Kjaamor

Alas that threads like "Why don't they make good RPGs any more?" also come down to the same game.

Bit late for another level-scaling debate, isn't it?

I assumed that the range of epilogues meant a Fallout/Fallout 2 style, where individual areas have their own epilogues, rather than massive changes to the characterisation. I could be wrong, of course. Certainly it doesn't mean that every variation is tied to the main character and needs bringing into the sequel, so fear not.

I confess that having not been excited about this game for several months now (primarily as a result of expectation readjustment and backer beta forums burnout), reading the snippet that Sensuki highlighted gave me a real pang of excitement.

Such Paladins?

Once you will complete the unmodded game (i recommend doing that) You just have to get the LongWar mod. Simply habe to. If you want to see the gamplay i highly recommend a guy called Beaglerush. He is 2 5h episodes into the game on Firaxis Tuesday fiveoclock. Oddly enough, I downloaded the LongWar mod at the same time and contemplated firing it up from the off. Eventually I decided not to and I'm actually glad I left it. I don't doubt that it's an excellent mod, but part of the charm of EU/EW is that it drags on substantially less than the originals did. Currently I have the means to start the final EU level, and am contemplating bailing on the EW section and just ticking the completion box. Been thinking about firing up a BG1 playthrough, since its been a while since I've done one of those.

Cannot unsee.

I bailed on Darkest Dungeon because I couldn't get over the level 3 lull, and want to leave some of it for when they actually finish the game. Picked up XCOM:EU and EW on steam, so I've been running through that. As someone who's first PC game was Terror from the Deep, I think EU/EW is actually a good update and while it loses some nice aspects of the originals it is infinitely less frustrating and drags on less.

Pre-order cancelled.

This post carries the fetid stench of the "enhanced" (read: thoughtlessly imbalanced) edition upon it.

I might also offer that in terms of the "quality" of the writing, BG was aimed at a far younger and wider target audience than PoE is.

I probably spent more time rolling stats than I did playing the rest of the IE games. I am against mechanics that require no thought or skill but make my life more difficult for not engaging in them. I'm particularly against the rolling of attributes, because if this is anything like the IE games those stats can be incredibly important for your entire game. And having said all that, if they put stat rolling in I would almost certainly merrily support my face with my left hand while my right clicked away into infinity, no pun intended.

To Stun and Emerwyn I would, at risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious, simply say that "my/his/her playtime" is a significantly more quantifiable measure than "the playtime". Equally, "completionists" and "non-completionists" are too binary for practical use. In the Morrowind example, how many completionists - that is to say people who explored every inch of the map and not only took in every piece of lore but also each piece of lore within the context of new information gathered - actually are there? Completionist for me is a term that works in the context of games that keep some form of percentage score dependant upon tasks done, and those people reach the magic 100%. In games focusing upon lore and exploration as it's own reward, where there is not a set bar ("You unlocked the toilet!"), getting maximum playtime from the game does not reflect completionist in the same manner. Completionist in terms of PoE might include filling all the bestiary, getting all the trap/lock exp (*groan*), getting all the exploration exp, and getting the maximum quest exp, all of which shall be possible without the need to tread over ever single pixel and reading every lore section until it sinks in. When I talk about "The Playtime" of PoE, or any other game, I talk about the amount of time the average (Mean + Mode + Medium / 3) playtime of the people who buy the game. Speed runs and Crit-only path runs are anomolies on one side, and score completionists and the sort of absolute completionists you refer to are anomolies on the other. "The Playtime" I talk about is very different from "The Playtime" you talk about, but in terms of comparison with other games, I think mine is of more practical use in games discussion. If the OP was talking about absolute completionist, the time it takes to have taken in every single thing in the game regardless of how incidental, then "The Playtime" of PoE shall be exactly the same as any of the IE games, which is to say practically forever.

I'm with Bryy on this one. The first time I played through Final Fantasy VII, I smashed in several hundred hours of gameplay, finding every secret piece of story, killing all the weapons, maxing out the huge materia, and ensuring all characters had 255 for all their stats. I would not, in a million years, use this as a benchmark for the "playtime" of FFVII. Similarly, in Morrowind, I played to completion the available guild quests, explored all the map's significant locations and many of the insignificant ones, maxed out my level and completed the main quest. What I did not do, was harvest every single tome in that game and meticulously read it, speak with every npc and map out every single section of land and sea around the island, and I would balk at the idea that only in doing so can we find the "playtime". I don't believe for a second that Bryy was describing anything close to just hammering on the critical path and ignoring everything else, although some people have suggested that he was.

