Amentep

I dunno, I think there has to be some consequence of attacking someone in full sight. That said there's something about creating a system that allows the evil player to kill a character without worrying about appraisal (essentially assassinating them). None of the "you stole an item from a locked box in an empty room and now your universal reputation -1" stuff (also known as the "donate to the church for good / wack an NPC system")

And of course, sticking things in the holes of your party members is even more important, right? While I disagree with SanguineAngel's proposition that "Adding romances...is a relatively trivial matter...", they also didn't mention sex at all in their post so your conclusion is a bit skewed I think.

Jell-O?

Every update makes me more interested!

Wasn't it IWD2 that did a limited version of that with the Wilderness Lore skill, IIRC, letting you use it to get an idea of what monsters might be in the area. I really liked that because it allowed me to plan better when going into a new area.

I think its hard to not have things fall into some sort of commonality for how we expect creatures to look. For example most of the Elder Scrolls critters look similar to existing creatures (maybe just not at the right size). But as long as they work within the physicality of the world, I'm cool with a wider range of creature to pull from - similar to exisiting animals, similar to extinct animals, tweaks to make freaky animals and so forth.

My hope is that there are traps and that there's more flexibility in dealing with them than always having a thief in the group.

Revolution is the one about all the power going out and nobody being able to get electricity working again and so society goes pre-AC/DC. at least that's what the trailer looked like.

I think its always a some of both to greater or lesser degrees, because I think it's impossible to take yourself out character creation.

D&D had Rust monsters, who were not only resistant to your +1 sword, but could destroy it on contact if you hit them with it. D&D had Jellies and puddings, who were not only resistant to your +1 sword, but would split and become more powerful on contact if you hit them with it. D&D had mages who put up Prismatic spheres that made them not only resistant to your +5 sword, but you risked DYING HORRIBLY if you hit them with it. D&D had creatures who could telekinese your weapon right out of your hand, forcing you to try something else, even if you did your homework and came totally prepared for the fight! But I guess it makes total sense that someone who's played D&D for 14 years would be annoyed at the 'unfun' nature of some enemies in the IE games being resistant to your weaponry. No wait. it doesn't. Er, but PnP games there's a lot more area to find an alternative resolution than in a computer game. And a DM running the game might be a bit more forgiving if the party stumbles onto a random encounter they aren't equipped to handle. I only mentioned having played D&D to say that I understood the system and understood that there was some creatures that couldn't be hit (or killed) without certain tactics - I wasn't walking into the game totally blind, as it were. I'm not against resistances; I'm not against having to adjust your tactics. I'm not overly fond of total immunities and very often I found in BG 1 that lack of money made it impossible to get the items necessary to kill certain monsters and if you tried to run away you'd get a TPK forcing you to reload. This wasn't a problem in subsequent playthroughs since I'd "learned" where to avoid the monsters, but an issue when I first played the game.

At this point, I think a lot of posters here are going to feel alienated if they don't include an alienated character...

I think Tolkien's fantasy stuff has its place. I just don't think it should be the only flavor of ice cream we get. I loved it in SSI's Phantasie when creating your party you could randomly get some of the monster races to join your party. I liked the inclusion of the planetouched in NWN2 (since they didn't show up much in D&D videogames to my experience). But ultimately as long as the races in the game - standard or non-standard, Tolkien or not - as long as they're fun to play and distinct enough to give reasons to want to play them...well I'm good with that.

Romance could be a part of the content if it's well done. If Josh has already has this in mind for specific reason related to the story and story dynamic I'd be fine with that. But just adding romance because OMG I WANNA ROMANCE MAH PARTY is a waste of Obsidian's time. besides we all know the party gets hot and heavy when we hit the "sleep" button and the screen fades to black anyhow. I kid. I kid. Joking aside, I don't think most of the people posting about romances would disagree with your statement. I think - because we don't know how much of PROJECT ETERNITY is nailed down - we're seeing a lot of people suggesting that it be considered when nailing down the story / story dynamic.

To be fair, though, some people see romances as something that can add extra play quality to the game (ie make it the best game possible). Some don't. And then people polarize and start making extreme statements that don't make any sense. And then the thread gets shut down by a moderator like the last 4-5 romance threads I've seen. I think these kind of discussions are inevitable - at the very least until more concrete information about the game exists - though. EDIT - I'm more bugged by lengthy quote pyramids here myself

Well, you know how immature priviledged white straight males are, don't you? I may be confusing my long term posters here, but as I recall Jaesun, the "Burn it with Fire" suggester, isn't that.

Because this is supposed to be a return to the classic IE cRPG days, not a real life emulator. Where do you draw the line? "I am extremely ADHD so I want Obsidian to include a ritalin meter (come on, George Ziets!) where I'll go into an "interruption mode" where my character won't let anybody finish their sentences when it wears off. I want this because I have a hard time relating to people in a more appropriate format than videogames." If they could support it through the game (think of how the low int dialogue in Arcanum was done, or the madness of the Malkavians in Bloodlines), an ADHD background (or alternatively a race with short attention spans) could actually be kind of fun. But I'd only want something like that done if it made sense in the setting and was able to be carried through the game (pretty much like any character creation trait or option)

In any situation where there is Finite resources, there has to be some effect between adding element "A" vs element "B". I don't see what's "underhanded" about the poll. While I find it fairly doubtful Romances would pull resources from gameplay (which I think from a development standpoint has to be the thing which all others revolve around), i think it'd be very likely romances would pull resources from story (or more accurately put, exchange additional external story in favor of additional inter-party story)

You could, have a mage have to cast from a spell book. The book has limited pages and the more powerful spells take more pages. The spells have to be scribed in a special ink (preparation) and when cast the ink contains the components for the spell, thus rendering the book blank (lost in casting). There would need to be some balancing for pages (your 1st level mage would otherwise scribe 100 magic missles in a 100 page book). And if you had a disarm system you could disarm a mage's spellbook in combat and, if lucky have your mage pick it up... But anyhow my point is you can do the kind of limits the Vancian system does without actually having it involve forgetting spells, relearn etc.

er...if they included romances in the game, wouldn't that actually make romance's part of the game's content? Romances to me are just fairly specialized character relationships. I can certainly play an RPG where my party's relationships are left up to my imagination to draw out; but I also have no issue my PC being able to talk to NPCs and develop friendships/enmity with them either.

Seems to me if the game was going to have backgrounds ala Arcanum (something I liked a good bit) this would be something that could be possible to do within the context of the background system provided it makes sense with the setting.

The trailer for revolution didn't grab me, so I skipped it. I haven't heard from anyone yet any reason to feel like I missed anything.

I never played Ultima IV, but it sounds interesting looking it up online for how it worked.

It should be ritual based. Want to fire a fireball at a troll? Dance around for 3 minutes chanting while making mystic signs. Want to stop time? Hire three other dances, dance in tandem for 7 hours and 15 minutes and slaughter a goat.

You know, I like that interpretation!

So Ridley has answered the final open question - why do the engineers want us dead? Because we killed Space Jesus. I think the Space Jesus angle is stupid as well. Luckily since its not in the movie and I ascribe to the idea that what the author intended is irrelevant to what is in the work, I can ignore it.