kanisatha

Meh, Planescape'll remain what it's always been, more people will just be able to play it. And perhaps they'll have the good sense to make reading text in that game a wee bit easier. They probably won't. Eh, one can always hope. Yep. Quite so. Really getting tired of the "I don't want/like it, so nobody else should have it" attitude of some people. Beamdog is doing awesome work, and I'll keep giving them lots of my money.

+1 Been beating the drums pretty hard for this myself.

Yup, they've sold around 800k-900k copies of the 1st game since it's release + the games they sold during the KS campaign. That's a truckload of profit for them right there. Enough to fund Pillars 2 and other projects as well (unless they were heavily in debt and paid that off). Yeah Feargus confirms in the GameBanshee interview that PoE1 sales post-release are over 900,000 units and that including the KS campaign sales the total is over 1 million. Surely PoE2 will sell even more. Btw, Feargus also confirms in this interview that PoE3 will happen.

^This. And I'll go even further and say that for me AD&D 2e is a horrible system in every way. D&D 3e, 5e and other similar systems such as PoE1 and PoE2 are superior to 2e in every way. Thank God WotC won't allow the use of 2e in any future games.

Yeah I'll join @213374U in defending the Beamdog EEs. To each their own. For me, finding and using mods is stupid and I don't have any interest in doing it, so having the EEs run flawlessly on my very new machine is awesome. And views on the new UI are entirely subjective. I consider the new UI to be awesome and a huge improvement over the ridiculous "classic" UI. And the new content (both quests and characters) is indeed hit and miss, just like the original games which also had their share of crappy content in them. Nostalgia is ok, but clinging to the past for its own same is not for me, which is something I've also stated with respect to the IE purists who attack PoE for not being IE-ish enough.

Seems like the perfect opportunity to bring together Paizo and Paradox (or some other big-name publisher) and create a Pathfinder cRPG!

Yes! Eder's the best. Always have him in my parties and never swap him out for someone else.

At least one fan of the IE games disagrees with you, and I suspect I am far from alone. What I wanted was a return to the isometric PoV with beautiful individually designed maps, to tactical real time with pause combat, and to a deep story. These were the things the made IE games great to me, not the individual mechanical elements ported over from tabletop AD&D, and certainly not the arbitrary party size limit. Hear hear! I'm really getting tired of the "Only I get to say what qualifies as a true successor to the IE games" crowd. So maybe some of these sentiments will make some heads explode: PoE was an awesome successor to the IE games; PoE2 is shaping up to be even more awesome; BG2 was not all that it's cracked up to be.

This transcript actually has a lot of interesting information. I was particularly happy to see that something I posted for in the Fig forum is now on Josh's radar: having a UI screen in our stronghold where we can simultaneously access the inventories of all our companions and not just the ones in our party.

Yes, if it will give me a Baldur's Gate ONE style open wilderness exploration map.

+1 Eder is my favorite companion of all and he is always in my parties as well.

Will you make this available as a YouTube video? Sometimes the Twitch recordings don't have close-captioning which I need. Thanks!

Great thread and awesome list, OP! One thing I'd really love to have is a UI screen (perhaps in our stronghold) where I can access the paperdolls and inventories of my PC and all my companions simultaneously. I really love managing the equipment of my companions including even those I don't take with me as a part of my regular party.

I strongly support 6, but I agree with those here saying this is a done deal. We're stuck with 5 whether you like it or not because changing it back to 6 would require way too much new work to replace work already done on the game. But what confuses me is that there are some people who like and support the reduction in party size yet who also keep insisting we need 8+ companions in the game because "that's how many there were in the first game." Seems inconsistent. If the party size is now smaller, I don't see any point whatsoever for anything more than 7 companions, and even that is a wastefully high number for me. Many people who've played through PoE1 are naturally going to gravitate towards taking along the 3 companions returning from the first game. So, for many, they're only going to have one party slot available for any and all new companions.

My unhappiness with this could be assuaged if they make it so that any "required" NPC that has to be taken along for a quest will not take up one of the five party slots.

@Infinitron, thank you for digging up the story. I knew I remembered it correctly!

Not reporting rumors. It was in a mainstream gaming news site (but can't remember who right now), and they were citing the information as coming from an email sent to them by Feargus himself in which he says they've wanted to shrink party size for tactical combat reasons but from their Tyranny experience decided that four was too small so they settled for five.

Already brought this up in another thread, but party size would be my big issue. I read in one of the online news stories that they've decided to reduce party size to five. My big wish would be for them to reconsider that design choice. But party size is fundamental to the whole game so if those accounts are true I doubt they'll be open to changing it at this point. Very unfortunate and very unnecessary. Really unhappy about it.

Backed it at the $45 level. Had intended to also invest a few thousand in the game but holding off for now after reading in one of the online news stories that PoE2 party size has been dropped to five. If true, that's something that really pisses me off.

Don't see why it needs to be either/or. Obs is a reasonably large company and they've often said they can do three major projects roughly at the same time. Me thinks the JES team will first do PoE2 and thereafter Sawyer's historical RPG project (which btw I'm excited by as well). The Cain/Boyarsky team I would guess is working on a vampire/werewolf game set in contemporary times. And then there's the Armored Warfare team which can transition to a Pathfinder cRPG. The smaller Tyranny and Pathfinder card game teams will continue to do follow-on work on those games. They can potentially do it all.

Did they actually say that they wanted to do a Pathfinder cRPG? [speculation hat] What if the mystery Unreal Engine project is a spiritual successor to NWN2, but set in the Pathfinder universe? [/speculation hat] HA! This is what I've been speculating on for months! I think they could sell a Pathfinder-based game as a spiritual successor to NwN2, perhaps first-person, 3D, modular, with emphasis on moddability and DM tools. Then they can keep releasing official modules post-base game release, and we'd have fan-created modules available as well, just like with the NwN games. And yes, they very specifically have said Pathfinder cRPG. I've heard of the D20 issue, but I would bet WotC would be willing to provide a license for its use if necessary because I can't imagine they'd want to suffer even more negative press and fan reactions given where they're at right now. But what could keep them from being supportive is if they already have a similar concept game in the works using D&D rules, possibly the new Forgotten Realms game being developed by Beamdog. If so, then I think Pathfinder fans would accept Obs using the Pathfinder setting and lore but a different rules system if that's the only way to get a Pathfinder cRPG.

Where would Obsidian's Pathfinder license fit into all of this? Both Obs and Paizo have said repeatedly they want to do a Pathfinder-based crpg, and I imagine given Pathfinder's large fan-base they could easily either crowdfund it or find a big-name publisher to bankroll it, so ...?

Yes but it's going to be PoE2, which I'm very excited about don't misunderstand, but I'm far more curious about their mystery game.

Eder, Aloth and Pallegina are returning. I was so happy when I saw that teaser screen. Eder doesn't get much love from PoE fans but he is by far my most favored companion and I always have him in my parties. Also like Aloth (and Sagani) quite a bit but not a big fan of Pallegina (and Durance). So all in all a good deal for me. I suppose which companions return depends on whether their writers are still with Obs.

You guys should seriously move on this. I think the niche exists for a 'spiritual successor' to the Neverwinter Nights games (a highly moddable modular cRPG with DM tools, etc.) but using the Pathfinder setting rather than D&D. After all, within the NwN games the parts made by Obsidian were the best, so those games' legacy belongs to Obsidian rather than to Bioware imho.