Gameplay video: Detailed Response

[Sensuki]

All hyped up after watching the gameplay vids and reading some recent interviews (although still waiting on mine!).

Overall I really like what I saw. I'd say probably 90% of the details about the game are absolutely bang on what I wanted or better. There is however another 10%, niggling little details that I was either cold on or not enthused by. Only minor things but I thought they'd be worth bringing up anyway, alongside praise for the stuff that the PE team has done so well.

First of all...

Main Menu

The artwork for the main menu is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. That is Justin Sweet/Jason Manley IWD Style Art in it's essence. Well done to (probably Kaz) whoever did that.

The small main menu box makes sense, hopefully it doesn't get too small on larger resolutions (such as 1440p+). Also hopefully the Options menu is split into Video, Audio, Gameplay, etc etc and quite extensive. We'll see during the Beta.

Character Creation

Once again, the artwork, the menus, CC icons and the color choices for this are all spot on. Very reminiscent of the Icewind Dale games. The CC menu going across the top of the screen makes sense due to the fact that most screens are 16:9 or wider these days.

One thing I did notice is that there is no skill selection, or talent selection upon character creation. By the spacing of the items at the top, I'm going to guess that you do not get any starting skill points and rather just start with your class bonuses. I'm also going to guess that you don't get a Talent at 1st level, and I can kind of guess that's because for new players who don't exactly know what they "need" for their build. I'm okay with that, even if I did enjoy picking feats etc in D&D/IWD2.

Another thing which I already brought up on the SA Forums is that you do not get very many attribute points to choose from. What I do like is that a weighted point buy system a la 3E/4E is not being used and it's more like the 2E style where one point = one point.

While I'm okay with low attribute points, I feel that this array of points such as this one here is going to be seen as "boring" by many people who want to max an attribute but don't really get any remaining points to have on anything else (even though you can reduce stats to 7 or . I think maybe like two extra attribute points could go a long way here.

Also regarding feedback on the attributes, the description of attributes tells the player what they do, but not by how much. I think it would be nice to see the raw numbers in the parchment in the character creation so you can see that 10 Might gives you +20% damage and healing, or however much it is per point.

 

Of the six shown portraits in the game I think there's a bit of quality variation between them IMO. Heodan's portrait is the best of them, looks like Kaz's work - another fantastic portrait bro. The Robert Baratheon looking portrait is my least favourite, mostly because the proportions just seem a bit off. It's probably just the artist's chosen perspective but his head seems a bit small/short, especially in contrast to the amount of armor shown. It's kind of jarring because none of the other portraits we've seen have had such a small head but such a large amount of body. Calisca's portrait looks better in-game than the version we were shown in the Fighter update. The other three (Odema and the two Elf variants) look like Polina's work and those are pretty good too, even if I think the Elf one with the bigger hair looks better than the other one. It's kinda hard to tell for sure though because I don't have the high res to see the "brushwork".

 

If this is the very same demo as the E3 demo then I'm going to guess that there's still a few more head and hair variants to be added to the game, as I *think* the E3 demo didn't include the extra ones that were supposed to be added in the Alpha/Beta, but I'm not sure. Maybe that's all of them.

 

And obviously there'll be more voice sets once they get onto audio finalization.

 

Environment Art / Areas

 

I don't really need to say anything here except that the Environment Art is simply fantastic. The lighting is really good and the environmental animations are also very nice. It also reminds me how sad it is that 2D environments have gone out of favor. I'm not 100% sure if these areas have had a paint over though, but they look great regardless.

 

Dialogue UI

 

I was a little bit worried about how the dialogue UI would be grounded into the screen as unlike the IE games it's not bound to the normal UI, but the positioning and size is perfectly fine at 1080p and the background wood and text are significantly improved from the pre-alpha version we saw last year.

There are a few inconsistencies in the text such as full stops being present on some checks and not others etc. I also like how the voiced dialogue is highlighted in a different color, as is the flavour text.

