Yonjuro

Exactly. Voice acting is very expensive. I am in favor of just enough voice acting. It can establish a character, set a tone for an interaction etc. Adding more doesn't add much and most of it will get skipped on the second and subsequent play throughs since it takes longer to listen than to read. I think PoE did it well (maybe a bit too much VA, if anything).

I cannot even concieve of how an RPG like PoE (or Torment or BG2) could be "too verbose." I wonderingly pondered the prodigious length of paradigmatic RPG classics like PoE, Torment, and BG2, but within this honored scope found nary a jot, word, or phrase the paring of which could yield (however faintly!) an overall improvement -- and it is truly beyond my ken to imagine such a thing. The problem with verbose writing isn't necessarily length as such, but a lack of economy. I'm not mocking you, because even though I disagree with your statement you expressed it concisely and sufficiently. The travesty I wrote, on the other hand, desperately needs an editor. Pillars wasn't nearly as bad as that, but in my opinion an editing pass with an eye for unnecessary things would have definitely improved it. I wrote a suggestion about an editor in the stretch goal thread (inspired, in part, by a recent article on RPG Codex). An editor can fix up prose, tie up loose ends, make sure that choices have reactions (in game), make sure that story elements don't get cut off (such as the factions in chapter 2 of PoE) etc. If it isn't somebody's job, it won't happen.

The shut up and take my money stretch goal. The first game had one (they called it polishing or something like that). In development money equals time - more money gives more time to spend on development in whatever way makes sense. Hire an editor for the game as a whole. The job description will be to look at everything for tone, trim excess exposition or add additional exposition where needed (in cooperation with writers), tighten up writing, make sure the game is self consistent and consistent with previous lore, make sure areas and quests have a consistent feel etc. You know, editor stuff. (This idea was stolen from, errr, inspired by, a piece published on RPG Codex by Darth Roxor).

Asked. I'll let you know if/when I see an answer. You can also PM someone from Obsidian to ask directly.

... ... Still, I wonder how they are going to pull it off. Starting at a mid-high level (say 10ish) would be a bit weird considering what was accomplished in POE1 at the same level... Can it be that people in the Dyrwood are just weaker than their counterparts in Deadfire? That's true. I guess you find some difficult enemies in Deadfire. Then again, you are chasing a 200m tall god made out of adra. So, yeah, I guess you'd better be in good shape before you catch him. And, he probably has minions. Gods always have minions.

BG2 didn't do that. If you imported a character, you kept the level that you had in BG1. If you had hit the XP cap in BG1 but gained additional XP above the cap, you kept the XP and leveled up sooner (maybe immediately if you had a lot of extra XP). You lost most of your items (there were a few things that you found in Irenicus' dungeon that could be changed based on what you had in your inventory).

That would be my preference. Your character's abilities and knowledge are part of their identity. I suspect that you will retain your level but that some of your equipment may have gone missing when your stronghold was destroyed.

Gog access confirmed by Aarik D via PM.

Yes, probably just an oversight. That kind of wording is something to get right on the crowdfunding page though.

Yup. I think you're right. I assumed that they meant digital key rather than steam key, but wanted to confirm.

I see that several tiers mention "Steam Code" I don't do Steam (or rather, I don't buy anything with DRM) so I hope the game will be available on Gog. Can someone from Obsidian confirm this? (Assuming it will be available on Gog, it would be a good idea to update the text on the Fig page.)

Yep. Kraken-bran cereal. It's nutritious and delicious - part of a complete breakfast.

That would have been nice. It was probably on a list of features that fell off the schedule due to budget.

I see where you're coming from but I prefer to have the option to read the lines and skip over any voice acting. This gets more true the more times I have played a game. Listening just takes a lot longer than reading. Voice acting is also expensive in a bad way (that is, it costs money that doesn't go to full time development staff) - a major issue for a game like PoE that has to be completed on a tight budget to turn a profit.

