Greensleeve

Personally, you're not really missing anything. Combat in the Infinity Games is terribly boring, though it's not the fault of the engine itself, it's the fault of the underlying rules mechanics governing the game. Seriously. D&D sucks so bad when it comes to making combat engaging. Unlike the above poster, I think that this is absolutely the game for you. Josh seems to agree with many of your points and he's designing the system to do away with them, particularly the mind-bogglingly boring mage fights. This game is indeed a spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games, but not just the combat. The plot and characterisation is a very important part of the developers want to call on for inspiration. The combat parts that PE are trying to draw on is mainly things like look of animations and the feel of movement. Movement of characters in the IE games was incredibly sharp and precise, which made moving the full party rather easy despite the size of it. It certainly controls waaaaaay better than NWN2, DA:O, the KotOR games, or what have you. So basically, PE will be a callback to the IE game engine, not to the rule set which made the combat stuff very boring and uninteresting, particularly if one played anything but a mage.

Looks like it, given that that is indeed 28 types and they all seem reasonable. I also remember a number of those weapons from various posts by Josh. I'm quite happy with that list, I have to say.

Read the title and thought "Oh wow, impressive. It's only been like, a day since the last thread closed." Highly disappointed when I then clicked and saw this. 3/10, would not try again.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65617-adam-at-work/?p=1428097 So we're going to get 28 different weapon types. 28. That bodes well, I feel. Given Josh's appreciation of historical weapons I'm convinced we'll see some fantastic weapons one typically wouldn't see in RPGs too. I'm really looking forward to polearms, so in celebration of the weapon variety, here's a bunch of art featuring polearms.

Including firearms and magical implements, there are 28 base weapon types with two unique (mid power and high power) versions for each base type. Additionally there are "ordinary" Fine and Exceptional quality variants for each base type. The uniques and base types have all been designed and (mostly) implemented, though we've only placed a few of them in the world so far. That's exactly the answer I wanted to hear. Incredibly happy to hear this. Also, great to see you guys answering our questions like this. Much appreciated and your answers do nothing but convince us that is game is going to be awesome.

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking? We have a ton of weapon types. Josh did the weapons in New Vegas, so it's in good hands. I'm asking whether there will be a diversity of powerful magic weapons in the game and not just a diversity of weapon types. BG2 had pretty good weapon type diversity, but if one looked at whether there were useful magical versions of these weapons for the second half of the game one ended up getting to choose between two-handed sword, halberd, flail, and warhammer. And that was more or less it. Sure there were other +3 weapons, but they were nowhere as good as the other types, nor were they nearly as interesting. Given that you say Josh is handling this I feel pretty good about things, given that New Vegas really went out of its way to ensure that you had great guns of each and every type. What I was hoping to get from you here was maybe something more concrete than hopes based on prior products.

Quick, let's flood Adam with questions so he doesn't get to do any bug fixing! Wait a minute... Anyway, question for Adam: how many weapon types (roughly) will there be in the game with actually useful magical equivalents? The IE games became sort of boring to play through as fight-y types because there wasn't that much choice in weapon types if you wanted to play with some efficiency and optimality and I'd hope that PE overcomes this. Given New Vegas, I have high hopes. Edit: Also, not had the chance to play The Stick of Truth, being busy with my final term in college and all (pesky dissertation). But I am strongly considering getting it when I can.

The art for Thalia is pretty amazing, I have to say. Used to have that has my wallpaper.

Yeah, surcoats and tabards are pretty amazing. I hope something like it will be in the game.

What everyone else has said. Most people who backed this game are quite emotionally invested in it. Therefore, loads of nitpicking, all the time, regarding all things. This means that half-finished placeholder animations are just likely to cause tremendous outrage as opposed to a genuine appreciation for the state of the game.

Dark Souls has always had amazing designs. Truly fantastic.

Probably has something to do with capes. -snip- Ooooh, I love the antlers on that horse. That's some awesome stuff.

You want early access, but you're not willing to pay for it? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Also, the game itself is not likely to be more than $45.

Reflex is a stat? No Reflex is one of the four defences. It'd be pretty hard for a primary stat to eat up a secondary one, given Josh's focus on unified mechanics. So no, I wouldn't say it seems useless or redundant.

The boots look a bit high, but otherwise good stuff. No real surprise; Warhammer tends to have some pretty amazing artwork.

DA:O is better than NWN2.

Some fantastic stuff in this thread. Here's my contribution. Blasphemous is considered something that most I'd talk to would disagree with, not necessarily what's against or in line with this forum. Any Final Fantasy game has just as much right to call itself a true and solid RPG as the Mass Effect series.Also, FFXII has one of the best stories of any RPG ever. Reactivity is one of the most important parts of an RPG. Therefore, Alpha Protocol is one of the best RPGs of all time, in terms of catching and fulfilling the essence of what an RPG is. I'll throw in my two cents agreeing with everyone saying AD&D is atrocious. In fact, the adaptation of any table-top RPG ruleset to a computer game will make the game worse for it. Dark Souls tells its story better than any other game, ever.

The Macedonian second from the right has the most badass helmet I have ever seen. Seriously. It even has a beard!

As Infinitron said, creating new areas is stupidly expensive for a modder to create in a game like this. Not sure why anyone expected it at all. It'd be nice to see the ability to add quests and tweak monster stats etc, but it's hardly essential. I never really used any mods for the IE games, for example.

Fantastic update. Cannot overstate how pleased I am with what we're being shown, particularly the Godlikes. Though I, too, would like to know if the racial aspect of the Godlike is still there, i. e. will there be Aumaua Godlike as well as Human ones, or if their subtypes are now defined by which god blessed them.

I would love to see starter traits like those in Fallout or Arcanum. Highly approve of that idea!

Without delving into the other aspects, I'd say that it's the mix of the western armour with eastern attire - which looks rather unique! I'm not an expert, mind you, but from what I've read it would seem that a rapier is a far more lethal dueling weapon; using a saber against one is actually putting yourself at a severe disadvantage. Oh and I'll definitely be looking to add some more examples of the Commonwealth designs! You're right. The rapier will either kill you, or at least very severely wound you (like pierce your lung or something), or it will do very little. Since the wounds caused by rapiers are so small, there's little damage from each stab, unless the stab is precisely placed in a critical location. A great example of this is the battle of Waterloo, where the English light cavalry used sabres that caused tremendous damage with each swing, but did not necessarily kill very effectively. The French, on the other hand, used thrusting swords for their heavy cavalry, that didn't cause great damage, but could kill with a single well-placed attack. The French soldiers complained about the barbarity of the English sword, actually.

Ah, just rediscovered this bit from the past, where both pollaxes and two-handed morning stars were confirmed. I very much suspected they'd be in, but happy happy to (re)see it confirmed. Whacking smash! Yeah, it's going to be fun to see the variety of weapons in PoE. Choosing weapon groups to focus on is going to be hard!

Having just scrolled through this entire page, the huge picture dumps are a bitch. How about we do them in spoiler tags in the future?