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mr nobuddy said:

Vault Dweller said:

The grey wizard doesnt die in some epic battle, but from a fluke of chance? Not so epic. Not so dramatic.

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Read a book. I've heard that Salvatore is a great author.

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you're going to hell for saying that.

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Any writer who can develop such an amazingly deep and detailed character as Drizzt - beloved by millions, mind you - is a great writer in my book.

PS. If you want to know more about Drizzt, here is a handy link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzt_Do'Urden

I bet you didn't know that his eyes are a lavender hue and very unusual in general. And you said that Salvatore is a shitty writer. Shame on you!

Movies/books where the heroes die like dogs for no good reason are way better than ones where there has to be an epic meteorite of ultimate Armageddon plus emotional climax before they're even vaguely in danger. Saving private ryan kicked ass, and almost everyone in it died to an unnamed German soldier. I'd love to see that kind of thing in a game, maybe an Atilla the Hun game where you're just about to conquer Rome and then you die face down in your own vomit after having a bit too much to drink/getting poisioned. An ending cinematic where you're just about to finish the ritual to banish ultimate end foozle then get nailed through the back by a generic orc would be even better.

You're missing the point. It doesn't have to be an epic thing that kills the character, it has to be emotionally meaningful. It has to capture the feeling your're trying to create. When those soldiers die, they don't do so randomly. Notice that after Omaha beach there was a good portion in the beginning when you get to know the characters, and only AFTER that does one of them die. Its a standard story pattern, used to introduce the personalities and create emotional connection to the characters before putting them in danger.

And that death was not "random", even if it was a random soldier. It was perfectly timed and orchestrated to tear apart that feeling of saftey the viewer has up till that point, and to illustrate the suddeness of death during war.

The plot point wasn't random. The killer was faceless and unimportant, but that aspect just works with the event to get across the point the storyteller is trying to create, about war.

As does every death from that point on.The deaths in a movie like Saving Private Ryan aren't just haphazardly scattered in without careful thought to how they impact the viewer.

So you're saying that only cutscene nameless goblins should be able to kill heroes?

No, I'm saying only the plot can kill the heroes.

So tell me, since I'm sure you disagree, which was the last RPG that you played, when your party members died, and where permantently gone?

Nothing can permanently remove your party members except a story point. Theres always a temple or something, and if there isn't theres always reload. A death that can be simply circumvented is meaningless to the experience and the story, and you may as well replace it with a "lying on the floor groaning" mechanic.


Tell me, do you guys also complain when in Mount and Blade, after combat, it gives you a message saying "You hide in the grass until they are gone, then get up to find your men, having lost some gold and gear."?

Does it totally ruin it for you? Does it remove all feeling of danger and thrill from the battle? I'm sure it must, given the sheer volume of whining on this subject.

Naked Ninja said:

@ VD : A stat could represent it you say? But....he died 2 hours ago fighting a random wolf while I was getting lost in the wilderness. Pity that.

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Again with the random stuff... Anyway, don't you understand that what you suggest is to make NPC practically immortal, making sure that they are never in real danger while you play... no, scratch that, while you follow the game from one cutscene to another? Why even bother playing a game? Watch a good movie instead.

But, jokes aside, you think a number on your character sheet has more of an emotional impact than having that character perform actions and speak dialogue during the game that convey his personality/nature?

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You misunderstood. The stat makes the character act, makes him say whatever the designer wanted him to say when he fails a save, etc. That gives the player a chance to change the outcome, instead of having exactly the same thing happening at exactly the same moment REGARDLESS of what you do. When things start happening "regardless" in an RPG, I lose my interest.

Really? I can see the game in my minds eye now, instead of Boromir constantly staring longingly at the ring, and trying to take it, he just announces every so often that "Hey guys, my ring-corruption level has gone up 2%!! I am so not trustworthy, lol.". Yes, that would be AWESOME. A number and some dialogue options are not the same as a good, well writen and scripted plot point.

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Now you are being stupid. First, nobody needs to announce anything, it should be a reaction to a certain event (for example, player using the ring). Second, when that happens, it could be a well designed situation with plenty of dialogues and options, not some lame one-liner and an insta-attack. I thought that was clear.

The only danger anyone experiences in these games is the danger of experiencing a set back. They're not going to die, you are just going to reload. You're in danger of losing time and some of your progress, thats it. Thats why you take your party of adventurers into places that most of the game NPCs are afraid to go. Because you don't actually fear any real loss. If you did, you'd roleplay them giving it up and becoming farmers.

