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@Adam Brennecke, WHAT?! How dare you have such a cute profile image?!

That is a very poetic way to put it, though its not much deeper then many FPS titles. Its appeal is mostly through its insane amount of difficulty, catering to the sort who prefer the challenge of arcade era, which provide them with sense of achievement and something to talk about.(WOW and casinos has also specific things they are banking on) You guys might be right that it is a fresh approach of narration for video games, it is also a huge time hog appropriate to people with a lot of time on their hands and in no way the approach used in the spiritual successors to this game.

BG2 had a very nice take on this as well. After escaping from Irenicus Dungeon you get your "long quest" to save Imoen, only instead of one long linear questline like in that Ultima VII questline retrospective in the OP. You have at least two ways to achieve that goal, with many smaller questlines, which can play differently depending on your dispositions, or carrier path, exploring different aspects of lore, meeting different people. To me it seems like the same "long" epic quest, only with far more choice and options.

First paragraph - You guess you are more qualified to know about that. Second Paragraph - I know, but keep inmind that not everyone has an large screen TV with HDMI or have/need modern graphics card...

I have been "camping out" for the past week, waiting for this update

I am pretty sure we are going with the same narration as in Baldur's gate. The "codex" example I suggest is not a meant to substitute anything or has anything todo with AAA titles etc, only to improve already existing mechanics which you can find BG. As for Dark Souls, its a completely different game, which IMO has completely different appeal than Baldur's gate game and lets leave it at that unless you have any specific suggestions for this game.

Console gamers will disagree Personally, I don't see myself playing games on sofa with keyboard with or without steam box. Which is nothing but streamer with input. I had a streamer for watching movies for a while and before that I just used good old drill, extension cord and IR eye to make my PC available in the living room. Honestly, it's ain't worth it, for gaming purpose I prefer my monitor any day. But I digress..

It was in the context of: and the point was that such "codex like" info you complained about, wasn't uncommon in our games, only poorly implemented. I'd rather imagine that I grabbed one of the books, so I can read it later at my leisure, than turn my escape from the Irenicus dungeon into a book club or forced to drag countless books in my inventory instead of having an easily navigateable codex. As for what info will be handled by the codex, I trust our writers in this.

There were great libraries before the printed press and you'll be hard pressed to say that the written word or lore is uncommon in a world where adventurer keep detailed journals and cyclopedias, where every mage is running around with a huge grimoire, priest are church-educated and are widely versed in many types of lore, and chanters will tell you tales of long forgotten lands. So if you are looking for rationalization you'll find it.

There is no need to try to be edgy, trying to support everything. However, we shouldn't ignore today standards. This issue isn't new, I am certain our dev's are familiar with it and ways to address it.

Lets try break it down into something we can use, like what mechanics works for us and what doesn't. On topic of information overload, I much prefer that my codex will be handled as collection of lore gathered during my adventure as opposed to starting the game with a complete world guide. I don't know what led Bioware to use numbers instead of entries name, it made looking up information(for which the codex was made) harder. But you can find better examples in this regard, for example witcher: EDIT: Do you remember the library in Irenicus dungeon? shelves full of books with background info? What a waste! does anyone expected us to hold on our prison break, so we can pause the game for a couple of hours and read history books? or drag that stack of books around in our limited inventory, since there is no way to revisit it. Why simply not to add it as codex info, so we can revisit at our own time during our adventure? Same can be said about all those books in Irenicus dungeon, they contained a lot of info from our adventures at the sword coast. EDIT2: @Osvir, in witcher you unlock codex entries by reading books, conversation or observation. If they can make the codex more naturally intertwined with the setting then great, if not i'd go with codex over no codex any day.

Most commonly they just don't design the system with this in mind and then its really a hassle to fix. If in 1998 most common resolution was 800x600, today its very likely 1920x1080 among gamers or 1366x768 in gen pop(common laptop resolution).

Yes, but which aspect of it is "overload in information". Too much text? too broad in its coverage? or what? Because IMO, DA:O has one of the best codex systems.

do you have a specific example of what you consider overload in information?

Yeah some characters make you smile, some grow on you and some are just going to have an accident, its just the way it is in a party based game. IMO it means that dev's are doing something right, because the only way that no companion will be objectionable is if you make them blend stat list that follow you around to compliment your skill set. So to me many of the complaints above speaks to verity/quality rather than the concept it self. The good thing about PE is that there are no niche class, nor your characters progress is locked into certain path. which means that you won't have to drag along some NPC which annoys you, just because he is the only rouge available. You'l be able to make due with other NPCs with similar skill sets, or if you really hate banter and person stories, you'd be able to pick a generic NPC from that recruitment "inn"(i don't remember how its called)

A little off topic-ish question. So far we were give only those two concepts: World map and Shall I assume the later is one playable location(looks like defiance bay) on the world map or is the only playable location during Pillar of Eternity?

