Malekith

Now replay Fallout 2 and tell us your opinion. Because your critisisms of NV were things that were already missing from the second game.

Wait, what? Is there a story behind this? Or is he simply finished doing what he was assigned to do? He was on aa six month contract and it ended. If they need him for more, they would get him. No drama i'm afraid...

Seconded.

Linear isn't a dirty word. All of the IE games were more or less linear except BG1(and BG1 had the worst story from the lot). The rest of Obsidian games except F:NV were also linear. The best stories in videogames are in linear videogames. PE will be semi-linear like BG2 and MotB as well, and thank god for that. Affect the plot isn't the same as change the plot significantly.

You need to stop putting words in my mouth, I said I view gameplay as a technical aspect of the game, whether that is how dialog works or how sneaking, lock-picking, crafting, opening doors, specking your character, getting xp, items, etc. functions. What you described in your previous post, was story, narration and linearity. If you want to divide a game in to story/gameplay/graphics that is your problem, for me it is simply too general and vague to discuss it that way. Also, yes not every game has combat, but this one does and the games it is trying to emulate did, so the biggest part of its gameplay is, yes you guess it, combat. But that is what you mainly do yourself as well as he. Gameplay isn't mainly combat. Gameplay is the ways the player has to interact with the game. Combat system is one of them. Quest system (the actual objectives of the game, the way they are interlinked and how one affects the other, F:NV fanction system is an example), is another, how the world change in regard to your actions, the dialogue system (how dialogue options change depending on your stats, ingame knowledge, if you can perform actions through dialogue like you could in PS:T). All these have nothing to do with narration and story, they are parts of the gameplay. You say again and again that PS:T had bad gameplay, yet you say that how dialog works is part of the gameplay. And how dialog works in PS:T is the best from every RPG i have played. Fallouts and Arcanum come close, yet the rest of the IE games don't. PS:T didn't had bad gameplay, it had bad combat. You spend most of the time colecting info and performing actions through dialogue. And the way you built your character had massive influence in that. There is no accident that MAXing WIS,INT,CHA is recomended. And character building is part of the gameplay as well. That was the core gameplay in PS:T and not combat. There were only 3 mandatory fights in the whole game ffs, and PS:T would be a much better game if half of the rest of the combat in it was cut.

I totally forgot about those, yeah illithids where such a pain in the ass (so much reloaded games) the beholders where not so hard if you could summon enough cannon fodder or had the Balurian shield which I always got after my first playthough. Balduran's Shield was an ingame cheat. It was a serious ****up from Bioware. It turns one of the most difficult enemies in the game to 'walk around and watch them die by themselves"

What you where expecting a replay? I don't know, you stated a very subjective opinion, so there wasn't really much to say. The fighting with mages was usually a puzzle in BG because most of the time those mages where "boss fights" of a quest. That is why mages where overpowered and there where few interesting non mages fights (except for dragons). The story wasn't a focus in IWD, but I personally liked it. As for the fights being easy, if you where good enough there was always "heart of fury" difficulty which I played on (you get buffed items, but also much stronger enemies). For me, IWD 2 was my first game in the IE series so there is undoubtedly some nostalgia going on there, but I remember when I played BG after it, I always felt that the combat was easier overall and the combat system was no where near as complex. Even Trent Oster said in one of his tweets that IWD2 was the culmination of their experience with working on IE games, which is logical seeing as it was the last of its kind. You can look at the IE games as a tree, the main branch is the Baldur's Gate series, on one side of it is the story branch which is Torment and on the other side is the combat branch which is Icewind Dale. (this wasn't a very good metaphor but you understand what I'm getting at) While i disagree that the only interesting non mages fights were Dragons (illithids and Beholders top easily anything in IWDs), i agree with the rest.Interesting=! difficult. IWD2 was the most difficult of all the IE games. That is universaly held as true.

I think P:E has a lot to learn story wise from Torment that was never in question and I agree in most cases story>gameplay, but never the less I still want it to have great gameplay. We all do. No one (in his right mind at least) would say that PS:T combat was the best it could be, or expect P:E to have similar combat. As Sawyer and Ziets have said BG2 is the balance they want to achieve between dialogue/combat. Such a huge combat centric game with PS:T combat would be boring. I just hope that Sawyer improves on IWD2 encounter design because P:E will follow the same principles(his) and i found IWD2 battles unmemorable.Not bad, just not interesting.

