Arsene Lupin

Um... I find this whole absence of combat experience to be completely baffling. I've been anxious about POE for a while since Obsidian seemed so resolutely opposed to sharing anything substantial to the backers, but I still had faith that they could deliver a competent CRPG based on their prior work. But quest-only experience is... Not at all indicative of competence. Has Obsidian made any real attempt to justify this? I'd appreciate it if someone could point me at a defense for this nonsense.

FEEDBACK The title screen music is good, but too bland. A "title theme" should play, and that theme should be "grand." It should be a call to adventure. A strong, powerful piece of music that instils the player with excitement. Or at least it SHOULD be if the goal is to recapture the feel of Baldur's Gate and the other classic CRPGs of yore. The current music feels like background field music--very forgetable. Which is the opposite of what is needed--the title theme needs to be the MOST memorable music in the game. I seriously love the character portraits. Especially how several of them are "clones" -- using the same face with different skin tones/hair styles. That said, I do think there need to be a few more portraits. Non-white portraits seemed to be (very much) lacking, and I think there should be at least 3-5 different clones to accommodate each style of hair. Maybe it would be possible to alter the skin-tones of each portrait by applying a semi-transparent layer based on the skin-tone color the player selects for the 3D model? That would be really cool. I like the little bracketed dialog attributes, but they're a little unclear. I get what "clever" means and so on, but what about the second term indicating severity? IE "minor?" Does that mean the dialog option is only minor-ly clever? That it only has a small chance of being articulated properly? That I need to have a "clever" stat of at least a "minor" level in order to say it? If the latter, numbers would work better than words. IE, my character has 3 points in clever, so can say, "I'm clever [Clever 3]", but can't say "I'm super clever [Clever 4]." I seriously love the ambient sound effects. The audio quality is really, really clear. One thing that would be cool would be to add some "frictive" sound effects--like different intensities of wind blowing through trees/grass, footfalls on various terrains (dried leaves, grasss, dirt, sand, snow, rock, wood, wet sand, etc.). I'm not classifying this as a suggestion though because this stuff could already be in the game and I simply haven't heard it yet, or it could be stuff that's currently being worked on. It's also much more of a thing that would be "nice," but isn't as "necessary" as what I'm classifying as my suggestions. Really love the dialog. There's brevity, clarity and style--I don't get any since of the writers either trying to hard, or too little--something I haven't been able to say of ANY western-style RPG since the Infinity Engine days. When the game is minimized, the icon is really too small. At a 1920x1080 display resolution, it looks like the icon is upscaled 200-300%. It'd be nice if you could replace it with a higher-resolution icon. This is probably the least necessary feedback I can offer--but it's one of those polish things. I really like the little scroll & sound effect that pops up in the upper right corner of the screen when something is added to the journal. You know what would be cool? If mouse-clicking on that scroll would open up the journal screen.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUGGESTIONS I think the character customizations are "sufficient," but I would VERY MUCH like to see a few more facial models and--most especially--hair models. Speficially, I'd like to see at least 1-2 new "short hair" models for each gender, if possible. Add "real" tooltips. Right now, hovering a mouse icon over a character portrait will display that characters HP in a window... but tat window is over the character him or herself--instead, the tooltip HP window should appear exactly where the mouse cursor is. The dialog history window (lower right of GUI) should indicate the "time" status of the game, like in the old IE games. That is to say, when the player pauses the game dialog (in red) should appear reading "PAUSED," and when the game is unpaused another line of dialog should appear reading "UNPAUSED." As soon as I started the game I noticed there were several NPCs right near to my party--but only barely. The problem is that they blend too much into the terrain--there needs to be more contrast! It should be easier to see NPCs, I think, although I'm am not entirely certain how to go about making them more visible (in general). Not using green/brown color clothing would help, but that's not an ideal solution. Making the unit circles brighter or making them glow (maybe pulse slightly?) could help. Simple idle animations would also make them stand out more, as would generic VFX. I'm not sure what the temperature of the area is, but it seems like it would be easy to add a puff of breath vapor that appears and dissipates at regular intervals around each unit's "head." The lack of contrast is also a problem with the terrain. It's very hard to make out what a tree looks like when its leaves are the same color as the grass underneath it! I would very much like the multiple options, or tiers, of spell effect options that can be disabled--specifically passive VFX. For example, offensive passive and defensive passive. IE, if there's a passive defensive spell that creates a bubble of magical energy as a barrier around the caster, I would like the ability to disable that visual effect. One thing I hated about Baldur's Gate is that some of the best gear had always-active passives like that (cloak of mirroring, etc.) and it just looked incredibly stupid to see a party member PERMANENTLY surrounded by a giant glowing bubble. Or glowing. Or whatever. The same with offensive passives--like a flaming sword. If the sword is always going to be flaming (instead of only igniting while in combat), I think it's necessary to have to option to disable that effect entirely so you don't walk into your bedroom in an inn to go to sleep, with a giant sword strapped to your character's back shooting out great big gouts of fire.

