Alexjh

Personally I don't think regional accents are generally as important as the specific voices speaking them, and I'd rather that the developers picked foremost on the quality of the voice within a fairly broad range of what suits the character. To take a vague example, I have broadly the same accent as Christopher Lee (recieved pronunciation) but the reason that you'd probably hire him over me isn't really anything to do with accent, and more to do with that he has a voice that is memorable and has impact. I think the reason that people (including me) aren't fond of strong American accents is that they come across as very modern, the connotations of which you associate that accent go back about 200 years at most so are a bit jarring in a fantasy setting. That's not to say that all American accents do have that problem, but, the ones where you immediatly think "that's American" are. As a general rule of thumb, if it sounds even slightly like Ruby Wax it's too American. In contrast even though, say, in the case of Meryll from DA2, I can immediatly go "that's a Welsh accent", that has more of a timeless sound to it so it fits. On that note, I think the Welsh accent is one of my favourites and underused in games, so a vote for Welsh accent from me. But yeah - for me, quality voices that don't sound too modern, from a selection of backgrounds that fit the tone of the characters.

I'd honestly largely want original creations, or at the least creatures which look like they fit the setting. It's a tricky line to follow, as its a lot harder to come up with good new monsters that have the same impact as classical ones, after all, they are classical for a reason, but can definitly be done - mindflayers are really great. They can certainly invoke existing creatures, but just try to get back the wonder of encountering something new, challenging and a bit scary for the first time. Also as a bit of a creature design pedant, I'd kind of like it if creatures generally fall into two categories: either naturally evolved and look plausible as a complete creature, or are created by a sentient being or so. Case to point, I'm not a fan of (classical lion/goat/snake) chimeras in worlds where its suggested they just evolved naturally, but, if there were a world where chimeras were mage-constructs that had gone on to breed that's fine. It's mainly just the multiple head thing really, I don't mind a creature that did have elements of lion, goat and snake but as long as it fit together into a whole creature. Griffins on the other hand are fine - as they do look like a complete creature. There are exceptions, but these are largely archetypal creatures which have variations in many cultures (undead, giants, serpents, were-creatures etc) but even there I'd like some slightly new twists on them that means you aren't just going "oh I'll get out my silver crossbow bolts/wooden stake again" make them defy expectations.

In "vendor trash" would you include gems and non magic jewellry? While in general, I agree with the principle of getting rid of peoples collections of harpy toenails or whatever which merchants for some reason find highly desirable, getting rid of gems would be a shame as they are a fun bit of classic adventuring fodder. On that note, what I would like to see is actually have a couple of divisions for specific kinds of inventory that overly clutter the thing otherwise. Specifically, I'd like a "keyring" rather than each individual key you pick up taking up one whole inventory slot, there isn't really any need to have each one take up a slot. Stick them automatically to the keyring and then you don't have to worry about them. Similarly with my gems/non magic jewellry, have a gem bag as a default part of your inventory which all non magical gems/jewellry etc go to automatically, with a "sell all" button at the bottom when trading. I think at least one of the Dragon Age games did that, but to combine it with specifically jewels etc slightly kills two birds with one stone - keeps the fun/archetypal fantasy thing of getting gems while also eliminating the hassle of selling them all individually. Besides, you can easily image the average adventurer just going up to a merchant, emptying his sack out on the table and going "how much?" rather than individually going "how about this one? and this one? and this one?...."

I'd prefer the Arcanum route personally, where you select some origin during character creation but whoever you are you enter the game at the same point. The problem with the Dragon Age: Origins thing is that then means you have a bunch of different origins, all of which require their own assets etc, which in DA:O's case meant that only 1 out of any 6 players would see any one bit of that content. That's fine in theory, but I'd rather have a single origin and then tradeoff that same work to have 5xorigins worth of content i nthe main campaign that I'll actually get to play.

