UncleBourbon

^ This. I like it as much as the next man - especially in pen and paper. But if you've ever played BG2 with the mod that adds some spells purposefully not included - such as dimension door - you'll notice it can terribly break things. Dimension door is simple: if you can see it, your party can be there (in the mod, anyway). Maybe a script could be added to disallow the use of it if you were in a certain area, or something, but then that subtracts from the power of it. Some things are just too powerful to be balanced without a DM to account for it.

Not to mention being able to use all of the skills/abilities larger characters can on horses and such, only with a size bonus.

Heh, I didn't mean to nitpick. If anything, I was trying to cite precendence - I think having a rodent-esque race would be an interesting spin on things. Then again, the appearance and all might throw me off a bit. I would at least hope that you could use a bite attack.

In a video game? Very few - I can only think of teenage mutant ninja turtles games. In tabletop games? Just about every fantasy roleplaying game setting has them, though in varying frequency. In pathfinder the Ratkin, in darksun the Tari. I do think the idea it interesting - though I'd hope they used some better hygene. I completely forgot about Planescape: Torment, and I think warhammer fantasy and 40k have some rat-like race.

Morrowind certainly had it - with a nifty little quest involving a scroll, a philtre and a dead mage. I wouldn't mind flying and such effects, but it would probably be a bit of a difficulty to implement. I think it would add some neat aspects, just like use rope or climb skills might in certain dialog based mini-adventures.

New Vegas to me was more of "Many people have wronged you, who are you going to go after, or are you going after anyone?" The latter of which was achievable by basically being a raider/bandit and out for power, slaughtering and optionally eating anyone you came across. This sometimes didn't work out well with npcs that tended to not be killable. I'm all for an antagonist, whether it be a person or a faction, but I think a soft introduction would be preferable. That is, I'd rather start off a bit, maybe with some conflict from a background or prologue, which draws you into a location/time where you realize/choose the major antagonist. I think this was one of the things I really liked from The Dark Eye: Drakensang - not as convoluted, but you receive a letter from an old friend asking for you to come to his residence, and then you run into trouble along the way.

How are they going to be any different visually though? Yea, if this was Age of Empires or Total War that would make sense, but this is a fantasy game. Having the only change from level 1 to the final boss be your armor is called Adamantite Plate instead of Iron Plate with a different color tint is boring. Well, it can be a bother, I suppose. I mean, the design is unlikely to change terribly much, as most innovations granted by advanced materials would probably lead to a new category of armor (armor of comfort or command, for example, or armor of mobility, which were mechanically close to full/half plate in NWN/2, but visually distinct). That said, I would like some distinct visual, but Dragon Age really took it to the extreme, and it left me sometimes regretting upgrading because the new armor looked gaudy, or wondering how these ancient magical robes somehow look exactly like those for sale in Denerim. Maybe unique items will fall in this category - something we say in Fallout 3 and New Vegas - which some were visually different.

Actually, I stated that only the higher end stuff should be crazy looking, but I can see how you might get confused. The earlier things you find should obviously be bland and boring; else there would be no sense of escalation, and no, going from plate mail to plate mail with gold inlay isn't my idea of improvement. On the other hand, you have just now (again) stated that you only want things the way you like them because compromise is apparently retarded. But isn't going from platemail made of pig iron to platemail made of fine steel are rather significant improvement? Or how about general stock platemail/scavanged platemail and made-to-order platemail? Those are realistic differences amongst a single armor category that could reasonably impact the effectiveness of the equipment.

Thinking of marvel's Cable character? He was a bit like this.

I think the majority of bugs are probably rooted in the system the game is running on, be it software or hardware. Optimization can face some of the same issues. Alpha Protocol never had significant issues for me - save the occasional weirdly behaving AI - but neither did ME2 - save for the occasional collector shooting through/around cover.