In the options menu: when clicking on the Game tab, the Graphics tab and Sound tab, all of the tab buttons fail to display. In other words, the Option menu tabs only display properly when viewing the Auto-Pause and Controls tabs. In character creation, ALL of the portraits are visible at once. Female characters should only see female portraits; male characters should only see more portraits. Otherwise you're forcing the player to scroll through a lot of inapplicable portraits to find the correct ones. Pathfinding has some serious bugs. Maybe this was intentional, since the Infinity Engine had some notoriously bad pathfinding? Anyway, the two pathfinding bugs I've found are: sometimes a formation "waypoint" will not appear on the map for one character, which will cause the character to "run" off in a random direction with absurdly accelerated movement animations (like 300% normal speed). Secondly, sometimes when moving the party, they will move very, very slowly (with the movement animation slowed to like 30% normal speed) and will stop before reaching the "waypoint." It looks really ridiculous to see them super-sprinting one minute, and slogging about in slow-motion the next. I guess the easiest way to define this bug is: sometimes characters move way too fast, sometimes they move in slow motion. Even NPCs seem affected by the slow-motion/hyper-speed bug. The icon for the Small Horn Helm on the dwarf party member is incorrect. It is a bag of flour, maybe? This is either a bug, or you haven't finished implementing all the art assets yet and it's just a placeholder icon. Something like a black square with a big red X would be better for a placeholder art, though. The icon for the player-created character in the GUI has a big white circle on top of it, oriented in the lower right corner. I can't tell if this is supposed to be something or not. A bug? Or an inexplicable feature? I made my character a ranger with a stag animal companion. Shouldn't the animal companion have a portrait icon or something with the UI? Could this be what the weird white circle is supposed to be? (Clicking the white circle does not do anything). Not really a bug, but sometimes there is a noticeable delay (input lag) when opening up a menu screen, and other times the menus screens open immediately. This is one of those little polish things that needs to be tightened up as much as possible. While inside the church near the initial spawn point of the beta, moving the cursor over the area of the map near the exit will sometimes transform it to the proper "area transition" cursor, but it will also sometimes turn into the sword-shaped "attack" cursor. After leaving the church, the cursor remained locked to the "attack cursor" even when using it to move or talk to NPCs. This could be a generic bug with the cursor itself, or something wonky with the area transition in/out of the church. Game executable suddenly froze/crash and forced me to do a hard-restart to unfreeze as I was unable to end the process via the task manager. The only information I was able to record is that it was using 1680MB or memory when it crashed, and 14% CPU usage on a 3.4GHz quad-core.