Having no agenda =! being reliable information. As for the second part, by now it's moot. It doesn't matter if Torment gained it's fans in 1 year, 3 years, 10 years. Only that it did. When PE is released the (Torment) fans will be there already. And to be more on topic, story vs gameplay is a false dichotomy. PE will need both to be a success. But if that is imposible, more people will be happy with great story/writing crap gameplay (PS:T,KotOR2, MotB) than with good gameplay crap story (IWD,ToEE,DS3) We are Obsidian fans after all....

I found it on a blog but the source is 404ed. I will link you to the blog. IWD2 was after the year 2000. Scroll down to may 16. http://www.nma-fallout.com/content.php?page=news-archive-05-2000 I know it. NMA is like RPGCodex2. But you would consider the words of Scott Warner who worked in the company fishy, while trust some random forum member with sales taken of an unknown sales chart?

He worked at Interplay. The press never mentioned bad numbers, it never does. Forums do so, and i don't think the company would reply to those. Can you give me a source for these numbers you found and what IWD2 sold according to said source? Curious.

Only if they gave as the ability to molest anything. If we could molest men,women, animals and monsters, we should be able to molest children as well. If not, then children shouldn't be special in that regard. My immersion would break. No so difirent with killable,unkillable actualy. What about trees? If they have the budget, why not? Destructable ****able environment. Next-gen feature. Suck it Bioware.

Only if they gave as the ability to molest anything. If we could molest men,women, animals and monsters, we should be able to molest children as well. If not, then children shouldn't be special in that regard. My immersion would break. No so difirent with killable,unkillable actualy.

Then it is a moot point since PE will be mostly digital. Obsidian shouldn't give a **** ,if what you say it's true.

Oh, and Sarex, check this link. http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?5156-Games-You-Liked-Got-Great-Reviews-Yet-No-One-Played&p=117970&viewfull=1#post117970

I've started a replay of BGT and I find the BG section to be incredibly tedious. Between the hordes of weaklings that manage to one-shot the early party with slings and the incredibly slow progression rate, it really fails to pull me in as swiftly as BG2 or PST manged to do. IWD1/2 had much better combat than the other IE games but fell behind because the lack of character interaction. I actually preferred the less specific counters in IWD2/3.x and PF to the specific counters in the rest of the IE games/2e because it made having a mage unnecessary(but still optimal) and was generally more intuitive. I don't think that this excludes hard encounters by any means, as the wizard duels in BG2 never sat as well with me as the wizard duels in my PnP experiences. In BG1 you spent most of the time hiking around in the wilderness killing random encounters. In contrast in BG2 you actualy spent that time doing something. As for IWD2, that's why i said hard counters and not encounters. IWD2 in general is more difficult that BG2, but they are different kinds of difficult. Take a fight like Kangaax the Demi-lich. There is no way to beat him using conventional tactics. No matter what level you are, no mater if you have mages-fighters whatever, it doesn't matter. He imprisons you anyway. Unless you find a way to counter his attack you are dead.No middle ground. There are many ways to counter it but you have to find them. That way the battle becomes some kind of puzzle. Imposible to beat until you find the way, but then a cakewalk. Most fights in BG were that way, if not in so extreme way. IWD2 (and PE) won't work that way. The counters will be "soft" In IWD2 you could just hack the enemy mage. His defences lessened your attacks but didn't flat out negated them. There was no protection from magical weapons to make the mage completely invunurable until dispeled. He just gained DR. For you that is a bonus. For me made most encounters bland. Not that they weren't difficult, just weren't interesting in the same way.

Oh, and Fallout, with children that can be killed in gory ways is still rated mature.

Not visceral enough. Needs more blood.

So will do simply not puting any children in the game.... with non of the complains. But i don't believe having the game rated AO will affect the sales. Controvercial sells, and since PE will be mainly digital you won't have the stores' problem.

