Lephys

Maybe they're just a really squat breed of horses? I've seen some pretty goofy-looking actual horses. Also, in Thief 4 (Or, the new Thief reboot, which is technically the 4th game?), they designed Garrett pretty nicely, I think. http://www.bubblews.com/news/369162-thief-4-garrett (Click on the image thumbnail at the top of the article for a larger view) They actually crafted his suit/equipment, in real life, and had a person test wear it, to make sure it was, indeed, functional and stealthy. Plus, he's got a retractable bow, a working replica of which they designed and had forged. It's that level of realism that I think is nice. The fantasy aspect is more just "would anyone really have that," rather than "is that even feasible at all?".

Nope. Since we're talking about the entirety of companions, and not JUST their subjective aspects (hence the "and what makes them good" bit in the topic title), the term "best" actually encompasses both things. If companion A is literally not-at-all functional, and companion B is completely functional and objectively beneficial to the player throughout a game's duration, people could still like companion A better, and say that companion B sucks, but that would only be in subjectivity. Meanwhile, in objectivity, companion B is the clear winner, since objective functionality is one of the roles a video game (specifically RPG) companion is supposed to fill, in this context. Or, if you'd rather, imagine water in the desert. Which is better? Having 5 gallons of water, or having 3 ounces of water, for a trek through the desert? Well, you could say that having to carry 5 gallons of water around isn't appealing to you, so 3 ounces is better. But, no matter who thinks what, having 5 gallons of water will definitely provide more hydration for your trek than 3 ounces, which is definitely a beneficial factor (so long as your goal isn't to die and fail to complete the trek). Obviously the value of water in the desert isn't "entirely subjective." And, therefore, neither is the entirety of an RPG companion's design. Especially as it relates to gameplay. If we were comparing ONLY a list of companions who all bore the exact same objective designs (time spent on dialogue, number of lines, quest content, functionality, etc.), then the only remaining discussion would be completely subjective.

Well, I feel the relevance of discussing the freedom-coherency relationship (however it should be labeled/broken up) is simply this: In Skyrim, they hand-designed this huge, open world. That provides an element that affects your gameplay, whether you explore the whole thing or not, and whether you do all the side stuff or just burn through the main narrative. So, at the very least, is it really prudent to make such a big, open world, that then hardly intertwines with itself in any way? Yes, things don't necessarily have to be in any way mandatory to the narrative in order to be in the game. And freedom doesn't necessarily have to go against the story. But, isn't the game world sort of a fabric upon which the narrative is built? If you shake even the farthest corner, doesn't it make sense that that fabric should ripple across its breadth? And if it doesn't, does that not produce a bit of disconnect in things? I'll just say that it DOES get a bit bad when side quests start feeling like books that aren't really in a series together: "Well... I mean, it IS a quest, and it's set in the same world... I wouldn't really call it a sequel, though. It doesn't really have anything directly to do with anything else here. But it's technically (insert game name here) content." I just ask, why NOT have a connection to the main story? Even if it just changes a tiny, tiny factor, why NOT have some effect carry over into the adjacent content? Why isolate something to the point of seeming pointlessness? Local group of bandits raiding a small village? You don't HAVE to get rid of them. The story doesn't rely upon that small village's banditlessness. But, maybe if you DO stop them, that village can ship more of its local crop to the larger cities. Maybe some NPC from that village ends up being in a different location, later on, because they can now use the road again to travel. *shrug*. Why does it need to be forcibly made SO isolated that it literally had nothing to do with the rest of the world and the narrative that's occurring within that world? I personally don't believe that it does, and I think having those ripples occur, as they would naturally, only helps the coherency of the overall experience.

I don't think Obsidian's ever made a game with only themselves as the taskmasters and Kickstarter funding as their budget, so nothing's really a very good example for supposing how P:E production's gonna go. 8\

I, too, hope cloaks are in the final game. I'm pretty sure they're planning on them. Horses are probably in. Just... probably not as mounts, it would seem. But I don't think the world will be devoid of horses. I suppose it could be, 8P. Also, maybe they'll include a cloak made from coins. Then you can have your Money Back.