I was worried when so much time passed before Obsidian showed off any of the game, and now it seems that my anxieties were justified--perhaps if they had been more open with the early development of the game, the main problems that I see in the Backer Beta could have been avoided or resolved. But with less than five months of development planned, it seems very unlikely Obsidian will be able to implement any substantial changes. In the course of my 3 hours with the backer beta, I compiled a fairly big list of bugs, general feedback and suggestions. But by the end of my first ride through the game, I realized that what I saw as the biggest problems with the game would be the most difficult to fix (because so much work has been done already), and also potentially the most detrimental to the overall enjoyment of the game. As you can see from the tags I chose, I am speaking of the visual and audio elements of the game. Specifically: VISUALS The visuals in the "wilderness" (or exterior areas of the first map) are very much lacking in contrast. Maybe I should try "color blind" mode to see if things improve (the game crashed on me before I could try it), but the "normal" visuals should be the "best," right? Well, maybe there was a reason color-blind mode was selected by default. The lack of contrast produces two problems: 1. Terrain is homogeneous. If I can't tell what a tree looks like because it's leaves are the same color as the grass underneath it, and it casts no shadow, there's no point in the tree being there at all. 2. Units/creatures are indiscernible. With the unit selection circles of NPCs/creatures hidden underneath grass, they may as well not exist. Without much contrast between themselves and the terrain, the NPCs/creatures are more difficult to spot than they should be. Superimposing the selection circles on top of the terrain would help some; maybe a small outline or "glow" around the NPCs/creatures would also help them stand out more. As would idle animations. And then there's a visual contrast that is in the game, but that works to its detriment: specifically the environmental animation. The animated water and doodads (like the waterwheel) look absolutely fantastic, but their presence contrasts far too much with the absensce of animation for the rest of the terrain. Contrasted with motionless NPCs, static grass, and unbending trees, the rest of the world looks incredibly lifeless by comparison. If the water is going to move, so should the grass; so should the trees; so should the animals inhabiting the world. MUSIC Maybe this is going to be a controversial opinion. I've seen a couple of people praising the music. Me? I find it to be incredibly bland. The field music is perfectly servicable for what it is--BGM. But the problem is that the title them (the music that plays at the menu) ALSO sounds like background music. The title theme should be the BEST, most memorable track of music in the game. Remember BG2, how each party member had his or her own theme music? Remember how dynamic and memorable those tunes were? Remember the title theme that played every time you launched the game? We all remember that, even years--or decades--after we played the game. BG2's title them was filled with a sense of wonder and grandeur--it was bold and dynamic and promised adventure and excitement. In other words, the title theme immediately set the tone for the adventure that would follow. Compared to the title theme in Pillars of Eternity, which sounds like the same sort of generic background music you'd hear in an Elder Scrolls game while traversing a swamp. There's no dynamism. No grandeur. No promise of bold adventures or sinister plots or romance or tragedy or anything. It's like standing in a medieval elevator. .... And of course, the biggest problem of all is that these aren't really aspects of the game that can readily be salvaged so late in development. It's possible they could crank out a few more tracks of music, and maybe create a decent title theme--but at this point I think we can safely declare it extremely unlikely that Obsidian has the time or resources to re-draw the maps with animated terrain. And I think that's really kind of depressing, because--the countless bugs aside--every other aspect of the game (that I've seen so far) seems to be EXACTLY what a successor to the Infinity Engine legacy should be: lots of roleplaying options, interesting quest design, and extremely well-written dialog. With so much of the game being so good, it's a shame that the most immediately noticeable aspects of the game--the visuals and music--are so lacking.

Pre-first impression: I am SOOO very glad they cut content from the beta. I was barely able to even dip my toes into the WL2 or DOS betas for fear of being spoiled. Cutting main story and stronghold content from the WL2 beta was absolutely the right move.

Isn't it too soon for beta? My understanding is that for a game to be in beta, it has to have all of the main features/functionality implemented... yet so far we haven't really seen anything of the UI, and very little of the actual "game" -- mostly I feel like we've just seen music and animated backgrounds.

Essentially, the plot-critical quest "Ebon Hawk ID Signature" is broken. Everything seems to work up until the cutscene that plays with the Ebon Hawk taking off... only instead of the story advancing, the game plays an incorrect cutscene from earlier in the story (some Duros(?) bounty hunters in the cantina, discussing the Exchange' trap). After the wrong cutscene plays, the party respawns in front of the Ebon Hawk--still on Nar Shaddaa--and the events with the droid repair shop are "reset." So, I can go back to the droid guy and request a new ID signature, but the quest is no longer active, and I'm unable to obtain a new ID signature because I no longer have the blank ID card. And, of course, there's no way to leave the planet because the Ebon Hawk demands a new ID signature. I'm playing the game with the Sith Lords Restoration patch... and even then I've encountered dozens of bugs. I've always heard people praise KOTOR2 effusively, but this is the second game-breaking bug I've found and if I can't find a way to get around it I'm just gonna give up entirely. So, please--help me out, would ya'? I'm thinking that I might be able to fix it by changing some of the global variables with the save editor--like the thing causing this might be that the wrong cutscene that plays might be assigned a "0" instead of a "1" or something--I don't know. I'm really desperate for help here... evidently, no one else in the whole Internet has had this problem, going by Google search results.

Honestly, I really hate seeing these updates. Each time I see an area design, it's just too much. This looks EXACTLY like my "ideal game." You know, that one game I've always wanted. It just shoots my expectations through the roof. Anyway, think we'll ever get an update re: side quest design? I'm curious whether or not the sidequests will be inconsequentially small (like fetch and collection quests) or bigger, in-depth fare like what we saw in Shadows of Amn.

