LKD

Maybe it would be called fluff, but I like to think of it as immersion. If everyone stands around statically, it takes away from the game. People percieve more than they realize. If no one moves around that can be an exceptable limitation but in the back of your mind you know that it's poor design. If they stand around doing nothing I begin to feel that I'm not playing a game with characters. At some level they have to attempt to mimic being people or else you won't enjoy any of the game. No ammount of extra quests will compensate for an environment where you interact with signposts.

Considering the prolification of wide screen 16:9 or 16:10 monitors, if the screen is not mainly side bars, I am concerned that you won't be able to utilize the setting as well as you could.

I understand that. I was just thinking that a little translucent haze along all the cut lines of the ceiling will give a more ethereal feel to the room, and in turn, player's eyes less reason to be drawn to the cut lines. I feel personally that the stark lines are a bit of a distraction for my attention.

I know what you mean. I'm doing a little QA now, and honestly, I would rather drink lye to end the suffering. You have to be a real zelot about details. I'd be fun to help, certainly, but they have to pay you for a reason...

It's certainly a feasible thing. Problem is... How much programming are they going to put into the companions when they could put that same effort into the player's character story, or the world's size? It all comes down to economics sadly.

I like the scene and the detal in the room. It looks great. I especially like the environmental lighting's effect on the area, specifically the book case at the top. I have 3 concerns which I'll try to explain, I hope. They are somewhat minor, but I believe would lend to a better experience for the players. The column tops being pure black seem to break up the room and feels like it's breaking the artistic design. I would love to see a little translucency to the tops so they don't seem so foreign to the scene. Possible all cut sections if that's even possible. The characters as stated by a couple others seem to not have enough shadow to them. While the majority of the enemies do blend in well with the environment, the two in the lower left and all the player's team seem to be cut and paste into the scene in a manner that seperates tehm from the scene. The armor detail is great, and I love the characters, but they seem to be lacking a proper amount of shadow to fit the surroundings. I don't believe that they need more flare to stand out as someone else mentioned (Though i would love to see eamples of how we can pick their colors and what effect that has on the various armors), I would like them to feel like they are part of the setting more. Last one, which is more of a personal preference, I have always been bothered by characters that hold their weapons horizontally. I would really like to see their non-attacking poses to feel like they are natural. Where the weapons hang towards the ground more and not so unnatural. Let me see if I can dig up an example.... Less this where the character seems to have wrist muscles of the gods: http://ghostknight.net/dndrealm/dnd/images/DrizztDoUrden.jpg And more like this where they seem a little more realistic in terms of feeling relaxed: http://wizards.com/dnd/images/xph_gallery/80491.jpg And if the weapon is a pole weapon where it's extra long you can always hike up on the shaft. Not sure about two handed swords as you would either have to lean the weapon along their arm, have them sheath it, or have them drag it behind them... Anyways, I like the scenery. Feels right. The column tops probably deserve a little translucency. I would probably add more tonal darkness to the characters.

It's all it really comes down to without a professional market survey. I feel that there is better financial sense in producing a designer add-on for persistance of the IP and for extending sales of the game beyond it's shelf life. I would be very curious on what the developers used in presentation of the economic viability when they tried to secure funding for the game. I would be really eye opening understand what they expected in terms of reception considering the game is going to be a difficult sale to anyone who hasn't played the engine before. Think we could petition them?

I'm sure that the game will have it's fair share of easter eggs for those who want to find eveything there is to find.

At worst, modding is a nice bit of advertising for the developer. If IE wasn't mod friendly, I doubt that there would be half as many people interested in seeing an updated version of the genre in P:E. Spellhold and the like keep people playing the game far longer than they would without the ability, and build a community around the IP that will carry it over to the next iteration quite well. It's fairly easy to sell a new product to people invested in modding and playing mods, it's much harder to reinvigorate interest in a game gone so many years later without this. If Fallout 3 & NV didn't having modding can you imagine how much advertising they would have to buy to get the player reinvigorated in the IP? HL2 Sold about as many copies as HL1, Skyrim doubled the sales of Oblivion. To me it feels like the capability is what helps sell the next venue.