And why do you think having a planned set encounter means you have no input? Thats where branching comes in. All of planescapes encounters were carefully planned and scripted. Did you have no chance to roleplay? Come now, apply your own logic to your experience playing that game, and see the falsehood of your hypothesis.

About the stats, again, you seem to believe a scripted, set-up encounter means that it always turns out the same way. I've already gone over that above, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.

As to the last paragraph, while I like to see options like that in games, you can only take that so far, especially if you can't guarantee where and when it happens. Generated content can't match handcrafted stuff, and a computer can only be aware of so many factors. If a player figures out that putting on the ring triggers event X, they'll just sit around in the tavern putting it on and taking it off until Boromir triggers and they get the payoff. There goes your nice pacing. Or he'll trigger it at a stupid time/place. Or after a piece of dialogue that doesn't make sense, in the content. Or he could never say it, by fluke, which sucks if you designed the story around the rings influence, and wanted to use that as a piece of exposition.

Computers can't match a good writers sense of timing, effect, setting etc. Computers couldn't generate a plot like PS:Ts through juggling stats and numbers. A good story is a work of art.

Vault Dweller said:

mr nobuddy said:

Vault Dweller said:

The grey wizard doesnt die in some epic battle, but from a fluke of chance? Not so epic. Not so dramatic.

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Read a book. I've heard that Salvatore is a great author.

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you're going to hell for saying that.

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Any writer who can develop such an amazingly deep and detailed character as Drizzt - beloved by millions, mind you - is a great writer in my book.

PS. If you want to know more about Drizzt, here is a handy link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzt_Do'Urden

I bet you didn't know that his eyes are a lavender hue and very unusual in general. And you said that Salvatore is a shitty writer. Shame on you!

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I actually like Salvatore. I don't care if he's teh mainstream fantasy writer or whatever. He has the rare ability to create believable villains with their own motivations. There are suprisingly not too many writers who can write an evil character from the first person and not come off silly. Don't get me wrong, he does have his flaws. I could do without his silly comic bookish 4 characters take on an army and win scenario that pops up too often.

If I had an uber elite decked out in full plate get done in by a goblin with a rock and a lucky critical, I'd think it'd be the most hilarious shit ever.

Then I'd reload.

If NPCs don't die, then "death" is a mere annoyance instead of a constant source of caution for the player. If your NPCs can die, then you do your best to make sure that they don't so that you don't have to reload to keep them going and re-do battles. Otherwise, NPCs that can't die just encourage the player to use them as meat shields, since if the PC is the only one in any real danger what's the point?

I think maybe the real problem is that NPC death isn't supported very well. There's no emotional investment because characters die and that's that. You don't even get the option to bury them.

Not that it's impossible to be able to support that, or that the alternative (auto-res) is a better experience.

Good games and good roleplaying is a work of art too but why calling games that are realy action-adventure games with some customization rpgs when they are not? In fact if they reduced the number of useless stats (for an adventure game) and offered a pre-made characters it would help them create better stories. I don't understand this obcession for stats when stats most of the time provide only cosmetic and meeningless choices for action-adventure games.

Roleplaying is about freedom of choice and real choice. A good roleplaying game can match any other game in terms of providing an interesting experience that is much more immersive than a story because you have the freedom to deal with problems your own personal way or even screw it up and deal with the consequences. Writers seem to be the most incapable people of understanding the notion of role-playing.

"So tell me, since I'm sure you disagree, which was the last RPG that you played, when your party members died, and where permantently gone?"

Gothic 3.

NWN1.

pnp.

BG2.

BG1.

PST.

And, a host of others.


All good to great to the best RPGs ever. *shrug*

Volourn said:

Gothic 3.

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What party members?

NWN1.

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You mean the party members that, upon dying, were to be found back at the temple resurrected free of charge along with a single line that went something like, "Wow! I was dead! But only for a moment!" Yes, very permanent.

pnp.

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The fact that you feel the need to include this is pretty lame, sorry.

BG2.

BG1.

PST.

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All of which had resurrection except for the occasional "chunky death".

It's great that you have an opinion and all, Volourn, and there's people that feel the same as you do, but it'd be better to simply express it as your personal preference rather than by presenting "evidence" which is simply not so.