The email update made the mistake of asking me what I think. .... I think it sounds too good to be true. I'm literally incredulous. I don't know, maybe it's because we haven't seen a real vertical slice of the game yet. Instead, all we're seeing and learning about are different parts--the mechanics of X, the features of Y, the environment for area A, the lore for setting B, etc., etc. And all of those parts look really, really good. But they're disparate parts, and I have a hard time believing they could fit into a fully cohesive game. .... So here's what I think: I really hope you can pull this game off. I really, desperately hope so. This is the kind of game the Western RPG genre desparately needs. Even if the game only realizes one tenth of its potential, it will be astonishing.

I think it's worth pointing out that acting evil--behaving selfishly, cruelly, violently, etc.--is inherently juvenile. It's unproductive and illogical, so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to see it represented in games any differently.

Ideally, all forms of storytelling should be in an RPG in equal measure: environmental storytelling (what you described); direct storytelling (the narrative); indirect storytelling (characterization); and peripheral storytelling (extra written lore, books, bestiary stuff, etc.). The point isn't to bombard the player with text and information... it's to allow the player to delve deeper into the setting, to learn things that would not or could not be revealed through other storytelling methods.

I agree, in part. I think sidequests need to be staggered out both chronologically (certain quests don't open up until certain points in the main plot) AND geographically. I think it was... George Ziets who described Baldurs' Gate II's sidequests as being like separate little D&D modules... and I liked that. One thing I really hate is when a sidequest makes you go from one area to another in order to complete it. Done sparingly, it's fine, but a lot of quests do that for EVERYTHING. In planescape torment, for example, I don't think there was a single quest that could be initiated and solved in the same ward. You constantly had to go through 2-3 areas at least for each quest, and if you did anything along the way, you'd get more quests. It had the same overall effect as Athkatla--delivering too many quests to the player too quickly. Bethesda's games are notoriously bad in this respect. They routinely craft quests that require the player to travel from one end of the game world to the other, and unless you ignore everything, you could spend 30-40 hours clearing the huge number of dungeons and other sidequests that would pop-up. The cool thing about the D&D-module style sidequests of BG2 was that they were self-contained. That was really cool. The only real problem I had was that most of the Amn quest lines had their "hooks" in Athkatla--the areas outside the city should have been on the map from the begining, you shouldn't have had to start a quest in Athkatla to complete the quest a dozen miles away from the city. Am I making any sense here?

That's why I mentioned the Civpedia. IT really is THE example to go by... fully indexed & searchable, set up just like a wiki so if a term appears in an article that has its own page, it's a link.

In the IE games, if you killed an enemy with a crit, they'd explode into a bunch of fleshy chunks. If that same kind of gruesome animation isn't in PE, I'll be sorely disappointed.

Huh. My rule is, "never trust a person whose first name and surname are alliteration." .... Anyway, anyone have any links to Ziets' speculation on BG3? I've only seen a few very generalized, uncredited ideas for a potential sequel (all of which struck me as fairly bad). I'd be quite interested in what an actual designer has to say.

When I say "feel," I'm not really talking about gameplay mechanics or narrative design here, but rather the general ambience of the game world and characters and player's role in that world. Shadows of Amn and Planescape Torment are probably my two favorite RPGs of all time, but when I think about which Infinity Engine game had the world I most enjoyed exploring... a world I really felt like I was a "part of"... the game that carried the general sort of ambience I most want to see in Eternity... it's the Icewind Dales. I really loved the atmosphere of those games--particularly in terms of the environment. It really felt like you were out in this vast, mysterious, mystical frontier--which I find a lot more interesting than spending a lot of time in heavily populated urban areas.

Isn't it simply a matter of setting up the game engine so it will only render X number of corpses at a time, and at X+1 the first corpse disappears, X+2 the second, and so on? I can understand the reasons why, but I've always loved the little decaying/decomposition animations you'd see in a lot of the old sprite-based RTS and RPG games. I would like, though, some kind of visual effect other than "fade into nothing." Final Fantasy X had this cool effect where corpses would explode into fireflies (basically), and Final Fantasies 7 and 8 did this cool "pop-out" style animation where the model textures were replaced with orange transparency, and then would "warp" away with a cool sound effect. I know neither of those would fit with Eternity... but I'd still like... something. Maybe make the transparency effect slightly slow, and move from one angle to another so it looks like the corpse is being "absorbed" into the ground? Or maybe make it look like it's burning into nothingness w/ a cool little sound effect? Not that I want to give you guys more work to do or anything, but maybe remember this if you've got some animators sitting around with nothing to do the week before release or so?

