed as immature and vice versa. Is sex mature? Yes. Is it immature? Yes. Perspectives. Take a look at the list and look at it from your own perspective of what maturity is. Wait.. you already are

Fan-service? If a complete engaging, and mature story is fan-service, than sure, count me in. Your character can be a eunuch that's fine with me, just don't make mine one. If the Romance is as deep, engaging, captivating and heart-wrenching as the rest of the content or the story *shrug* I want good stories~ (I'm all for "true" love, whether it is romantic or tragic I don't care, as long as it isn't sappy pretend love... looking at you Morrigan, Liara). Dynaheir (fan-made mind you, see quote and underline) was great because it was dedicated to be captivating, whilst Morrigan and Liara felt as if they were thrown together and was poor writing (in context to the rest of the game) and poor implementation mechanically (the "Mini-Game" argument). If the Dating Sim of Mass Effect and Dragon Age would be taken out of the the games as stand-alone games they would be "Well written Dating Sims" (I've played my share of dating sims in the past when I was younger and more sexually confused). About at the same time as Dragon Age: Origins was released to be honest, was there any other "mechanical" method that people knew of at that time? Isn't Dragon Age: Origins a bit of an experimental game that tries many new things? What did we learn? There's a huge fanbase for Japanese Dating Sims (Check the "Simulation - Dating" section Newgrounds, also can't you just get your fix from there? Does it have to be in everything?) in various forms, there's lots of cash to be had from that player-base. Just like Final Fantasy 8 was tailored for one group of consumers, Final Fantasy 9 was tailored to another, and Final Fantasy 10 tries to appeal to both. We learned that it was not appealing to the old school Baldur's Gate fans that obviously doesn't belong to the Japanese Dating Sim community. What do we want? * FF8? Lure in the new crowd? (Dragon Age: Origins) * FF9? Get back the old? (IE Games) * FF10, a mix of both? (Witcher, I haven't played it much to be honest, the prologue and some in the first fort with the "Beast" but it sounds like an attempt at it) Because Domi is a writer and did study in Russia because romance does not take away too much from characters written by Domi. Take Kivan, for example; it's basically a camaraderie which can last from BG1 and to the ToB, there are situational banters, struggles, and trying to understand and help that emo elf to overcome his obsession with revenge. You don't lose anything if you do not play as a female elf, really. He's written as character first and foremost. Compare that to legion of "masturbatory fiction" which BG mods are usually, with 35 flirt options and 40 questions like "What's your favorite color?", "If you'd be an animal, what animal would you be?". There, character only serves a purpose for entertaining a specific crowd, he has no real dreams and hopes, and quickly comes down to being nothing but your plaything. You can easely see when exactly writers steam ran out - he finished writing romance, and then it's like "oh snap, now I need to write something for people who won't romance dude/gal, like friendship path". And it sucks, of course, because the character was there to have romance to begin with, not to be a being with some grand hope or with ideas to say. Those who enjoy that kind of **** should have no vote on how characters should be written and their tribute should end in their names being used as NPCs in that Avellone's dungeon with crazy Cipher. EDIT: It's a platform game xD HAHA! Flash game/Newgrounds: Don't Catch the Herp

I don't mean to be dismissive because I am one of the people asking for Romance\Sex but aren't we expecting too much to ask Obsidian to represent all these aspects of Relationships? C) I am asking for something simple. A)You need to court the person and if you succeed you have sex with them. There should be straight and gay options. This is similar to all classic fantasy that I grew up reading, like Conan. B) I don't want to over-complicate it? It's all pieces of a cake and many people value Friendship faaar above Romance. A) "Need" to court them? I don't "need" to do anything. B) Maybe I do. Love isn't easy, and Romance is oft sporadic, impulsive "Heat of the moment" type of thing that's something easy that gets complicated. It is a game, but it is a difficult, snakey, devious and lustful game. You have to play your cards right, "The Game" is a great book (never finished it but read about 1/3rds before I lost it somewhere). C) I feel that you are asking for fan-service, you are asking for the pron content. You are the horny teenager when the rest of us real romantics don't want it to degenerate to the level of sweaty diaper sex, it ruins the entire thing about the romantic feeling. Romance is an art.

Thanks

Brotherly Romanticly Famliy Sisterly Rivalry Friendship Immaturity Maturity Motherly Hatefully Envy/Jealousy Basically Romance is just one piece of the cake called (Relationship). We'll see how much of it Avellone digests and how much of it he vomits out. P.S. There's probably more but I just brainstormed.