Sarex

Personally I don't mind fantasy armor, but I don't like it when it's over the top. Some examples(good):

Kickstarted game's audience is a special case. A large portion of them genuinely consider that modern games has moved in a bad direction. UI, combat, text focus vs cutscene focus, design direction in general. Many can't stand these modern elements. On the other side, if someone considers IE games meh and outdated, he shouldn't had donated in P:E. If someone wanted the IE experiense streamlined and "modernized", he has DA:O. Many of us considered that game mediocre at best, a pale shadow of the IE games, and hope that P:E will be way more "old school" for a lack of better word. While I am in the old school IE camp, I still consider DA:O to be a good game. It would have been even better if it didn't oversimplify it's gameplay, as can be seen from the "sucess" of it's sequel. Sorry for going a little of topic. I also liked DA:O.(but the UI was crap) But it had one huge flaw for me to consider it a worthy BG2 successor. Combat. First of all, all the combat in the game felt like filler. I think Feargus in an interview nailed it. He said that BG was a combat game with story, whereas DA was a story game with combat. Enemy variety(nonexistent),encounter design(bad overall) and simplified mechanics made combat utterly forgetable and a chore after a while. The game would be better if it had 90% less combat, and a LOT better if it had better enemy encounters and variety. I mean BG2 had the best encounter design of every game that i have played, and a huge enemy list. Think Planar Sphere.A simple side quest and it had more monster types than DA and ME series combined. Other than that it was a good game, but if P:E is something at that level i will be dissapointed. I hope for P:E to surpass BG2, and i expect something on par. I agree with you on that, as a successor it was a disappointment, as a game on it's own it was good. (Also agree with you on the UI) Or, you know, playing BG1 on the iPad probably is a big deal. All this 'nostalgia' argument doesn't make much sense to me. Nobody has the stats, but most of the time people who bring up that argument are precisely the people who haven't played the IE games much in a while. I play IE games regularly and also replayed NWN2 and KOTOR2 recently, and there's no question what I prefer. I currently have the original BG series instaled on my PC, had ID2 and PS:T instaled a while ago. I don't get what you are saying? Never had a problem with the UI in any of the games, and I personaly think that the UI's had a big impact(positive) on the games.

Kickstarted game's audience is a special case. A large portion of them genuinely consider that modern games has moved in a bad direction. UI, combat, text focus vs cutscene focus, design direction in general. Many can't stand these modern elements. On the other side, if someone considers IE games meh and outdated, he shouldn't had donated in P:E. If someone wanted the IE experiense streamlined and "modernized", he has DA:O. Many of us considered that game mediocre at best, a pale shadow of the IE games, and hope that P:E will be way more "old school" for a lack of better word. While I am in the old school IE camp, I still consider DA:O to be a good game. It would have been even better if it didn't oversimplify it's gameplay, as can be seen from the "sucess" of it's sequel. Sorry for going a little of topic.

If that's how you feel about IWD2, then chances are the user-interface won't be the only thing you'll be disappointed with in PE. Icewind Dale 2 was the peak of the infinity games, gamplay wise. The only thing you could give it bad marks for is that it was a little linear. To this day it reamins one of my favourite games. (my favourite from the infinity games)

I think you are really underestemating the role the UI had in the infinity games. That was something that folowed you through out the whole game. I also though that this game represents the resurection of our nostalgia.

I really like the Icewind Dale feel for the UI. I don't think that a minimalist UI, like Dragon Age has, is really a good idea. A big part of the Infinity games feeling is the way the UI looked, and I think people are underestemating that. Also as someone said, you could hide your UI in all Infinity engine games.(you can't go more minimalistic then that)