Istmal

No, a single mouse movement doesn't matter. But when you're in combat with six characters, the character panels located on side, and the actions along the bottom... you can end up with a lot of screen traverses per combat round. You move to select a character, move down to switch to bow, move up to select the target, move to select another character, move down to pick a spell, move up to choose the target... It all adds up to lower efficiency and greater tedium. hmm... to be honest, when I played BG1&2, I've never done it that way. Even now, when I play BG EE, I choose a character by clicking on it on the 'game screen', not by clicking on the portrait. Or simply by presing key-shortcut: 1,2,3... To me those portraits are for: 1. how much damege was dealt to my party member. 2. party member status: blessing, speed, labirynth.. 3. switching betewwn characters in 'inventory mode'. 4. maybe something more, but I can't figure it out now... You don't have only one way to select one party member or another, and those portraits are not only for one thing. Seriously, I want them to by 'visable', not mini-hidden-icon-in-the-corner-of-the-screen, just because 'it mists the battlefield'. One can move his camera to see what is there, it's made for this.

"8 pre-made companions and 8 hired adventurers". What is the difference between one and the another? I belive that both have their own quests etc. etc. What makes them different? 'pre-made' are plot-tied, hired are not?

You mean just like Baldur's Gate? Where every character had additional slot for alternative weapon and fighters had four of them? Dunno. I think I vaguely remember crushing weapons being better against skeletons but I may be making that up in my head. Are you saying the BG series also played rock/paper/scissors wrt certain weapon types being optimized against certain armor types? if I remember correctly in D&D rules used in BG & BG2, were hidden addictional -AC against damage types in every armor. for ex.: armor AC 0, -2AC against crushing, -0AC against slice damage, etc.

hmmm... I had much over 100k gold in BG2 and I must say, that i liked how it looked in the inventory window ;p but it's true, that I bought every item I needed and still had soo much gold. it would be nice to have something to spend it for. I like the crafting idea.I belive there will be some armor sets, so it will be a good way to collect them fully and kill monsters wearing items you want to show them before they die I can't say that I like the idea of derubility on items in IE-like-game. I understand that my sword can breake when I parry an attack. Some time ago I played BG1 again (the enhanced one), the poorly made swords that broke in the middle of a fight - I had 4 weapons of one type for times like that. But when I found the magic 2h sword... it was a glourious day, because i knew: "it's indestructible!". it will be fairy dissapointing to find a super-mega-legendary sword and after, lets say 1h of fighting, it'll be like: "oh... it broke? what kind of artifact is it?" this item waited hundrets of years to be found just to be broken after few hits? i hope there is upgrade to weapons like 'doesn't lose derubility', and those powerful items will have it from the start. consumables? there always were, and will be some of those in RPGs. consumables will surely be very useful on higher difficulty. go fot it!

Some of ideas for UI are really good (Karkarov, Morgulon), and sone of them not. One showed by the devs is also a nice one, but had some wasted space. I played in every IE game and other similar ones, but i can't say, that 'IWD had better UI than BG', or 'I didn't like ToEE UI'. Each was quite good and easy to play with. What I must say: combat log is a 'must-have'. Some ppl want to have it by the left/right side of the screen, but in my opinion it should be in the middle - just like in the IWD, BG, or even Gorasul (IWD2 had it for nearly whole width of the screen, so I think it counts too). It's the place were you can always see and it's easy to check what is going on ("What?! I one hited a dragon?! ahh... deathbringer assault..."). As for the 'talking with NPC case'. I thought, that it would be cool, if it looked like the 'event screen' (showed before). Of course it will take too many time and effort to do it for every NPC so it won't gonna happen. If not this, then I think every 'loose window' will be far worse than simply expanded combat log with options to choose what to say (please don't do zoom ins while talking to the NPC and blacken bottom of the screen with text on it like in some games [it's a horrible idea imo.]). Ps: sorry for the grammar/language mistakes - it's not my native language.