Comments:
Annie is a size queen.
Adam likes Mass Effect even though he thinks it's a movie.
Mitch says freedom is expensive.
Swen loves systems.
Josh still hates Bioware-style meaningless flavor dialogue.
Adam Heine played new RPGs (ME, NWN2) for the first time after joining the Torment team and was disappointed in the de-emphasis on choice.
Annie tried to sell Dead State to fans of Fallout, XCOM, and Jagged Alliance (and failed).
Swen really hated having D:OS compared to Diablo so much that he accepted the IGN guy who called it a modern day BG2.
The moderator claimed that there's a steampunk RPG being made now which is a damned lie.
"There's a lot of grognards who will let us know if we're stepping outside the boundaries"--Josh Sawyer
Bobby Null, the lead level designer of PoE, is the biggest grog at Obsidian. Didn't show in the encounter design.
Annie's really desperate with the Romero namedrops.
Mitch thinks Batman Arkham Asylum is a RPG
which is wrong.
Josh doesn't want to argue about what is or isn't a RPG but would not want to make a game with a main character whose personality you can't define.
Annie says she had to make peace with all the features they couldn't have in Dead State (e.g. cover).
Swen asked if anyone's ever shipped a game on time and New Vegas and Hong Kong were.
Every time Adam flies to inXile, something of his gets cut.
"If we can't do it well, we're going to cut it"--Adam Heine
Mitch wants people to be emotionally engaged ten years later.
Since there wasn't much dialogue in Dead State, the levels had to tell the story (over and over and over again).
Josh had to use New Vegas as an example while acknowledging it isn't ~classic~.
In D:OS 2 if you kill the ghost you have to go to the underworld to get info.
Adam's favorite RPG is Torment or Banner Saga (...).
Swen: Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle.
Josh Sawyer: Darklands (Swen knows he's streaming), Pool of Radiance, Fallout 1.
Mitch: Eye of the Beholder (which he calls Gold Box...) (...).
Annie: Something that sounded like iovola 2 (???) and Fallout.
The first question-asker (chairwoman of a LARP [...]) thanked them for having a woman on the panel ("It's
her panel.") (...) and then asked them some bullshit about LARPing (...) and balance ("I got this"--Josh [he didn't actually say this])
Some troper asked them what tropes they would ban.
Annie: Waking up in jail.
Swen: Collect-a-thons.
Adam: Fighting rats, bats, snakes, spiders.
Mitch: Breaking barrels, and bikini armor.
Josh: Just wants to see some used less.
Community feedback:
"User-generated content was a horrible idea,"--Swen Vincke (would be added to my sig if there was room)
"We tried to say yes to as many things as possible and that was stupid,"--Mitch Gitelman
Josh had to use New Vegas as an example again when it comes to reactivity. Something tells me he's not all that into PoE?
Some nerdlinger hates it when only the first sentence is voiced.
Swen claims D:OS:EE has 88,000 lines of dialogue, but I'm skeptical about that considering it only had 1.5 writers (and this would place it above Dragon Age Inquisition which holds the current record)
Josh says rtwp went by the wayside because of consoles and to appeal to a wider audience.
Last question: "What happened to Wizardry?" "IT'S GONE!"
Adam tried to salve the wound by saying maybe Bard's Tale IV would scratch that itch but we know that isn't true. FFS a perfect opportunity to namedrop Grimoire lost.
). I don't know if he recorded the whole panel though.
