Rahelron

I hope this game is not too long Playing for 60 hours to finish a game is ok... but having to play for 150 hours is too much. And I didn't even finish everything in DAI. Another reason why it's better to have a medium sized game is the fact that a big part of the fun of playing CRPGs is trying all the different choices and paths. But to do that you need to do multiple playthroughs. I seriously can't put myself through other 150 hours of gameplay just to try a different romance option or to choose a different Emperor of Orlais. I hope this game isn't filled with collection quests and bars to fill One of the things that pissed me off the most in is the sheer amount of collection quests DAI contains. Collect all the mosaic tiles, complete all the astrariums, collect all the crystal shards to open the temple rooms, close all the rifts to gain influence, find all the pieces to build a key to open a crypt, find X crafting materials to complete the requisition quests. Too much. I know that when developers create big zones they want to give players reasons to explore them, but you know what? If the zones are bautiful enough players will be willing to explore them without any other reason. Hide the dragons and the rarest crafting materials in faraway places and you'll have everyone exploring, all of this without the hassle of having to fill up endless completion bars. I hope this game will offer less choices but better layed out and more important for the plot DAI made me choose all the time: dialogue choices, choices about missions at the war table, choices during judgements... 90% of them didin't have any impact on the plot, and this is the first downfall: why making you choose if the only difference between them is getting 60 rather than 30 influence ponts? Among the 10% of relevant choices some of the most important are layed down in a confusing manner. During my first (and only) playtrough I ended up with a semi random endig slideshow, because I didn't know what I was doing. Ah: did I really choose Cassandra as the new divine? I didn't know. I think DAI achieves this effect because it confuses choices with puzzles: I think developers thought it was a good idea to hide some endings and have players struggle to find them, but that makes things unclear and frustrating. One example of that is "Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts", the quest where you have to choose the new ruler of Orlais: in order to get the result you want you need to collect objects and documents that are hidden behind locked doors. To unlock the doors though you need to use specific keys: there's only a limited amount of those and they are not enough to unlock every door. It's a puzzle more than it is role playing and during your first playthough chances are that you will not be able to achieve the result you want, because during the final confrontation you will not have the information and the objects you need. Another example is the choice of the new divine: you need to stay coherent for your whole playthrough and act with your goal clear in mind in many different dialogues scattered around different stages of the story. It is tricky thing to do. I hope this game reacts to player's behaviour like DAI does Something that DAI does right in my opinion is letting you roleplay. During my playthrough I chose to roleplay an atheist and non-violent inquisitor and the game allowed me to do so. Ok, I still killed more people than Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson combined, but I was able to preach Leliana about the fact that violence is wrong. I was also able to tell Cassandra that I wasn't the herald of Andraste and I didn't believe in god. The great thing is that the game recorded my behaviour and reacted to it in a coherent way. Towards the end of my playthrough Cassandra knew that I was an atheist and acted accordingly and I was able to teach Leliana the advanteges of not being ruthless. This is great and I hope PoE has this feature too.

Thanks a lot for the Italian translation, for real. You are great.

I would really like to see a populated area and not just empty buildings and cities. Could you please show a crowded marketplace, a square full of people or stuff like that in the next updates? I want just to experience the real look and feel of the places I'll visit during the game. Right now everything feels so lonely...

I went a little through the topic and I didn't see an answer to one of my main doubts after listening to the track provided in the OP: Is the game going to have music with real instruments (as it was promised in the stretchgoals) or not? This doesn't mean that I would dislike the game if it wasn't included, but still you promised it... and it would be a great addition... so what about it? If budget restrictions didn't allow for a complete instrumental soundtrack, could you at least record the main themes with real instruments? (Like the final battle, the intro music, the core theme...). Thanks a lot

You made a good point and I agree with you on the fact that good writing sells games even if they don't grant the player any freedom. It is not a by chance that two of the most awarded games of this year (The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite) are very linear games with a great story. But those are not RPG games. The designers of those games wanted to tell a story, to develop a character and to prove a thesis. So they decided to use the tecnique that best fitted their goals: linear storytelling, linear level design, almost no character customization. The player was asked to progress through the story discovering it passively (defeating enemies is not a way to interact with the story, it is just a way to gain access to its next part). RPGs are radically different. Why bothering with character creation and customization, why granting the player the possibility to roam free in the game world, why building interactive dialogue trees if in the end the developers don't want the story to be shaped by the player's actions? All the features that I have just listed require a lot of work and have negative impacts on storytelling because they decrease the amount of control that the writers have on how the story unfolds and on the rithm of the narration. If they want to implement such features they'd better use them to do what they do best: granting the player agency over the events of the story and the possibility to make choices. If they don't use them to achieve the goals they are best fit to achieve they'd better scrap them altogether and design a linear experience. The storytelling would benefit from that and the game would be simpler to design and produce.

