Ineth

But how can you not like an NPC with lines like this: "Please don't disturb me while I'm plotting to overthrow you." "Conversation with you does not rate highly on my list of things to accomplish." "Sigh. It's aggravation like this that will eventually cause me to fireball the entire party as they sleep." Okay, okay, I see your point...

Well, as much as I like the IWD games, they had a much higher percentage of stupid fedex quests than BG2. At least in BG2's "fetch item X" quests, you sometimes had to actually investigate and interview people like a detective and combine knowledge given previously, or even use deception/intimidation, in order to procure the item in question (e.g. the "Procuring illithium" quest). In IWD1+2, it was either all spelled out as in "Please go back to the previous map and fetch me some arrows from an NPC you already met!", or quests of the form "I need rare item X, if you ever come across it bring it back to me!" where you would always automatically come across said item without any additional effort while following the game's critical path.

In the Infinity Engine games, you can disable them - or make them conditional, e.g. only for selected characters. (It's a slider grouped under "Feedback Settings", which admittedly makes it a little hard to find.) A similar option would be good to have in PE.

If dogs exist in the game world, they should also exist as food.

Actually, the Infinity Engine games did implement this idea implicitly - by giving the attacker a Thac0 bonus, if the target did not have a melee weapon equipped at the time of the attack.

Well, but each note that you can play also has a unique color and symbol associated with it. So the pitch is not the only thing to go by. It has been a while since I played the main game, but I can only remember 3 puzzles where you actually had to reproduce full melodies. Two of them were optional side-quests, and were not sound-only (i.e. you were given color/symbol/position info for the notes you needed to play). The third one is the one in the youtube video you linked (the "ghost child"), and that does indeed cause a lot of players to get stuck and turn to google (probably more so than any other part of the game). Although in hindsight, it seems obvious: 10 actually, but those 'special abilities' songs the protagonist learns aren't puzzles. Each of them gets automatically transcribed to your "song book" when you reach a certain point in the world, and from then on it can be quickly accessed using a keyboard shortcut ("1" key for first song, "2" key for second, etc.). So you don't actually have to manually play them using the song circle, ever. (Although of course you can, if you want.) The main uses for the song circle, are occasions where you need to play a single note to match a specific color.

Aerie - most annoying NPC in BG2.

Because every bit of additional differentiation helps, in a party-based isometric RPG where you frequently need to select specific party members. Stature, outfit/gear, race, gender... the more aspects that offer differentiation the better, because: The chance that each party member will have a unique combination of identifying aspects (preventing you from selecting the wrong one), increases with the number of aspects. In different situations you will (consciously or subconsciously) think of your characters in different terms, depending on what is going on in the game role-playing wise and what's currently on your mind. The game should make it possible to effortlessly identity and select your female dwarf tank, no matter whether you are at the moment thinking "Where is that woman, she just did one of those audible combat-taunts (female voice-over) so she can't have wandered off too far..." or "I need a fighter over here, hmm the human one is occupied so I'll take the dwarf".

For voice acting you need: 1) talent & experience. 2) probably more importantly, a professional recording studio with expensive equipment, otherwise it will sound horrible.

Well, they do already have 3D information in Maya before they render it out into a 2D background. I think it would be possible to also pre-render shapes of shadows (from trees, etc.) into 2D sprites at this stage, and then simply 2D-stretch them and overlay them onto the background within the game. It wouldn't give those objects the ability to cast highly accurate shadows in all directions, but it would make it possible to make the shadows longer or shorter in the direction they are already pointing (or some slight deviation thereof, using a little skewing), which could be used to make the day-night cycle a lot mode dynamic.

Actually, I think it was mainly due to players trying to "play it safe" by optimizing their front-line fighters for AC, while neglecting items and spells that improved Thac0.

Animating faces using 3D models in a way that looks at least *somewhat* realistic, is very difficult i.e. expensive. For a triple-A first-person 3D game with a 100 million dollar budget, it might be a worthwhile investment. But in the case of PE, I think not.