Out of interest, how many teenagers from medieval times (where they would have been working from a young age anyway) or from the distant future do you personally know? The idea of a teenager being anything other than a small adult is a pretty modern concept... I hope we get the full spectrum of ages, including old and young, especially considered that in a fantasy setting combat prowess doesn't necessarily have to be in correlation with strength when there are magic and mystic skills in the offing.

Well to be fair it depends on how much the first continent cost... If to take a very simplified version of things, if gameplay and engine cost £100k, Music and sound effects cost £100k, Story/characters cost £100k and monsters cost £100k, leaving £100k for the continent, if you are adding a new continent thats in line and you just prod the music/story/character/monster guys a bit to get them to keep up with the new content. Games are produced in many chunks of art, design, writing, sound and code, and producing, say, an extra continent, doesn't necessarily draw from all of those equally.

Looking at the 3 Infinity Engine franchises + ToEE I think 90% of what I'm hoping for is found in those. - Plot about the scale of (core) Baldur's Gate II, personal, large in scope but not world defining. City Areas on about the scale and desnsity of Athakala. - Icewind Dale for general quality of atmosphere and level design particularly in outdoor environments, as well as variety of fights and loot. - Planescape for quality of character writing. Much as I love Planescape it's pretty much its own thing and much of it isn't very transferable. - ToEE for level of tactics in combat, and for quality of character/monster animation.

Much as Fenris very much seemed like he got lost on the way to being the protagonist of a JRPG that is not excuse for homophobia.

This was already covered here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62305-changing-companion-alignment/ As I said there, that's fine, but aslong as we can't corrupt all our companions, I don't want to be adventuring with a group of personality mirrors, I want people who will argue with me and confront me when they think I'm out of line, just as I would with them. Some should be fairly impressionable some unshakable, just like real life.

I think some of these things are a bit... catchall... to actually make a categorical thing of. Things like the "no drunken dwarves" or the "mumsy" things, are you saying specifically you just don't want any drunken dwarves or mumsy mums in the entire game, or just not in the party/in close proximity to the players. If thats the case then that's fine, but otherwise those are things which actually exist, (drunken people and Mums that is, not dwarves) so saying there shouldn't be any is even more artificial than making all Dwarves drunken and all Mums "mumsy". In the case of Oghren say, in terms of tropes I don't think he was drunken because he was a dwarf so much as drunken because he was drowning his sorrows, which is a fairly common starting point to pick up companions from, as it enables the player to "rescue" their companions as a character arc. See also: the Paladin from Mysteries of Westgate. I think the thing is that if you are going to have a character which plays to expectations, make sure that they don't do so fully, and in some cases actively be the opposite of expected.

So in conclusion people don't like characters who tell them what to do... I actually didn't dislike any of those, though the closest would probably be Casavir and Elanee because they felt like they needed a bit more interaction to get to them, I never really felt like they were really interaction with me so much as talking at me. But that could be fixed with a bit of work. I think the trick to characters that moralise at you is to have some way of giving weight to their criticism of you rather than just it coming off as nagging, perhaps actively stepping in to oppose you at early points in the game rather than arguing against you for ages about not killing some puppies, then, when you do kill the puppies just grumble about it. A character who cares about those puppies would put themselves between you and them until you either backed down or fought. Maybe not to the death, maybe they yield at a certain point and leave, but they shouldnt just grumble at your moralising. I liked Bindo, he was worth it for the "jedi prophecy" story alone.

There are still a good number who haven't been mentioned, most notably not that much Jade Empire love and nothing for NWN1:OC None for the Storm of Zehir characters either but they hardly had any lines so it's not surprising - only one I can even remember is that little svirf who was both evil and kind of endearing...