 

One thing that looks a bit jarring to me is that the names of NPCs are all in the same color of brown. The color looks fine, but I personally prefer the Baldur's Gate style where their major clothing color is used for their name in dialogue and it definitely helps during conversations with multiple NPCs and companions interjecting. However I do realize that in the Icewind Dale games, the same color of text was used for all NPCs. I hereby submit a request that the major clothing color be used for characters in dialogue, or at least an option to be able to use it.

 

Trade UI

 

I really like the Trade UI. Please don't change it. It's very IE-like but it's also a bit more useful, being that you can drop items into a trade window and your pack is also shown. I personally like the 16 space pack size, but I read in the PC World interview that the standard size is 8 slots. I am really not a fan of pack size being influenced by an attribute, but I can understand if a Talent was used to buy a second row or something. Personally though I think 16 slots is great, even if it does allow you to carry a fair amount of stuff. Also once again the styling and colors are spot on.

 

Inventory UI

 

Much like the other UI screens, the Inventory UI is also very nice. From memory I think the combat stat icons are still temporary, but I'm not sure. I'm going to guess that the chest icon is the stash? But I'm not sure what the chalice icon does. What does it do?

I think if there's one area for improvement here it's most likely in tooltips, mousing over things to get a more detailed idea of what they do. Also some kind of weapon damage and weapon speed display would be nice as well, whether that's simply a tooltip of the equipped weapon or something. Perhaps that is shown in the Character record screen I'm not sure, but being able to compare weapons in the inventory screen is much more useful.

 

"Chapter screens"

 

Perfect. Just like the Icewind Dale games.

 

Scripted Interactions / "Interstitials"

 

Much like the Environment Art, these really speak for themselves. They are very evocative, have a lovely look and feel to them and feel very fitting to this style of game. The Intersitials with different smaller drawings, animations and sounds are p. sweet too. Good job!

 

General UI

 

Starting with the main UI elements. We've already seen these in some youtube screencaps, and they've already been discussed. Seeing a 1080p version though I reckon that the PC's portrait looks strange overlapping that piece of UI art in the left corner. I think that should be touched up so that that side of the UI looks like it connects to the portrait, rather than the portrait sitting over it. Then again, I'm going to be using the solid bar UI anyway.
Nothing really wrong with the rest of it. The centre menu is very good. The dialogue window is a little different (in text presentation) than what I expected, but I think the different colored events works. I'm really looking forward to seeing the verbose dumps and how the log looks when expanded.

The only thing I'm not "woo hoo" about is the Action Bar look. I was envisioning more of an ornate look to the bar in my head, but the actual bar itself is very plain. Hopefully the Full UI spruces this up a little bit but it's only a minor niggle. The functionality is fine though. I noticed that abilities with multiple uses aren't distinguished until depleted. I think some kind of display is needed here to show how many uses an ability has. I noticed a zero appears in the bottom right corner of an ability icon once it's depleted but maybe have the number there the whole time or have some way of showing/differentiating how many per encounter/per rest uses an ability has on the action bar.

 

Another thing I'm not super keen on is the selection circles. We've seen varying thicknesses and colors in the selection circles in various screenshots, and it looks like the ToEE style circles have been chosen (for the moment).
I personally prefer the thinner IE style circles, and I'm not massive on the colors used or the style of the movement indicators used either.

 

I really wish the selection circles and movement indicators were in the IE style, rather than the ToEE style, and one of the things I liked about Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition was that you could choose the colors of your selection circles, and even give different party members different colors - such as purple or orange. I think this feature would be a cool thing to have for PE ... but truth be told all I really want are my IE style green selection circles and movement indicators.

 

 

Odema also had a blue selection circle in the opening dialogue. This is a bit concerning for me and I really hope that in the final version NPCs, enemies and player controlled units all have distinct colors, and that we will be able to have the same control over the selection circle feedback that the IE games gave us, where we can have selection circles for everyone all the time. Enemy red selection circles also looked less smooth than the blue ones in the video, but that could be the type of compression used in the video.