So when you open the Quest log it will focus on the quest you currently pursuing, instead the first quest in alphabetical order? It might seem like a small thing, but I hope to make more use of the Quest Log and Journal(e.g. looking for clues within) and IMO such small things makes for better experience. We are familiar with growing quest logs, especially after several playthroughs with power of hindsight at our back, account to different play styles and or mods. We can all appreciate a quest log you can easily navigate. For example hiding entries for quest which you have no plan to ever finish(or broken) and just clutter your list. Anyway, like I said at this point we know very little about quest, mechanics, etc so those elements I added were mostly to better distinguish the various entries. For more substantial suggestions, we will have to wait until we are further down the road

I recent had a reintroduction with how annoying some of the old UI are, so I was very happy about this initial quest log mockup. That I spent couple of minutes to see where it can go, its nothing but some shiny bs, since we don't enough about this at this point. But I really hope that the devs will go all the way in terms of streamlining with the quest log, inventory and character sheets.

I don't know how spell books will work in PE with the grimoire, but if its planed like in BG, I hope theydrop the priest/arcane spell book. Just have one spellbook and if a person have access to more than one magic school add bookmarks. Couple of notes: 1. The text log should be in one of the corners, it should also have button to expand upwards, so you can review/follow it more easily. 2. The icons are little bit too small, you have the space so at least 50% increase in size is due. This way I wont have to strain myself and you'll be able to add additional indicators. For example how many uses you got left. 3. The Icon seems cramped up and lack space for expansion, maybe move them to the center? this way you can expand them with additional quick access bar/s. To be honest I prefer the element placement in the original Obsidian mock up. This is from the original thread. It is not pretty, but IMO the most functional thing I seen so far. Though it might create some other issues, since I suspect that Obsidian is planing its interface on the premise of bottom hud. If you move the char portraits to the left, it will cause issues with encounters screen(selecting the active char).

You realize that to support all resolutions, pretty much every UI will have to incorporate either floating something or wasted space in the form of dragged interface. This is the reason why people like floating interfaces, otherwise this would mean designing at least 2 interfaces. Can you be more specific, because it fits the Big and stylized option perfectly.(p.s. the Poll choices are ridicules, why can't I have functional and stylized?!)

I never played ULtimaVII, so based on this retrospective video alone, that questline doesn't look complex only complicated. Its a huge chain of fetch/trade quests that doesn't seem to offer anything other than a reason to run around and fight, honestly it seems like the linear version of some of those oblivion collection quests. I prefer your other example, the DA:O urn questline isn't that long or focused on exploration, but the process of investigation, gathering clues and different approaches in each location is much more appealing to me. Anyway, I think that most will agree that we want interesting questlines that can be approached from different angles, have different outcomes and possibly unexpected consequences down the road. Quest length should be determined on the best way to achieve the above. Btw, if you like adventure and exploration, short quest which can be only found by those who look or ask the right questions seems like the logical choice for you, maybe you just got burned by oblivion? Yeah right, because people who don't like ticking lists have OCD or other psychological problems. Thanks for that. Keep your bull**** to yourself. I am pretty sure we can apply this answer to your previous statement:

On slide 27 we see Constitution attribute and Athletics skill(?). Do we know anything else on the subject? like what are the primary attributes, how they are tied with skills or what exactly is Athletics? Because all I can think of is that none specific interview by Tim Cain about none combat skills.

Lets be honest, Western press is nothing compared to Russian press in this regard.

Interesting that the RPG which considered to have one of the best stories, also have one of the worst combat system. I wonder... Would want what? better combat(like in other RPG classic or here) or pimp his RPG with the system the best games with tactical combat have? Which I suspect would make it much more combat oriented.

Those definition above seem to be bit motivated by the developers choice. Sure its easier for them to adapt the system from wasteland2 and less time to bother with companions AIs. But the biggest difference between the two is whether the actions executed simultaneously or in turns. Thoughtfulness? With all my love to Fallout its turn based system has nothing to Baldur's gate RTwP* and while ToEE offer some great options, IMO it is also really out of the ballpark for a story based game such Planescape torment. You'll need more than few encounters to learn the system, and I don't see how it can be achieved without greater focus on combat. Edit: * I don't know why its even brought up, other than being a popular series, since its system doesn't have multi-turn actions, so for example you'd never be able to interrupt a spell.