OK, I'm going to admit here that I haven't read all of that, as it was quite a considerable post you did there, but fro mthe skim read I did do, I think you are missing the mark a little in game design terms. More complex doesn't necessarily = better, and there is a point at which new stats make things less fun rather than more. Reallistically, I'd get rid of speed as that tends to be a rather convoluted fiddly sort of statistic which makes it harder to work out which is a better weapon. If you did want to have a speed statistic, I'd perhaps go with a different approach, a sort of "strength required to wield at normal speed" score. Basically, every weapon has this score, and if we use a D&D analogue a dagger might be 8 while a greatsword might be 18. Anyone can wield a greatsword, but obviously someone with greater strength can wield it more efficiently - if the "normal speed" is 10 hits every 30 seconds, someone with 1 lower strength than normal would have 9, 2 levels would have 8 etc. Whether you then have the "normal" speed of a weapon as a cap, or indeed, do have a cap at all is antoher question. If the normal speed was a speed cap ( or there was one several strength points above normal) then it becomes less of an issue, if there isn't one then you are theoretically letting someone with a pair of knives get up to insane speeds, so for balance purposes I'd suggest that in addition to the greater damage potential, have greater crit potential with bigger weapons. You could theoretically link this in to size/weight as well, eliminating the need for two separate stats. Similarly I'd ignore the "piercing potential" stat and have that defined by damage type as seems to be the case from the stuff that has been posted here eg. slashing does the most damage against lower armoured characters but loses its effectiveness against more so, while piercing and crushing retain their effectiveness to a greater degree. I'd also demote armour bonus and grappling to special attributes rather than integral parts of the weapon, having states for them for all weapons is unecessary.

To a point - I'd rather that each culture is original, but with perhaps a bit more inspiration from a particular source rather than, say, going to a Dwarven town and everything is copy-pasted from Vikings. So in the Aumaua, if the Maori/Polynesian thing is an actual source, I'd rather that it was a subtle thing about the way their society works rather than just them having Polynesian style decoration everywhere.

He's not asking that all spells be removed, hes asking that the game be completable without them, which it probably will be anyway. You shouldn't treat every religious person as if they are identical zombies - far from it - and while there are certainly obnoxious people out there, there are plenty of reasonable people out there who are religious and willing to let others get on with their lives. It's just that the idiots who cry witchhunt if they see someone reading Harry Potter on the bus are just a lot more vocal than everyone else. The only way that you can stop this being an issue is to have some dialogue with religion - not the extremists of course, but if a regular people are engaged, see something for what it is then it leaves the extremists without a leg to stand on. I don't believe I did treat this person as an identical zombie; I am arguing that the game shouldn't be designed around one player's moral principles. Get it? I'm disagreeing with the message, rather than the messenger. Sorry about the way I phrased that, I wasn't really addressing that at you so much as using that as a springboard to try and pre-empt any full on religion-bashing - I've seen quite a lot of Gamers vs Religions with each being openly hostile to the other in a way that just makes matters worse. As for the around one players principles, it depends on context, and what you mean by one player. To take the game "Smite" that there was a bit of an issue around last year, where there was an issue of it including Hindu Gods and Goddesses in an arena battle game alongside Greek, Viking and Egyptian deities. I'm not religious in the slightest but you could see that was going to offend people from a mile off and to me if nothing else ts good manners not to include a being or beings that approximatly ONE BILLION people consider to be real in a beat-em-up. What should have happened was the company should have gone "Oh, we're dreadfully sorry, we didn't really think it through properly, we shall remove them immediatly", but what happened in stead was effectively numerous mssage boards of idiot gamers saying effectively "suck on that organised religion", with the actual company replying basically that they were going to carry on adding more Gods. Which isn't to say that religion shouldn't be allowed in games, far from it, games are as a valid a medium to say what they like as books or film or whatever, but there is a difference between considered inclusion of something, even in such a way as if you were to make a game that specifically critiqued a certain religion, to just going "hey that guys deity looks cool, lets stick them in this fighting game so they can get beaten up!". We live in a very diverse world and the sooner people work out that other people are different to themselves and the sooner people stop doing things which will offend others because they didn't think about it and it seems fun the happier everyone will be. Equally though there are some cases where Religious people also need to look at things in perspective: I read something somewhere abotu a guy who returned Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to a shop because you had to find 5 candles to form a Pentagram to get through Mepihsto (the Devil Analogues) Realm. Where its something like that and they aren't familiar enough with their own religion to know that the pentagram was in the past a Christian symbol, and the context of the game where you had just killed hundreds of demons to get these candles, you can fairly safely assume that Captain America isn't a secret demon worshipper. In the case of the thread, yes it may one man's oppinion here, but as we already know it's possible to solo the game this isn't even an issue. In general, if a game doesn't have a point to make and it's a minor thing to change (or as in this case, not a thing at all), why not fix things to make more people feel comfortable playing your game, and help lessen the bad blood between religion and games? I began reading your post, thinking I would agree with your message, as many here is unnecceseraly hostile to the question of the OP, which is pretty innocent. But reading on, I understand pretty quickly that we don't agree after all. When it comes to works of art, wether as books, paintings, sculptures, movies, music or even computer games, I will not condone any compromise to the artistic vision. Religious or philosophical ideas should not be able to bend or change the art, except if that was the artists wish of course. Neither would I condone someone feeling compelled to change their work based on irreligious wants, nor political ones, so this goes all ways for me. I think the difference is I draw a line down the middle about what I think is good or not good practise. The difference is purely, whether you actually have something to say with the art or not. If an artist/writer/game dev/filmmaker has something to say about a religion or country or philosophy or political viewpoint then fine, they should be able to express themselves fully about it without fear of reprecussion and it can be judged on its own merits. Conversely though, if you go and include "Sexy Kali" in a game purely because you felt like it, it just proves either a) you have failed to educate yourself sufficiently on the subject around which you are basing your creation, or b) you lack respect for other people who do not subscribe to your personal world viewpoint. If nothing else (and as an artist myself) I strongly believe that we owe it to ourselves to be informed on any subject we choose to wade in on, and despite not being a Christian in the slightest, I do believe in a form of "Do unto others...", and being disrespectful/rude/inconsiderate to people should be saved for those who deserve it, not just thrown about at anyone without provocation and then justifying yourself with cries of free speech. Sure free speech allows you to say anything you want, but it doesn't mean you aren't an arsehole when you say it.

