Sonntam

That... sounds like an interesting potential for a game concept/mechanic on its own. Only allow 1 character in your party to fight, whilst the rest is more of an entourage/escort group that you protect/defend. Hm. Escort Quest: The Game.

What I liked about first KotoR was that it allowed me to actually role play. I didn't care about light or dark side and the game allowed me to lie or avoid straight answer in all instances that required me to choose a side. I was out for revenge - to kill everyone that betrayed me, but I was not heartless. I would help those in need, but only if they were not complete beggars and I was expecting at least a small reward for my work. I would kill everyone that treatened me, my team or my goal outright without any hessitation, but I could never crush those that have no way of fighting back (impossible odds - plague victics in first planet). In the end - I destroyed Bastila and cut Maliks head off with no mercy. Thanks for the medal republic, see you in dark space. Ended up with neutral alignment. My favorite companions were HK and Binto. Good times. My gripe with Kotor is actually how hard it is to suspend disbelief. I played a character who was very greedy and often killed people for ****s and giggles... and then Bastila turns around and pats me on the back, because I'm a good person?? Really? Even giving money to ten beggars should not negate evil actions so easily. And since I was sometimes Dark Side and sometimes Light Side, it felt very weird to call companions call me Satan reborn and then a couple missions later praise me for my kindness and tell me how awesome I am at being Light Side. It would probably feel better if I stuck to being Light Side OR strictly to Dark Side. By playing a Chaotic Neutral character I effectively gimped by whole playthrough. (And it really doesn't help that Carth is meant to be a character my fem!protagonist is supposed to care about. Especially the scene at Malak's ship was hilarious, I literally cried from laughing too hard. Also, I am rather prickly about the fact that Juhani, one of the few companions I really like, has almost as few lines as T3-M4. At the same time Carth argues with me about the same stuff for four times in a row and the endless stories of Canderous were not that interesting either.) I guess I'd like the game more if I played first Kotor and then Kotor 2. I just keep comparing first Kotor to Kotor 2 and Kotor loses on pretty much all fronts. Not really surprising, considering that Kotor 2 is my favorite game of all times.

It is for this kind of game. Publisher providing money is standard protocol (see, again, the Mandate, Starpoint Gemini 2, Shadows Heretic Kingdoms, Homeworld Remasterd....): if they did differently here, I'm not obligated to know it. The main Kickstarter selling point was that Obsidian will make a game according their vision and the vision of their backers. A publisher appearing and meddling with the game development would be actually making this selling point void. I really feel you haven't been keeping up with updates on game development and your memory on Kickstarter campaign is equally fuzzy.

Source? There was nothing along the lines promised in Kickstarter or in any updates after Kickstarter.

Playing Kotor for the first time. I played Kotor 2 a year ago and now decided the time has come to play first Kotor too. A bit of a disappointment, but on the other hand I promised myself to replay Kotor 2 after I'm finished. So I got that to look forward to. After that I will probably finish Dark Messiah and other games in my backlog. The "old" goes to the style. Basically not old but old-school. Other than that, of course it is modern; it runs in high resolutions and uses a new 3d graphics engine. But the style of graphics is done the old way. The IE way. I meant something different. I heard someone saying "omg same graphic of Baldur's gate what a shame, i expected some improvements, wtf" and i was complaing that thoose people can't see the huge difference between the 2 products in terms of graphics. Actually PoE is probably the best looking 2d isometric game avaiable Same here. I played a couple older isometric games and I absolutely hated how they look. But Pillars of Eternity looks great on a big monitor and with high graphics. Lots of detail, less fuzzy objects, much, much better textures. In fact I may like PoE graphics more than those of Shadowrun and God knows Shadowrun is damn pretty.

Actually Paradox gave them no money at all. Paradox just handles producing physical copies, physical goodies and then shipping them to backers. That's it. And if Paradox gave money, it would mean that Paradox would have a say in what kind of game is made. That is what Obsidian did not want, so they would not have taken money if Paradox offered them any.

That's fair. In ME3 I was almost forcibly entered into a homosexual relationship with Kaiden. I thought I was just being a good bro, but then it got weird. Really weird. I've felt permanently uncomfortable ever since then. In my opinion, in ME3 the romance triggers were alright. Like, yeah, Kaidan hits on you and then you tell him off and that's it. Unlike first ME where Liara and Kaidan/Ashley ALWAYS hit on you and make drama. What's even better, there is a bug that if you do too many side quests after rejecting Liara... you get locked into romance with her! I rage quit after that, because I really wanted my Shepard romance absolutely no one in first ME and transfer the saves to ME2. Well, tough luck.

