You could create your own characters in D:OS2 as well, so I never thought you couldn't in BG3. The thing is that there was absolutely stupid to make your own character in D:OS2 because the game was made for playing one one of the pre-made characters. They had special plots and story integration/connection that you would lose out on if you didn't pick one of them.
This is why I stopped playing D:OS 2 after one hour and regretted buying it (on sale, even). I absolutely hated their cast of premade characters, even as companions, much less having to *be* one of them. Hard pass.
So far, most problems that i had with dos2 aren't on bg3.
In my list of things that i din't liked on dos2, only thw short range for ranged weaponry and the slow animations appears in the gameplay.
Cooldowns
Bows with 13m range
Wow style endless number inflation on gear
Nothing epic to be learned. IS not like gothic 1/2 where when you get a new spell circle, a lot of opportunities open and if you are focused on melee, getting the Uriziel or Beliar's Claw is a HUGE progression.
Dumb initiative system
Dumb armor system
Too much focus gimmicky environmental puzzles
Extremely slow animations that makes even trash encounters takes eternities
The story from non pre made characters isn't that good
Firstly, the so-called "duality" they say they're introducing in reality is just clear incentive to play evil and not good. If you try to play your character as good, which means resisting the tadpole and not using the tadpole, you lose out big time both in your powers and abilities as well as in useful dialogue options. That's a HUGE strike against the game for me, way more than combat system and the like, because I will NEVER play an evil character in any game. Period.
There's really no evidence for this argument, imo. You could just as easily use the tadpole powers to create a "good" outcome in a quest as much as an "evil" one.
No this is not true at all. The article clearly says using the tadpole powers moves you towards becoming a mindflayer yourself. So, you gain a lot by using your tadpole powers but gain nothing by not using them (other than not becoming an evil mindflayer, which is completely lame and one-sided).
Moving towards becoming a mindflayer doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be a playable state. In fact that seems quite unlikely. If anything that sounds like a game over condition.
You could create your own characters in D:OS2 as well, so I never thought you couldn't in BG3. The thing is that there was absolutely stupid to make your own character in D:OS2 because the game was made for playing one one of the pre-made characters. They had special plots and story integration/connection that you would lose out on if you didn't pick one of them.
This is why I stopped playing D:OS 2 after one hour and regretted buying it (on sale, even). I absolutely hated their cast of premade characters, even as companions, much less having to *be* one of them. Hard pass.
So far, most problems that i had with dos2 aren't on bg3.
In my list of things that i din't liked on dos2, only thw short range for ranged weaponry and the slow animations appears in the gameplay.
Cooldowns
Bows with 13m range
Wow style endless number inflation on gear
Nothing epic to be learned. IS not like gothic 1/2 where when you get a new spell circle, a lot of opportunities open and if you are focused on melee, getting the Uriziel or Beliar's Claw is a HUGE progression.
Dumb initiative system
Dumb armor system
Too much focus gimmicky environmental puzzles
Extremely slow animations that makes even trash encounters takes eternities
The story from non pre made characters isn't that good
Only one summon limit
We will see above 7 and 9 I guess. And I think party based initiative with 5the edition abilities qualifies as 5 for me.
Firstly, the so-called "duality" they say they're introducing in reality is just clear incentive to play evil and not good. If you try to play your character as good, which means resisting the tadpole and not using the tadpole, you lose out big time both in your powers and abilities as well as in useful dialogue options. That's a HUGE strike against the game for me, way more than combat system and the like, because I will NEVER play an evil character in any game. Period.
There's really no evidence for this argument, imo. You could just as easily use the tadpole powers to create a "good" outcome in a quest as much as an "evil" one.
No this is not true at all. The article clearly says using the tadpole powers moves you towards becoming a mindflayer yourself. So, you gain a lot by using your tadpole powers but gain nothing by not using them (other than not becoming an evil mindflayer, which is completely lame and one-sided).
Moving towards becoming a mindflayer doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be a playable state. In fact that seems quite unlikely. If anything that sounds like a game over condition.
Unless you become an Adversary maybe?
They (Larian) have stated that they want choice to be ultra meaningful in this game, so this might be a possible.