 

The various mouse cursors are all very nice though. I noticed that when you go to collect the bushes, that when you mouse over the bushes that it is not highlighted, but other interactive objects in areas are. Is there a reason for this?

 

Ground loot icons and stuff are great too.

Combat

 

Pace of combat looks quite good. The animations displayed are also quite nice, and in many cases better than what I was expecting. The moment the first dialogue ended, I was surprised at how smoothly all the characters were walking away from the fire. Combat does feel a little bit floaty though, it sort of captures the IE feel ... but not quite, hard to put my finger on the specifics of why it doesn't 100% get there right now, but certainly fairly close.

 

I noticed a couple of pathfinding issues where characters get stuck between other characters and run on the spot (which funnily enough reminds me of what happens in the IE games funny that the same issue occurs).

 

One jarring element of combat animation to me is the combat idle animation that playable races have. I did ask Josh about this on tumblr, but in the IE games, there is a difference between the BG games and the IWD games in how characters are poised during combat. The default IE animation from Baldur's Gate has the characters holding their weapons at the ready, and pulsing up and down to likely simulate breathing - visible in this video

which is actually the 1PP BG1 animations modded back into IWD1. In the IWD games, characters look idle in combat. In IWD1 they practically stand there doing nothing, but in IWD2 they have an idle combat animation similar to the one used for PE, which is no doubt where the animator has gotten his/her inspiration from there.

 

I personally prefer the BG style where the characters hold their weapons with a higher/more active guard and I don't think the PE idle combat animation is convincing enough. Not a huge deal, but something to point out anyway.

 

Another concern of mine regarding combat was the FX used for abilities and spells. I didn't think the style of FX used in the Priest spell videos were perfect ... to my surprise the ones shown in the demo are all pretty much fine, except for a couple.

 

I think it's the FX for the Fighter and Wolf "Knockdown"

 

 

The FX for this ability is just plain wrong. The orange "fire" really isn't evocative of the type of skill that it is and the blur effect that goes with it is REALLY over the top. Blur effects like this were used fairly extensively in the ARPG Titan Quest for the Dream skill tree and I think it's possible that some of the Defense skills used it as well, but I think even using blur, and particularly the amount of it is just waaaay over the top in this instance (hard to see in the screeny, evident in the video). The sound effect is nice, but I really think a simpler graphic should be used instead that's more fitting for the mundaneness of the ability. I really hope that such a blur effect is not super overdone, I've already seen a few abilities that use it and the only one where it really looked natural was the Skuldr's scream. There's a similar looking ability in Titan Quest which pretty much does exactly the same thing (stuns). If anything the amount of blur used for Knockdown should be reduced, it looks silly.

 

The flame effects on the floor trap looked great and I really hope the same FX is used for other fire spells, such as Fireball (which had a rather silly Nuclear effect in the teaser trailer).

 

Looks like blood spatter animation from hits isn't in the game yet either. Looking forward to seeing that when it's in. Interrupt animations aren't as long as I thought they'd be.

 

Fog of war looks really nice (good job Adam) but I did notice there was one instance inside the dungeon in the Giant Bomb preview where I could see over the top of a solid wall in the upper right of the screen. It's towards the end, I'm watching the IGN one at the moment though so I won't bother screen capping it.

 

Oozes move way too fast. I'd prefer if they had slow movement like in the IE games and did those ranged attacks rather than rush at running speed towards the party. Perhaps that is just something that hasn't been tweaked yet. Nice to see Oozes in, but hopefully we also get our Gelatinous Cube.

 

The game also looks like it has pretty decent performance!

 

So anyway, there's my impressions and nigglings. I've still got a few more interviews to read but yeah good stuff PE team. Very good job overall, and I can't wait to play the beta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

As for the lack of talents, see Josh's post yesterday:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66444-backer-beta-coming-august-18th/?p=1469106

[Sensuki]

That's to do with the amount of talents present in the beta. There is no screen in the Char Gen UI for Skills or Talents. The space along the top UI is all taken up as well, indicating that you don't choose them at level 1, but only on level ups.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Main Menu

 

The artwork for the main menu is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. That is Justin Sweet/Jason Manley IWD Style Art in it's essence. Well done to (probably Kaz) whoever did that.

