Amentep

"First, we would like to create unique portraits for every quest-giving NPC across the entire game." Reads to me as it wouldn't be joinable companions or the PC, but a way to identify Joan Questgiver from Jane Questgiver across the street. But I could be wrong, of course.

When I worked specifically with remediation at a college that had open admissions, ~60% of the incoming class were remedial and had been for at least 20-30 years. However all that time spent working with remedial students (and indeed being a part of organizations tied to remediation) taught me that this isn't a new problem. The part that's new(ish) is that the colleges themselves are being forced to handle the remediation (to some degree) rather than requiring the student complete a prep school after graduation from HS but before matriculation into the college which was more the norm back in the 1700s-1800s.

Bushel is 2150.42 cu in. in the US. I'm thinking they mean identity (a=a) symmetry (if a=b then b=a) and transitive (if a=b and b=c, then a=c) rather than the associative, distributive and commutative properties, which IIRC are more specifically tied to operations in algebra. 1 Acre is 160 square rod.

Wetton was a founding member of ASIA and U.K., IIRC. RIP

Geoff Nicholls, keyboardist for Black Sabbath from 1979 to 2004 - http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/geoff-nicholls-black-sabbath-keyboardist-dead-at-68/11867262 Not sure if these really count as 'celebrity' deaths, but... Comic Artist Dan Spiegle; I mostly knew him from various Gold Key titles (including the first Doctor Spektor with Don Glut), his work in Blackhawks and the Eclipse comic Crossfire with Mark Evanier http://www.newsfromme.com/2017/01/30/dan-spiegle-r-p/ Namco founder Masaya Nakamura; originally the business was Nakamura Manufacturing before changing their name to Namco. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/business/pac-man-masaya-nakamura-dead.html

Typically with crowdfunding, information about where to ship stuff isn't collected until after the campaign ends

Yeah, I'd *think* it does, but they don't specifically say and I wouldn't want to assume.

On the forum/blog updates, they've said there's 10 people on Pathfinder Adventures.

Since I realized the poster stated PHYSICAL copy, IIRC the physical copy of the first game was DRM free (didn't require any activation) but I can't find the thread where people talked about that. I'm not sure that I've seen any specifics on a physical copy of this game - is there definitely one in the boxed sets?

Well they are releasing through GoG if that meets your criteria of DRM free.

I think for Romance to work in the large scheme of things, this has to be a possibility. Romance is a part of character, if two NPC's characters make sense to have a relationship, I see no problem with having that happen as part of making the NPCs reactive to their 'game lives', if you will.

How is this "back to the topic" when the topic never was about party size in the first place? Hm... Because in the bit you snipped, he said that the three returning characters limits the characters who might have to background-info dump to the player. The previous characters are "known"1 1Excepting that it wouldn't be new player friendly to not have those characters info dump on your past. I haven't played Tyranny (couldn't get it to run last time I tried) but the lore hyperlinks - at least for stuff your character should know or has learned about in-game (but the player may have forgotten) - sounds promising to move towards a more naturalistic companion relationship.

The reputation of Exorcist II: The Heretic is part of why I never proceeded with watching the rest. Boorman has made some genuinely great films (IMO), but its my understanding that Excorsist II was made under the conditions ripe for bad film making - the script was still being re-written while they filmed.

More people should see The Ninth Configuration. In fact I should re-watch it again myself, its been a few years. Weirdly as much as I liked the original THE EXORCIST, I've never seen any of the sequels, including Blatty's 3rd.

Certainly, though, this is a product of the character being written as well as narrative needs? A companion who sees their best days behind them will always contextualize the events of the present into their view of their past achievements, while a companion who is looking to make a better future will always contextualize the events of the present with their hope for enacting change in the future. The former may materialize in telling stories of past exploits, the other in praising or criticizing the PC for how their choices align with the NPC's goal. And either may need to give some setting or history information about a town, a faction, an event because the developers can't rely on having the player stumble across it in a book so they can make an informed decision as a simple narrative function.

While admittedly I was off-put by the drop from 6 to 5, ultimately if the game is better for it, how can I argue against it?

The Watcher will start at level one in Romance though...

Beyond the above listed individuals, I'll add that William Peter Blatty author of THE EXORCIST, author of the book it was based on and director/screenplay writer for the great, strange philosophical film THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (aka TWINKLE, TWINKLE, KILLER KANE) passed away on the 12th. And Mike Connors. Probably best known to US TV audiences as the lead in MANNIX (or if they're old enough, they might remember his days as a basketball player at UCLA). Possibly best known to Fallout fans as the small-time criminal who survived the post-apocalypse in Roger Corman's THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (one of the many listed influences, IIRC on Fallout). We also lost Barbara Hale, probably best known as Della Street in the long-running Raymond Burr TV version of Earl Stanley Gardner's seminal lawyer-as-detective character, PERRY MASON. She had a long career, although primarily in small roles before taking the Street role. She originally wanted to be an animator and worked as a model for Roy Ketcham's comic strip RAMBLIN' BILL (aka BOWLEGGED BILL) And lastly, but not least, Alman Brother's Band drummer Butch Trucks has also passed away. He was #71 on Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time with the bands other drummer Jaimoe Johanson.

Ultimately we all know that levels are an abstraction anyhow for the "gameist" part of an RPG. I'm probably more bugged by the narrative railroading to accomplish the level drain than being reset to level 1.

By, admittedly, making fundamental changes in the sequel to an already popular game that sold a lot of copies. I "get" the conspiracy theories, even if I don't necessarily agree with them.

Can't say that's surprising given that they're dropping the party limit to 5 instead of 6.

Looks like they've posted some WIP footage - maybe that'll help advertise it?

Personally I think they should do strictly D&D style Dual Classing instead of multiclassing. I may be the only one though.

I don't you can be of a relaxed and reasonable opinion on the Internet. You must be doing it wrong.

How many templates do you think 8 classes + multiclassing + 2 sub-classes (first stretch goal) will have to result in? I don't think we will be able to import our Watcher as is into POEII, the classes are going to get reworked to get multiclassing and sub-classes in which will make one-on-one mapping impossible between the two games, you'll have to manually level up to level 16.... As long as you can't take a subclass until level umpteen+1, then doing 8 class templates would be all you would need. There'd be no need to make a template for multiclass (particularly if Multi-Class is like D&D 3.X). If someone wanted to start with a new multiclass, they don't have to pick a template OR import a character.