(Pretty much every CRPG developer says they want choices to matter, although few manage to deliver perfectly on that premise. Remains to be seen in Larian will with BG3).
@kanisatha one might debate that a player that plays a good aligned character would find reward in taking the good path and not giving in to the tadpole. I never used the Slayer ability in Baldur’s Gate 2. I never even knew that it affected reputation until someone said so in a comment lol
Oh I see. So those who like playing evil get REAL in-game rewards. Those who like playing good can pat themselves on their back about how wonderful it was that they got to be good. Yay.
Seriously?!
As @Ammar correctly points out, in MotB the game gives you some nice in-game rewards for choosing to not eat souls, Okun indeed being the awesomest reward of all. The way this is currently set up in BG3 is blatantly lame. The only thing I will grant is that maybe there will be some in-game reward you get that hasn't been revealed yet. Maybe.
You could create your own characters in D:OS2 as well, so I never thought you couldn't in BG3. The thing is that there was absolutely stupid to make your own character in D:OS2 because the game was made for playing one one of the pre-made characters. They had special plots and story integration/connection that you would lose out on if you didn't pick one of them.
This is why I stopped playing D:OS 2 after one hour and regretted buying it (on sale, even). I absolutely hated their cast of premade characters, even as companions, much less having to *be* one of them. Hard pass.
So far, most problems that i had with dos2 aren't on bg3.
In my list of things that i din't liked on dos2, only thw short range for ranged weaponry and the slow animations appears in the gameplay.
Cooldowns
Bows with 13m range
Wow style endless number inflation on gear
Nothing epic to be learned. IS not like gothic 1/2 where when you get a new spell circle, a lot of opportunities open and if you are focused on melee, getting the Uriziel or Beliar's Claw is a HUGE progression.
Dumb initiative system
Dumb armor system
Too much focus gimmicky environmental puzzles
Extremely slow animations that makes even trash encounters takes eternities
The story from non pre made characters isn't that good
Only one summon limit
We will see above 7 and 9 I guess. And I think party based initiative with 5the edition abilities qualifies as 5 for me.
Yep. You are right. To be fair, one summon limit would't be THAT bad considering that animations are extremely slow. On PnP, one thing that i do, is simplify the calculations. Eg - If you have 30 skeletons, each one with 50% of chance to hit enemy AC, i just assume that 15 will gonna hit and use the average to the damage. Also ruled that each one will have only one HP vs melee attacks.
But in computers, there are no reason to put a hard cap on summons. Computers can do all math for you. I an playing Gothic 2 with the RETURNING addon as a necromancer and be able to learn demoniac language, having dialog options reflecting my class, etc; is epic. Also, there are no limits to how many summons you can have. But each minion has a mana cost to summon and maintain. There are a expensive skill that only Xardas can teach who allows you to use your own lifeforce to maintain your army but even with this skill, some creatures takes too much mana. I tried to attack the Ice Dragon with a army of 63 demons BUT due the high amount of particles, the game crashed...
On NWN1, it and the lack of +CL ruined Pale Masters. On BG1/2:EE, the limit of 5 summons is awful IMO. Makes no difference between teh summons. A lv 20 wizard can't have 6 skeletons BUT a lv 1 wizard with few scrolls can have 5 Efreets. 3.5e rule of allowing you to have your caster level * 2 hit dice worth of creatures is the best one. That way, you can decide between quality or quantity and everything in between.
You could create your own characters in D:OS2 as well, so I never thought you couldn't in BG3. The thing is that there was absolutely stupid to make your own character in D:OS2 because the game was made for playing one one of the pre-made characters. They had special plots and story integration/connection that you would lose out on if you didn't pick one of them.
This is why I stopped playing D:OS 2 after one hour and regretted buying it (on sale, even). I absolutely hated their cast of premade characters, even as companions, much less having to *be* one of them. Hard pass.
So far, most problems that i had with dos2 aren't on bg3.
In my list of things that i din't liked on dos2, only thw short range for ranged weaponry and the slow animations appears in the gameplay.