I prefer the portion of harder difficulty from old games that was found in the lack of waypoints, significant hints and simplified journal entries. That, and all the [diplomacy: 40] or [speach: 50%]. In most campaigns, it was never revealed until maybe after the campaign ended whether I failed to try and persuade an NPC or not, and by how much. Also, it shouldn't be the dev's job to implement a system to prevent saving/loading before each pickpocket attempt - players who want to play through without it, or think it is cheap, can not do it. I think the only reason those sort of "choose your penalty before you start" sort of rules are simply so you can get some obscure achievements - more a mentality of "it doesn't matter how well I play, it is all about others seeing it." I would prefer the greatest challenges being cerebral rather than dice-roll repitition or building your character to a fixed skill level then switching, because it is obvious that most things that skill is used for would be satisfied. I trust obsidian to make a great game, but I also know there is a big pressure to make games more "accessable" these days.

To quote the Discworld novel, Small Gods: "We get that in here some nights, when someone's had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether gods really exist. Next thing, there's a bolt of lightning through the roof with a note wrapped round it saying 'Yes, we do' and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out. That sort of thing, it takes all the interest out of metaphysical speculation." Of course, the Discworld also have an atheist god, so. Yeah. Thankfully, there are some great questions, like, what is the sex of the turtle?

I think some aspects that are sometimes sorted into "difficulty enhancers" are really just pen and paper holdovers - like restricted resting. Reasonably, a party on a critical quest isn't going to rest for 36 hours combined while trekking through a lair to stop a villian. That said, a normal pen and paper party has several individuals, each with a chance of having insight and innovation able to help overcome the villian, and perhaps just as importantly: the pen and paper party tends to have a Dungeon Master or equivalent. This means the difficulty should be a sort of sliding thing - a skilled DM can scale difficult to a party as they please (usually) - though even they may be unable to account for a bad rolling streak. The issue is that incorporating an adaptive difficulty system into a video game is difficult, to say the least. Truly, I can't think of many cRPGs that boasted a low-magic setting throughout, though segments of BG1 had less magic than most. I'd like to see some holdovers from PnP in PE - some are vital, I think. I'm interested in seeing which ones Obsidian chooses to include, if any, and I feel confident they'll balance it well. I think having fully optional companions is a good way to put difficulty in the player's hands, and I hope to play through my first time without any.

I would disagree. New Vegas had three grey factions (NCR, Mr. House, and Independent) with both positives and negatives and one faction that was a pretty straightforward villain: Caesar's Legion. Oh, you could side with them, but as mentioned in post #1, that doesn't mean that they aren't douchebags. And it doesn't mean you aren't a douchebag for helping them. Yes, but you were not AFTER some villain in that game. You just pursued your way about who you wanna help get the Vegas (or leave it free to the communities). There was not me VS someone. That makes the game villain-free to me. I always thought of it more as "decide for yourself who the villian is, and pursue if you want." I mean, Benny was the guy that shot you in the head, and that is a good reason to hunt him down, ignore his pleas and dismember and eat his corpse (okay, maybe not all of that). Then again, Ceaser was a different kind of villian - he felt the world should be rebuilt on the principles of the roman empire - albeit a bit modernized. Was he evil? I don't know - I don't think he was particularly kind or helpful, but I do think his plan would work and benefit the world in the end - just at unimaginable costs. The NPR was a bit villanous to me - some far away oligarchy wanting to assimalite more and more territory and offer pseduo-citizenship while taxing and corrupting. Yeah, that would work too in the long run - maintaining some sovereignty, yet also having some military force with which to protect it; the greatest threat to the common man was the corruption and exploitation from senior regions. Mr. House was an extreme capitalist and was largely about forming a meritocracy (so long as he remained dominant); paradoxically, the enlightened despot can sometimes be the greatest threat to the common man. Not to mention you can bring disaster and anarchy - intentionally or not. But those are factions - for individuals it is a different sort of question, I think. Did they mean harm? Did they achieve it? Was it on a scale that makes them sinister and villanous? Benny serves as an example of this to me - his greed and power lust convinced him to sabotage Mr. House's plan and try to kill the player, he jepordized what was arguably the greatest chance for a rediscovery of pre-war society rather than a remaking, and he cost thousands of lives as he prolonged the NCR/Legion conflict and the anarchy in the streets of Vegas. Conversely, the Legate is, in my mind, the sublime man for Ceaser's role; he knows that relentless expansion is a bubble, and that he needs to refocus - not become weak and full of infighting, but to reforge the blade that is the empire.

