Katarack21

"I'm only interested in expansion style DLCs." I agree 100%.

The word "narcotic" implies an opiate-like drug, but the description doesn't match that, either.

None of them track super close to a real-world drug--they mix origins with effects, basically. But whiteleaf is the closest.

"Svef is the Aedyran name for a potent narcotic produced from the berries of small shrub that grows in the dry, distant mountains of Tal Kness. Svef produces hallucinations and, according to some, allows users to actually see their own soul." "Whiteleaf is derived from the whiteleaf weed, which is commonly found throughout the Dyrwood and Eir Glanfath. Locals dry and smoke the plant, which grants a feeling of calm alongside an intense lethargy." Which sounds more like weed? Hallucinations and seeing your own soul (made from berries), or calmness and lethargy (smoking a dried plant)?

Rumbling rot is pretty much just my life.

Actually, DOS2 has 74k lines of dialogues with voice over and over 1m words. That's about Dragon Age Inquisition level of voice acting budget. BG2 had 57k lines of dialogues, but around 1 millions words. For comparison, POE1 had 25k line of dialogues with a bit over 6k of them voice acted. It was announced in the FIGstarter that Deafire would get x2 the voice acting budget of POE1, so their VO budget is for ~12k lines. Bottom of the line, DOS2 voice acting budget was 12x larger than POE1's budget and 6x larger than POE2 VO budget. An interesting comparison but I wouldnt use the word “budget” as we don’t know how much money is spent on what. We can’t possibly compare voice acting budgets between both games, as they are created on different continents. Voice Actor salaries are standardized when it comes to unionized work (both POE1 and DOS2 was unionized work going by the voice cast). EQUITY (UK where DOS2 was recorded) and SAG-AFTRA (USA where POE1 was recorded) have deals with each others so their members can work on cross-border projects which resulted in salary standardization (along other voice actors unions, it's not just a UK/USA thing). That's also why EQUITY supported SAG-AFTRA during the last strike and forbid its members to work for the targeted gaming companies (Larian wasn't on the list). In term of actor cost, the budget is totally comparable. That leave the renting cost of the voice recording studios but I doubt there is much difference between the UK and LA there, otherwise you'll see companions pick one over the other to save cost and they aren't. There's more that would go into that then the studio cost; transportation costs, renting places for the studio people to stay in the other city, etc. etc. The calculations aren't as straight forward as you make it seem, and there's lots of variables that we don't know about that could be preventing that decision from being common.

Whiteleaf. I'm pretty sure whiteleaf is the weed analog, and he seems like a stoner.

Still frustrates me, as it necessitates an additional playthrough for one more party members complete storyline.

The anime chick, turned goth vampire Ydwin. That doesn’t mean anything to me. Have you not seen the side-kick portraits? Yeah...here's the thing, the sidekick-portrait doesn't actually portrait an "anime girl", let alone a "goth vampire". The answer to the question the OP raised is: None, because there's no reason to think Ydwin is being removed from the sidekicks.

2017 has been a super strong year for RPG so far, especially if you have a PS4: Nier:Automata Nioh Persona 5 Horizon Zero Dawn Zelda:Breath of the Wild (Switch/Wuii exclusive) Out of that list, Zelda: Breath of the Wild is pretty much the #1 game of all time now, Persona 5 was called a GOTY candidate and Horizon Zero Dawn was said to be the new The Witcher 3 at release. I see no rpg in there These games have a very different target group and, except Persona maybe, they are popular genres. I don't think The Witcher 3 is a RPG, but the people who gave it RPG GOTY and called it the best RPG ever sure did... What a single person think is or not a RPG is totally meaningless when it comes to attribute games awards. People put Assassin's Creed on lists of best stealth games, even though it doesn't have functional stealth mechanic. It's not an RPG either even though you have an upgrade system. Hell, I wouldn't call Diablo an RPG. It's mechanics draw from RPGs but there is no roleplayig in it. Like in any other genre what RPG is can be defined. Many games adopted individual elements of RPGs but it hardly makes them RPGs. Witcher 3 is an odd case as it certainly has many RPGs roots. I heard it described as a roleplaying game where you can role play one character. And before you argue that it could be said about any game Witcher games encourage roleplay, while other games define characters outside players influence. Is witcher the best RPG of all time? Nah, but it's one of the best games I ever player. I would say just like "rogue-like" the term RPG is often misused by people who are familiar with games which use some of the elements of the genre, but are not familiar with genre itself. Well, that's a distinction in *role-playing style*. There's *lots* of RPG's where you play one character through a storyline and the role-playing is in how you play that character and how you go through that storyline. Nox, Risen, the Fallout series (companions exist but are completely and totally optional and completely "play" themselves, you don't control them), any JRPG, Vampire: Bloodlines, etc.

That very review calls it "The most RPG Zelda ever" and acclaims it's "RPG-style armor", saying it "reminds of the western RPG explosion". It doesn't actually call Zelda an RPG, and explicitly draws a distinction between this Zelda game and all Zelda games previous. I will grant it is far more RPG-like than other Zelda games, but even Ocarina of Time was called an RPG by people who either don't bother to learn the distinction or just don't care.

Tyranny was definitely about *exploring* evil, but it in no way forced you to *play* evil.