The Aerie romance, like so much of BG2, can be quite endearing the first time dependant upon your emotional level at the time. Despite the fact that I should've been old enough to know better, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot during my initial playthrough. Now, unfortunately, it has become something of a sacred cow for the general psuedo-disney elements of much of BG2's quests, and everyone loves to ridicule it and state that it was a blight on the game in the same way that many Star Wars fans pour scorn on episodes 1-3 while absent-mindedly neglecting to mention that Return of the Jedi was also a piece of ****. EUPD Aerie was symptomatic of a trait of ToB that I heavily disliked; taking the very cheap notion that if you want to create new characters but also want to milk the **** off the original game, then the easiest way is to completely recharacterise the already existing ones. Aerie herself isn't even the best example of this, with some characters performing personality 180s without so much as the mildest prompt. For all of BG2's unabashed cheesiness, ToB was the only IE game that felt like I was reading bad fanfiction. I don't recall the main story being a problem, and I actively enjoyed some of the little set pieces in Watcher's Keep, but the bastardization of the characters was crude, incongruent and to the game's detriment.

There is just no pleasing some people. Why do you think 30-40? I think the complaints with Wasteland 2's length were more than justified, and there are definite lessons to learn from it. I completed Wasteland 2, but the last few hours were a repetitive plod with no rewards save that I would soon be able to say "I've completed Wasteland 2" and then never play it again. I pick 30-40 because Obsidian have stated from very early on that this will not be as big as BG2, and in threads where this has been brought up, to my reading their posts carried a certain suggestion that people expecting BG2 size games should calm their expectations a little [Citation Needed]. Although the hub area in the backer beta was just one small, possibly incomplete, area, all of the content within could be breezed through in a relatively short time. There are only a handful of quest hubs in the game, and while the larger ones could potentially be massive, as of now I haven't personally seen any evidence that confirms this. I haven't used a timer for my BG2 playthroughs, but I would be very surprised if my last individual playthrough, including the overwhelming majority of optional side content (Stronghold, Dragons, Kangaxx, etc), topped 50 hours.

I think probably around 30-40 hours in total. When I first came to the forums, I was greatly concerned that the game wouldn't be long enough. Having completed Wasteland 2, my current concern is that the game will be artificially padded out to increase its length.

Optimism for breakfast, disappointment for lunch, and a hearty slice of grim realisation for your evening meal.

I can only hope that the rendition of this in the comic is as wonderful as its depiction in my mind's eye.

+1 for not being where I thought this thread was going

And due to resources, almost inevitably that seems to mean having a romanceable female heterosexual npc, a romanceable male bisexual npc, and a romanceable female bisexual npc. Which to be honest, for a long time has struck me as being even more offensive than having only heterosexual romances. Edit: Minor typo.

The words "ethics" and "ethical" keep cropping up in this discussion. I'm not sure they mean what you think they mean. PoE's price looks about right to me, although I'd probably wait for a sale before I bought it. Except a publisher's marketing department: a) has no idea what I want from a game. b) has no right to tell me what I do or should want from a game. Unfortunately, failure on the publishers' part to grasp such a simple concept: a) killed the isometric party-based RPG genre (publishers arbitrarily and unilaterally decided those games wouldn't sell anymore). b) dumbed down A.I., dialog, and storytelling to a bare minimum in all games because spoiled console kids don't like to use their brains when they game. c) turned RPGs into shooters with swords instead of guns (cough cough Witcher and Dragon Age cough cough). You know how much I am willing to pay for a Witcher game? USD $0. But I forked out USD $250 for PoE and would do so again for PoE2 if given a chance. Yes, but: 1. You have no idea what I want from a game 2. You have just as much right as a publisher's marketing department to tell me what I do or should want from a game. While I'm here... a) May have some truth to it, but the isometric genre was being criticised as looking dated, and for all BG2 sold well, Lionheart and many others did not. Ultimately those companies have to turn a profit and don't owe themselves to a camera angle. b) Absolute hysterical nonsense. c) I blame Mass Effect, personally.

The steam coming from the **** stew that is the RPGcodex says different.

Why? Is there something unachievable about being better than BG, IWD, or PS:T? It is not unachievable that PoE should be better than BG, IWD or PS:T. It is not impossible that PoE should be the favourite IE/IE-like game for most people who currently have a favourite in that selection. It is highly unlikely, however, that PoE manages to please the niche fans so much that the majority of such fans prefer it to those games while also bringing in extra fans from other genres (as BG2 did). The rose-tinted glasses are there in their thousands, make no mistake.

I've been playing Darkest Dungeon, too. I really enjoyed it to begin with, but DD has a huge drop off at around level 3. The difficulty plummets, the whole thing becomes very repetitive and you realise that all the wonderful party balance you think is there really isn't present. I own Elite: Dangerous, and have played a little bit of that, but in its present state it is far too repetitive and lacks any sort of meaningful challenge. Might dig it out again once Wings comes out. I'd been playing Europa Universallis IV loads, but then they patched it which unfortunately wiped a very hard-earned save of mine. Might play that again soon. Got Recettear cheap on Steam a few months back, having wanted it for years, and yet somehow haven't had the itch to fire it up. I was doing an IWD1 playthrough, but I switched computers, lost the saves and will be damned if I'm slogging my way though all those early dungeons again.