What about the manners/morality relationship? I get the feeling it was handled the way it was in the Infinity Engine because the dialog system was used to trigger combat situations (I.E., if you say X, character Y becomes hostile) and the engine itself really wasn't set up enough to handle different variables (I.E. if you turned down a quest, and then completed a quest and spoke to the NPC again, he or she would react as if you had accepted the quest in the first place). Is the Unity engine capable--and are the designers willing--to build a system where players can be judged BOTH by what they do AND what they say? That's really what I want to see. A sort of 2-state (at least) success resolution: 1. The NPC likes how the player spoke to him or her, gives better quest reward items/dialog 2. The NPC doesn't like how the player spoke to him or her, gives inferior quest reward items/dialog ---- Anyway, in terms of overall dialog design and crafting "natural" response for the player... I agree with you, Josh... J.E.... Mr. Sawyer(?)... Cool Developer Guy Who Always Seems to have A Different Haircut. But, honestly, I don't really feel like that cohesion is too much of an issue considering your involvement in the project and how well everything sort of meshed together dialog-wise in the Icewind Dales, Neverwinter 2, and New Vegas. One of the things that can really ruin an RPG for... or at least stick out in my mind for (literally) decades after playing... is when those player dialog options are NOT natural-sounding... at all. The example I constantly remember is in Baldur's Gate. In Infinity Engine games, I always played a Wizard, which meant high INT. Sometimes, that would let me choose special dialog options that offered greater insight into one thing or another, or allowed me to glean more informative dialog from similarly "intelligent" NPCs. Except for one encounter. At a pub. In Baldur's Gate (the city). In Baldur's Gate (the game). Some of you may know -exactly- what I'm talking about. You encounter a very dull-witted half-orc assassin, and if your PC has a sufficiently high INT score, you're able to choose a dialog option that lets you avoid combat. Thing is, the "tone" of that dialog is -drastically- different than all of the other dialog in the entire game. Suddenly, my wizard became a fast-talking Eddie-Muphy-in-an-80s-movie character... and it was jarring. ---- So, while I understand that it's important to craft dialog that caters to whom the player is speaking (the NPC), and I'd also really like to see some sort of mechanic that caters to the kind of character the player is role-playing as. What might well would simply be a "regard" stat for NPCs like what you see in Divine Divinity, (and I believe this was in New Vegas, too), where the NPCs react to the player different based on what that "regard" value is, which is modified by the choices the player makes in dialog (and by a reputation value, too, I think). I dunno.

Yeah, that's really mostly what I'm getting at--more diversity with art design of monsters; specifically with dragons. But, inside that diversity, I'd still like to see a dragon with feathers. ~__~

There are no real archetypes I hate... but I've seen plenty of characters "done wrong," mostly in Bioware games, so here's my (short) list of things that should NOT be in ANY game EVER: A character whose personality revolves entirely around his or her sexuality. A character specifically designed to be utterly inoffensive to everyone... by way of having no personality at all. A character with no discernible flaws or eccentricities. A character who is shoehorned into filling out a specific role in the narrative, when doing so is antithetical to his or her personality. ...Honestly, I'm much rather make a list of the kinds of characters I REALLY WANT TO SEE! A loyal comrade with a few screws loose and and a knack for saying really funny things (but not meaning to)--like Minsc. A wisecracking sidekick with a proclivity for hyperbole, falsehood, and uncertain loyalties--like Morte. A "stranger in a strange world" character who doesn't really fit in, and doesn't try to--like Viconia. Characters whose personality you can change dramatically through your interactions--like the relationships that would result in alignment-changes in Baldur's Gate and KOTOR. Silly mascot character, like Boo and the blacksmith-imp in Throne of Bhaal. A TALKING LIZARD MAN A character who establishes a "fake" personality and maintains the facade for a long time, who you can't really get to know until he betrays the part--like Yoshimo. A lazy-but-super-smart character, like Yang Wenli. (Major props if you know who that is).

