Helm

If it doesn't matter, because Torment isn't about combat, then why must it have turn-based combat and not RTwP combat like the spiritual predecessor? A decent combat system would have vastly improved Arcanum.

That is a severe misconception. Have you ever played a hard turn based game? go play Knights of the Chalice or Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 bro, come back and tell me how well you did. Interesting how you assume that I have never played Jagged Alliance 2 or any "hard" turn-based game. Like I said, if you can play realtime with pause games, then turn-based games are no problem. Interesting. Then from a marketing perspective RTwP is the better choice, because more people like it. rofl I also find it interesting how you think that the sluggish and inept have absolutely no problem playing RTwP games. How many times have I read "RTwP is confusing, and the combat is too fast, I can't into that. Derp, derp, derp".

All I know is that if you are inept and sluggish you just might find RTwP confusing. The good thing about turn-based games is that even an old senile fart can play them.

Changed? The game is not even fully out of conceptual stage. The developers chose to have TB. Plain and simple. They thought that for their game TB is the way to go.Planescape: Torment is the spiritual predecessor, or better said WAS the spiritual predecessor, and it has RTwP combat. I think this has been said enough. But I don't care anyway. Maybe I will play it, maybe I won't. I didn't back anyway. I feel sorry for those who did though.

AD&D doesn't have real-time combat either. Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate are based on AD&D and are RTwP games. Mindblowing, I know. I know, what a casual baby dumbing down betrayal of its glorious inspiration, right?Are you trying to say that PoE would have been better if it had turn-based combat?

Apology accepted. Lets at least keep cool until the beta. Later.

I see you are still resentful and apparently also miss our arguments @PrimeJunta. Trolling me in the update thread is probably not a good idea, but thinking was never your strong suit anyway. You can play commander asslicker by yourself now. Maybe you'll even get a prize, who knows. See ya later.

Josh Sawyer had Evil-Helm "removed" for trolling and I am his replacement. Call me Jolly-Helm, nice to meet you old fellow.

Yes.

Kind of funny that they say the game is coming out in Winter 2014. Winter 2014 could mean January or February, or the last 10 days of December. :D

So much discussion and we haven't even seen an official mock up or screenshot of the HUD or UI.

I was rather vocal about my dislike for the music in the trailer....... but whatever. You can't please everyone. It's up to Obsidian. If they think that Justin Bell is the right choice, then that is fine by me. Go for it. If the music in the game turns out being bad, which I hope will not be the case, well, then the fans can make a Baldur's Gate music mod. Heh.

If he is enjoying himself by making the videos, then he should continue. If not, then he should stop. It doesnt make sense to force yourself to do something you aren't enjoying. He's a busy man and I would probably rather have him use his office hours to work on PoE than make longplay videos anyway. What he does in his free time is of course a different story, but I think he has lost interest. Which is fine. Maybe he will make another video some day, only Mr. Avellone knows.

héhéhééééé... I believe you, my friend, no problem. But, really, just try the french voice acting of many US games (Skyrim, New Vegas and some even worse). It's easy with steam if you save your orignal voices.bsa before switching language. It's just... well, my baker may voice the game the same way. Truly, i play these games with US voices and french subs (pity that the NV radio is not subbed :s). The only way not to be disgusted. But i agree with your entire post. All is true. And more. Hum, Skyrim can eventually become a great game, but needs at least 60 mods well picked. Strangely enough, New vegas needs less of them. The VERY WORSE was the UI.. PAD UI, Atrocious UI... Unmanageable UI... I'm not found of the ideas i read on the interview too. But i prefer to say wait and see, i may be surprised (well, i would be very surprised if such a game eventually comes to be great). The only way is that such a game uses 3D not just for 3D but in order to serve a deep purpose. And to achieve that, devs need to rework from scratch the entire concept of using full 3D... A brand new way to think the entire game experience. Yeah, with a boatload of mods Skyrim might be playable, but vanilla Skyrim is pretty terrible. Bethesda should be happy that there are so many modders out there willing to fix their game. Anyway, If Feargus wants to make an openworld like game with a lot of exploration and what not, then that might be fine, I am not sure. But Obsidian should not copy Skyrim and stuff it into the PoE engine and most defintely not market it as a isometric Skyrim game - that would be a death sentence for the title.

