Preview Pillars of Eternity Gameplay Video, Previews and Interviews

[Sensuki]

On her twitter it says she's an aspiring voice actress. Can't help but wonder if she was cast for the game.

 

[Invictus]

In the IGN interview Sawyer confirmed no romances in Pillars of Eternity!
Does this mean I won't be able to get my Elf mage busy with a Dwarven Barbarian!
Heresy!
There goes the Biowhore faction of your backers
This game keeps looking better than ever and the Codexian butthurt it will generate from the non IE fans will be glorious

 

[Darkion]

Greemwahhh clean-up on Aisle 2!

 

[Roguey]

There were no scythes in IWD2 (any of the IE games for that matter) and Scythes in 3E don't give a 4x critical.

He's talking about the dragon fight in NWN2, which was a game tuned for babies who couldn't be bothered to learn the rules.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47033-obsidian-dumbs-downer/page-2#entry775466

There were battles in NWN2 that a lot of people found challenging. Take Tholapsyx, for instance. Constant Gaw tuned that battle for a long time. A lot of players and testers had a hard time with that fight. I beat her in two rounds. It's pretty hard to tune high level fights so they are fun for both the hardcore player and nubz.

Some people have it in their minds that J-Saw is tuning PoE on hard for the same audience despite all his statements to the contrary. We'll see how it is in the beta. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh hey he was replying to roshan in that thread. Some things never change.

How did you not take the opportunity to gloat that the woman host did better?

Self-evident.

 

[Sensuki]

Which audience is that?

My understanding is Hard "should be" like Normal / Core Rules in BG2 / IWD2. Seems like Path of the Damned will be the mode to play though.

 

[Roguey]

Which audience is that?

My understanding is Hard "should be" like Normal / Core Rules in BG2 / IWD2. Seems like Path of the Damned will be the mode to play though.

"babies who couldn't be bothered to learn the rules."

I think the last time he spoke about it he said normal would be bg/iwd and hard would be bg2/iwd2, yeah. I'm still sticking with hard the first time considering the absence of known exploits and overpowered abilities, and the changes to strategic gameplay.

 

[Darkion]

Went through and watched a couple of the video previews, but had to stop listening to the voice commentary because of verbosity and rambling insipidness . Do all the interviewers have to share the same script or something?

Anyway, not sure if but I hope they change the color of stamina loss in the portraits from blood red to something else. It was the only thing aside from the animations speed that I totally disliked in the preview and I had to keep telling myself "It's not health, it's stamina" over and over again every time there was an encounter. I can deal with health being a green line on the side, but I think the red visual will be hard to get used to in a game so closely resembling the old IE games.

 

[Sensuki]

They're changing it to Endurance. It's kinda like Subdual damage in 3E.

 

[Jedi Exile]

I watched the IGN video and yeah that was better, especially when Josh was all "Yeah it's important to wild sprint though those guys and kill that ranger before he really messes us up" and "We need the barbarian to frenzy here to take this guy out asap." Fuck the Giant Bomb presentation..

How did you not take the opportunity to gloat that the woman host did better?

Giantbomb video is better. The woman from IGN was clearly uninterested in the game and she only asked Sawyer about romances. While Giantbomb guys talked about IWD2 and even mentioned one of the default adventuring companies designed by Josh ten years ago - they still remember that lol.

 

[tuluse]

Giantbomb video is better. The woman from IGN was clearly uninterested in the game and she only asked Sawyer about romances. While Giantbomb guys talked about IWD2 and even mentioned one of the default adventuring companies designed by Josh ten years ago - they still remember that lol.

What did you watch?

I heard her ask about system stuff (what's the downside to using frenzy). Josh was actually explaining how the game works (examples given by Roguey). She explained how different parts of the game gave her feels, while the giantbomb tools were mostly ignoring what was happening.

 

[Roguey]

Giantbomb video is better. The woman from IGN was clearly uninterested in the game and she only asked Sawyer about romances. While Giantbomb guys talked about IWD2 and even mentioned one of the default adventuring companies designed by Josh ten years ago - they still remember that lol.

They should have been talking about the game that was being played right in front of them.

IGN-person commented about disengagement attacks, why Brandon wild sprinted to the ranger, the loss of the weapon during the scripted scene and whether or not fists could be used as a weapon, the stun from the skuldr, and wanted to see the consequences of hitting a trap.

 

[Sensuki]

I wouldn't be surprised if the IGN chick is doing VO on Eternity too. On her twitter it says aspiring voice actress, and PE will be using those types of actors/actresses due to budget.

I have yet to meet a chick who doesn't love romances in RPGs. Most of em read romance novels too

 

[Athelas]

Jennifer Hale or gtfo

 

[Sensuki]

I like Grey DeLisle too.

 

[Athelas]

Did she do Nalia? Cause her voice made me punch babies.

 

[Sensuki]

Yes, but she also did Viconia.

 

[roshan]

There were no scythes in IWD2 (any of the IE games for that matter) and Scythes in 3E don't give a 4x critical.

I was talking about NWN2.