Agreed.

The small main menu box makes sense, hopefully it doesn't get too small on larger resolutions (such as 1440p+). Also hopefully the Options menu is split into Video, Audio, Gameplay, etc etc and quite extensive. We'll see during the Beta.

 

Valid concern.

Character Creation

 

Once again, the artwork, the menus, CC icons and the color choices for this are all spot on. Very reminiscent of the Icewind Dale games. The CC menu going across the top of the screen makes sense due to the fact that most screens are 16:9 or wider these days.

I love them, and yes.

One thing I did notice is that there is no skill selection, or talent selection upon character creation. By the spacing of the items at the top, I'm going to guess that you do not get any starting skill points and rather just start with your class bonuses. I'm also going to guess that you don't get a Talent at 1st level, and I can kind of guess that's because for new players who don't exactly know what they "need" for their build. I'm okay with that, even if I did enjoy picking feats etc in D&D/IWD2.

See my post above.

Another thing which I already brought up on the SA Forums is that you do not get very many attribute points to choose from. What I do like is that a weighted point buy system a la 3E/4E is not being used and it's more like the 2E style where one point = one point.

 

While I'm okay with low attribute points, I feel that this array of points such as this one here is going to be seen as "boring" by many people who want to max an attribute but don't really get any remaining points to have on anything else (even though you can reduce stats to 7 or . I think maybe like two extra attribute points could go a long way here.

Personally, I prefer low attribute scores.

 

Also regarding feedback on the attributes, the description of attributes tells the player what they do, but not by how much. I think it would be nice to see the raw numbers in the parchment in the character creation so you can see that 10 Might gives you +20% damage and healing, or however much it is per point.

I concur.

 

Of the six shown portraits in the game I think there's a bit of quality variation between them IMO. Heodan's portrait is the best of them, looks like Kaz's work - another fantastic portrait bro. The Robert Baratheon looking portrait is my least favourite, mostly because the proportions just seem a bit off. It's probably just the artist's chosen perspective but his head seems a bit small/short, especially in contrast to the amount of armor shown. It's kind of jarring because none of the other portraits we've seen have had such a small head but such a large amount of body. Calisca's portrait looks better in-game than the version we were shown in the Fighter update. The other three (Odema and the two Elf variants) look like Polina's work and those are pretty good too, even if I think the Elf one with the bigger hair looks better than the other one. It's kinda hard to tell for sure though because I don't have the high res to see the "brushwork".

Some of them aren't my cup of tea, perhaps, but overall, they are pretty darn good.

 

If this is the very same demo as the E3 demo then I'm going to guess that there's still a few more head and hair variants to be added to the game, as I *think* the E3 demo didn't include the extra ones that were supposed to be added in the Alpha/Beta, but I'm not sure. Maybe that's all of them.

 

And obviously there'll be more voice sets once they get onto audio finalization.

 

Environment Art / Areas

 

I don't really need to say anything here except that the Environment Art is simply fantastic. The lighting is really good and the environmental animations are also very nice. It also reminds me how sad it is that 2D environments have gone out of favor. I'm not 100% sure if these areas have had a paint over though, but they look great regardless.

Great is the word, although I think some colour palettes have become to bright and D3-vanlla-y.

 

Dialogue UI

 

I was a little bit worried about how the dialogue UI would be grounded into the screen as unlike the IE games it's not bound to the normal UI, but the positioning and size is perfectly fine at 1080p and the background wood and text are significantly improved from the pre-alpha version we saw last year.

I find that all the wooden textures of the wood UI have a hard time blending nicely for the eye at times, but still I really like them. Perhaps you can make the wood more tarnished, scratched and woodworm-y.