Philosophy 101. Some philosophies believe it's the act itself which is moral or not. (Categorical thinking) Other philosophies believe it's the world that results from the act which determines it is good or evil (Consequentialist thinking) Most religions I know of fall into the Categorical thinking category. (I think) Which is what allows for fundamentalism. Both leave a lot of room for justifying atrocities, and honestly, if someone wants to commit one they'll take whatever justification they can get. To pick an example, if someone killed 99% of the humans on earth, though obviously appalling for humans, could be considered to be vastly beneficial for the world itself, so a consequentialist by your definition could justify global genocide under that philosophy quite easily. As in most things, if you look at everything involved in a choice not just the choice or just the reprocussions then a choice is more morally informed.

Right, getting around to my own list: Aveline Mordin Kreia Tali Annah Looking at this list, Aveline because she is arguably the best written female character in a game I've played and is played in such a way where she isn't conventionally pretty, isn't romantically interested in the player character even if you are in her, and just feels a lot more real across the board. Mordin because of him being a fundementally good and lighthearted character, but is also effectively a man who has potentially committed genocide... Kreia I don't think I can really add much to: she challenges the players prception more than any other companion. Tali because she just felt like a friend, and watching her go through good moments and bad aways caused an emotional response. Annah I remember being fond with, although I'm embarrassed to say its been so long since I played Planescape I can't entirely remember the reasons, but as the Planescape characters were written so well as a whole I needed to pick one to represent them. There are some others that didn't quite make the cut: I didnt include any Baldurs Gate characters because they just feel fairly lightly sketched compared to the games which I have chosen characters from, though I am very fond of Mazzy, and find Keldorn interesting even if its hard to actually like the guy. Jade Empire also feels a bit lightly sketched, possibly because you don't get to see much inter-character itneraction relative to most of these games. I will shamefully admit I've never got into the original Fallouts despite owning them both, so can't really comment there as the only companion I even got in 2 was that one you get shotgun weddinged into having along. Neverwinter Nights 2 was a bit of a funny one, as was DA:O they both had characters which I enjoyed at the time, but I don't find myself particularly wishing I could spend more time with say, Morrigan or Sand, much as I liked them at the time.