Why do you play RPGs if you don't want the story/setting to change depending on your actions? For those who want linear stories there is plenty of great action adventures, like The Last of Us, Uncharted, Tomb Rider and so on. There are even games like Assassin's Creed which have an open world, play those if you want to be railroaded towards a pre-set ending. I play RPGs because I like to interact with the story and the setting. It's not just about big story twists in the main plot: in Skyrim I didn't want to become an assassin, so when I got kidnapped by the Dark Brotherhood and Astrid tried to force me to kill one of the other captives I killed her instead. Not only the game let me do that, but it also acknowledged my choice and gave me the possibility to storm the Brotherhood's base. Ok, I lost a lot fo content by doing that (all the Dark Brotherhood's quests), but I also experienced a part of the game that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise (the quest to find the Broderhood's Base, infiltrate it and kill everyone). Creating content for all the playstyles and letting the player roleplay in meaningful ways is key to create a real RPG experience. Too many "RPG" games grant the player the possibility to choose just by locking away content if they make the unexpected decisions. Do you want to play an evil character not concerned with the suffering of those that sorround him? Shure, you can, but be prepared to refuse a lot of quest proposals and to loose a lot of game content, experience and loot by doing so. You get punished just because you didn't let the game railroad you, all of that just because the game developers designed a lot of linear quests instead of creating less of them but able to grant the player some real freedom. I'll stop here for now, but I could talk a lot about the weight of consequences (or the lack of it) in games.

Let's roll out the questions first, and then proceed with my thoughts about them. How many endings will PoE have? Will the player be able to make decisions that will radically change the game during the playthrough? How are the developers going to implement "real choices" in the game? When I talk about "choices that radically change the game" I mean choices that make the story branch out in a way that locks away a significant amout of content and opens up an equal amount. Chapter 2 in The Witcher 2 is a great example of what I mean. In the witcher 2 your choices not only have an impact on the story, but radically change the way you experience the game. You get to see different areas, you get to know different parts of the story and need to complete different quests to go on. The greatest part of the witcher 2 is that it doesn't allow the player to see all its content in a single playthrough. That's great because designing a game like that makes the player feel that his choices are real and that there is no "perfect playthrough", at least content wise. Let me explain this concept with 2 examples: In Baldur's Gate 2 you had pretty much 2 ways of getting back from Spellhold: with Saemon Havarian's ship or taking the portal to the underdark. You had a choice... in theory. But the truth was that if you chose to cross the portal you just lost a lot of content. The game made you end up in the underdark anyways, and choosing to go there directly made you loose quests, loot and a lot of story content just for the sake of roleplay ("I'm not a fool and I don't trust Seamon, so I prefer taking my chances with the portal"). This makes me say that it wasn't a real choice: the game was clearly meant to be played in a way and the developers had included a second solution just for the sake of saying "Do you see: we let you choose". Second example: in Mass Effect 2 there was a clear optimal sequence in which you had to do the quests, the one that allowed you to immediately follow your crew once it was abducted by the aliens. You also had to have the loyalty of every sqad member in order to make everyone survive during the last mission. If you did everything right not only you got the "No-One left behind" achievement and a better ending, but you also gained the possibility to experience everything that Mass effect 3 had to offer. If a member of your crew died during Mass Effect 2 you didn't meet him during the next game, loosing content that you had paid for. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that every real choice within a game should open up some content and permanently close some other content. This is the only way in which you prevent your game from having "optimal" playthroughs and force the player choose for real and not just think about how he will be able to get everything in the game.

What? Seems like someone isn't able to understand the difference between love and sex. Romances don't need to include sex cutscenes like Mass Effect does and I don't really understand why sawyer reasoned like that. Too bad, but I can live without romances in my game. The only thing that makes me a little sad is that the "Anti romance trolls" have won their battle.

For what it's worth I'm glad that the developers decided not to pursue any more stretch goals. As I have already said I think that this game has to be the inception of a new franchise. Obsidian has to use it as a test run to understand what they want to keep and what they want to change of the old Infinity Engine mechanics. Once done that they will be able to move on and take more risks with the next chapter, innovate more. I like the idea of a dive in the past, but times have changed and making a Baldur'sGate/Planescape Torment/Icewind Dale remake can't be the ultimate goal. Right now those are old and worn out games, and their graphics are the lesser problem. I crave something new and innovative in the RPG genre, not just a ripoff of old stuff. So: let's play Pillars of Eternity, it will be a blast, more areas would have changed nothing. After that let's kickstart a second chapter, with more features, innovative mechanics, an RPG able to move away from the shadow of Infinity Engine Games.