You see this just highlights the illogical nature of some of the criticism about Romance, why is it weird? Its a game, isn't everything about steps you need to complete ? Why single out Romance ? Because among all the things that you do steps by steps, mechanically, in a game, the most weird one is indeed developing a romantic relationship between your character and some other one. I mean the very association of the word "romance" with the word "mechanic" which is all over this thread just... feels very very weird. All of this feels way way less weird than a romantic relationship. Friendship has never been a game mechanic of any good rpg as far as I know. It's either automatic, part of the narration, or featured in sims-like games. In most Bioware games you need to do a loyalty mission/give enough gifts/achieve enough friendship points for REAL friendship to be unlocked. The requirements for romance and for friendship are normally pretty much the same, except for romance you pick a couple flirting lines on top of that. I said good rpgs. Bioware gifts, which they did only once if im not mistaken, is exactly a sims-like game mechanic btw. Although edited before i saw your answer sorry for that :> Bioware are one of the few studios that ever did romance. If you exclude them, because they are not quality enough... well, what games are we even going to talk about? Baldur's Gate? It may be a good game, but in terms of romance and friendship building it was absolutely mediocre, worse than Bioware games even. Baldur's Gate was made by Bioware. Oh, right, absolutely forgot. I'm really having trouble remembering good games with romances in them... Alpha Protocol is a questionable choice and the romances are sort of weak too, Kotor 2 maybe counts, maybe not, I found the romances there to be weird... what else is there? Witcher with it's soft core porn?

You see this just highlights the illogical nature of some of the criticism about Romance, why is it weird? Its a game, isn't everything about steps you need to complete ? Why single out Romance ? Because among all the things that you do steps by steps, mechanically, in a game, the most weird one is indeed developing a romantic relationship between your character and some other one. I mean the very association of the word "romance" with the word "mechanic" which is all over this thread just... feels very very weird. All of this feels way way less weird than a romantic relationship. Friendship has never been a game mechanic of any good rpg as far as I know. It's either automatic, part of the narration, or featured in sims-like games. In most Bioware games you need to do a loyalty mission/give enough gifts/achieve enough friendship points for REAL friendship to be unlocked. The requirements for romance and for friendship are normally pretty much the same, except for romance you pick a couple flirting lines on top of that. I said good rpgs. Bioware gifts, which they did only once if im not mistaken, is exactly a sims-like game mechanic btw. Although edited before i saw your answer sorry for that :> Bioware are one of the few studios that ever did romance. If you exclude them, because they are not quality enough... well, what games are we even going to talk about? Baldur's Gate? It may be a good game, but in terms of romance and friendship building it was absolutely mediocre, worse than Bioware games even.

You see this just highlights the illogical nature of some of the criticism about Romance, why is it weird? Its a game, isn't everything about steps you need to complete ? Why single out Romance ? Because among all the things that you do steps by steps, mechanically, in a game, the most weird one is indeed developing a romantic relationship between your character and some other one. I mean the very association of the word "romance" with the word "mechanic" which is all over this thread just... feels very very weird. All of this feels way way less weird than a romantic relationship. Friendship has never been a game mechanic of any good rpg as far as I know. It's either automatic, part of the narration, or featured in sims-like games. In most Bioware games you need to do a loyalty mission/give enough gifts/achieve enough friendship points for REAL friendship to be unlocked. The requirements for romance and for friendship are normally pretty much the same, except for romance you pick a couple flirting lines on top of that.

If you want to roleplay a "clever" character, better level Perception. Most checks concerning quick wit and recognizing someone is lying to you, is tied to Perception. Not sure how important Perception is for paladins, though.

https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/570649725021528064 Countdown to Eternity thread it being closed soon. I'm going to guess this means answers will come in equally soon.

It's annoying to run back and forth all the time. Backer beta may not have such large areas for running back to become very burdensome, but I personally have very little tolerance for wasting time, especially for so little gain.

Yes, there will be.