So... what happens when you're discussing some female person with a female person, and she asks "What do you think we should do about this?", and one of your options is "Attack her."? Are you telling her that you think this being-discussed female person should be attacked, or are you telling the game that you wish for your character to attack the female with whom you're currently speaking? Riddle me that, Batman. Also, for what it's worth, I feel that the literal "do this" listings of actions aren't out of place in a list of dialogue options, since the options from which you're choosing are actually just actions that happen to all be dialogue. In other words, the dialogue UI is basically telling you "Here's what was just said. How do you react?", and each line of text with quotes around it is the same thing as "Say:" followed by the line your character will be saying. That doesn't mean there aren't alternative methods that are also viable, but I don't have any problem with the way that kind of... syntax, for lack of a better word.

And a lot more regenerative/killable-only-by-fire.

If you would be so kind, please point out exactly where I didn't literally state that the relationship between time and money in this context is, in a sense, fixed. Also, Obsidian is a functioning entity that wasn't founded by Project:Eternity's Kickstarter funding. Thus, it makes perfect sense that they could provide a buffer of funding, if the Kickstarter funds were to actually run out and the game really needed another month of polishing. Especially if the cost-benefit ratio is high enough in favor of benefit. Essentially, time factors into the decisions behind the spending of money, as well. Things like "Go ahead and hire a bunch more animators, and let's start pumping out all the animations in the game, since we said we'd release the game on a specific date," as opposed to "Hmm, we really need to spend more time on these animations BEFORE we hire all those artists and exhaust our funding, even if that means delaying the release a bit." You see... the relationship is fixed, but the specifics are not. You can spend $1 million over the course of a year, or over the course of 4 months. It really depends on a lot of specifics. So, taking your time on a game doesn't necessarily mean increasing your allotted budget. For what it's worth, since Josh is so focused on the importance of initial design and planning before actually "manufacturing" the game components, I don't think we're in trouble here. I think they're basically taking their time as much as they possibly can, already. Which is a very good thing.

Yeah. I mean, obviously the functionality of the UI is more important than the aesthetic design. But the aesthetics are simply less important, rather than not-at-all important. Plus, I find myself with questions (in reading Hassat's post, and others with similar sentiments here) such as "If you're pointing out all the things that take up unnecessary amounts of real-estate, why insist on square/rectangular portraits when a circle/oval actually takes up less space than a rectangle?" Again, subjective taste isn't a bad thing. There's no wrong way to inherently feel about something. But then there's no need to even put things you purely-subjectively dislike in the running for quality ratings. And I'm not saying Hassat just subjectively dislikes stuff and that's it. Just, I'd like to know the reasoning/basis for why those listed things about that layout are inherently bad/fluff/waste.

Sure, sure. I'll start worrying about that just as soon as I'm done with more eminent baseless worries, like "Are meteorites going to collide with my head today?", or "Is my lunch 37 days from now going to fall onto the floor/ground before I get a chance to eat it?" I mean, I don't know what Josh Sawyer and team are capable of in 18 months, but I should definitely be worrying about their inability to make a game with their own resources and decisions, according to their own design/budget/schedule, if anything. What we definitely shouldn't worry about? The possibility that they might actually be competent and succeed at their goal. That would just be silly. Forget half, even, since we don't know the amount. We know that Obsidian's filling a glass. Let's go ahead and call the glass partially empty, rather than partially full.

Alright, let's go with "Take as much time as you're able, Obsidian." There are plenty of factors at play there. 1 dollar does not always equal the same amount of productivity. Progress and creativity fluctuate. Some things that often get compressed by publishers' somewhat arbitrary (at least regarding the benefit of the project's creative development) deadlines don't need to be compressed strictly because of money. It's because the people making decisions don't want to go any longer without firing up the income. Not necessarily because they literally don't have the resources necessary to allow for spending any more time on polishing and bug-removal, etc. Or, to put it simply, larger than what? Obviously the more time they take, in general, the more resources they'll need. But, with the exact same budget, you can take more time or less time. If you pay me $1,000 for a commissioned painting, I can take 3 days to paint it, or a week, even after spending the same amount on physical materials.