You are interested in it. I am, too. I would like you to get carry away I've quite understood your meaning (even if that "albeit" is a problem for me. Even with the dictionnary, i can't figure out the meaning of this sentence "...were imported into the game, albeit the texture data." Sorry, it's a typo. "...were imported into the game, albeit without the texture data." is correct. By the way, Albeit is a conjunction and is synonymous with "although". Ok, make more sense now, thanks. About full 3D, i'm not of these guys. I played skyrim with many mods, and some really wonderful graphics mods. Was really beautiful, great. But 3D games are too descriptive, and just break my imagination. The immersion power of Skyrim is more about tourism than Roleplay in my mind (even if i dont point the problem of Roleplay being really difficult in a franchise like The Elders Scrolls). Was a problem too with New Vegas. I've the feeling that the game would be much more flavoured if rendered in the old Fallout 1&2 iso engine.   Music is a great part of immersion in such games, and this trailer has a great soudtrack. Didn't said it, but love the portraits too, very IE feeling, and great piece of art. Magic and animations sound great. Or, at least, i like the directions it took. Waiting for further development. I know what you mean. You like the top-down "isometric" look and the extremly beautiful pre-rendered (raytraced) backgrounds. I like that too. That is what Obsidian is trying to capture with PoE and they are doing a good job too.

AD&D doesn't have real-time combat either. Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate are based on AD&D and are RTwP games. Mindblowing, I know. Anyway, Torment was "marketed" as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment during the Kickstarter, but that is not what the backers will get.

A Skyrim-like with the PoE-Engine? lol Skyrim is badly designed! It has terrible content, terrible quest design, boring and completely forgettable NPCs, extremely bad and amateur voice acting, horrendous writing, ridiculously stupid and broken RPG mechanics, a broken economy, an unreactive world, boring and empty area design, 99% of the dungeons and caves are completely linear and tunnel-like, uses level scaling excessively, is overly simplified and is unchallenging. And that list is way too short. And to top it off, the user interface is freaking horrible. In other words, it is an extremely boring and bad game. How could you want to copy that and stuff it in the PoE engine? Jeez. If you said you wanted to make a GTA5-"RPG" or something then I might understand, but SKYRIM!?!?! lol Don't go down that path Feargus. If you put that on Kickstarter, you will regret it.

While I'm ok with either RtwP or TB I disagre with this a bit. I mean you couldn't have Fallout 2's combat system hold up if you just let it be RtwP. The whole thing is based around action points for movement or attacking and it just wouldn't translate without tearing down the whole combat system. Personally I was very happy with Torment becoming a TB game as I find their combat systems stand up to the test of time a bit better than RtwP. Also there are just too few true TB games out there for my tastes. :-p What? WHAT? WHAAAAT?!?! There are bucketloads of turn-based games out in the wild and on kickstarter. RTwP games are very rare, only BioWare's games and Project Eternity use RTwP, and that's it! I can't think of any other notable examples. To be honest, I am not even sure if there are any RTwP shovelware titles, but who cares. Shovelware is crap, as the notation denotes, and therefore does not count. Torment ruined by turn based combat system... implying Torment is about combatIf it doesn't matter, because Torment isn't about combat, then why must the combat be changed from RTwP to turn-based? Contradictions, contradictions.

You are interested in it. I am, too. I would like you to get carry away I've quite understood your meaning (even if that "albeit" is a problem for me. Even with the dictionnary, i can't figure out the meaning of this sentence "...were imported into the game, albeit the texture data." Sorry, it's a typo. "...were imported into the game, albeit without the texture data." is correct. By the way, Albeit is a conjunction and is synonymous with "although". I'd like to get carried away, but I'm pretty sure this is not the correct thread for such a discussion. If somebody opens a thread with questions about the technology, then I would partake in the conversation. I like the graphics. The game looks nice and is very reminiscent of the Infinity Engine games. As I mentioned, perspective projection is sadly impossible with this technique, so some people will never like it and always prefer the more realistic look of a (fully) virtual 3D enviroment. They could create multiple 2D layers to somehow evoke an illusion of perspective while panning the camera, but this isn't perfect either. The particle effects (magic) and animations need some more work, but the game is still alpha, so that is to be expected.

