[Step aside, Shaker. GRIMOIRE is finally here!]

Update #1, showcasing 1024x768 resolution and increased viewport size.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPrOsNehxsM&feature=plcp

[RPG cliches you hope to see avoided and/or mocked]

nevermind

[RPG cliches you hope to see avoided and/or mocked]

The stats thing was sort of... dumb. Case in point, what happens when I actually want to play a fighter but still get a decent ending and dialog options? I have to gimp myself to do it. That is bad design, no two ways about it.

 

Then you put points into wisdom/int as the game explicitly advises you to do. Not letting you min-max your stats as a fighter isn't gimping you, particularly when the gameplay revolves so much around investigation, unless you see 18-18-18-3-3-3 as the standard (and THAT, to me, would be poor design). Encouraging balanced characters is perfectly sensible and I hope it continues in PE.

 

The no sword thing however was downright stupid and where the line gets crossed.

 

It wasn't challenging a trope, it was being different just so they could say "we were different". Especially when you factor in one of your party members has a sword, and you encounter and sometimes kill multiple npc's who all also clearly have swords. It is really odd how almost every enemy in the game drops the weapon they use when I kill them, but when they used a sword it is nowhere to be found? When I got to a market where someone screamed about having the "finest Toledo blades" (uh what? Why would people in Sigil be using swords from Spain?) only to find out none of the vendors sold what they were yelling about I wasn't thinking "oh cool" I was thinking "who thought this was a good idea?"

 

That was merely inconsistent execution of the details when it comes to enemies with sword graphics. Dak'kon and Trias's swords were meant to be out of the ordinary in the setting. I don't see anything wrong with the attempt to distinguish the equipment from traditional high fantasy, especially as the same design sensibilities extended to the entire setting.

 

Planescape is NOT the direction this game needs to go in.

 

I hope they emphasize the PST over the BG.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

Protip: Baldur's Gate 2... quite possibly the best game ever made,

 

You're tripping!

 

also had romances, and they were very interesting. Was that a 'next-gen Bioware thing' too?

 

In a way, yes; it showed the way for their later experiments. In any case, the implementation was different from the sort of thing people seem to talk about now. It was at least vaguely connected to the story and seemed to flow from the situations into which the characters were thrown, rather than existing for the sake of pandering to some sort of soap opera/dating sim instinct with an infuriating veil of respectability thrown over it by the dev/press/gamer circle church, which is what it collapsed into after BG2.

 

No one's saying we want a Bioware romance, we're just saying we want romances period. Of course a well written and well thought out romance is much preferable to the superficial '4 lines of dialogue every 2 hours' romances we got in Mass Effect for example. I think that, now that Obsidian is not bound by VO budget, they could (and should) finally deliver a deep and interesting romance story again.

 

Planescape did it tastefully and to the greatest effect wth probably even less than that, again, by developing it in connection to the story rather than with dating sim sensibilities (that many seem to be asking for in PE).

[Step aside, Shaker. GRIMOIRE is finally here!]

Grimoire is the echo of that artistic ghost in the 21st century.