Sacred_Path

That's ok though. You can be certain that certain actions will brand you as "cruel" but you have no idea how any given NPC will react to that. I don't really see any other non-retarded way to do it.

v. good.

30:30 Spiderweb games + Infinity Engine

oby: There's a stronghold update. It's about strongholds.

To answer my own question: I want to shape the gameworld in accordance with my character concept. Not the other way round. So expect a fair bit of bitching and moaning from my side. Getting an unwanted disposition on my character may prompt me to reload. Character death/ maiming would not. I don't know if that's typical RPGer behavior or not.

let's see if people are fans of actual consequences to go with their choices

The gist I got was that Expert mode is about no hand holding. But people who need hand holding probably don't care about exact defense values in the first place, so they might as well not see them either. Should Expert mode really just be a nostalgic IE mode, I retract my statement.

I don't see the connection with Expert mode. Being an expert on the game doesn't necessarily include having an encyclopedic recollection of every defense value and DC in the game. If you can't remember or never saw such values before, making uninformed choices doesn't make you an expert either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH18_dZIYOE

Regarding the topic at hand... one of Planescape's flaws was the 'click all lines' thing. It's one thing that led to the feeling of verbosity. OTOH, IIRC, Arcanum was pretty strict about 'closing off' dialogue. Which way are you leaning with P:E?

does not compute

PS:T had a lot of crappy/ mediocre writing inbetween the good parts. That's what drags it down, like it would any piece of literature. That's why I'm saying: don't be verbose. Of course, aforementioned events transpired a long time ago, and nowadays there's no juvenile need to prove how deep and thought-provoking a game they can put together.

That's good enough for me. As for allowing/ not allowing dialogue choices... it's like adding milk to mashed potatoes. The more hard [reading] elements, the more [choices] you need to add to make things... creamy. Umm... hungry.

In what world is it edgy to dislike PS:T ?

Why emphasize the reading part then? Anyways.

Giving out text in short bursts like that would be welcome. Passively enduring walls of text is not. It's like a Bioware game otherwise - it doesn't matter if you lose the player due to cutscenes or monologue.

I'm an avid reader and kind of an enthusiast when it comes to literature. Also, I'm not easily impressed by writing. It seems I would incline to agree. But the problem with your statement is, that it hinders development of good gaming narratives. If people in the beginning of games with stories would've said "Ah, shucks, I don't want stories in my game!" we would've never had, say, Dear Esther or Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs which were absolutely stellar in writing. They have to be the most literary games I've ever played and I loved them dearly. "Reading" sounds unspecific and that irks me. It reminds me of verbose, everyone's-a-walking-encyclopedia-of-banalities Planescape. That, on the other hand, is true. I wouldn't say Torment was full of banalities, at least not in the context of other computer and videogames. I think Torment introduced players to some interesting albeit not very deep philosophical questions, and I think those players were never in a "philosophy" target group. So there's that. But I really hope we will not see "quality" writing in the vein of R.A. Salvatore. Someone in the market square whining about trees for several pages worth of monologue is pretty banal IMO. Avoiding things like that is what seperates an accomplished writer/ team of writers from your average blogger.

I'm an avid reader and kind of an enthusiast when it comes to literature. Also, I'm not easily impressed by writing. It seems I would incline to agree. But the problem with your statement is, that it hinders development of good gaming narratives. If people in the beginning of games with stories would've said "Ah, shucks, I don't want stories in my game!" we would've never had, say, Dear Esther or Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs which were absolutely stellar in writing. They have to be the most literary games I've ever played and I loved them dearly. "Reading" sounds unspecific and that irks me. It reminds me of verbose, everyone's-a-walking-encyclopedia-of-banalities Planescape.

Lots of reading? BS. I turn to books for that. Lots of interactive branching dialogue? Hell yes. (I'm aware the latter involves reading)

George Ziets... is that you?

in b4 someone suggesting alternative names for the hedge maze

I'm somewhat at a loss as to why you missed the obvious alternative (that all defenses aren't equal) in favor of the improbable/ impractical/ derpy one (that there should be only one defense). Deflection and psyche are bound to be less problematic IMO because psyche, in all probability, will protect you from hard-to-quantify things like status effects. In relation to my example, it's more like all weapons do the exact same damage. Maybe half of them target stamina and the other half target health, but you're gone all the same if one of these hits zero and they both replenish in the same fashion and with the same speed (for my example).

If the consequences are the same, there is no choice. That's pretty basic.