 

[Copper]

Hmm. Not terribly impressed after re-watching and pausing to read the interaction text - it's pretty purple. Just because the adverbs and adjectives are less banal than Gaider's 'run he did' opus doesn't make them any less grating when nearly every action or object has one applied to it. (Disclosure: Have not read Gaider, but can't argue with the extracts.) Am I mad, or is this a problem for anyone else? Especially jarring around the whole 'trouble with Heoden' sequence, I feel it tries too hard to be erudite and evocative, when it should be clean and sharp.

 

[Jasede]

I feel like purple prose has its place in fantasy settings. The area descriptions in Wizardry 6 for example are very purple, so I take this style as a callback to that.

You can definitely tell it's not Avellone who wrote this, though. I kind of noticed what you mention and don't remember having that feeling in PS:T or KOTOR 2.

 

[Athelas]

The Avellone influence can clearly be felt, what with the wolves being the first major obstacle. Probably some of his most subtle work.

 

[Copper]

I feel like purple prose has its place in fantasy settings. The area descriptions in Wizardry 6 for example are very purple, so I take this style as a callback to that.

You can definitely tell it's not Avellone who wrote this, though. I kind of noticed what you mention and don't remember having that feeling in PS:T or KOTOR 2.

I feel the same way about Max Payne, it doesn't matter if it's deliberately bad or just turned out that way, it works for a dumb game where you kill over a hundred guys and one woman in a single night, but being critical, I don't think it's hitting either the right pulp tone, which Howard is a good example of, or more Erickson-esque fancy wordplay stuff. Meh, it's hardly a deal breaker so long as the game is solid, and the actual choices are decent.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

I never expected it to look this good. I am also one of those who would have preferred it to be turn based (and I am glad Torment went with it), but I have no trouble with rtwp. It can work as well. And I thank the Gods these games are making a comeback.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

"Realistic" solutions to the dump stat problem typically revolve around creation of in-game content. For example, to offset the weakness of a low Strength/high Intelligence fighter, proponents of this approach would suggest that you implement numerous scripted Intelligence checks within the game that could provide said Fighter with various powerups.

But that's a messy solution that's much harder to balance, especially when you're operating under a limited budget and can't afford to iterate much.

I'm not against giving each stat a level of usefulness to each class, I'm just against the hamfisted way it's been done here. As I said before, there are other, far more rational ways to go about it rather than just throwing your hands in the air and saying, "games are meant to be gamey, so don't think so hard.".

It's a game, it's got gamey stuff in it, 's not the end of the world.

I'm pointing out flaw, not slitting my wrists here, buddy. Again, see my reference to is it a "Mario game or a cRPG?" because cRPGs have to take into account suspension of disbelief.

Yeah, all those Baldur's Gate paladins with 18 wisdom and charisma and 3 intelligence, the Fallout characters with 1 Endurance and 10 Strength, the suddenly alchemy-related epiphanies scored by killing 500 goblins, the abrupt mastery of computer science by paging through a book for an hour, the sudden deepened understanding of toaster repair because of a radio conversation--

Firstly, flaws in one game don't justify putting other flaws in another game. It's pretty obvious that BG devs should have either kept the player from lowering certain stats too far or given more severe consequences for lowering them too much. FO and Arcanum actually have some pretty serious consequences for lowering INT to much for example. (yes, they involve a lot of content creation, but as I said, it's an example of a consequence)

Secondly, again, you can at least find some level of similarity in reality to some of what you just brought up: you read a book and suddenly understand more about a subject (not sure why that's far fetched to you), you adventure for a certain amount of time and overcome enough challenges, you gain experience - the killing of goblins in the example you put forth is more of a benchmark for your experience as an adventurer and what level of challenges you've had to overcome. See, those are "gamey" elements in the ruleset that also have a little bit of a simulationist component to them, so they don't make you stop and do a spit take at how retarded they are because they're not.

Suspension of disbelief is exactly what's required for stat-based game systems.[sarcasm]

You realize you acknowledge that the stat system violates suspension of disbelief by attacking suspension of disbelief rather than defending the system, right? You're basically saying, "you're right, lambchop, but I don't care about suspension of disbelief".

I'll say it again, all of the arguments I've heard so far actually do more to prove my point than my arguments on their own. Everyone who scoffs at the idea of making the stat system sensible is basically admitting that it makes no sense and everyone who spins their wheels trying to come up with a rational explanation for it proves how dumb it is by virtue of the fact that they have to come up with such convoluted explanations at all.

Seriously, what's the explanation for this?

Intellect lets you unlock your soul power in a specific way.

What "specific way" would that be, hmm?

The way that increases the size of the effect (either time length or range) that a characters gets from using their soul power.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Although I don't actually care much, outside of my build playing as I imagine it should, as outlined in my other comment, I would prefer attributes that make sense while being balanced. So I guess I agree to an extent,(just apathetic about it.) so what's the proposed solution? What should int do instead?

 

[Shadenuat]

Skills/feats, feats prerequisites, chance to crit. Can make INT or WIS affect soul based abilities and split abilities on physical&soul based, so barbarian could have most that are physical based (run, stun, knockdown, aoe slash), but some soul based (rage, damage resistance, shout of some sort), so player would have to choose what he wants or even stats out.
As for now I have a feeling that every char is kinda a wizard that uses mana (soulupower), which makes whole soul stuff banal, like it's just some energy points, they don't give something special/unlock new builds.
Put points into power to get more power, put in brains to get aoe, IQ 150 = .15 aoe range for anyone.