You do realize that space isn't automatically "wasted" simply because it isn't being used for mechanical function, don't you? And that graphics aren't "fluff" just because they aren't actually necessary for a UI to function. The Graphic Design curriculum is often referred to as "Graphic Communication." This is because our brain processes graphics and graphical aspects (colors, shapes, contrast, lines, etc.) involuntarily. You don't have to know anything about art for your brain to process aesthetics. So, even while you're voluntarily deciding you'd rather have all the "unwasted" space you can, and gauges and indicators that are only as complex as functional necessity dictates, that doesn't change the fact that the aesthetic properties and design of that interface alter the extent to which your brain automatically separates/relates the UI to the rest of the screen/gameplay. If you don't like the design, cool. That doesn't make UI design, itself, a frivolous thing.

It'd be cool if different characters' qualities/factors could buy you different amounts of time to do things. Not necessarily Speech-skill/Charisma stuff. But, different factors. Like, if you're trying to distract a noble, maybe using a character with a lot of knowledge about the local nobility would be capable of properly distracting that noble with conversation for far longer than other characters might, allowing the rest of your team a larger window within which to do what they're trying to do. But, that same character could provide benefits in other areas of the operation as well (like being the smallest/most agile to gain entry to a room, or being able to talk your way past some other nobility personnel in the entry-gaining/information-obtaining process). So, it'd be a tricky choice, instead of just "Well, obviously have the nobility-familiar person do the distracting," etc.

- A "cautious" mode in between "I don't care if we attract any attention" mode and "OMG there are hostile things less than 5-feet away" mode, as far as stealthy/overt movement goes. It's really annoying when your characters are either running (or, even if you can toggle walking, functionally are no more covert than when they are running) or tip-toeing at 1/5th speed. "We really need to just cross this field without being spotted by that guy 40 feet away, but all I can do is crawl..." - Rebounding with grenade-type weapons (and maybe even some spells/projectiles) would be pretty cool. You could target the ground on the other side of a wall/boulder by targeting a vertical wall, kind of like making a shot in pool. Of course, I'm not talking about any kind of perfect motion physics. Just simple bouncing. You know... "This has a range of 20 feet, so I can fire it at a wall 10 feet away, then hit a target 10 feet away from the wall." *shrug* - Passive/modal things like "detect traps" or "search/perception check" could be directional, targeted things, almost like aiming a flashlight around in a search effort, to tell your character where to focus, rather than simply being a radial range around your character and requiring you to just jog around in the hopes of finding things around them.

Man I'm late... (internet-less vacation'll do that). That gamecap ("gameplay" spliced with "screencap") looks gloriously splendidful! ^_^ Also, in full honesty, I think I'd love a career in game QA, but I sadly lack both the proximity AND the credentials to be an Obsidian QA lead. *le sigh* And yes, I know those "YOUR JOB COULD BE PLAYING GAMES ALL DAY!" commercials are just plain silly. I would legit test the crap out of games. Literally. They would be crapless when I was done with them. I'd find so many bugs, you'd think I was an electronic entomologist. 8P Thanks for the update! Can't wait for the Vertical Slice's completion! 8D. I really can't. I'm getting on a plane, right now, and flying east, so as to transport myself into the future. u_u

Ahhh. I was a bit unclear on the hireling thing. Totally missed that, 8P. Thanks! *Has an excite*

Also, I think if your character can Perception-check something lying about (for lack of a better term), it should be indicated to the player. Of course, the distance at which items/interactables are "spotted" like this could vary drastically. Some things (such as items/interactables on shelves/inside containers) would obviously never be indicated to the player outside of the loot interface. But, mainly, the player should never have to "pixel-hunt" just to find that loot pile from a dead Xvart just because the tree canopy is blocking the player's view of the ground, even though the characters' view of the object is completely unobstructed. If there's a sack of gems lying on the ground 5 feet away from my party, in broad daylight, it shouldn't matter that it can't be seen from the sky. And the problem I have (even with things that aren't blocked from player view) with interactables being purely "find it with your cursor" is twofold: 1) The player can find something that your character would never be able to see, simply because the mouse cursor can be placed upon it. 2) The characters (even with extremely excellent perception) can't spot a little wall lever until the player hunts it down from a floating-50-ft-in-the-air perspective.

