dorkboy

@BruceDC I strongly disagree with your first idea. Just leave CNPCs out of it. While romancing some random NPC is just as cheesy.. well, NPCs can afford to occasionally be cheesy. CNPCs cannot. Just my opinion.

Elf or godlike. Maybe orlan.

How so? And the "oh, but it's optional!" argument is the assertion that it is not or should not be obligatory to persue an in-game romance, correct? I'm just trying to connect the dots. Ah, my bad. I wasn't addressing whether or not it was forced. Like Lephys, I take it for granted that it isn't. The question is rather "what's the alternative?". Are we talking a 50/50 split between romance-centered and non-romance-centered characters? Or would each character be both romanceable and non-romanceable, but both paths offering content of equal value/depth? The latter seems to me like a typical "split design" issue - like having both RTwP and TB combat - where the result isn't likely to be truly satisfactory to either side. The former, unless what is really asked for when people say they want romance is spending way more time on developing way more companions, would mean that the total number of potentially interesting companions (from an "antimancer" point of view) would effectively be reduced. That makes the "oh, but it's optional!" argument rather less than compelling.

The "oh, but it's optional!" argument seems flawed to me, in that it more or less assumes that "antimancers" do not enjoy character/companion depth.

A birth and a boss fight? Double trouble.. --- Cutting elves or other decidedly fantasy content in favour of romances? If anything there should be more elves, and more elven roleplaying options. Maybe two separate story paths; one for elves, and one for all the lesser races. And of course a path specifically tailored to a necromancer playthrough. And a bandit/brigand one. Oh, and let's not forget a robust set of roleplaying options - both mechanically and in conversations - for characters with rampant arachnophobia. *sigh*

"In an ideal world, I'd snap my fingers, and romance .." Not if I snap them first, Lephys.. --- There are aspects of the fantasy genre that I find uniquely appealing for their own sake. Romance just isn't one of them. Therefore the only good mance, is a necromance.

I think the conversation UI is great in almost every possible way; it looks great and has a nice, soothing library feel to it, it is concise but still has enough padding to keep the text separated from the game world, possible/impossible conversation checks are clearly differentiated but at the same time not jarringly so, and the same goes for NPC name vs. NPC speech vs. player responses, the fact that the camera moves to focus on the active speaker as well as the prominent placement of the portrait makes it abundantly clear when someone else is speaking and who that someone might be, and, lastly, the text is crisp and the text background is muted. Slightly tweak the contrast between the description and the speech text to make it less straining on the eyes, and it'd be a clear 10/10 in my book.

[redacted]

I think it would also be nice to be able to see the portrait while customizing the character model/appearance (iirc, the portrait appears at the top after customization is complete).

Hm, right.. Ok. So, then.. I probably understood less than a third of that, and I'm not sure which third..

It's likely one static resource/animation that fires from each of the pillars... as in they don't create the flame with fake physics by lighting a volume-body on fire, and so on. And that most of the effect is a 2d overlay effect. But each of them, each of the flame animations ..could.. :D have an element to it with the smoke, secondary fires and glow and so on that is rendered depending on whether something is underneath in the non-background areas. Very easy to have anything under an animation like that essentially be invisible. And I'm not completely sure, but it doesn't look like that's actually happening. Very much like the swirls and overlays in Dungeon Siege 3 (which were brilliant - that there's essentially an effect swirl rendered in a separate layer on top of the image, twisted depending on the view-angle from above. So depending on your definition - all realtime effects, but some of it is pre-rendered and placed only on the overlay. None of which you will notice, because the camera-angle is fixed. I.e., it's the 2d detail of the scene from the infinity engine, but with scaleable and amazing "next gen" tech, and without the obvious 2d breakage. ...incidentally, stuff like this is what Obsidian really should advertise more, because it's awesome even if you don't know anything about animation and rendering). I'm pretty sure that the actual flame animations also have "tints" that follow the lighting theme, or flame colour in outside and inside areas as well. That even if they have different flame animations and effects, that there's possibly some dynamic element of it that decides whether the flame looks yellow in the middle - instead of searing red and black, like it does in the trap. But instead of me randomly making guesses about something I really wouldn't know - click your heels together a few times and wish for Josh to answer it instead...? Yeah, I'd guessed as much already - more or less. Makes me wonder about those purpley purple things, and also laptop frame rate.

There will be no jokes. Period.

I wanna make a party of only Orlans and Black Oozes. Can I, please? It breaks my suspension of utter bullsh1t when I can't do that.

Is there a screenshot of the dialog UI somewhere? Just curious whether the background (where the text goes) is blurry or low contrast. In the video it's clearly got lots of video compression going on, so maybe that's the case with the ground as well? The skin texture does actually look a bit dull/flat. (Not that I really find it bothersome, but I can kind of see the issue there..)

So.. how about that trap FX rectangle*? Is that prerendered? (*the one when the trap is triggered, that is.)

I don't know about you, but when I read I generally prefer to keep the amount of audiovisual distractions at a minimum.

The sonic wave FX seems redundant, and might actually get slightly in the way of what is going on. Those thuds plus the prone body is plenty of feedback (assuming those thuds signify knock-down?).

I see it as the other way around. With no xp for kills, there is no point in killing more than you really have to, to finish the quest. If you get xp for every kill, the incentive is to kill everything you see (assuming you like to gain levels). Talk about carnage. No no no no no, I wasn't criticizing the lack of combat XP. In fact, I'm pretty excited about that aspect. What I was getting at was the visual storytelling; the dead caravan, deer, adventurer/gem thief could all have been handled via those illustrated text screens - but they're not. So, when the game kills someone and leaves their corpse laying around for the player to see, it's narration. But when the player kills someone/-thing it is not storytelling? If you happen to backtrack for just a moment, it's as if those enemies/creatures you slaughtered were never even there... *spooky music*

What makes it even more jarring, in my opinion, is that the corpses of the caravan crew, the deer (?) by the wolves and the lootable dead adventurer inside the little dungeon are all displayed for the purpose of narration. Also, the lack of XP from combat meaning that combat, apart from the occasional loot, is more about the actual carnage itself.

Permanent corpses. Not that it's that much of an immediate issue when the dead enemies morph into loot bags - but those dead wolfes just popping out of existence, and leaving nothing but nothingness behind is the kind of thing that cheapens a setting in my eyes.

Is the plot in Legend of Zelda really optional?

I thought the beginning of FO2 was, save for the mandatory tutorial dungeon, amazing. The atmosphere, low level gameplay, sandboxy openness of the world - hooked. Can't say I found the beginning of BG1 very interesting until after the Gorion/Sarevok fight and leaving the mandatory tutorial dungeon (aka. Candlekeep). BG2 - For some reason I never manage to play much further than Whatshisvoice going: "They move much sooner than I had anticipated!". So Arch, much Villain. Conceivably people are drawn in by entirely different aspects. Some people like deep and personal character arcs and personal motivations, others like IWD. (nice snow you got here!)

That is great and all, but if it releases for real (supposedly soon) at a 60 dollar price point they are going to find out no one will be buying their game. I have played it, it isn't worth 60 dollars. Honestly I would say it is a 20 dollar game at best. The 60 dollar version includes additional goodies (OST, concept art etc.), as well as Early Access. There was a 30 dollar slacker backer option for just the digital game, available via inXile's own store, so I guess that's what the non-EA version (without the goodies?) will cost...? 60 dollars after release would indeed be way too steep, even more so if the full game is released in an unfinished state. I can't help but think that playing a game before it's actually done is what beta access is for. If it's released on time just for the sake of being on time, then you're going to have to wait for post-release patches and stuff anyways.