This is a mix of a bit of fun, and just seeing what people like in their companions that could provide lessons that could be potentially transfered into P:E. Essentially the Challenge is this: You are a random protagonist who is given the opportunity to round out your party with any companion characters from Obsidian/Bioware/Black Isle/Troika party based RPGs. As six is the classic party size, that means you can pick any five characters from any game where you have at least one or more companion with you. It doesn't matter if they are from different settings (so you could have a 5 which had a Jade Empire character, 2 Fallout characters, an Arcanum one and a Mass Effect one) or if it would make an unbalanced party of five wizards or whatever, its just the guys who you've felt most attached to or felt were the best written, even if you hated them as a character you liked the writing. It can be about anything at all really, but about the characters personality, NOT about their power level. This is specifically for characters who you are on a team with so, for instance, no characters from Alpha Protocol. So, basically just a list of 5 characters, why they worked so well, and if there were any lessons learnt from that character that could be transfered to P:E. I'll put mine up in a bit when I've fully decided, but in the mean time, have fun, looking forward to seeing who people choose!

I'd disagree with the IWD2 thing - I think the trick is that 80% or so of the loot should be hand placed, the remaining 20% randomly placed. ALL should be hand crafted, and make sure that the random stuff isn't underpowered relative to the hand placed stuff, and include named items with back stories in the treasure tables. I'd actually think what you could do with random encounters is tie them to skills like Storm of Zehir did, allowing you to avoid random encounters if you score is good enough to know they are there and get past them/optionally fight or even lay an ambush for them. You'd want to award XP for this though to offset the fact you aren't gettign any loot.

Though I will also add that in some ways, variety to enemies can be in the situation rather than having constant variation to enemies. Although a different genre, just finished the Walking Dead this morning, which always managed to keep the suspense high despite the only enemies you ever face being normal humans or zombies. It's the situations you face them in that provide the challenge. As I say, different genre with a far lower combat/content ratio than any IE game, but even so, there are certainly things that can be learnt. You could do a game where you only ever face orcs, but might have to at various times, defend against a horde at a bottleneck, sneak around a huge camp, protect people, rescue hostages, provide a distraction, assassinate a specific orc without letting the others know etc. The trick is to challenge the player in more ways than just brute power charging down a corridor of monsters.

I'd agree with all except the ones Malekith bought up - 1) because some degree of linearity helps with making a better structure to a plot, and can actually make a game more memorable because of it. I'd argue that the most memorable stretch of BG2 was the Underdark section precisely because it was linear and effectively forced the player to go forward rather than sideways. Not to say I think that sandbox or open world is bad by any means, but for plot structure linear or linear branching is far better. Ideally I'd say mix the two, so linearity is there to channel the player at points, but other sections are more open. Perhaps strucutred loosely like open islands with linear bridges between them. As for the point abotu variety.... I see your point but I don't find it as big an issue as all of the others. Yes in regards to say, a bunch of bandits with the excact same face, but otherwise if two Dragons are identical I can live with it if there are other places those resources could be spent.