2017 has been a super strong year for RPG so far, especially if you have a PS4: Nier:Automata Nioh Persona 5 Horizon Zero Dawn Zelda:Breath of the Wild (Switch/Wuii exclusive) Out of that list, Zelda: Breath of the Wild is pretty much the #1 game of all time now, Persona 5 was called a GOTY candidate and Horizon Zero Dawn was said to be the new The Witcher 3 at release. I see no rpg in there These games have a very different target group and, except Persona maybe, they are popular genres. I don't think The Witcher 3 is a RPG, but the people who gave it RPG GOTY and called it the best RPG ever sure did... What a single person think is or not a RPG is totally meaningless when it comes to attribute games awards. An argument can be made for all of them but Zelda. Zelda, like all Zelda games before and all Zelda games to come, is an action-adventure puzzle game. It is not and has never been in the RPG genre.

Divinity Original Sin 2, which does count as an isometric RPG, is definitely one of the most popular and highest games this year, and it's a PC exclusive. It definitely has a chance of being RPG GOTY for many sites and I'm sure it will sell close to a million copies long before the console versions hits. Great. That's really impressive for an isometric RPG. Witcher 3 sold 4 million copies in *two weeks*. That's not counting 1.5 million pre-orders. That's the difference between a niche success and a mainstream hit. Do you think Pillars 2 is going to sell 4 million copies in it's first two weeks? Because I doubt it. I seriously, seriously doubt it. Isometric RPG's are niche. Period. They sell 2.5 million copies total and they did quite well for themselves. D:OS2 is a really successful isometric RPG, one of the best of the year and it's getting hyped as one of the best ever, and if it hits 3 million units total I'll be surprised. These are not mainstream games. Don't expect them to sell like they are.

I guess I missed where it was no-heal, permanent-death, weapon-degradation, reset-levels, etc... I thought it was just where it was the regular game system just where you had to ration your resources a bit. Jesus. ****ing. Christ. Let me explain it for you in small bites and tiny words. Like for a child. I was not being literal. Literal means "representing an exact meaning in reality". I was providing a list of examples of that type of gameplay. "Gameplay" means "the manner in which a game is played, separate from it's technical and narrative aspects". In Pillars of Eternity, the *only* way to heal is to rest. If you can't rest, you can't heal. This is because actual damage requiring healing--as opposed to stamina regain--is difficult to do. Stamina=regeneration, real easy. Hitpoint=healing, real hard. There is no weapons degradation in Pillars of Eternity, just as there is no reset levels, so when I listed those it should have immediately identified it as not being a list of actual game play elements included in the game but rather a list of similar thematic--****, I lost you, didn't I? Just keep in mind roguelikes haven't been popular since they developed other forms of RPG.

The heyday of isometric RPG's is gone, people. BG2 will *never happen again*. We're lucky that they came back at all--we're lucky that these games even exist. Don't expect any isomeric RPG to be the biggest RPG success of the year. These are niche games, now. Look for a successful niche game, nothing more.

I saw a few for POE, literally nothing for Tyranny. Tyranny hit the market without making a *sound*.

You would never even try it? What if you find out you like it? I would give it a shot at least. I've played a lot of no-heal, permanent-death, weapon-degradation, reset-levels, etc. games in my life. It's not like this is a gameplay style that is new or untouched to me. I've been playing RPG's for a long, long time now and I'm extremely well versed in what attributes of a system I like and what attributes of a system I don't like. Being unable to heal isn't fun for me. It's just irritating and frustrating. If you make that part of the critical path, it will be the section of the game I hate the most and might be the part that stops me from completing the game, if it's frustrating enough. This isn't an assumption; this is learned from that having been the case literally dozens of times.

"Create some challenging dungeons where we cannot rest or escape, forcing us to prepare carefully, test our limits and come up with strategies to survive." As long as it's not critical path, sure, I'm down for that. I'll never ever play it or attempt to beat it, because dungeons where you can't heal just *SUCK* to me, but for people who are into that, seems like a good idea. Just making that critical path would be *terrible*.

Sure, but those are aimed at the very specific crowd only. I doubt they reach a wider audience than those really interested in Obsidian or PoE. Speculation time - publisher might provide various ads on websites, making deals with outlets to get a word out, reaching to audiences of their other titles. Who knows how much paperwork is needed to publish game globally. I imagine that if the work of a publisher wasn't significant devs wouldn't cooperate with them willingly. That's exactly what I meant. Obsidian did lots of updates, presentations, etc. but there wasn't any wider marketing to the wider audience *outside* of that core RPG crowd. That's the part I would've expected the publisher to do, and they didn't really. Tyranny was even worse; there was *NOTHING* to push that game. I'm hoping that Versus Evil will make a bigger ruckus--paying for web ads is a good start for something I'd expect the publisher to handle.

This is interesting news. I'm happy about it; I was less than thrilled with the way Paradox approached Pillars 1; there didn't seem to be a whole lot in the way of marketing and advertising for it, and almost *nothing* for Tyranny. The way they've handled the Tyranny DLC hasn't helped my image of them any.

Which is *terrifying* considering fun is the whole point!

I hope to *NEVER* encounter rust monsters in a computer RPG. Those things are just *sick*. They exist for no reason other than to make your players *hate* you.

I got the game and the DLC season pass. Seemed like a steal.