anameforobsidian

I like how honest and generally polite Josh is. - I think he missed a huge chunk of modding in the modding question. He talked about wanting stats to be in xml, so it's easier to change the balance. That's great. But many, many, many mods add characters or dialogue. I'd like to hear something about that.

Try it again later or sneak past the shades. Optional dungeons are harder, but cyphers are not necessary in the game at all.

There's a special automatic save before you jump in the pit. Reload that, and then someone at your stronghold will tell you about WM. Warning, you might be a little high for WM1.

I don't have a problem with them crowd-funding again, but I'd like to see something like the Shadowrun Hong Kong campaign. As in, we have this much money to make the game, with your money we can add X, Y, Z. I'd be down with more WM2 style wilderness areas, or another town. I hope they never do a city as a stretch goal again.

I really don't see what Pathfinder can add as a CRPG. It seems mostly generic DND with a few rule tweaks. I'd like to see some games in a new setting. Pillars is at least Renaissance instead of faux-Middle Ages. I'd like to see some games in relatively untapped settings. Underwater, in the desert (though this one is growing more popular), urban fantasy, kirby-esque space, depression era, Age of Exploration, Chinese fantasy, Indian fantasy, Middle East cyberpunk, African fantasy or civil war or cyber-punk, Space Dandy style cosmic absurdism. Really anything but high fantasy, cyberpunk, or militarized space. Pathfinder seems like a step backward.

Sour grapes. He wasn't willing to criticize anything Bethesda, but was down on F:NV, which is probably the best Obsidian game to date. He criticizes upper management when he owned part of the company. He doesn't know why Vegas was picked when he was one of the creative leads and one of the owners of the company? And the line about Bethesda not wanting to buy Obsidian was just catty. One of the great and terrible things about MCA is that he constantly wants to push past the scope of the project. This leads to ambition that most of the game industry lacks, but it also leads to rushed, incomplete, and buggy products. No difference in this interivew; Obsidian should have just chosen a different area and gone out and hired a bunch of developers from that culture. OK, who's going to fund that talent search? Who's going to lead that project? I can see him getting bitter after being cut out of the loop by the more practical Urqhart and Sawyer, which is fair. But occasionally Obsidian might want to finish a ****ing game.

I wouldn't mind them if they were rare and related to sidequests. Like running across the Morton gangs in Fallout 2, or occasionally pissing off a faction and having them send hit squads. The assassins were a weird version of this, because they would occasionally kill allied NPCs.

Why does the survey ask about whether we watch TV? I'm willing to help Obsidian out, but come on, respect our time.

Saying it in big letters just makes it hard to read anything else you wrote.

I've heard that the newer version of unity is easier to Mod. This will be a good thing, since modders could have done great things with the AI and adding NPCs. Tyranny is being made in that version of unity, so it's safe to bet PE2 is too. Can anyone tell me why the newer unity is easier to Mod?

Josh has played on PotD and they have one other dev that does it. The vast majority do not. BTW, updated wish: I want another dialogue check that will obviously fail, like when you can try to persuade the guards that you're not holding a torch in NWN2, when you are obviously and conspicuously holding a torch.

I really wouldn't mind priests getting different spell options based on God. Right now, priests have a bit too much. They're close to wizards that can also buff everyone and heal. Mixing it up wouldn't be the worst.

The difficulty levels have several effects as far as I'm aware: 1. Stats. The higher difficulty goes, the higher the enemies' stats. 2. Encounter composition. Many fights have different combinations of enemies based on the difficulty. PotD dumps all those encounters together. 3. Camping supplies. The higher the difficulty mode, the less camping supplies. This means you have to conserve spells longer.

As a class-based game, the classes are some of the least restrictive ever designed. Few games let wizards wear plate, or be playable with a party of bards. Fighters can use ranged weapons in a fight, and they get proficiencies in most packages for ranged weapons. But there's nothing wrong with the idea that a class should have core competencies in a role-playing game. Also, unpicking powers doesn't seem like a fair criticism. Wildshape is a class feature, but that doesn't mean that druids are built around it. I barely touched it and use druids on most of my runs. There are also builds around it. They don't have all the options of earlier DnD games, but part of that is the fact that this is the first game in the series made on a limited budget. Keep in mind that subclasses were only in BG2, and prestige classes were only in the NWN expansion packs. Multi-classing would have exceeded their means.