Note: I realize many of us are part of the crowdfunding initiative for both this game, Project Obsidian (which, I'll be honest, I find the most exciting all of the crowdfunded cRPGs) and InXile Entertainment's "Torment: Tides of Numenera." InXile's Torment forums have a very nice set of mechanics in place for contributing game ideas--a mechanic I have made full use of in the past several days. My basic line of thinking was this: What are the things that annoy the hell out of me in isometric RPGs? What are the things that I always want to see an RPGs but never do? That train of thought led me to propose several ideas both mechanical and aesthetic. Because both Torment: Tides of Numenera and Project Eternity are very much being developed in the vein of classic, Infinity Engine cRPGs, I feel that these ideas are applicable--and, to a certain degree, vital--to both titles. As I mentioned, these are things that I believe belong in every RPG of good standing, and while some may read these notions of mine and think, "that's obvious," or, "that's too simple of a thing to bother proposing,"--and while I may agree with those sentiments--I still believe that some things simply need to be said. I will do my best to fully articulate these ideas as best I can--which means I'll be writing as much as I feel necessary to clearly convey both my ideas in specific, as well as their emotional impetus. If you don't have the time or inclination to properly hear me out, please just avoid this thread. _____________________________________________________________________________ Expanded Journal Content: Bestiaries, Biographies and Big ol' Encyclopedias Alternate title: Lore, Lore, Lore Galore This idea is very simple, so simple, in fact, that I'm kind of shocked so few Western RPGs have gone with it--what I'm proposing here, after all, is a very common thing in Eastern games. Basically: expand the utility and content and functionality of the journal. In most WRPGs, the journal is simply a document the player can consult to see the progress states of various quests... and that's it. The only Western RPG I can recall that really tried to do anything more with the journal system was Planescape Torment. Essentially, I want to see the "Journal" become a nexus for all kinds of information. All kinds of information. The quest journal is just the bare minimum. I want to see short biographies on all of the party members and prominent NPCs--and I want those biographies to be updated as we learn more about their pasts, and as we see their destinies unfold. I want to see a Bestiary, where I can view models, sprites or concept art of all the strange and wonderful animals, monsters and races in the game--with information about who and what and why and where they are. Final Fantasy XII had a fantastic Bestiary section, where once you killed an enemy it would be added to the Bestiary, and as you killed more and more, additional information would be added to the Bestiary entry--ranging from basic information about where the enemies could be found, to cool little pieces of lore. An in-depth Bestiary is a fantastic way to flesh out all the little details of a setting that simply can't be inserted into a game through narrative or dialog. Hell, I'd even love to see a "Library" style menu, where each time you open up a book in your inventory, the contents of that book are added to the Library menu so you can sell/dump the book, but still access the text. I also want to see detailed encyclopedias of key concepts and terms with regard to the setting, explaining those little details that are important--things that can't easily be addressed with the in-game narrative, yes, but also everything else. The Civpedia in Civilization games? That's what I want. The journal screen should be a massive repository for lore in general. The benefits of fleshing out this system are, I think, obvious. First, it allows all of the crucial information to be located in a single space, which makes things much more accessible; second, it adds a great deal of depth to the setting--which, in turn, heightens the players' sense of immersion; and third, it provides a very important resource for players to remind themselves about information in the case of not being able to play the game for a long span of time. I can't count the number of times I've come back to an RPG I was in the middle of after several months, only to start the game over because I couldn't remember enough about the world, the setting, or the characters. I'm not really sure how much extra effort this kind of expansion would involve. I get the feeling that very little "new" information would have to be created, as when constructing a world, this information about the setting and beings that inhabit it is very necessary. But assembling and organizing all of that information into a single set of menus could be fairly time-consuming. Nonetheless, this is a feature I really enjoy seeing.

@samm: I agree completely. The descriptors shouldn't be visible unless they're tied to a specific stat and have succeed/fail states. I think I kind of forgot to say this explicitly, but the general idea I'm getting at is that designers ditch the "archetype" for dialog construction, and instead focus on different tones. I.E., instead of writing dialog options as "what would this archetype say, and what would that archetype say?" (which is how Avellone describes the process), it would be better to simply focus on tones. I.E., the NPC says X, so what would be the natural responses and in what tones? That kind of thing. So that gamers can use dialog to role-play their characters as they want, rather than being forced to adhere to one of the developers' archetypes.