 

There are a few inconsistencies in the text such as full stops being present on some checks and not others etc. I also like how the voiced dialogue is highlighted in a different color, as is the flavour text.

 

One thing that looks a bit jarring to me is that the names of NPCs are all in the same color of brown. The color looks fine, but I personally prefer the Baldur's Gate style where their major clothing color is used for their name in dialogue and it definitely helps during conversations with multiple NPCs and companions interjecting. However I do realize that in the Icewind Dale games, the same color of text was used for all NPCs. I hereby submit a request that the major clothing color be used for characters in dialogue, or at least an option to be able to use it.

That would be a nice detail to keep on having.

 

Trade UI

 

I really like the Trade UI. Please don't change it. It's very IE-like but it's also a bit more useful, being that you can drop items into a trade window and your pack is also shown. I personally like the 16 space pack size, but I read in the PC World interview that the standard size is 8 slots. I am really not a fan of pack size being influenced by an attribute, but I can understand if a Talent was used to buy a second row or something. Personally though I think 16 slots is great, even if it does allow you to carry a fair amount of stuff. Also once again the styling and colors are spot on.

Except for the wood-texture blending issue, I really like it.

 

Inventory UI

 

Much like the other UI screens, the Inventory UI is also very nice. From memory I think the combat stat icons are still temporary, but I'm not sure. I'm going to guess that the chest icon is the stash? But I'm not sure what the chalice icon does. What does it do?

I think if there's one area for improvement here it's most likely in tooltips, mousing over things to get a more detailed idea of what they do. Also some kind of weapon damage and weapon speed display would be nice as well, whether that's simply a tooltip of the equipped weapon or something. Perhaps that is shown in the Character record screen I'm not sure, but being able to compare weapons in the inventory screen is much more useful.

See my answer just above.

 

"Chapter screens"

 

Perfect. Just like the Icewind Dale games.

A big thumbs-up.

 

Scripted Interactions / "Interstitials"

 

Much like the Environment Art, these really speak for themselves. They are very evocative, have a lovely look and feel to them and feel very fitting to this style of game. The Intersitials with different smaller drawings, animations and sounds are p. sweet too. Good job!

Absolutely stunning. One of the best features, and a great artist drawing them sketches too.

 

General UI

 

Starting with the main UI elements. We've already seen these in some youtube screencaps, and they've already been discussed. Seeing a 1080p version though I reckon that the PC's portrait looks strange overlapping that piece of UI art in the left corner. I think that should be touched up so that that side of the UI looks like it connects to the portrait, rather than the portrait sitting over it. Then again, I'm going to be using the solid bar UI anyway.

Nothing really wrong with the rest of it. The centre menu is very good. The dialogue window is a little different (in text presentation) than what I expected, but I think the different colored events works. I'm really looking forward to seeing the verbose dumps and how the log looks when expanded.

 

The only thing I'm not "woo hoo" about is the Action Bar look. I was envisioning more of an ornate look to the bar in my head, but the actual bar itself is very plain. Hopefully the Full UI spruces this up a little bit but it's only a minor niggle. The functionality is fine though. I noticed that abilities with multiple uses aren't distinguished until depleted. I think some kind of display is needed here to show how many uses an ability has. I noticed a zero appears in the bottom right corner of an ability icon once it's depleted but maybe have the number there the whole time or have some way of showing/differentiating how many per encounter/per rest uses an ability has on the action bar.

As you may guess, I really like it, and I don't want any big changes.

 

Another thing I'm not super keen on is the selection circles. We've seen varying thicknesses and colors in the selection circles in various screenshots, and it looks like the ToEE style circles have been chosen (for the moment).

I personally prefer the thinner IE style circles, and I'm not massive on the colors used or the style of the movement indicators used either.

I love ToEE, but I agree wholeheartedly here!