The_Pope said:

Movies/books where the heroes die like dogs for no good reason are way better than ones where there has to be an epic meteorite of ultimate Armageddon plus emotional climax before they're even vaguely in danger. Saving private ryan kicked ass, and almost everyone in it died to an unnamed German soldier. I'd love to see that kind of thing in a game, maybe an Atilla the Hun game where you're just about to conquer Rome and then you die face down in your own vomit after having a bit too much to drink/getting poisioned. An ending cinematic where you're just about to finish the ritual to banish ultimate end foozle then get nailed through the back by a generic orc would be even better.

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Or have a temple fall on your head, as the case may be.

What party members?

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There were guys who would follow the Player Character and fight with him, but beyond giving them health potions there wasn't much interaction beyond them being followers.

Games that don't have spells allowing you to raise the dead like Fallout and Sci-Fi RPGs have the most significant elements of character death. They die and that's it. Can't drag the body to Lord British.

Twinfalls said:

Do NPCs (and party members) have to be tangential to a story in order to be killable (or otherwise 'unforced')? Can they perhaps play a greater, more integral role in whatever story unfolds - in differing ways for different NPCs, yet remain realistically severable (individually) from the player's game arc?

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Well, their role can't really be integral if it can be handed off to another character, can it? I think it really depends on what kind of story you want to tell, and in some cases either you are putting some of the story onto the NPC's or you are defining the player's character for him to an extant so that any PC fits into that role themselves (such as "you are the Bhaalspawn"). It's either one of those things or you make it all about the quests and the world, as you suggested, but in that case the player must be completely unconnected to it all.

But either way, no, NPC's don't have to be tangential in order to be killable. If their role is integral they can still be killable so long as you're willing to branch your plot to handle either occurrence. It might have to be set so that they're only killable after X event, perhaps, or else it can get really messy... but it can be done.

I suppose that your assumption, then, is that we don't have permanent death in Dragon Age because we need those 2 characters to be indispensable for plot purposes? That may be a small part, as our lives are certainly made a bit easier if we know where at least 1 of those characters is at various plot points, but really it's mostly because we don't think that permadeath adds anything to the gameplay. Not without some kind of recovery like resurrection, which is something that we're just not willing to have our setting ignore like D&D does.

There are arguments against it, and they've some merit even though most of them revolve mostly around what kind of abstractions players think they would be willing to accept. And even permanent death without resurrection can be done well, though it requires more accomodation from the rules system and party members that are more disposable by design. I've yet to hear an argument, however, that "real" death makes for a better inherent design or that it alone determines the difficulty of combat. I suppose we shall see. Certainly there are also plenty of people who don't think challenge in general is important (and, in fact, a bad thing for the "casual" audience) and I don't really agree with that, either.

I think you're also troubled by the 'we don't want players to not see a lot of stuff' thing, about which I can only re-iterate that replayability is a great plus.

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I'm not a big fan of the "we put a lot of work into this thing so therefore every single player must see it" concept, if that's what you mean. I'm a big fan of optional content, though I admit when available content becomes limited it becomes much harder to justify putting it in places that don't lengthen the overall play length. In that respect, it will be interesting to see how the multiple origin chapters in Dragon Age go over.

Naked Ninja said:

The only danger anyone experiences in these games is the danger of experiencing a set back. They're not going to die, you are just going to reload.

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That is a choice, and it should remain a choice. Forcing something on players because "everyone will reload" anyway is as lame as not designing xbows and throwing weapons because "let's face it, everyone uses bows!".

There is a good reason why "iron man" is a popular choice and an often requested feature.

And why do you think having a planned set encounter means you have no input? Thats where branching comes in. All of planescapes encounters were carefully planned and scripted. Did you have no chance to roleplay? Come now, apply your own logic to your experience playing that game, and see the falsehood of your hypothesis.

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Prove it.

About the stats, again, you seem to believe a scripted, set-up encounter means that it always turns out the same way. I've already gone over that above, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.

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Cop-out.

As to the last paragraph, while I like to see options like that in games, you can only take that so far, especially if you can't guarantee where and when it happens.

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Is that a fact?

Generated content can't match handcrafted stuff...

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Daggerfall vs MW/OB.

If a player figures out that putting on the ring triggers event X, they'll just sit around in the tavern putting it on and taking it off until Boromir triggers and they get the payoff. There goes your nice pacing.

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It's a choice, isn't it?

Computers can't match a good writers sense of timing, effect, setting etc. Computers couldn't generate a plot like PS:Ts through juggling stats and numbers. A good story is a work of art.

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So is a good RPG.

"What party members?"

Did you, perchance, play Gothic 3?
Quote:

"NWN1.