I can see where you're coming from, Dream, but I don't think the number of arcs are wholly independent from the quality of the narrative. Simple narrative structure can have a huge impact on a story. "The" example of this is Rashomon--a very simple, not-terribly-interesting story, that becomes insteresting chiefly through the structure of the narrative (how the reader/viewer--it was a short story, first--learns about the events of the narrative) and its presentation. A well-crafted narrative structure can elevate a story, whereas a poorly crafted narrative structure (see: Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect 3, Final Fantasy XIII, etc.) can be a huge detriment to the overall narrative structure. .... Think of it this way. One of the biggest elements of gaming is "exploration." Bethesda's Pete Hine's describes it as the feeling of looking out at the world, seeing a mountain, and wondering, "I wonder what's on the other side?" -- And then finding out. There's an inherent joy in exploration--in striving and seeking and finding. There is a thrill to discovery. We can all agree on this, correct? But exploration and discovery do not just apply to the geography of a game. When you play a game, you are not simply exploring a world, you are also exploring a story. If the narrative structure is simple, that means there's less to discover--it's like journeying through a flat plain. You can see the vast terrain of the story laid out before you, and though you cannot see the smaller details in the distance, you're still able to easily grasp the greater whole. More complex narrative structures serve as forests and mountains and trees: the narrative is winding and obscured. As you proceed through it, sometimes you can catch a glimpse of where it will lead, far in the distance--and sometimes the narrative takes an abrupt turn, and you find you're heading in a brand new direction. Well-crafted multi-arc narratives do not necessitate deeper, more elaborate and enthralling and interesting narrative experiences... but they do encourage them. It's not really about a story "calling" for multiple arcs... for texturing... but more about that more complex narrative structures arise naturally out of dynamic stories and settings. .... Or, we can consider narratives spatially. Imagine each arc as an aspect of the overall story. Each additional arc adds a new dimension. First, you have a line. Then a shape. Then an object. Each arc allows you a different angle from which to view the world and the characters than inhabit it. I would argue that multi-arc narratives are inherently superior to single-arc narratives, in that they provide more potential for narrative depth. Starcraft is perhaps the best example of this, as each arc in the original game did a great deal to define and then re-define the characters and setting. And then the expansion introduces two new story arcs that go so very much further with the characters and setting and story. .... EDIT: And as for this idea that certain narrative elements would be shoehorned into the story... again, I think that's a misunderstanding of the cause-and-effect at play here. If you have good writing, it will naturally form a more complex narrative structure. That's just something that happens. As I've been saying, there are two different ways this narrative can form--as a multi-arc narrative, where different or semi-related stories play off one another, or mysteries, where the complexities of the narrative are hidden, and not fully evident until the end (if done right). Mystery storytelling can often be used to mask poor writing, but generally speaking, a well-crafted narrative structure is a consequence of skilled writing, not a causal factor.

Because there's more than one reason to have user-defined UI-scaling, that's why. It's entirely possible (and in my experience, very common) to have a game that you like at one resolution, only to have that resolution render the UI too small to use. It's about more than just resolution, it's also about proportion. User defined UI scaling + user-defined font sizes ensure that every user will be able to play the game in its best possible form. Farsighted people can play with smaller UI elements and text; nearsighted people can play with larger UI elements and text--and neither would have to sacrifice visual fidelity to do so.

@PrimeJunta: I couldn't have said it better myself. Partly because pain pills make me unnecessarily verbose (seriously, check out the posts I've made today: I write waaaay too much and say waaay too little). I view the different "arcs" for each race in DAO as sub-narratives... they're not really part of the main narrative arc (which I found embarassingly simple). I guess, my impetus for posing this question is chiefly my disappointment in DAO's narrative. It, too, was billed as a successor to the legacy of the Infinity Engine classics--and to me, it failed miserably. I want to see more care placed into the construction of the narrative, and in my experience, there are two basic constructions that work best: the double, or rather, multiple-arc narrative (come to think of it, Tales Of games are famous for these, too) and "mystery" narratives. I would argue that PST is a better example of mystery narrative, as Fallout fits more as mystery/double-arc style narrative, since the first arc involves obtaining the water chip, and the second arc is about the FEV. ---- You know, I said that multi-arcs were common in Japanese games, but almost universally absent, in Western games, but that's not entirely true if we consider expansions. Expansion packs often continue the narrative of the original game, yet introduce new, subsequent narrative arcs, transforming single-arc narratives into multi-arc narratives. Case in point: Throne of Bhaal, Brood War, and... actually, those are the only two "really awesome" expansions I can think of off the top of my head right now.