I think the best way for cRPGs to do it is to be flexible - especially if a major part of their draw is their story. I know a few people (who sadly face a good bit a ridicule) for plaiyng rpgs for the story of it. I'm not saying I think cRPGs would benefit from the DA2 menu option "I don't want any dialogs, just choose for me" sort of thing, but it should have an embracing attitude for both casual players and individuals unfamilair with the game system. I am a big fan of high-challenge games - I want my characters to hang on for life, or die if I fail to account for them - I want something beyond a visual novel with combat minigames. Of course, development for both would seem to increase developement time/resource consumption, but I would thing you could strip down the AI a bit and add a sort of "auto-revive" function or something - though it would likely break continuity. I think those are probably best left to third-party mods and the like (and example would be the Fallout3/NewVegas companions essential mods). That said, the premise of xcom was as a brutal, punishing and painful game to play - there are points where the ability to name and customize soldiers was purposely to make the player suffer upon their death. Additionally, if you save in a new slot earlier in combat, before a soldier's death, you should be able to load it and try again without issue - it works for me. There are some bugs, but the most aggrevating things to me are the design choices regarding enemy behavior on being spotted and the reaction shots/normal shots despite clearly no line of sight (through a truck and around a doorway?). I knew that when I purchased the game, and when I was readying for the final mission I wasn't surprised that I had ~35 casualities. That said, I had only failed a single mission, and that was because I sent the VIP out and he got gassed.

Don't forget his awesome performance in Macbeth.

I voted yes, but with caveats: I'd like it to be avoidable - maybe you can notice subtle changes in behavior, or suspicious circumstances. Maybe some class's danger class/speciality would realize - or maybe another companion will catch on and bring it up. I like the idea of it being influence based on the one hand, but I think there should also potentially be high-influence "sort-of" betrayals - that is, a party member is targetted for being seen frequently with you, so maybe their friends/family are taken hostage, or maybe they're blackmailed, or something - and the companion(s) do something nasty, but only because they have other priorities, too. Playing on some of the speculation about the cipher detective NPC, maybe a companion is arrested/suspected of a crime, and you have to investigate, determine guilt, and then decide on whether you turn them in/free them. Ideally, the sort of betrayal and the extent/trigger(s) would be different, or have a chance of being different, on subsequent playthroughs, but that would likely be a coding nightmare - and much of what I described probably would subtract developement attention from other things. Then again, I've rarely been disappointed with obsidian's handling of companions, with perhaps the exception of not having lasting acknowledgement of triggering an increased influence (I'm looking at you, F:NV with no/little change in basic dialog/banter).

I agree with most of this post - FNV was especially relatable to me, though I did think Raul's afterstory was pretty awesome. After taking the wasteland for myself once, I then realized that I'd been shot in the head, left for dead, and aside from a few nice people in a village that's only suffered from proximity to Vegas, everyone had more or less been trying to make you sing and dance for them. Thus, I nuked them all. That said, I never really felt disappointed at the end of either of them - Mask of the Betrayer may have left me wondering a bit about my companions from the original campaign, but it was alright. F:NV took a bit more imagination, I'll admit, but the gamebryo engine can support some really neat mods.