That's what immediately came to my mind... If you kind of think of the whole party as one character, you get one new ability/capability-increase at a time, rather than play,play,play,play, SIX NEW ABILITIES! Granted, I know the party is 6 people and not 1, but the player is still just one person. Gaining "Crippling Shot" allows you to do more/different things in the same combat situations to overcome difficulties, whereas gaining Crippling Shot, Power Slam, Mana Grenade, Shadow Dodge, and Light Chakram all at the same time doesn't really give you the opportunity to make use of one of those ability with the limitations of not being able to also use all the others. You get rather abrupt spikes in party competency. A party of opponents a level above you could go from quite-challenging to quite-easy, rather than going to pretty-evenly-matched. I'm acknowledging both forms of staggered leveling (individual-character XP gain AND varied leveling thresholds), for the record. I was just thinking of aspects shared between both. 8P

Heavily, heavily related to that would be: appropriate modifiers for opponent status. What I mean is, if you successfully sneak into a bandit camp (it's always a bandit camp, isn't it.... ) while the majority of the bandits are asleep, but they are alerted and awoken at some point during this siege, the ones who were just sleeping shouldn't be instantly in tip-top focus. They should probably have some sort of Grogginess penalty or something, at least for a short time (obviously after a couple of minutes, they're going to be fine.) I've always hated that in other games (and really, in ANY stealth game), when you have no transitional representations between states. "Ohhhh, you're being sneaky, you're being sneeeakyyyyyy... you're being- OH NO! You made a noise, and the guards are all now awake and are already coordinating an attack on you before you can even blink!" This would also allow stealth to provide benefits to combat beyond just first strike/numbers thinning and backstab damage.

You do know that the chance to miss isn't fixed, right? In other words, if you have relatively low accuracy, and you're fighting something with low defense (whichever of those 4 you listed, depending on the attack type), then you're pretty much "evenly matched." So you get the 5%-45%-45%-5% (miss-graze-hit-crit) scale. However, essentially for every point of difference between your attack accuracy and your opponent's defense, the scale shifts. Is your foe's defense 3 higher than your attack? Then you might have 15%-45%-40%-0% (no chance to crit). Or, if his defense is 3 points lower than your attack, the reverse would occur; 0%-40%-45%-15% chance to crit. Now, I don't know the exact math that will be used. The graze and hit ranges could stretch at a different rate from the miss and crit ranges (so that if you have a really high attack accuracy, you're getting something like 0%-10%-70%-20%, instead of 0%-5%-45%-50%). *Shrug*. I'm not sure on the specifics. But, I just wanted to make sure you knew about the sliding scale, since the base 5% miss chance I could see looking to be too low, if I didn't think it changed significantly in different situations.

Slightly off-topic, but this just got me thinking that it would be pretty interesting, from a purely tactical perspective, if the longer you waited to "revive" someone with such an ability, the longer the duration would be before they stamina crashed. Because, bringing them back mere seconds after they are taken out of combat leaves you with the advantage of having almost no downtime for the fallen character, which could cancel out the fact that their sort of soul-power "adrenaline surge" is only going to last about 15 seconds. But, maybe if you put up with their unconsciousness for 15 seconds or so, you can actually revive them for a duration of 30 seconds. There would clearly be rates and caps. I'm not suggesting that if you wait 30 years, you can "temporarily" revive them as an immortal, haha. Just a thought. Perhaps you were getting at something like that, and I misunderstood. Are the ability effect factors actually altered depending on when you revive them? Because, if not, it just seems like the best option never isn't "revive that person as soon as possible." If there are 3 enemies left in combat, it's better to have that extra person back up and fighting for 15 seconds while you take down 2 enemies, then "stamina crash" before you finish the combat (with only 1 foe remaining) than it is to take down 2 enemies with less manpower, then revive them after you've already thinned out he numbers, right? As I said, I'm probably misunderstanding a key detail here, heh.

A) The presence of racial modifiers doesn't necessarily denote the existence of racial stat caps. Even if 18 is the highest Intelligence anyone can have, maybe an Orc CAN have it, he just has to be 2 points worse at something else to have 2 additional intelligence points. All the -2 means, in abstract mathematical values, is that, all other things remaining the same an Orc's going to have a less capable brain than a human. B) It's not a problem when you abstract everything (relevant) into mathematics. Just because "18 intellect" doesn't tell you everything you could possibly want to know about a given person's intellectual specifics does not mean it's useless or meaningless. What it means is that a person with 18 intellect is obviously more capable of processing information and deducing things than a person with 12 intellect. So, if a person with 12 intellect can't solve a puzzle, or figure out a math problem, despite their best efforts, then a person with 18 might can. Without a point of reference, it's meaningless. All it is is a relationship. If there weren't two actual examples of people with differing intellects, with which to label 12 and 18, then the numbers would serve no purpose. That's why there are oodles of other things in the game representing the more specific details of a given character's brains, so that two characters with an intellect of 18 aren't identical.

