Greensleeve

Yeah that's my point. The way the map is laid out it looks like two decent size cities and a couple small villages that would take a day, maybe two to travel across. It doesn't look like a "country" or a "region". It looks more like one or two counties. I am sure as we get closer to release the map will become more fleshed out and start considering some of that "scale" it has crossed out. That map is only small portion of Dyrwood, which in my understanding is region size of Spain. Map of Dyrwood from kickstarter page. It seem that as Stronghold should actually be Twin Elms that that map don't yet have all the hubs in place or hub icons aren't up to date. Even if the map is only part of the region, it's still between 35-50% of a region the size of Spain. Spain is the second largest country in Europe (in area at least) and the region shown should feel much larger than the current state.

Oh god that video just oozes of the 90s. The picture quality, the sound, the colours... It's like a 90s soap opera all over again.

Yeah I have seen this pic before and it is sort of terrible but it makes the game look like it will be 2 small towns, 2 big towns, and a bunch of wilderness with like maybe 2-3 actual non town dungeons. In effect it looks really really tiny. Hoping for something a little more "in between". I'm not sure why this is terrible. Baldur's Gate 2 had 1 big town (5 maps), 3 small town (Trademeet, Brynnlaw, Ust Natha), a few non-dungeon areas, and dungeons. We can make no judgement on dungeons based on this map, and it seems to have as many of the other types, at least. Judging the map as horrible isn't very useful at this early stage. I will, however, agree with that the map feels too cramped. Making the map larger would give us a better sense of scale, and it would make the world feel like a larger place, as opposed to a small neighbourhood you trek across in a day or so.

Defiance Bay and Twin Elms are the two big cities. One of the past few updates (look for Twin Elms in the title or body of text or something) confirmed the second one.

Nice sword and shield. The sword looks as though it's from a bit later an era than the early 16th century (17th century British perhaps?), but the shield is beautiful. Given the prominence of cut-and-thrusts with rotella shields in Italy (I think the Bolognese manuscripts speak extensively of it. Might be misremembering) I'm really looking forward to some viable sword and shield action in PoE. I'm strongly considering a saber/sword and shield using rogue for my first character.

Quiet You! You'll summon Pun Pun! Ah. The excellent example of how poorly worded D&D 3.5 really was. And above all, the shining example of how no splatbooks were ever playtested in conjunction with anything at all. Maybe not even themselves. As for a game that is well balance, I don't know. RPGs are notoriously poor when it comes to balance. I've heard that most MOBAs are pretty good when it comes to balancing, and they have crazy replayability. Civ 5 is rather well balanced between leaders, at least with all expansions installed. Some sucked massively before Brave New World. I can however point to a subset of a game which is really rather well balanced, fun, and with great replayability. Games of D&D 3.5 where everyone played Tier 3 or 4 characters are rather well balanced and incredibly fun. Tier 3-4 classes are all classes that are not 1) Full casters 2) Fighters, Samurai, Truenamers, NPC classes, Monks, Paladins, and probably a few I'm forgetting. The ideal classes are anything from Tome of Battle, the Binder, Bard, Duskblade, Wildshape Ranger, and probably one or three I'm forgetting. I'm going off memory here, though I could dig up the thread. Edit: Found the thread: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0 Also, I don't care if a reader here doesn't agree with the list. I've argued and seen enough arguments about Tiers to not care anymore. The Tier 3-4 classes are rather close together in terms of balance and power and playing a game with just those classes would be fun and interesting and have plenty of replayability.

This right here is probably the single largest reason to why I can't replay Baldur's Gate II again. I tried three years ago, and I tried earlier this year. But the boredom of anything but mages (which is by far my least favourite class in these types of games) upon level up and general gameplay is just too hard to overcome.

Maximillian armour certainly fits in with the time period that PoE is taking its inspiration from.

I really like that your behaviour chances your priest abilities. That's really cool. I also love the Aumauran Chanter portrait. I am, however, disappointed that Barbarians and Fighters ended up being the last classes covered

I believe there was a thread by Montecarlo asking for strange and weird environments in the Endless Paths a year or so ago. There were some great suggestions (most of which I of course do not remember) but I'll throw out mine here for now. I'd love to see the Endless Paths to have at least one part where a natural cave system had broken into the dungeon and taken over. It would have spread funky, blue-glowing mushrooms and fungi giving the entire level a dim, eerie, blue glow that casts all in an unnatural light. The main struggle for the PCs here would not be monsters, but the fungi itself, fighting either mind control effects, or decreasing stamina when in its reach, or it simply making all tasks harder, particularly scripted interactions. I also love your idea of there being vastly differing and wildly improbable environments in the dungeon, like a desert. It'd be a real adventure exploring something like that.