They have already explained that those high-poly character models will be used for a) paper-dolls in the inventory screen, b) to generate normal-maps for the low-poly models that will be used in the normal (isometric) game view. So no, they are not an indication for in-game cut-scenes leaving the isometric view. And indeed I don't think that will be the case.

I think that looks a little too slick/modern/synthetic for a game like PE, a more "solid" and fantasy-styled UI like BG2 had would be preferable.

I had that impression as well. But using a particle-based mist generator might be too processor intensive. Perhaps they just need to blend it a little better? It's a WiP, after all. I think what would improve the waterfall spume/mist, is if they'd remove the gray taint and make it clean and white, so it looks like water not smoke:

Fine by me That's true.

Try Aquaria (a cool underwater open-world exploration & action game in hand-drawn 2D). During much of the first half of the game the environment is very bright, colorful and pretty (with the exception of some "dungeons"), but once you get down to the Abyss, it's pitch black and you will need a light source to stand a chance. (And of course keeping the light source active interferes with combat. And of course all kinds of horrible fantasy sea creatures, who are perfectly adapted to the darkness themselves, roam the waters and love to ambush you... ) That said, I'm not sure how well it would translate to a party-based cRPG with tactical combat...

Well, the game's setting is not earth, it is a new fantasy world. Who knows how dark it really gets there? Maybe the planet has a really bright moon? Or several? So the "realism" argument in favor of darker nights falls flat. It should only get so dark that you require torches, if the developers feel that it would considerably add to the gameplay.

I think the only useful auto-pause conditions in BG2 were: those that allowed me to safely walk around and explore without having to keep one hand on the pause key:Pause when enemy sighted Pause when trap found those that made combat more efficient (especially in combination with party-AI turned off):Pause when target gone (enemy dead) Pause when spell cast (i.e. as soon as casting is finished, before the spell's effects manifest) Especially the last one ("pause when spell cast") is extremely useful - no more letting your mages stand around idle (or worse yet, auto-attack enemies in melee thanks to crappy party AI) after finishing a spell while you are preoccupied with a different character and don't notice. And in combination with the "Improved Alacrity" spell, it turns your BG2 mages into gods... :D

Yeah, some of the bushes are more "twitching" than moving in the wind...

To all those who are anxious to increase their pledges, consider redirecting some of that generosity to Torment: Tides of Numenera - the other kickstarter-funded spiritual sequel to the Infinity Engine games. Their kickstarter has just ended, but pleging via PayPal (for the same tiers and addons as the kickstarter) remains open until the end of the month: https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/store... And all additional money that is pledged until then, will still go towards reaching the last stretch goal (which wasn't reached through the kickstarter)! They presented two animated environment screenshots of their own: (Note that unlike Obsidian's waterfall screenshot, these were not created through months of pre-production, they were created more or less spontaneously in only a few days near the end of the kickstarter campaign. So keep that in mind when comparing the quality.)

What I like most is the character models. It just feels so good to see a game with the Infinity Engine style, but not the low-res pixelated characters! Makes me wish I could play it now... As for the environment, I like that too... I think there are a few aspects in which they don't really use the advantages of pre-rendered graphics (as opposed to realtime 3D) to its full potential, but I'll wait with more specific criticism until the wave of excitement has passed and everyone's jaws are back up...

How come this update is still not on eternity.obsidian.net? It has been on the kickstarter site for almost 2 hours. Obsidian claims that eternity.obsidian.net is the main update site for PE now, yet their actions tell another story...

Hear, hear. Well, an adventure is not a game of chess that your characters can win from the safety of their living-room armchair. An adventure entails plunging into the unknown, and taking risks. During a good adventure, even a perfectly designed plan or strategy might potentially fall apart when push comes to shove. And the heroes are forced to come up with a (probably more reckless) "plan B" on the spot. But if they make it through it, success will be that much sweeter.

Amen to that.