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UI Version 2: What did Obsidian do? Hopefully not this! Another thread because I'm bored. Also another speculation. I have made another mockup UI based on what I think Obsidian would have done to achieve their goals, based on a couple of recent-ish statements. Objective #1: Use up less screen space overall. This is something that they stated they were going to do, make the UI smaller. This is something I wouldn't necessarily agree with unless it was trimming a little bit of vertical space that they could have spared from the original. In my opinion there is absolutely no point in not using up the total width of the screen for an IWD style UI as it allows you more space to make use of functionality (such as extra action bar buttons, quick item buttons etc). It is possible that this is exactly what they did. However the unfortunate fans of minimalistic UI's probably influenced this decision a little bit. (Assumed) Objective #2: Make portraits slightly larger In a recent thread Josh Sawyer posted the current portrait size in the main HUD - 73x86, which is slightly bigger than the version seen in UIv1. It may be that the portrait size is bigger but is cropped or shrunk by the UI to fit in the same tiny portrait windows featured in UIv1, but for this mockup I assumed they were bigger. Objective 3: Remove Dead Space Self explanatory. After shrinking the space, make use of available space in the UI. Less amounts of fancy pillars and superfluous art-y stuff like that. Worst Case Result: Vertical space cannot really be shrunk any more than this, unless the portrait size (73x86) or icon size (32x32) was made smaller. Room for status effects has, however disappeared. Not sure how they are going to be handled unless they make them tiny icons on the portraits or something. Horizontal space has been shrunk to only include necessary menu elements. It is possible that the menu size could be reduced even further and the left side of the UI with the portraits expanded a bit further to include some more action bar slots. I am not sure how things like skill use, guard interface, formation buttons and all of that are being handled in Eternity. This is however, exactly what I hope they HAVE NOT done regarding the UI for the game. You do not need to see the bits of the map to the sides of the UI because you will never ever be focusing down there or need to see characters beneath the UI height on the screen. Latest RockPaperSh*tGun article on the mega dungeon however was promising in that they've rejected the minimalists and kept the skeuomorphic, Baldur's Gate style, but I can't help but fear that we've lost some horizontal space that could be used. Hopefully this is not what was done for the second version!