Great update. Really good animations shown, and the interviews over at GameCrate were pretty great. I really enjoyed the interview with Feargus.

Well, if we're talking military tactics, then that depends entirely on the effectiveness of regular artillery by comparison. But in general, yeah, I think you're right.

What's a Neu Grognard?

Cool interview. I'm, once again, very satisfied with Josh's stance on things. Also, I managed to misread the line "Pillars of Eternity is out sometime around the end of the year." into "Pillars of Eternity is out sometime around the end of the war." Which is a very different message.

Pretty sure they've said that achievements will only be in the Steam version of the game. In other words, there'll only be Steam achievements, and not in-game pop-ups from in physical copies of the game, or from GOG.com or whatever.

Right, forgot to say that I'm also throwing in a vote for an update on the Aumaua. I'd love to get a proper lore update on them and some sweet concept arts/in-game models.

What does this even mean? In Icewind Dale, The PLAYER is the one who creates those characters, remember? If they're boring then blame falls on the lazy player who 1) didn't try to role play those characters, 2) didn't take some time to write anything in the Biography section of those characters. But I get it. We've been seduced by Bioware-drama. Where characters aren't interesting unless you can romance them. And plots suck unless they're delivered via long cinematic cut scenes <gag> So you're saying that they're boring because we didn't larp the party? Even if they have a bio, there's zero reactivity to what you do. The characters you create are nobodies who don't exist as anything more than hp bags with swords. They're not boring because we've been seduced by BioWare characters, though they're certainly all easier to invest in than the IWD characters (except for Mission Vao), but because we've want characters of the Obsidian calibre. We want the Kreias, the Briannas, the Kaelyns, the Ganns, the anyone-from-Alpha-Protocols, the Boones, the Casses, and the Joshuas. We want characters with personality and reactivity. And even if we get all these, if there's zero interactive possibility with these characters, there's no point. IWD has some cool characters, Kresselack in particular (Tony Jay is awesome), but the party is utterly faceless and uninteresting. So you're stumbling around other events wondering why you don't have those guys in your party instead of PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, PC5, and PC6. You can respond to the little dialogue there is, but it doesn't matter who says what.

Well, the pathing was beyond atrocious in the IE games. The party could not in any way walk as a group, which was incredibly dangerous for combat. I've certainly had deaths because a party member decided to retreat towards the enemy, thinking that's the shortest available option.

Because it's one of the best tactical rpgs of all time?

Also worth noting is that Paradox will provide a QA team of 18. Which is larger than the dev team itself.

I presume you're referring to tactical combat. In which case I'd point you to Final Fantasy Tactics. Be aware that it can be a pretty hard game.

DLC is one the thing that has me a little uneasy about the partnership with Paradox. DLC in PoE? Surely that can only mean: "Congratulations, you have cleared all five levels of this dungeon, and now stand before the entrance to the boss's lair (where all the good loot and the XP payout for the entire quest awaits). To unlock the boss's lair, please click: [buy 'boss014' DLC for just $10]" Everyone, start panicking! How about reading Brandon's answer on this topic first? I'm pretty sure he's joking.

Great update. Both classes look really cool and I'd like to have at least one in my party I feel. A druid seems to have some really nice tactical options I'd be very happy to use.

I understand that this is probably not something you can really answer, but I'd like to know how this will affect profits. As it was up until know, Obsidian would receive all the profit, but now that Paradox is involved, that obviously won't be true. I'm not asking for percentages on how this will be split, but I would like to know how this will affect the scope, size, and resources available to the expansion pack and potential sequels.

@Stun: Honestly, I have to say that you are vastly over-praising the combat mechanics of the IE games. You say it has depth, which I have to say I disagree with. It has complexity, almost exclusively through spellcasting, but little depth. (Disclaimer: I use the general definitions of depth and complexity as found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVL4st0blGU) This is almost entirely because the system is so piss-poorly balanced, meaning that there are few meaningful choices, particularly as someone who isn't a spellcaster. A game that has great complexity: Final Fantasy Tactics (it also has rather great complexity, to be fair). That game allows for a stupid amount a combinations of skill sets and abilities for every single character. It allowed you to use everyone meaningfully and everyone had options and could take actions that interacted tremendously well given insane replay value. The tactics and strategies one could stage in that game is extraordinary. In the IE games on the other hand, it often just devolved into (optional) 0) cast AoE from outside of line of sight. 1) strip protections from mage. 2) kill mage. 3) whittle enemies hp down until dead. 4) rest to heal up and recover from potential status ailments. Any variations were merely variations of how one whittled down hp, more or less.