Yes, exactly. I surely didn't word it well enough, but the feeling i got from the posts far too regularly was that the theme of character personalities in PS:T weren't varried enough for a larger audience. While BGII had a wider appeal but lacked a compairable depth to their personalities. Thinking back on it, they seem a little cartoonish but I liked it for the setting. Likely this would be a view others feel in their preference to PS:T as a better experience in that regard. I do wish I had a greater history of playing these to mke a better assetion, but sadly I transitioned to out of the genre too quickly.

It's mentioned a few times by the posts, and really detailed by several of you, but I wonder why the comments keep coming back to Fetch quests being necessary or useful? I think the reward XP should come after meeting the goal, not when you complete the arc. Let me try to give an example or two... You walk into a town, they have little speach bubbles above their head remarking about how their daughter got bit by a rat and they're really sick. A fe others of the citizenry comment on this regularly to note there is a rat problem. No need for a quest or marker, or what have you. If you wander around the town exploring and kill all the rats around the town, kill 20 and you get a dig and a bonus XP number for letting you know you fixed the problem, the plague doesn't start and the town improves and they no longer talk about the rats but about something else. If you ignore it, the people get sicker and the next time you come back a lot of the NPC's have died leaving the stores hurting for stock. You walk into a town an people complain regularly that they wish they could overthrow the bad duke. If you ask people about it, they clam up, but if you are persistant you find the leader in the tavern. He remarks that he likes your sword, but would rather a dozen weapons to help his people. This opens a dialoge with the blacksmith to buy a dozen swords for him xp ding and your done, report the leader to the duke for an xp ding, you can steal them from the duke with an xp ding when you hand them over, or you can gather them up at your leisure and hand them over for an xp ding. None of the successful options require a quest as far as I can tell. And depending on the path you take, the town changes its reaction to you and any bonuses in interactions. In both cases there doesn't need to be a quest giver, quest marker, or any fetching at all, so much as a comment or 12 about a problem that you can effect. BGII did this with Nalia where she gives the speech when you enter into the tavern, but after the dialoge, you are free to ignore it, act, or what have you. I'm afraid that I don't see where fetching quests are in any way necessary. You can probably remove every single one and no one would notice a lack of XP.

I have always been a fan of druids, not for the balance of nature or equaling out of forces which is impossible to portray, but because I love the thought that their power comes from life assisting their will. I really like the thought that a druid can with a couple snips of flowers ground up in earth and root you have a concoction to cure illness. That they can will the earth to let rain fall on a drought riddled landscape. Or for practical purposes, they ask the trees to caputure their enemies with roots, summon a bee swarm to assail the enemy. Previously one of the posters mentioned that they should have inherant area bonuses and detriments to those nearby. I really like this idea. I'd also like them to be crafter's of potions good or bad so they're more akin to herbalists and combat controllers than a shape shifting bear that is always second rate to the ranger and fighter.

I'll slightly disagree here, I far often see people remark in this thread how they didn't like most or any of the characters of PS:T. Jethro touched on that just a couple posts up. It was a theme that some didn't find suitable to their game interest. The point of the diversity of the characters come down to, honestly: "Do I care about anyone here, or am I just seeing how big a damage number I can summon over my enemy?" If the various character's personality are diverse to cover a good range of personalities, then whether it's 8 or 80 is irrelevant. If the NPC's are themed to act roughly the same way, then you could have 100 deep characters and the whole experience will be unsatisfying. Like any good book, if you don't enjoy any of the people, if they aren't engaging, it is a bad experience no matter how well detailed. The Silmarillion was a fine example of this.