OK, the graze/hit/miss/crit system, combined with using a d100 instead of d20, is what makes the game work. I won't go into it in depth here, but it's the single best thing in the rules. It makes small stat changes matter and keeps the wheels from falling off at high levels. On status effects... I think real problem is that there are too gosh darn many to remember what they do, and many are similar to one another, both in name and in function. I mean, dazed, confused, disoriented and distracted are practically synonyms. No way did we need both frightened and terrified. Weakened, hobbled and sickened could easily have been consolidated to just weakened. Almost all of them have stat debuffs similar to another effect but with differences of severity. There could have been a system that applied the same affliction but with differing levels of severity. "Applies a strong weakening effect," for example. Yeah, they affect different stats, to some degree. But the differences are not so great that they couldn't have been worked out in design. I wouldn't want to see it dumbed down to two or three, it just almost seems granular for granularity's sake, and I have to look at tooltips to keep track way more than I'd like. I think you're right about the status effects. They either need clearer distinctions or fewer of them. I agree that overall it seems to be a solid system. Some additional UI options could help to manage the complexities that do exist: The armor system is simple in principle but in practice it adds new decisions. That isn't bad; it adds to the game, but it would help to have some UI support to make decisions. E.g. should my monk wear heavy armor, light armor, just clothes? Well, what happens to defense vs. DPS? I know in general what will happen, but specifically deciding between 2 levels of armor, say padded armor vs. leather is not obvious. Maybe some UI goodness would help the player (especially a new player) understand the specific trade offs. Also, enchantments and stacking rules are bit much to keep track of. E.g., you might notice that you are wasting the +1 might from this ring on this character, but is there a better place to use the ring? Well, you can move it to every character and read the wall of text describing the equipment or you can just not worry about it too much. Also a place where some UI could potentially help the player - something like a summary of wasted attribute points for each character or, an option to sort by attribute rather than by item.

Thanks for posting this Infinitron. What a great interview.

Extra hookers and blow can't possibly do anything but great things for the development cycle. You know - why not? It's Christmas! Hookers and blow for everyone (and to all a good night)!

No, but with a particular dialog path he realizes that he was wrong, gives up his misguided pledge to his people (and his soul bound weapon related to his pledge) and offers his help against the actual common enemy. Killing him after that would not be the action of a good character (opinions may differ, of course). Note that until the meeting and mutual watch-fest, your character is also mistaken about the source of the threat. If your character attacked without the dialog or went down a different path in the dialog, then the character's actions could still be consistent with what a good character might do.

I would like to see the watcher's story continue with the choices from the original game having an effect on the game world. Having the continuing story is one of the the things I liked about Baldur's Gate. The problem with Baldur's Gate is that your in-game choices didn't have any effect on the sequel. For PoE, a new player (that is, a PoE2-only player) can get a default backstory that assumes a default set of choices. (Or they can do some things along the way to expose the backstory and indicate a different choice -- NPC: "I heard that this thing happened" PC, "really, I heard something different...." to have a different experience, but I'm not sure how well that would work). Either way, for the new player it's just backstory, isn't it?

I let him live because,

Also, why aren't game companies doing this? They already paid for the translations and the extra UI is minimal work for them. This would be good PR for an industry that is always blamed for everything wrong with today's youth. If Elvis Presley had taught everybody to speak Lithuanian his gyrations would have been far less scandalous ... err ... I surmise. I suppose it is due to the dearth of text in most modern games but it could be a good value add for games like Pillars of Eternity. Are you listening Obsidian? It makes your products better than more expensive to produce products in a new way and you are already paying most of the cost of doing it. Also, somebody has already written a working prototype. Just let word of mouth do the advertising rather than claiming to be a language learning product for ... reasons.

Usable items have to be fairly weak or risk the ire of the majority of players who didn't back the game.... I meant for real life. I want to see people's past lives, souls, all that jazz :D There we go. I would toss in another 40 or 50 bucks to have one of those.

Did you look at your character sheet (hit 'c' to see it)? In the right pane, you can see either your party stats (including who has done the most damage, killed the most powerful enemy etc.) or your personal stats by clicking at the top. It will give you all of the information about how much damage you've dealt (and taken).

Agreed, though I would prefer a matte finish rather than gloss; something that looks like it belongs in the game world.

I really liked the exploration and resulting sense of player agency in BG1. I recently did a new play through of PoE with the White March expansions, which I hadn't played yet, and I like the game a lot more now. The expansions really opened up the game world. Also, the WM story is integrated nicely unlike the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion which had great content but didn't entirely make sense from a story standpoint. (I'm hot on the trail of that menace Sarevok ... ooooh something shiny!) (There are still issues like the factions in Defiance Bay that suddenly become unimportant at the end of act two, and the rushed act three. Also, combat feedback could be better.) I think they got a lot closer with PoE+WM in terms of exploration and I would love to see PoE2 do a little more of that. They can gate the difficulty of the combat just it is done now with the WM content and the bounties (it could also be level scaled, but I would prefer to do it another way). Sometimes new areas open up and other times new enemies show up in places you've been to already after competing certain quests. In addition, there can be quests that send you to other major areas which can serve as hints that the difficulty where you are now is about to go way up.