As you wish. I don't have to suggest solutions anyways. I'm here just to emphasize what I consider a problem of this game. Finding a way to move on from Infinity Engine games and make PoE somewhat innovative is the developers' taks. I'm one of those who pay and they are those who get payed after all. This doesn't mean they have to listen to me of course. I'm just ONE of those who pay. If the others have different ideas and like a BG remake is their right to voice their opinion.

I played Mass Effect at my friend's house once. After 10 minutes I was literally pissed off of being interrupted by a cutscene every 30 seconds. I hate cinema console games as much as you do. And I hated Dragon Age when its developers tried to make it that kind of game (Dragon Age 2). I know that a full voiceover game is impossible with the budget available, but it is possible to innovate the gameplay, the user interface, the combat system, crafting, player housing... try something different. But I've seen nothing of that so far.

Ok... so give an example of this "moving on" you are talking about. And how will Torment achieve this, while Eternity didn't Here's an example: when the developers posted their first UI mock up some months ago the community gave many useful suggestions. What I felt during in that discussion was that they were scared of making any real changes to what the UI concept was because they didn't want to steer away too much from Baldur's Gate and all its brothers. Look at Torment instead: its developers have chosen to use a Turn Based Combat System and not one based on Real Time With Pause. That is not a groundbreaking feature and the developers made a poll to make shure that their supporters' base was not against it, but this shows that the InXile's guys are not scared to make design decision that go against some of the core Infinity Engine features. I don't want to say that Torment is better than Pillars of Eternity. I supported the latter and not the first. What I want to say is that when PoE will ship no one will like the remake of a 13 years old game, at least in my opinion.

I agree with you. That's why they should focus on shipping the game, use it as a test to see what are the IE features they absolutely need to keep in the future PoE's installments and ditch everything else in order to build a franchise that can stand on its own legs. Everyone here loves Baldur's Gate, but how many people outside this place would love an Infinity Engine game in 2013, even with updated graphics and animations? Not many. I tried to play through BG2 once again recently and I literally hated its inventory management system, its dialogue system with tiny eye-breaking letters and no voiceovers, all the thrash mob encounters, the wandering mobs that interrupted the flow of the game etc. I have great memories about playing that game, but right now it is obsolete and its graphics are the lesser problem.

Dude what? I know it can sound odd. This game aims to be the Baldur's Gate rightful heir after all. But let me tell you something: being a rigthful heir doesn't mean to mirror your predecessor in every aspect. It means going on without betraying your predecessor's legacy. Obsidian's developers aren't certainly betraying any legacy. What they are missing (at least judging from what I've seen up until now) is the MOVING ON part.

To me this first game has to be a test drive for a new franchise. It doesn't need to be huge in terms of content, not bigger than it already is at least. The developers need to focus on delivering it as polished as possible and, even more important, they need to use it as a test to understand what to keep and what to throw away in terms of "Infinity Engine Look and Feel". In my opinion this game looks too much like a Baldur's Gate ripoff. The new gameplay video has confirmed this feeling that I always had. This is not what I wanted. I didn't pledge my money to this game because I wanted to play Baldur's Gate in a new setting, I pledged my money because I wanted a great new roleplaying game with branching storylines, great agency for the player, a great story and choices that mattered. Dragon Age II had greatly disappointed me at that time and I was looking for something better. I was hoping that the developers were going to keep some basic IE features (like the isometric view, the six players party and the real-time-with-pause combat system) and ditch pretty much everything else in favour of a more modern approach, but so far I've been disappointed. That's why I'm not interested in pledging more money for further stretch goals. As far as I've seen Pillars of Eternity is shaping up to be a dive in the past that will involve too much reading, an outdated combat system and parhaps a painful inventory system. Add to this the fact that it is not going to introduce any groundbreaking gameplay feature in the RPG landscape and you can understand how I feel. I'll be glad to play Pillars of Eternity, but it will probably rank after The Witcher 3, Dragon Age 3 and even Torment in my personal 2014 RPG Game of the Year chart. I hope PoE will sell well though so that the developers next time will be able to take more risks, innovate more and start a real groundbreaking franchise in the RPG genre.