He's not asking that all spells be removed, hes asking that the game be completable without them, which it probably will be anyway. You shouldn't treat every religious person as if they are identical zombies - far from it - and while there are certainly obnoxious people out there, there are plenty of reasonable people out there who are religious and willing to let others get on with their lives. It's just that the idiots who cry witchhunt if they see someone reading Harry Potter on the bus are just a lot more vocal than everyone else. The only way that you can stop this being an issue is to have some dialogue with religion - not the extremists of course, but if a regular people are engaged, see something for what it is then it leaves the extremists without a leg to stand on. I don't believe I did treat this person as an identical zombie; I am arguing that the game shouldn't be designed around one player's moral principles. Get it? I'm disagreeing with the message, rather than the messenger. Sorry about the way I phrased that, I wasn't really addressing that at you so much as using that as a springboard to try and pre-empt any full on religion-bashing - I've seen quite a lot of Gamers vs Religions with each being openly hostile to the other in a way that just makes matters worse. As for the around one players principles, it depends on context, and what you mean by one player. To take the game "Smite" that there was a bit of an issue around last year, where there was an issue of it including Hindu Gods and Goddesses in an arena battle game alongside Greek, Viking and Egyptian deities. I'm not religious in the slightest but you could see that was going to offend people from a mile off and to me if nothing else ts good manners not to include a being or beings that approximatly ONE BILLION people consider to be real in a beat-em-up. What should have happened was the company should have gone "Oh, we're dreadfully sorry, we didn't really think it through properly, we shall remove them immediatly", but what happened in stead was effectively numerous mssage boards of idiot gamers saying effectively "suck on that organised religion", with the actual company replying basically that they were going to carry on adding more Gods. Which isn't to say that religion shouldn't be allowed in games, far from it, games are as a valid a medium to say what they like as books or film or whatever, but there is a difference between considered inclusion of something, even in such a way as if you were to make a game that specifically critiqued a certain religion, to just going "hey that guys deity looks cool, lets stick them in this fighting game so they can get beaten up!". We live in a very diverse world and the sooner people work out that other people are different to themselves and the sooner people stop doing things which will offend others because they didn't think about it and it seems fun the happier everyone will be. Equally though there are some cases where Religious people also need to look at things in perspective: I read something somewhere abotu a guy who returned Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to a shop because you had to find 5 candles to form a Pentagram to get through Mepihsto (the Devil Analogues) Realm. Where its something like that and they aren't familiar enough with their own religion to know that the pentagram was in the past a Christian symbol, and the context of the game where you had just killed hundreds of demons to get these candles, you can fairly safely assume that Captain America isn't a secret demon worshipper. In the case of the thread, yes it may one man's oppinion here, but as we already know it's possible to solo the game this isn't even an issue. In general, if a game doesn't have a point to make and it's a minor thing to change (or as in this case, not a thing at all), why not fix things to make more people feel comfortable playing your game, and help lessen the bad blood between religion and games?

He's not asking that all spells be removed, hes asking that the game be completable without them, which it probably will be anyway. You shouldn't treat every religious person as if they are identical zombies - far from it - and while there are certainly obnoxious people out there, there are plenty of reasonable people out there who are religious and willing to let others get on with their lives. It's just that the idiots who cry witchhunt if they see someone reading Harry Potter on the bus are just a lot more vocal than everyone else. The only way that you can stop this being an issue is to have some dialogue with religion - not the extremists of course, but if a regular people are engaged, see something for what it is then it leaves the extremists without a leg to stand on.

I do actually like cursed items, and if anything I think P:E could do with more of them relative to the IE games. Not massively more, but at least a few, and more evenly distributed. What I'd actually like to see is that in certain occassions a cursed item might be useful - to take your gender swap item - if you are trying to sneak into a city where the guards have been given your description, they wouldn't think twice about letting a woman through if they were expecting a man of a certain appearance and vise-versa. Tourette one might be seen as offensive to people who have actualyl Tourettes though so you'd have to play that one carefully...

It certainly should be possible - I believe that at the very least its been stated that the game should be just abotu compleable by a singel character, so if that single character isn't a wizard then it should be fine. Out of interest, what would be the view on the other spellcasting classes other than wizard - Clerics with their divine spells from their deity, Chanters with their strange music based thing or Ciphers with their psychic-esque powers? Druids (possibly?) commanding nature etc. All lumped in with the wizard, or would, say, Chanters be more acceptable?