Not really. I am sure that there is a formula to make RPG 's successful for the average gamer.as in, there must be a specific mixture of (complexity of) story, graphics, action etc. which will most appeal to as large a group as possible. And that group and that mixture will then count as the average,which is not what this specific game is designed for. This specific game is designed for a specific audience, and people like Luckmann, Stun and me want to reserve this type of game as it is and not have it become more average. That said, glad the game is getting good press. I really don't understand the logic how a game can go from: made for a niche => mainstream likes it => loses qualities that made it niche => becomes even more mainstream If mainstream likes a niche game, then it means that the niche game has to stick to its guns and what made it special. Otherwise they lose customers (even mainstream customers) because it will no longer be the type of game that people liked. Especially since we are talking about Obsidian who does not have some publisher telling they have to become more "mainstream". If you ask me, you are all overreacting and are overprotective of the genre. Right now what we need are more isometric strategy games, not less. And if some of them are more streamlined and mainstream-y we win in the end anyway, because the larger the genre becomes the more games there are, including the very-very grognardy type.

:::shakes head::: What the hell is wrong with you people? I kissed my mother last week. Doesn't mean I'm romancing her. You can't romance Annah in PS:T any more than you can Romance Dakkon. I certainly hope you don't use tongue while kissing your mother. I also hope you don't playfully bite her and I certainly hope she doesn't bite back. Just saying.

Also Annah and Nameless One kissed, too. That's as romancey as it can get.

@Sonntam: 3:18-3:19 (Pause) There's no space for any artillery weaponry (unless you can attack/defend several maps apart). But maybe you can get mercenaries to defend your stronghold or something, NPC units or whatnot. Maybe an Ogre even ;P but I don't think you'd get to pin-point or custom place them in any way other than their set-positioning (if there's even anything like this). Though, the walls above the gates looks like a great place to put a Wizard or some archers. There is still room outside of the stronghold for artillery weapons. That is, if we can fight outside stronghold walls and are not forced to stay inside the stronghold. To be honest, I would already be okay if we had some kind of traps we could set up beforehand or could recruit stronghold NPCs to aid us (like you said, put some archers on walls) and so on. I just want stronghold combat to be a bit more than just "here is a normal fight, only it the enemies come in waves). I would love to see some kind of planning before the battle and being able to use the fact that the fight happens on MY terrain and not in just some wilderness area.

What ? No inter-buddies fights ? Is this official ? Not official, but I can't really imagine companions here fighting it out like that. We don't have that many companions after all and if they just kept killing each other then we would be in real trouble. The companions may still bicker and have their own disagreements, though. It just won't get violent, I guess.

It had been already mentioned that the devs can reuse animations that already exist in game (run summoning animation backwards or use the dying animation). The last month is for polish and such small annoyances are exactly what is being taken care of right now.

I would like to hear more about strongholds! We had a backer update about a year ago, but I wondered if you could share more details now. For example, ow will attacks on strongholds look like? Just enemy NPCs storming through the gates and attacking you? Or is there slightly more to it? Can one build catapults or set up any kind of defenses in the courtyard?

I also don't get it. He seems kind of contradictory as well. Like, as the God of Light, you'd think he's the Big Good Guy, right? But he started the Saint's War so... he's a kind of a douche? Spoiler: all gods are douches, only to varying degrees. And Eothas may have thought he had good reasons to start a war. Like, make everyone worship him! That's a noble goal, right. Especially since you are so cool and kind and everyone would totally be better off worshipping you and not that **** Magran.

There is a documentary for the development of the game. It's part of Champion and Royal Edition. Also, I think you can also buy the documentary separately by upgrading your pledge at the Obsidian backer portal.

Also, it should be impossible to enter houses. And add a penalty for being inside caves. Everytime you make a step forward there should be a chance for you to hit your head at the ceiling.

I am going to play a rogue who worships Wael. Since she's been a thief for a long time, she really appreciates the value of well kept secrets. When people don't see you, don't know you're there, they can't catch you. I want to roleplay my rogue as someone who sees as Wael as someone who can hide her away from danger and keep her out of sight. When main plot of Pillars of Eternity starts rolling, it's going to be fun to watch my character get more and more into spotlight. Can't exactly hide from people now, now that you live in a huge stronghold and everyone can come knocking at your doorstep. Equally, there will be even more opportunities for uncovering secrets of other people... my character may wonder if that's a gift from Wael and what exactly is expected of her to do with new found knowledge. Priests can choose a deity. But I wouldn't be surprised if one or two NPCs asked our characters if we worship a specific god. It's a good opportunity to flesh out a character, after all.