We already have a lot of classes in this game. Games like Dragon Age and Diablo need skill trees and subclasses, but it's because they have just 3-5 classes to choose at the beginning of the game. It is proven that too much variety does not mean diversity and doesn't improve the player's experience. After a certain threshold (3 to 7 options in the same category) people aren't able to compare the different alternatives anymore, they just get confused. Yeah, shure: if you really took your time to analyze all the different options you could tell the differencies even if PE had 20 or more classes/subclasses. But tell me: would be those meaningful options? Would they have a meaningful impact on the gameplay, creating new dynamics and so on? I don't think so. I would prefer the developers focused on other parts of the game, like story, crafting, housing and so on.

They are limited to the budget collected with the kickstarter campaign so I wouldn't worry too much about delays. Delaying a game means spending more money in wages, consumptions (electricity), and other costs. They probably can't afford it. If they really wanted to make a stellar product and they needed more time to do that they could ask the banks money. In that case they would be able to delay the release significantly. But i don't think it is probable.

Perhaps they will just talk about business issues, the kickstarter model for videogames and stuff like that. Readint the title of the firs event (the panel) it will probably be something like that.

Are you talking about the BG2 fix pack? Idk, I kind of felt dirty using those options. XD No, it was a built in feature, it was in the game since the release. You just needed to move the game difficulty cursor one step left form its default position (which was named "core rules"). The encounters were just as difficult as with the "core rules" setting, but you had those facilitations i listed above.

Luckily in BG2 you could activate a specific game mode where you didn't have to do all those things. In that mode there was a 100% chance to scribe every spell, there were no death penalties (no constitution loss, no permadeath chance) and your characters always rolled the highest possible roll for hit points when they leveled. In BG1 it was hardcore. Perhaps the "easy" mode existed and I wasn't aware of it, but I played the whole game following the "core rules". It was a pain.

Yeah, and what about saving before upping yout character's level? Just in case you got a crappy hit point dice roll XD

I would not enjoy to be compelled to find an inn every time I needed to sleep. To be honest I wouldn't enjoy to be compelled to rest to recharge my spells and my "one day only" talents too. If that was the case I would have to "rest-spam" as I did in BG and that was not a funny thing to do, it was just a hassle. I am all for the need to sleep and eat in project eternity, but I think it should be managed in a new way. A good way to implement such a feature would be to give a "soft" penalty to those who refused to sleep at least once a day. An example: the playing characters should be able to stay awake 16 hours without any penalty. If they stayed awake more they should get a -1 to every dice roll for every hour.

I think that was what every IE player did. Moreover at high difficulty levels Baldur's Gate punished deaths horrnibly: i remember that everytime a character died there was a chance of permadeath, and that there was a permanent costitution loss for every resurrection. But this is not necessarly a good thing. Inventory management, rest spamming (solved in BG2) and death penalties were really annoying in Baldur's Gate. I know it was made for the sake of following the D&D ruleset and I think that with PE we can get rid of those things (since it's not D&D anymore). I'm perfectly fine with the need to rest and eat, and with death penalties too, but those game mechanics can be managed in a better way. Character skills and feats shouldn't be usable only once-per-rest. Players should just get dice roll penalties if they don't sleep at least 8 hours a day for example.

The witcher 2 gave almost no XP for defeating enamies. 95% of your total XP came from completing quests. I'm completely fine with that, it offers many advantages: 1- Grinding stops to be a mandatory thing, even for those powerplayers who want to maximize their character's combat potential. 2- Developers have better control over the maximum level players can reach and can balance the game accordingly. 3- Players get the exact amount of experience if they complete quests in a pacific way. I also agree with the OP on the fact that monster waves are for God of War and Dante's Inferno, not for RPGs. Waves were one of the worst things in DA2, they were completely unrealistic and not fun at all. Project eternity has some core features that would make wave combat even worse. Its strategic gameplay (real time with pause, 6 characters group, top down view etc...) does not match with concepts like enemy waves, an endless stream of foes and "enemy types". The games which include such features are those that want the player to enter a state of flux where he enjoys to keep going and do all its character's moves fluidly. But to achieve such a thing the player has to control just one character and have an interface that doesn't need any pause to be used at its full potential. PE is a completely different thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play I was using the word "Mechanic" instead of "Aesthetic", sorry for that I didn't remember corretly. You're still applying things to *rpgs* randomly. Using a structure such as the MDA doesn't change that. Especially since that structure does not not automatically make gerne definition. As you wish. Anyway we are way off topic and trying to define the RPG genre doesn't help the discussion about the interface. So I think we can stop here.