Oh, i can imagine solutions to that. But that isn't the only problem for me. The simple fact that the kid survives the fireball is a prety big problem for me. Same if i hack it with a mace and it lives. Just take it out of the game completely. Nothing of value is lost. If you want to dicurage players killing children, make it part of the narrative like Fallout did. You could kill the ****s, but then everyone hated you, more than half of the content of the game closed to you and bounty hunters came after you. That made killing them a big no no, unless you played a psychotic palythrough with the sole aim to kill every living thing in the game. That is a way more elegant solution.

IWD 2 improved on BG combat, so in my opinion it outshines BG gameplay. I can't argue with that. But it is not universaly held like you said. That BG2 is the best IE game overall and the most succesfull, and that Torment has the best narrative,characters, player agency are prety much uncontested. Sure, there are people who disagree but the general opinion is this. Between BG2 vs IWD2 gameplay it's not so clear. Many people prefer BG combat because: mage duels(liches included) Dragon fights illithid fights Beholder fights It all comes down to a single element. HARD COUNTERS. In BG2 if your fighters run over to the enemy mage and tried to killed him, they died. So simple. You had to use the exact counter to his protections to have a hope to win. That lead to mage duels being a chess match between the mages, with one countering the other. For many people that was the best part of IE combat. And it worked outside of mages us well with all my above examples. Sawyer doesn't agree with that. In IWD2 he used soft counters. Result? More smooth curve in the fight, with the fighters ganging up on a mage a viable tactic. Some people liked that. For others (like me) made the encounters completely bland. The only memorable encounter in the whole of IWD2 for me was the Dragon Guardian in the jungle. The rest was completely forgetable. BG2 had dozens of memorable fights.

Then what was the point in saying "Torment has critical acclaim(more than BG)"? Because no one mentions BG at all? It hasn't aged all that well, it has some bafling design decisions etc. The one mentioned is BG2. Not BG, not ToB, BG2:SoA. That they are in the same series doesn't mean that they are the same game. BG2 had the best gameplay among IE games( and not only gameplay, many other things as well) Torment had the rest. My ideal for PE( and i believe the majority of backers) would be a mix of PS:T with BG2. The rest of the IE games were good, but nothing special and to be honest i would prefer them to take clues of Fallout instead of IWD designwise.

Well there's a few solutions to this that don't necessarily entail being able to kill that child! The only one i can imagine is not having children in the game at all. That would be the best solution if Obsidian somehow believes that having killable children in the game will result in a massive ****storm that instead of advertising will be detrimental to P:E sales. Having children in the game serves no purpose at all except for realism, which goes out of the window anyway if you make them unkillable. And to have children serve a dramatic purpose they should be able to die,suffer,tortured,whatever. If they are just invulnurable puppets walking around, better to axe them completely. Problem solved.

That. I never said PS:T was more successfull than BG2 which is considered by many the best RPG of all time. I even said then even on GoG BG2 is the bestselling GAME of all followed by Torment. And BG2 had better gameplay than both IWDs. The mage duels and the hard counters made encounters like Dragon fights, mind flayer fights etc. In IWD you could just hack&slash with your fighters every opponent to bits. The only thing IWDs had going for them was art,music, atmosphere and cool dungeon design.No one considers IWDs among the best games ever, and IWD2 was more comercial failure than Torment ever was. The sales were way less than projected, they didn't worth any excpansions and Black Isle closed after that.

Torment was a commercial failure, so going by the sales it wasn't that popular and just because the Torment fans are one of the loudest I met doesn't mean half the people on kickstater liked it. I guess we will see when the game comes out, just how many of you Torment fans there really were. Nope. The rumors that it was commercial failure are overblown. Torment sold well enough, and actualy sold better than Fallout. It just was way less than BG sold. IWDs didn't sold that well either compaired to BG. But that was then. Torment has critical acclaim(more than BG), is in all Top 10 list of best RPG of all time, continues to sell well 15 years later(second best selling game on GoG behind BG2, so the "sold poorly" arguement no longer applies), and the Torment kickstarter gathered the same amount of money (a little more actualy) than PE. So Obsidian could have ditched the rest IE games and go for Torment only and they still would had get the same amount of money. If there is a weak link among the IE games, that is the IWD series and not Torment. (And BG is completely overshadowed by BG2)