 

I really wish the selection circles and movement indicators were in the IE style, rather than the ToEE style, and one of the things I liked about Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition was that you could choose the colors of your selection circles, and even give different party members different colors - such as purple or orange. I think this feature would be a cool thing to have for PE ... but truth be told all I really want are my IE style green selection circles and movement indicators.

 

 

Odema also had a blue selection circle in the opening dialogue. This is a bit concerning for me and I really hope that in the final version NPCs, enemies and player controlled units all have distinct colors, and that we will be able to have the same control over the selection circle feedback that the IE games gave us, where we can have selection circles for everyone all the time. Enemy red selection circles also looked less smooth than the blue ones in the video, but that could be the type of compression used in the video.

 

The various mouse cursors are all very nice though. I noticed that when you go to collect the bushes, that when you mouse over the bushes that it is not highlighted, but other interactive objects in areas are. Is there a reason for this?

 

Ground loot icons and stuff are great too.

 

Once again, yep!

Combat

 

Pace of combat looks quite good. The animations displayed are also quite nice, and in many cases better than what I was expecting. The moment the first dialogue ended, I was surprised at how smoothly all the characters were walking away from the fire. Combat does feel a little bit floaty though, it sort of captures the IE feel ... but not quite, hard to put my finger on the specifics of why it doesn't 100% get there right now, but certainly fairly close.

 

I noticed a couple of pathfinding issues where characters get stuck between other characters and run on the spot (which funnily enough reminds me of what happens in the IE games funny that the same issue occurs).

 

One jarring element of combat animation to me is the combat idle animation that playable races have. I did ask Josh about this on tumblr, but in the IE games, there is a difference between the BG games and the IWD games in how characters are poised during combat. The default IE animation from Baldur's Gate has the characters holding their weapons at the ready, and pulsing up and down to likely simulate breathing - visible in this video

which is actually the 1PP BG1 animations modded back into IWD1. In the IWD games, characters look idle in combat. In IWD1 they practically stand there doing nothing, but in IWD2 they have an idle combat animation similar to the one used for PE, which is no doubt where the animator has gotten his/her inspiration from there.

I'm not fond of their idle panting either. It feels a bit like thirsty dogs, heaving and frothing.

 

I personally prefer the BG style where the characters hold their weapons with a higher/more active guard and I don't think the PE idle combat animation is convincing enough. Not a huge deal, but something to point out anyway.

 

Another concern of mine regarding combat was the FX used for abilities and spells. I didn't think the style of FX used in the Priest spell videos were perfect ... to my surprise the ones shown in the demo are all pretty much fine, except for a couple.

 

I think it's the FX for the Fighter and Wolf "Knockdown"

 

 

The FX for this ability is just plain wrong. The orange "fire" really isn't evocative of the type of skill that it is and the blur effect that goes with it is REALLY over the top. Blur effects like this were used fairly extensively in the ARPG Titan Quest for the Dream skill tree and I think it's possible that some of the Defense skills used it as well, but I think even using blur, and particularly the amount of it is just waaaay over the top in this instance (hard to see in the screeny, evident in the video). The sound effect is nice, but I really think a simpler graphic should be used instead that's more fitting for the mundaneness of the ability. I really hope that such a blur effect is not super overdone, I've already seen a few abilities that use it and the only one where it really looked natural was the Skuldr's scream. There's a similar looking ability in Titan Quest which pretty much does exactly the same thing (stuns). If anything the amount of blur used for Knockdown should be reduced, it looks silly.

Very good points, and especially the blurring is too much (all of these criticisms are constructive nitpicking, but still...)

 

The flame effects on the floor trap looked great and I really hope the same FX is used for other fire spells, such as Fireball (which had a rather silly Nuclear effect in the teaser trailer).

 

Looks like blood spatter animation from hits isn't in the game yet either. Looking forward to seeing that when it's in. Interrupt animations aren't as long as I thought they'd be.

 

Fog of war looks really nice (good job Adam) but I did notice there was one instance inside the dungeon in the Giant Bomb preview where I could see over the top of a solid wall in the upper right of the screen. It's towards the end, I'm watching the IGN one at the moment though so I won't bother screen capping it.

