applesaucers

You do realise that Sawyer is not a fan of Baldur's Gate 2. Right? Here's Josh debunking that very idea: http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/476555580379526832?utm_source=social Being critical is very necessary to being a designer. It always seems weird to me that some don't understand hating parts of things you love. The current compromises for attributes, class abilities, the item stash, health/stamina are the result of lots of very intense forum discussions and iterations, and their fundamental goal are very unlikely to change. In particular, Josh seems very attached to the attributes, attribute-based dialogue options, and health/stamina, which aspire to goals he considers very important and are informed by games he loves a lot. In addition, Stealth, slot-based inventory, attribute dialogue, DT, and health/stamina seem to have some very big fans. You'd need a better reason than just your own happiness, since your happiness would have to come at the expense of some one else's happiness. During the KickStarter, they said they were willing to make changes to the original game systems, specified how they were interested in changing them, and outlined their design philosophies many times. But also the project was pitched as being Obsidian made, designed by Josh Sawyer, Chris Avelone, and Tim Cain. Many backers would be disappointed if the systems weren't Obsidian-ish. Honestly, compared to other spiritual successor KickStarters, only Wasteland 2 doesn't make more radical changes than this.

Now that I know it exists-- here's my log. I've played a bunch since then, though. output_log.zip

After starting the game and building my character, I decided to take a look around the village before leveling up. I took a quest, accidentally killed a villager, looked in the shops, fiddled with menus and formation, and talked to various people around the inn. A couple of times I alt-tabbed out when the screen blanked for more than a few seconds. I saw a lore option I couldn't access and loaded up the leveling screen. I tried to back out to look at my other characters' skills but couldn't, so I completed leveling as intended. But when I finished, there was no way to exit the menu. I could only modify my choices and spin the character in circles. Having leveled up properly now, I can say the entire UI border surrounding the level up screen wasn't there.

This is true of every attribute in every RPG, though. Attributes are arbitrary by nature and there's always potential for more atomized attributes. A single strength attributes ignores that there's many kinds of strength and a single intelligence attribute ignores that there's many kinds of intelligence. Splitting charisma is rad, but all the systems with a unified speech stat still worked well enough. edit: Maybe a better example-- a high dexterity character can throw a ball wherever they want, hit any ball that comes their way, and round the bases very quickly. But just a glance at any baseball game will tell you these are wildly different skills.

So then this size? Those look like they'd work fine as portraits on my 1920 x 1080 monitor.