I would like to play a little devil's advocate. I haven't played Torment, but will shortly, but what I am gathering from the discussion is that BGII had interesting personalities, but not enough depth, while Torment had a lot of depth, but not interesting enough personalities. If you were to take 9 (I thought there were only going to be 8?) of the BGII characters and give them a deeper repertuar of interaction and character development, would there be anyone unhappy with this result? While I'm a little hesitant about only a handful of NPC's, done well, that's more than enough for me. It's the comment by Joshua Sawyer that worries me: "I prefer naturalistic -- some would say "dry" -- dialogue. BG2's characters are much more expressive. This is a personal thing and I recognize that most players *don't* like the same style of dialogue that I do." http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/449392305086952316 While I appreciate serious and measured characters in a book, in a game I like a little bit of excentricity to make the experience memorable. If the story is done straight there's no differentiation between personalities from my view. Games lack the ability to handle this well much like a post lacks the ability to relay sarcasm. And besides, I get enough dry dialog from the quest givers. I have faith it'll be a great game, but in the interumn I guess I'll worry because that's my nature...

An unfair over simplification. For every sanitized show like Dexter about an evil guy trying not to be evil you have 1000 shows about good people fighting evil. The real offenders are the B movies out there. I can name a dozen, but movies and shows almost never glorify evil, worst case they try to examine it from an artistic prospective that can be taken wrong. If you want to fault Holywood, you can fault them for not putting tallented people on the big screen. XD To me, it all comes down to whether it is an interesting story with a thought provoking, satisfying end... or not.

I love highlighting for obvious things, and for realizing that you found a secret door or trap or what have you. I truly despise pixle hunting as, for me, it takes away from the story and immersion to focus on the myopic. Mass Effect 2 had this problem with the planet probes. You were taken away from the game and experience to scan every inch of a planet's surface to find mining materials. Not fun at all. You brought up a point that I was thinking on, highlighting allows the developers to not worry about making the object bltantly obvious. Giving artists the freedom to make a scene beautiful without worrying so much about whether it stands out enough...

Mods are important to me. I play every game straight as intended 1 or 2 times, then look for more content and a deeper setting through mods. The bug fixes and combat tweeks alone make mods worth assuring. There are of course lots of rediculous god-items, but there are a lot of graphic improvements, sounds fixes, new locals, and especailly companions, that more than make up for their presence to me. So to me, mods are a mandate when you have an open-ish world like this. I have made a couple silly mods for DAO using the toolset; it's fun and really gives you a rewarding experience that lasts far longer than the replayability of an unalterable game. I hope that a toolset is included or at the very least added afterwards.

I enjoy this topic discussion, it's good to see. Hopefully my post is coheerant. I always feel like if I am acting as an evil player, I want the population to react accordingly. That what I do effects the general population. A lot of the evil in games is irrelevant and has no impact at all on the world as a whole. You attack the castle, kill a bunch of guards, and steal the nations treasures, and the storekeeps give the same response as if you are the nicest person on the planet. What I would rather, in what I hope is the OP's desire, is for actions to have an effect. For example I travel and find a village maudared by goblin. I hunt down the lair and instead of getting them to leave (good) I just execute them (evil). If I do the good route everyone is happy-ish. If I do the evil route other goblins hear about the event and make it a point to hold the act against me for the rest of my career, even going so far as to exact vengeance, but the village loves me. If I take posession of a city as their new ruler in an act using the easiest evil path, I want the citizenry to harbor resentment and carry the feelings until i redeem myself with them. Even going so far as to stage a rebellion. If I was evil enough, I would like to see the option to have an all out war and end up losing the city and all the people. I guess in a nutshell... when I play evil characters it is to see the content that I didn't experience because I played the good roll. When I do this, I want something to be there. Much like characters branching in the skills they chose, comming back to try the other branches they missed to experience a different game. Not allowing different approaches to a problem is like only having one class. A well designed evil path for a player adds an amazing amount of replayability to a game.

I was a little put off about the slacker backer title as well. I didn't hear about the project till yesterday and wanted to back the game. Is there a way to buy the beta access this late along?