Yeah, I'm not seeing the problem with stat modifiers. If an Orc is typically stronger than, say, a Human, then if someone gets trapped underneath some fallen debris from a building collapse, it could actually make a narrative difference whether you had your strong Orc Warrior there to help them, or your strong Human Warrior. Even with them both being very strong, physically-disciplined specimens of their respective races, the Orc has an advantage. A meaningful one, if the Human isn't strong enough to lift the rubble enough to get the person out. Or, maybe, more realistically, it takes the Human longer to free the person than it does the Orc. Obviously, a weakling Orc would do you no good in that situation. But neither would a weakling Human. Thus it is simply a second layer of depth. If one race has lowlight vision, and another does not, then that provides a dynamic for scenarios involving darkness. Even in the narrative. "It's quite difficult to sneak into this city, because darkness doesn't really hinder these people." That's a mechanical difference, AND it provides a narrative difference. The entire lore and culture of that people is partially affected by how they've been able to protect their cities in the past, or whether or not they typically hide because they're able to spot threats more often than others can, etc. Still, no one's answered the question of "if there weren't any actual mechanical differences at all between any of the races, how different would the races really be?" @tajerio: That's a very good point, but I wouldn't say "mental stats." Intelligence can be likened to processing power, and is drastically affected by the "hardware" of the brain. Brains are physically different between animal species, and so would probably be between different actual races of humanoid/sapient creatures. The Charisma thing I get, though. And Wisdom, as well. But, those are more intangible things. I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with the reaction aspect of Charisma. If there was a race of nightmarish spiderpeople, I don't doubt a vast majority of people would instinctively be terrified of their apperance, at the very least. We're built with survival instincts. Heights, size, speed, etc. That's why someone who's as kind and gentle as a fly could appear quite intimidating, despite their intentions. This is a physical reaction. That isn't to say there isn't a non-physical aspect, too. Reputation. "Society has deemed these specific people to possess intangible-yet-terrifying traits!" Sure. And that should be SEPARATE from any kind of Charisma modifier, but that doesn't mean an aspect of Charisma (inherent reaction to physical presence/aesthetics) doesn't warrant a modifier at all. I think the biggest problem with Charisma is that it encompasses too many things (at least at times). Heck, a race could even physically emit a pheromone or something that heightens anxiety. Or maybe they are the only race that communicates telepathically, instead of audibly, thus prompting a severe unfamiliarity with other races who aren't used to and cannot communicate in the same fashion. Or, on that note, maybe a race just has a completely different vocal range (like the Elcor in Mass Effect), that's completely uninteresting by at least Human standards (for example). That's a physical difference that begets an inherent reaction modifier, on average.

It is kinda nice to be able to go "Ooh! My mage gained a new level! Let's see how that changes my party dynamic," instead of always just getting this level-up-times-6 boost in your overall effectiveness at very even intervals. However, I'm not entirely sure what all that really means, objectively, as far as the system design is concerned. Also, even if everyone has the same XP tables, I'm curious to know how the XP allocation will be handled. To reference existing examples, there's the "you get 100XP, so you actually get 100x6 XP, as every individual character in your party gets 100XP (the quest reward value)" approach, and the BG "you get 120 XP, so each character in your party actually only gets 20 XP" approach, and there's even things like individual characters getting bonus XP for specific acts, such as lockpicking, etc. In some games, lockpicking XP (for example) goes to the whole party, while in other games, it only goes to that specific character. Just details it'd be nice to know. I'm aware we may have to wait a bit for them.

I know, I know. . I was only being silly, as an aspect of it is a bit funny to think about. "Now that I know their weaknesses, I could EASILY kill a THOUSA... oh, wait..." I realize the point of the example wasn't the specific number 1,000, or that the specific act of slaying goblins should necessarily make you better at slaying goblins. Necessarily being the key word. As you said, it could help you with tougher goblin-type enemies, etc.