Yes.

 

Oozes move way too fast. I'd prefer if they had slow movement like in the IE games and did those ranged attacks rather than rush at running speed towards the party. Perhaps that is just something that hasn't been tweaked yet. Nice to see Oozes in, but hopefully we also get our Gelatinous Cube.

Agreed. Even those in IWD2 weren't that good. They ought to revisit oozing as a creature state and sfx, as it were.

 

The game also looks like it has pretty decent performance!

 

So anyway, there's my impressions and nigglings. I've still got a few more interviews to read but yeah good stuff PE team. Very good job overall, and I can't wait to play the beta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Natusake]

Since you liked the main menu art, I screen capped it and attached the file in this post.

 

There is also a higher quality version, but I can only upload up to 1MB file size.

[Sensuki]

Some of them aren't my cup of tea, perhaps, but overall, they are pretty darn good.

I like them I just think some are really good and some are just good.

[Sensuki]

Oh yeah corpse persistency is another thing. But I think that issue has already been raised previously. I recall Josh saying they were going to raise it to a minute.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Sensuki: OK. Then, yes, some are sorta out of place and a bit "bland", to put it harshly.

 

I might add a little nitpicking of my own: about those pillar lights in that puzzle: They were too similar, too bright and somehow over the top.

[Sarex]

I will be importing all my portraits from IWD2 anyways, so no big loss there. While the ones shown so far are all great, they just aren't my cup of tea style wise.

 

As for the rest of the things, I think that all the little nitpicks are something that can be used to fixed in beta.

[mstark]

Would just like to say I agree with you on the Knockdown VFX. It's over the top. There's really no need for a micro nuke to go off when it happens. Some sort of clear & concise visual feedback (like the character falling to the ground...), or even just sound, should be enough.

Edited July 24, 2014 by mstark

[Sensuki]

I might add a little nitpicking of my own: about those pillar lights in that puzzle: They were too similar, too bright and somehow over the top.

Screeny?

[Sensuki]

Races also need their mechanical bonuses on their preview scroll during Race selection.

[Labadal]

This one?

 

[Sensuki]

I think the reason they are that bright is because of the fire. But yeah if those symbols are made of some kind of stone, that is probably a bit too bright. It does scream "ITS A TRAP" though.

I'll bet they weren't originally that bright and then every beta tester killed their characters walking over them

Edited July 24, 2014 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

No, not the floor glyphs (although too bright, perhaps), but literally huge magical "bonfires" on top of pillars in Giantbomb peek vid.

[Sensuki]

Oh really? I thought those looked great, a very IE style animation/brightness level too. Been playing BG2/ToB recently and those reminded me of them.

 

 

Oh btw, if you are using a 6-bit TN panel LCD monitor, the color of the Pillar will probably be too bright. I'm currently using my 22" CRT screen atm and it looks right. My 23" Alienware TN panel struggles with bright orange/red colors though, they all look too bright, due to the fact of the reduced color depth of the screen.

 

I'd be surprised if you said that and you were using an IPS or PLS panel.

If you have a phone, bring up that above image on your phone and see if it looks different.

Edited July 24, 2014 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

Wow! Yeah, those are the lights I meant, and indeed, I have just recently upgrade my screen to a bigger LCD-one. I had no idea how you could figure that out just from that, but yes on my screen that looks almost neon lights-bright and garish.

[Sensuki]

Yeah it's sad that consumer LCD technology is still stuck with 262K colors + dithering, as opposed to the 16.7 Million true colors that you get on pretty much everything else.

 

Grays are also horrible on 6-bit panels.

[Sedrefilos]

So I guess this is the thread where we say our oppinion about the demo?   If no, just ignore me

Ok, let's do this...