Oh, epicness is good, very good. Especially for a trailer. Some of the songs in Mass Effect 2 were very epic. I thought the score in that game was fantastic (kudos to Jack Wall for a great soundtrack). IMO the PoE trailer is much better if you watch it with music from Mass Effect 2 running in the background. I know it sounds funny, but it is true. Just ignore the fact that in some parts of the song synthesizers are used. Yes, these are nice, but now that you mention it, given what Mass Effect must have cost to make, the synthesizers are a bit surprising. Maybe they were trying for a futuristic sound?Yes, they wanted the music to sound futuristic too. Using synth instruments does not mean the music is cheaper to produce though.

RTwP is a bad system according to Inxile and their "Leader in Exile", Mr. Brian Fargo. That is why Torment HAD to use a turn-based system, they really wanted to make a good game and not a bad one like Pillars of Eternity. Pillars of Eternity will be a bad game and Torment will be a great game. Oh well. But maybe we can have a vote so that Pillars of Eternity can become a great turn-based game too. lol

That is because PoE is not a true 2D game. The game uses 3D models; the particles and dynamic lighting are 3D effects. Only the backgrounds are 2D (pre-rendered 3D to be exact) Oh yeah, i saw a video from J.Sawyer explaining this in an old update few months ago. I really had a hard time understanding this english video :D And what was awesome to me back then was that the point light hightlited the edges of the statues and brought shadows too, like if the statue were eventually a 3D model and not imported 3D model in 2D environment. I did some 3D modelization in my time (10/15 years ago) with Lightwave, but i can't really figure out the process used here. The only way i can figure out is that the 3D model was rendered with the highlights in 3D environment, and then converted into sort of animated texture in the 2D thing. But i kind of understood that dynamic lightning should do this in PE (spells etc) in real time, and then, impossible to use pre rendered lighting animations. I'm not sure my english is good enough to explain well all this stuff... Still, awesome. The 3D data (normal maps, specular maps, volumetric meshes and what not) from the background models were imported into the game, albeit the texture data. The rendering engine uses this data when light sources are added to the scene giving backgrounds the illusion of depth. The game is much more 3D than some would like to think. True 2D games are a thing of the past, which is of course a good thing. Taking a screenshot while playing a 3D game produces a pre-rendered 3D image, i.e. a 2D image of a virtual 3D enviroment. The result is of course essentiially just a 2D image, "pre-rendered 3D" however emphasizes the fact that it is a snapshot of a virtual 3D enviroment and not a virtual 2D enviroment. This is what Obsidian is basically doing for Pillars of Eternity. The raytracing engine of their rendering software (Maya I believe) just produces a 2D (pre-rendered 3D) image of much higher quality. This image quality can not be surpassed by the rasterizing engines of modern game engines. At least not without a lot of processing power. The only downside to this method is that the perspective can never change while panning the camera, so it will look slightly less realisitc than a fully dynamic virtual 3D enviroment. The upside of course is that you have a very high visual fidelty...... But anyway, that isn't really what you asked so I'll stop right here before I get carried away.

Put me down as someone who loved the music. I hope to hear more of it in the finished game. The epicness (err, epicality?) is not something to be shy about. Go nuts with that. Take it to 11.Oh, epicness is good, very good. Especially for a trailer. Some of the songs in Mass Effect 2 were very epic. I thought the score in that game was fantastic (kudos to Jack Wall for a great soundtrack). IMO the PoE trailer is much better if you watch it with music from Mass Effect 2 running in the background. I know it sounds funny, but it is true. Just ignore the fact that in some parts of the song synthesizers are used. http://youtu.be/ne2QAp-F4qU Here are some more: http://youtu.be/qwrNf_e5NZA http://youtu.be/5mijfwXhMkU

That is because PoE is not a true 2D game. The game uses 3D models; the particles and dynamic lighting are 3D effects. Only the backgrounds are 2D (pre-rendered 3D to be exact)

Anyone else wanna cry me a river because the music in the teaser was not good? I'm all ears, go for it.