You mean the party members that, upon dying, were to be found back at the temple resurrected free of charge along with a single line that went something like, "Wow! I was dead! But only for a moment!" Yes, very permanent."

Admittedly,. NWN1 may not the best exmaple for this; but it's better than npcs that simply cannot die until a prescripted even tells them do. I know ressurection is not a part of DA which i think is cool; but it *is* a part of D&D so it was legit in NWN1 9even if it gave the player too easy of a time).
Quote:
pnp.

"The fact that you feel the need to include this is pretty lame, sorry."

The guy said RPGs. Not CRPGs. How is it lame to include pnp since pnp (any version pretty much be it D&D or otehrwise) is the ultimate form of RPG. Why apologize? That's just rude.


"BG2.

BG1.

PST.

All of which had resurrection except for the occasional "chunky death"."

Irrelevant. they'r eall D&D games hence they should try to follow D&D rules. The fact that you have 'chunky death' (did PST have that, can't remember) also furtehrs this. Plus, the point is npcs cna and do die and not just because they scripted to. Death is permenant within the rules of the system.


"It's great that you have an opinion and all, Volourn, and there's people that feel the same as you do, but it'd be better to simply express it as your personal preference rather than by presenting "evidence" which is simply not so."

You know this is the Codex, right? No need to be PC. Just say you think my exmaples are stupid. Don't sugar coat it, please.

Let's don't forget the FO series npcs - also permenant death, and while the Fo npcs aren't as intergal to the story as the BIO npcs tend to be, the sytem works fine.


"There is a good reason why "iron man" is a popular choice and an often requested feature."

While I'd be all fine with Iron man modes if I could trust games NOT to crash or having other bugs leaidng to game over and destroy the save' define 'popular'. 1% of the audience? 5%? 10%? 25%?

I'd wager that the 'popularity' of Iron Man in games is not as high as you seem to think it is.

_________________

Naked Ninja said:

No, I'm saying only the plot can kill the heroes.

So tell me, since I'm sure you disagree, which was the last RPG that you played, when your party members died, and where permantently gone?

Nothing can permanently remove your party members except a story point. Theres always a temple or something, and if there isn't theres always reload. A death that can be simply circumvented is meaningless to the experience and the story, and you may as well replace it with a "lying on the floor groaning" mechanic.


Tell me, do you guys also complain when in Mount and Blade, after combat, it gives you a message saying "You hide in the grass until they are gone, then get up to find your men, having lost some gold and gear."?

Does it totally ruin it for you? Does it remove all feeling of danger and thrill from the battle? I'm sure it must, given the sheer volume of whining on this subject.

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No, I'm saying the game should have the same rules in and out of cutscenes, otherwise it destroys the suspension of disbelief. Write a story about immortals if you want to use immortality as a gameplay mechanic, don't give me bullshit about people taking a cannonball in the face and getting back up without a scratch then dieing during a cutscene. Believability is far more important for teh immershun than bloom 9.3 or whatever next gen is up to now, and blatantly gamey features get in its way. That said, serious injury sounds like a very good mechanic for it.

A more important question than this stuff about NPC death would be the combat mechanics though. Arguing about suspension of disbelief over NPC death is truly retarded if the game is still using DnD, as that system is so whimsical that suspension of disbelief is only possible with the aid of powerful drugs.

Whatever happened to follower NPCs that supplemented the setting and player character? Why do they have to be so plot critical? Can't the story just be about the player character?

Bradylama wins.

Game over.

I'm delighted to see that this game isn't vaporware like I thought it was going to be, and there isn't any rumor (yet) of the game being a cross-console XBox360/PS3 release. Bioware needs to get back to the roots of what made them great -- great PC RPGs with huge open-ended worlds, tactical combat with good balance and depth, and lots of NPC's with character. Bioware's departure from this genre is one of the worst things to happen to PC gaming in recent years. I'm kind of looking forward to it being an actual real-time combat system from the ground up instead of the bastardized hybrid semi-turn-based-semi-real-time compromise system that has dominated D&D RPG's since Baldurs Gate 2. I think that the same thing could be accomplished, but with less hassle.

Dgaider said:

Twinfalls said:

Do NPCs (and party members) have to be tangential to a story in order to be killable (or otherwise 'unforced')? Can they perhaps play a greater, more integral role in whatever story unfolds - in differing ways for different NPCs, yet remain realistically severable (individually) from the player's game arc?