We're not sure what exactly non-combat skills are to be yet - we've got some confirmation on lockpicking, and some interesting talk about the new mechanics. Likewise, we have indication of non-combat skills being usable to avoid combat, and some information of non-combat and combat skills not relying on the same resource. I've always been a big fan of skill checks for unusual things, be it in dialog, mini-text adventures, or in obvious ways. Obsidian, from all of their games I've seen, has always been pretty innovative in this - whether it be the usefullness of appraise and survival in Storm of Zehir, or the various dialog checks in Fallout: New Vegas, not to mention some of the stuff in their infinity engine work. That said, I figured it would be interesting to find out which non-combat or more-than-combat skills everyone prefers. Clearly, D&D's skill selection lends itself to this sort of listing, but Dragon Age:Origins even had lockpicking/pickpocket and such. Clearly, these are things we'd probably also like to see in Project Eternity, but I think we can all agree they should be the ultimate judge of what skills and what uses thereof to include - despite a fondness for basketweaving. So generally: Intimidate - I like to talk people into things, and myself out of them sometimes, but prefer the "mind your own business or else, that's why" reasoning. Aside from that, the general "thieving" skills, though I admit a bias to pickpocket, and I lament how many games implement it as a fairly useless skill. The last really decent use for pickpocket was skyrim, and before that was New Vegas. (I imagine the gamebryo engine is a bit more suited for pickpocket/stealth systems). Taking into consideration PnP games, I'd have to say Use Rope is pretty high up, as well as climbing.

Still, if they have the about the same raw materials available (iron, copper, tin et.c.), and the anatomy of the different races are about the same, we will see similar fighting styles emerge. When talking about more recent iterations of D&D, or perhaps the earliest, I would agree (though early editions had a LOT more flexability). Depending on who you're playing with (and how much they subtley, or not so subtely, insult your choice of character build for "not carrying his weight in combat") you may well have characters with some interesting choices of utlity weapons - though I think pathfinder really streamlined it. Chains were great because like many large weapons, it had the ability to hit things 10 feet away, only it could also hit something 5 feet away, which most cannot, and if you built a fighter around it, it was stupid. Whips were all about disarming opponents - which if you're trying to take a foe alive was a good way to persuade them, usually. Weapons you can trip with are good for provoking attacks of opportunity, and saps and a few other weapons that primarily dealt subdual/nonlethal damage were good for knocking people out. The great thing about D&D is/was that basically, the limit is however much of your imagination the DM will allow/work to enable. Now cRPGs are significantly different, likely because their nature is so much closer to a choose your adventure novel than an organically evolving trek of characters. That said, I've found some cRPGs that are terrific, and had some terrible PnP campaigns.

What is your take on khopeshes? I'm a big fan of them.

I'm thinking if it was a female barbarian in the picture, even with an added strategic strap, there's still be a storm of feces hitting the admirer. Other than that, there's no armor in the picture, just harmful shoulder ornament, but the axes are just fi... wait.. how is he holding the left hand axe? Clearly he is a master of the rare axe back-hand

Maces and flails are interesting weapons in terms of niche - in history, iirc, the flail was mostly for getting around/above shields in close combat, and the mace was for punishing, brutal blows despite not piercing armor. However, in a lot of games those aspects are hard to translate, thus the weapons end up as flavor choices. I've played a flail cleric and mace rogue before, more for roleplaying purpose than anything else. Maces in some iterations of D&D can benefit from weapon finesse (or equivalent). Also, there are a few games that allow one-hand spear wielding, and several D&D rule sets, and derivatives, have a "half-spear" or something akin to it, which is generally a spear that is one damage step down, but usable in one hand. The monkey grip feat is also an example of a feat that helps - though in homebrew games we usually reasoned that if it is a spear of your size category, you could reasonably wield it one handedly - basically considering it the spear form of a bastard sword, with the cavaet that to dual wield you needed monkey grip. Spear and shield was a classic build - no wonder it was popular throughout history. In game, however, the dps is usually inferior to other weapon choices - luckily, most of the campaigns I played appreciate role playing, which made it sensible.

In tabletop D&D - at least, in 3.5 D&D and pathfinder - one of the major advantages to a free hand is the ability to manipulate things and attempt many combat manuevers at only half the penalty as you might wihtout a free hand. Using a nice dagger and a rogue specialised in grab can be fun in pathfinder, though it does only work if you can get in close. I'd like to see some abilities that are more effective or more likely to work in one weapon fighting.

Sounds like the longsword you're describing ArcaneBoozery, is the D&D Bastard sword - machanically between a longsword and a great sword, it can be wielded in either one hand or two, the wielder's strength playing a big part into which is more effective. It it usually my weapon of choice because of the flexability, but I trust Obsidian to make logical, setting based weaponry.