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Given that the NPC companions will be of an engrossing nature with their own personas and agendas, how severe can we expect conflict and consequences arising from derision to be? There was a moment in BG: ToSC when my party was deep within Durlag's Tower near death and out of resources, I attempted to rest before gracefully exiting that death-trap when an argument broke out. Khalid and Jaheria had decided that Montoron and Xzar weren't desirable company anymore, which resulted in my party hacking itself to bits in a squabble I had no ability to stop. It was an absolutely exquisite moment. Baldur's Gate II followed up these conflicts well with many other characters ending in irrevocable impasses where the PC had to make serious choices that could result in party members leaving forever or dueling to the death. I am very excited at the prospect for these consequences; particularly in a no-reload environment. Is this an aspect that anyone else looks forward to?

Hello friends, my first post here and i hope that is a "new topic/discussion". I hope u enjoy the poll.

I've always thought it strange that, in party-based RPGs, while lots of time is spent recording dialogues and conversations, there's always only a tiny pool of audio cues that are used when selecting them / giving them orders. Why is this? A large percentage of the player's time is spent clicking on their portraits and giving orders, so why is it that we're stuck with hearing the same 'I stand ready' phrases over and over again? Given that OE don't need to worry about full voiceover for companion dialogue in PE, what I'd like to see (or rather, hear), instead, is greater variety and nuance to the audio cues we hear when giving orders to the party. Here are a few examples: Location specific: relaxed quotes when in Taverns, wary ones when in a new and threatening area, urgent when in battle, whispers when in a crypt, that sort of thing. Emotion-affected: It always jars for me when I've had, say, an argument with a party member in a conversation, or an emotional reveal has taken place, and then when you're back in gameplay, you're back to the standard sets of chirpy responses. It would be amazing if sometimes that could affect the voice sets as well. 'Huffy' or 'distance' responses after an argument, for example, or cheerful after a humerous exchange. If you wanted to be really interesting about it, you could use this as a cue to the player as well. If a companion's audio phrases suddenly sound pensive, or sulky, talking to them might open up a conversation. Level / story affected: This is a big one, but wouldn't it be good if, say, a character's voice set became more confident as the story progressed / levelled up. A character might join the group and be quite non-expressive and professional when being given orders, but as time passes and he's travelled with the group and becomes more relaxed, his tone may change. Or a cheerful character, after being witness to an evil player character's awful deeds and derision in conversation, would become more downbeat. When you've got the voice actor in the studio, given the lack of need for extensive recording, I wouldn't have thought it would be too hard to get them to instead spend a bit of time recording different nuances of responses? I asked about this in the reddit Q&A, but unfortunately didn't get a response. What do you guys think?

Hello I really like the drinking minigame and mechanics from Witcher. I think that drinking whould by a exellent addon to the project. to find out something interesting such as gossip or to obtain information from the NPC that normally would not have to get drunk shared. It is good ifea of spending some time with your companions or other npc. Drinking beer with dwarf, wine with elf companion or simply vodka with human mercenery. What do you think about adding drinking (alkohol not potions) to the game, when you are resting in tawern or simply in your base-camp, partying with companions all night long hehe :D I whould like your opinion about that subject so don't by shy

What if it were not taken as a given that our protagonist was master of all he surveys, what if he had to work to persuade the party to follow his course, and pursue his personal objectives. Currently doing a playthrough of Origins, and the character of Alistair has gotten me wondering what would happen if the man had possessed a functioning spinal column, if he had taken control of the party and decided its actions and strategy after the battle of Ostagar. Say for instance he had chosen which quests to pursue and we had merely a chance at persuading him otherwise within dialogue and asking additional questions, so that originally it seems we are more a junior partner in his struggle against the blight. If we kept persuading him to follow our path or challenging his decisions eventually we'd have to resolve our roles within the party, through persuasion, threats, violence or even blackmail we might try to seize control. Obviously other party members would have something to say on these matters, and an unpopular player character might be challenged by all and sundry if he tries to seize control without the proper legwork. Then again the opposite might be true, and a protagonist who has pleased all the companions and advised the party leader well might be approached to lead the party as everybody sees the benefit of his leadership. Would this be feasible I wonder, would it create too much of a dissonance when we are controllling the party but our character is not the primary decision maker. Would it take away too much of our sense of agency, when we are not driving the plot but rather steering from the sidelines. We could still be fairly free in the short term, free to wander where we choose within areas, begin converstaions with who we please and conduct business with merchants and craftsmen, but in the long term we'd be bound to follow the party leaders mandate and path. Or perhaps work against it, so as to harm his reputation? I'm not sure what to think of my own idea honestly as I can think of as many bad points as good, and it might be a nightmare to implement.

Do you want to romance one or two of your companions? I do because the romanceable characters become more deep and intresting persons. It also helps me made my role-play in game diffrent and intresting every time. Developers please give us opportunity.

Hey! One of my favorite things about Icewind Dale 2 and BG2 (and Temple of Elemental Evil, which I just found and started playing!) was the ability to have an entire party of PCs, skipping the PCs entirely (or almost entirely). Do you intend to have this as an option in the game, or will it be more like Planescape: Torment, where there's only one true PC, and then you get a bunch of controllable NPC sidekicks? Game looks really neat, look forward to seeing great things!