I always thought Wael was helping in his final interaction. Wael is the god of secrets and revelations. By hiding the souls, those who go looking for them will discover the truth about the Engwithans.

I turned 30 after the game was released, and Baldur's Gate was one of the first games I ever played. If you're around my age, you probably missed the SSI games and then saw a long and steady decline in the quality of computer games, especially rpgs. Nostalgia supported by reality leads to a powerful yearning. A lot of people in general left. Sensuki and his fan club leaving is probably bad for the next game, because they did a ton of bug reports, but good for the forums, because they're insufferable louts who could never be pleased.

People already complain about the game being too flashy. (I would like it too.)

It might be easier with Unity 5, which they're using for Tyranny. But I thought hex editing was in the finest IE traditions?

I really like most of the classes. Ciphers, Paladins, and Wizards are probably my favorite, but I think they did a great job designing classes.

I don't think there's anyone to teach you; the Fampyr in the middle killed all his friends to control the soul energy. Od Nua is stuck in the past, and probably doesn't want you eating what is supposed to be his son. There could be a neat souls leaching into the nearby land, making it stronger effect.

I also really liked the Endless Paths, enough that it would be an enjoyable short game in its own right. However, I think any future megadungeon would be better as an expansion location or a separate campaign. The problem with putting it in the main campaign is that you hop in and out, which isn't how I like to play. I like to complete one location at a time and then move on to the next one. Taking it farther off the crit path would make it more obviously optional. But as it stands, several levels of the Endless Path's particularly stood out. I loved the xaurip fight by the pit, the drake fight, the vithrak level, and the Od Nua level.

I could do with more characters like Eder and Hirviras and less like Grobnar when designing humorous characters. Writing silly characters is hard, especially in a game with so relatively few npc choices. I would say the best silly character I played with from a game like this is Deekin, despite NWN1 being mediocre. The characters need a real motivation and real concerns. Minsc wasn't really afraid. Jan had a better quest, but his characterization was too different in his banter and in his quest. Imoen was light-hearted, not silly. I didn't touch Korgan because he was evil and that was a pain in the ass. Khelgar was just dumb. And that brings me to a real concern; does Obsidian have the writing talent to pull of silly characters? It's a different skill. Mitsoda (VtMB) left a while back. Avellone (FNV:OWB) also left. Are there still over the top humor writers kicking around Obsidian? Anyone who had a large part in OWB? If not, that's fine. I think the game would be served with more characters like Hirviras and Eder. Eder's cynicism is grounded in the setting, and is a great contrast to flashes of the somewhat innocent person he was. Hirviras' intentional vulgarity and cynicism are also grounded in the setting, and even mechanics in his case. I think its fine if your best characters are humorous but realistically so.

Supposedly they don't spend the next couple decades at war if you use the cannons.

Then feel free to name games from 95 onward which marry the narration with gameplay as seamlessly as DA:O does. Imo, only BG II and ME 2 surpass it. Torment no because it is more of a philosophical thesis than a game. Some of Witchers, maybe, but we are talking about individual games not franchises(I agree that DA franchise went to trash after DA:O). I think you mean narrative, rather than narration. And really, a fault in Bioware games since forever that Pillars has inherited to some degree is that the narrative is widely split from gameplay. Take romances in D:AO, they're largely a result of a gift system and dialogue system. Give enough gifts, and the character sleeps with you. The character may leave if you do one thing to tick them off. That has nothing to do with stealth or fighting the Darkspawn, and really only barely touches the choices you make. Baldur's Gate II did it better, by at least having characters use the reputation system so that the characterization of your character is represented, even if it is easily circumvented. In Alpha Protocol, the NPCs are aware of the type of choices you make both narratively, and through gameplay. They react to the way you play, and the story changes accordingly. That is the gold standard. In games like Fallout or Deus Ex, the way you do something is as important as what you do. Going in guns ablazing will change what you can and can't do, and how people react to you. The original DE also has that one moment that changes the story for the rest of the game in a small but very important way. That's not to say the origin system wasn't impressive, because they were amazing game openers. However, they don't really affect how you play the game; they just affect the narrative.

I was thinking about this too. There are only three resources I could think of that aren't already in the game. Mana is a little too ARPG. Resources you get from killing an enemy (souls) could be cool, but it could be really unbalanced. Focus, a resource that depletes as you get hit or cast spells and slowly regenerates over time (cipher pool could be renamed affinity or something). Honestly, it might be neat to see a 12th class that uses the last resource.