First, regarding my two bigger concerns (some may laugh): font size and visibility range. Font size is nice. Everything is readable. ALL IE games and their successors (NWN 1+2, ToEE) had, for reason unknown, such tiny letters it made it painful to read! I used to skip dialogues because of it! Now it's fine (took 'em 15 years to realize?! ).
Now visibility range, on the other hand... Man, I don't get it. You stand at a big open place and all you can see is 3 meters away! And I don't mean the fog of war (the place you already uncovered but can't see at the moment), I'm talking about the area you are currently exploring. Take a look at Wasteland 2 and Divinity OS. Your characters can see as far as their eye goes. Maybe it's because of the night in the demo? Then again there are areas in the dungeon that are lit and there's no excuse for that. HOPE they'll change it. It's annoying for 2014!

 

Now to the other stuff...

 

Things I liked:

- Roleplay. That was super cool! Plethora of dialogue options - stats mattered. And it's only the first 15 mins or so! Loved that.

- Environments: All the environments shown ware either great or fantastic. Especially the dungeons.

- Game speed: Game speed was fast. I like that. Models moving fast etc.

- Puzzles: I love puzzles in rpgs so I loved when we're introduced one that early on. And there are several ways to pass through it. Super cool!

- Character creation: yeah! That's the stuff! Many many things. Love it!

- Drawn cut-scenes/interactions: nice stuff there too. Loved you get choices according to things you got with you.

- UI: I liked it minimal. I believe Josh said to one of the videos they'll change it an have it occupy the entire bottom line? Hope not.

- Visual effects: those shield and burning effects where pretty cool. And the soul sucking effect also.

- Enemies: not many of them, but they all had some special ability. Nice.

 

Things I didn't like much:

- Animations: well, I expected somenthing more... they're a bit... boring? That speed run of the barbarian was ugly. He just moved his feet a bit faster and that's it. Hope they work 'em a bit more.

- Character model: hmmm... I cant say I liked much the character model at the character creation screen. Seemed like a toy or something... It's gear too.

 

Indiferent stuff:

inventory and menus are nostalgia-driven. They almost seemed identical to the IWD games. Don't care much about them but I'd prefer something more... modern?

Bigger icons for the gear and abilities would be good too, but I'm ok with them as they are too.

 

That's what I can think of the moment. I guess I'll watch those vids some times more and come up with more stuff

Edited July 24, 2014 by Sedrefilos

[Sensuki]

Josh said on Something Awful earlier that the Fog of War vision is too small and will be increased a bit.

 

I also noticed that currently when you pause and a sound is playing, the sound loops! xD

Edited July 24, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sarex]

Personally I find IWD2 inventory much prettier that the one I saw in PoE.

 

[Volourn]

Races/classes/backgrounds need to have whatever mechanical bonuses/minuses listed. As an 'old skooler' those picturesque dialogue  screens are just unneeded and will ruin my make beleive 'immersion' as they'll take me out of the game. They'll be alright but my opreferences is not to sue them as they add nothing that a simple normal on screen dialogue  process would do. Character stat management looks boring as it seems caharacetrs will simply be all looking similar. Need more range. Otherwise, looks good.

Edited July 24, 2014 by Volourn

[Sensuki]

Come to think of it the movement cursor and movement indicator might be place holder. The movement cursor is literally ripped directly from the IE games, obvious due to how small it is. I hope they keep that design, just something that scales with resolution (and do the pulsing triangles for the movement indicator).

Edited July 24, 2014 by Sensuki

[Messier-31]

 

Y U NO CHOOSE OTHER RACES FFS!?

[Sensuki]

It's the E3 demo, the other races probably hadn't had enough polish work on the models. We still have not seen a single Aumaua, Orlan or non-human Godlike yet.

 

One negative that I've seen pop up on NeoGAF and the RPGCodex is that there's too much hand holding in the demo. I'd agree with that, as the PC is pretty much told exactly what to do every step of the way, you don't really have to figure anything out for yourself. Most of that is fine but Calisca's give away ambient dialogue line about the the Pillars/Beacons is a bit ham-fisted.

Edited July 24, 2014 by Sensuki