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Well, their role can't really be integral if it can be handed off to another character, can it? I think it really depends on what kind of story you want to tell, and in some cases either you are putting some of the story onto the NPC's or you are defining the player's character for him to an extant so that any PC fits into that role themselves (such as "you are the Bhaalspawn"). It's either one of those things or you make it all about the quests and the world, as you suggested, but in that case the player must be completely unconnected to it all.\

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Perhaps integral in a way that they enhance the storyline 75%, yet still are not necessary to complete the main plot. Though perhaps that's not what "integral" means. But anyhow, you can relate this to PST or Arcanum and the option of having a low Int or Wisdom character. If you have a low Int/Wis character in PST or a low Int character in Arcanum, you're basically missing out on 75% of the story. But you can still finish the game. So you could make the NPCs' dialogue and scenes make up 75% of the story in the same way, yet not be necessary for ending the game.

An example. In BG2, Hoshimo (or whatever his name is) betrays you at a certain part of the game. If you didn't see it coming, this probably elicited feelings of betrayal and anger. If you did, you probably felt that your suspicions about his shifty nature were confirmed. Both of these responses are emotional. They imply that the character has left an emotional impression on the player, and that you are responding to that connection and his actions, and its a sign of good writing.

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Yoshimo can die before Spellhold and then the betrayal never happens. You don't sacrifice a great degree of realism like this just for a plot point.

No, I'm saying only the plot can kill the heroes.

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In terms of books/movies, no shit. An author writes a book and things happen only when he says they happen. But in terms of the audience's perception when they read the book or watch the movie? Bullshit, they are never supposed to perceive that the plot can kill the heroes. Do you go into a movie saying to your friend, "Oh, don't worry, only the plot can kill the main characters"? Do you start a book not worrying about the livelihood of the main characters because you know they will only die when they're supposed to? No. In Saving Private Ryan, the audience fears for ALL the soldiers' lives when they storm the beach on D-Day, facing the stationary machine gun fire and grenade spam. In the Lord of the Rings, the reader fears for the hobbits' lives when they're trying to escape the Nazgul. The reader PERCEIVES that the deaths can happen at ANY moment.

There IS a difference between books/movies and RPGs. In a book or movie, the story is already set in stone by the writer(s). HOWEVER, in an RPG, the developer is as much creating the story as is the PLAYER. In the Lord of the Rings, while death only happens when Tolkien wrote them to happen, the reader perceives instead that death can happen at any time. However, in an RPG, this is not possible. The developer may be writing a storyline on his part, but then the player is thrust into many a situation where he has the freedom to write his own storyline. And still, the player has to perceive that death can happen at any time. That's realism. When any character can get up unscathed after receiving a fatal blow, poof - there goes the realism. You don't see Gandalf dying to a minor enemy, only to *poof* return to normal status just so later on he can save the party from the Balor.

In books and movies, the writers have the luxury of not needing to sacrifice realism for plot points because they are writing static stories that can't be affected in any way. For RPGs, though, the developers do NOT have this luxury. They are not writing a static plot; they are writing a dynamic one affected by the player's actions in the game.

David:
First, I never proposed that you do things the X-Com way, and utterly abandon the pre-written story. I'm suggesting that you can stick with all the pre-written story you like - but also gain by using an injury system which requires tactical changes in the face of some time pressure.

Having a character sit at camp recovering to 100% at the loss of a little gold is simply dull. Unless there's some significant pressure to get on with some things (not necessarily the "main quest" - just something), that's probably what you'll get.
Also, there's nothing to stop you providing characters with interesting story, but who also have particular tactical roles - so their presense/absense makes a real difference.

All you need to get this element is some strong incentive on completing some objectives quickly (either leaving injured members behind, or using them with interesting penalties). If these can't be main quest objectives (since you need the characters with story there for that), then fine - have them be other objectives.

This isn't an either/or choice between pre-written and "emergent" story. It's a choice between having important (short term) consequences for "death", or having essentially none at all. If the player can just wait for a serious injury to heal without any real consequences, that's a dull situation. Is it that much of a stretch to turn it into a non-dull situation?

The story implications are a side-issue to this particular question. The point is to place some importance on "death", and have it result in somewhat interesting choices.

The goal of having the choices be interesting is not to provide story - it's to make the situation entertaining for the player. The more entertaining you make the "death" situation, the more you can safely penalize the party (NOT the player) without encouraging reloads. The more "death" penalizes the party, the more important it'll feel to the player.
The aim is to avoid the trivialization of "death", and to create more tension as a result.

If this creates any emergent story, that's lovely - it's not my main point though.

Also this is a little silly:

Dgaider said:

but really it's mostly because we don't think that permadeath adds anything to the gameplay. Not without some kind of recovery like resurrection

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For a start, the idea that including resurrection can make "permadeath" good for gameplay is pretty much nonsense. Temporary permadeath is an interesting concept. [I think resurrection sucks btw]

In any case, of course permadeath alone doesn't add to the gameplay - not does any isolated element. NPCs alone don't add to the gameplay - you need to integrate them properly with the rest of the design. It's no argument against a feature to say "Well... we tried tacking it on to our existing design without making any compensating changes - and blow me if it didn't suck. It adds nothing to the gameplay."

Clearly a game designed with permadeath would need to do many things differently. Just because you can't throw it in without a thought and see improvement, doesn't make it a bad feature - it makes it one that needs careful wholistic design.

Oh, and can we please get away from the comparisons to Oblivion? You did well by deleting your first, yet since then you've been unable to resist the temptation. Oblivion sucks in too many different ways - both in desgin and in implementation - to be a useful example. Doing a few things differently from Oblivion is not a recipe for great design.

Naked Ninja said:

A main character dying under the attacks of some random goblin...

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Which wouldn't happen. Are you reading? (and do stop with the "random" - it's getting tiresome).

An example. In BG2....

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This can be done with permadeath. You just won't get to see all such "emotional" content on your first playthrough. Hence my suggestion that this would need to work for a shorter game with replay value a major selling point.

Compare it to Icewind Dale say, when one of your mute party members fails a saving throw or something and dies fighting Yuan-ti #22. What do you feel? Anything? Bullshit. All you feel is annoyance. That you're going to have to reload. There is no emotional weight to the characters death, plot wise. Its meaningless.

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Again you use a bad implementation that makes no attempt to give character death any meaning. Again, this is no argument against a system which does make such an attempt. Again, you need to construct the best permadeath system you can imagine, then argue against that. Arguing against systems that aren't good / don't try to do what we're talking about is simply a waste of time.

It would be the same if during the Star Wars movies

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Good lord . Please stop it.

You need to argue against: the best feasible permadeath system you can imagine.
You are arguing against: bad systems, systems that don't try in this area, movies, books...
Just stop it.

You also fail to address the issue: that a player knowing that main characters cannot possibly die makes the game dull in this regard. This isn't something you can contest with examples about books. Both solutions have their downside in games.

Oh, and about your point about branch overlap, you are actually incorrect.

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No - I'm not wrong. I said that the options you need to cater for are not doubled - since many events are independent of others. You know what that means, right?

If they overlap it makes them HARDER to keep straight and debug.

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Not with independent events. Your example assumed doubling of work for each "choice". That only occurs when every event in the game world is related - i.e. when no two events are independent. This happens only when the choice results in two entirely different worlds (i.e. practically never), or when the choice affects every other possible event in the future game (i.e. never). In short: never.

Get a fucking clue about what you're talking about before your shoot your mouth off dumbass.

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I don't suppose you'd consider taking your own advice on this one? Sticking an extra choice in a game practically never doubles the work involved. Look at almost any choice in almost any game to see this.
There are almost always extremely large parts of the game unaffected by the choice.

If "that's what you meant in the first place" (or equivalent), then note that your original point is just fairly worthless - if the doubling might only affect a very small section of the game, it's certainly not necessarily going to make things intractible.

The goblin example is stupid? You've never fought a horde of meaningless filler monsters in an RPG?

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To argue against a feature, you must argue against the best feasible implementation of that feature.
Repeatedly digging up examples where it's not done well demonstrates nothing about the feature - only about the state of parts of the RPG market (not what we're discussing by the way).

As for PS:T, yes you could resurrect your friends right at the end. Yes, this did make the whole thing much less emotional. Yes, the effect of the end scene would have been pretty much the same without prior resurrection: so long as at least one companion survived until the end, the emotional impact of that point would work - perhaps even more so, since that character would be the one who had made it through everything else, only to be sacrificed at the last.

Resurrection has always been tacky. Allowing it at the end of PS:T was a horrilble cop-out.

doctor_kaz said:

I'm kind of looking forward to it being an actual real-time combat system from the ground up instead of the bastardized hybrid semi-turn-based-semi-real-time compromise system that has dominated D&D RPG's since Baldurs Gate 2.

Click to expand...

I'll second this. Both turned based and real time games work fine, but hybrids are always a mess, in varying degrees. I'd like to see it turn based, though, since there are plenty of real times games out there.