Cooldowns
Bows with 13m range
Wow style endless number inflation on gear
Nothing epic to be learned. IS not like gothic 1/2 where when you get a new spell circle, a lot of opportunities open and if you are focused on melee, getting the Uriziel or Beliar's Claw is a HUGE progression.
Dumb initiative system
Dumb armor system
Too much focus gimmicky environmental puzzles
Extremely slow animations that makes even trash encounters takes eternities
The story from non pre made characters isn't that good
Only one summon limit
We will see above 7 and 9 I guess. And I think party based initiative with 5the edition abilities qualifies as 5 for me.
Yep. You are right. To be fair, one summon limit would't be THAT bad considering that animations are extremely slow. On PnP, one thing that i do, is simplify the calculations. Eg - If you have 30 skeletons, each one with 50% of chance to hit enemy AC, i just assume that 15 will gonna hit and use the average to the damage. Also ruled that each one will have only one HP vs melee attacks.
But in computers, there are no reason to put a hard cap on summons. Computers can do all math for you. I an playing Gothic 2 with the RETURNING addon as a necromancer and be able to learn demoniac language, having dialog options reflecting my class, etc; is epic. Also, there are no limits to how many summons you can have. But each minion has a mana cost to summon and maintain. There are a expensive skill that only Xardas can teach who allows you to use your own lifeforce to maintain your army but even with this skill, some creatures takes too much mana. I tried to attack the Ice Dragon with a army of 63 demons BUT due the high amount of particles, the game crashed...
On NWN1, it and the lack of +CL ruined Pale Masters. On BG1/2:EE, the limit of 5 summons is awful IMO. Makes no difference between teh summons. A lv 20 wizard can't have 6 skeletons BUT a lv 1 wizard with few scrolls can have 5 Efreets. 3.5e rule of allowing you to have your caster level * 2 hit dice worth of creatures is the best one. That way, you can decide between quality or quantity and everything in between.
vanilla bg1 proved that having more than 5 summons is kind of game breaking,
back in the good ol' days of vanilla bg1 when you cast animate dead i believe it summoned 1 skelly per level, or something like that, then you could set all your spells to animate dead and monster summoning 3s and wands of summoning, and you could summon so many creatures ( even if they were all weak ) it wouldn't matter what the enemy did;
they would get confused and stuck around all your summoned nonsense and then you could just bombard enemies with ranged attacks/spells, tis a lame strategy, but could be done none the less
and then could you imagine if you had no limit in BG2? hoards of earth elementals or mordenkainen's swords if you had multiple wizards, it would be very game breaking, even though you can only summon 5 creatures in SoA/ToB they are still incredibly powerful creatures ( especially the level 6 elemental spells )
but if you think that is hogwash, you can always edit your .2da file ( SUMMLIMT.2da ) with an infinity engine editor ( like NI for example ) and increase the limit pass 5, you could set it to 99 if you want and just have an entire screen filled with summon creatures if you desire
Really the tadpole powers thing reminds me more of the souleater thing in Mask of the Betrayer than Bhaalspawn
Which is why I've never finished Mask of the Betrayer, and only ever went about a third of the way through it once before I quit.
I refuse to play any game that tries to encourage me to be evil, or glorifies evil in any way. My fantasy is to fight evil, not be it.
i would not really say motb encourages you to be evil. the whole point is getting rid of it. the ability you get to restore spirits insted of eating them after you get okku is the games way of saying just because the power is evil it can still be used for good.
@BelgarathMTH I'm gonna throw in with some of the other posters in the thread. MotB does not encourage evil play. It actiavely makes the timer WORSE for the player.
I disagree with MotB not being interesting for a neutral-aligned character, too. The curse is very much a danger to the PC - everyone has a pointed interest in either controlling it or getting rid of it.
If anything I would say that MotB is one of the few games that has a hook that really works for everyone. In most other games (including BG, main NWN2 and KOTOR 1) you can always ask yourself why your character does not simply flee to a completely different region to escape the conflict.
Anyway, I feel that at least in the short-term realistically speaking evil should offer greater rewards. Doing what is best for yourself regardless of the cost for others is pretty much the definition, so unless you play someone who kills merely for fun you would mainly do evil acts if they benefit yourself. Long term those acts might well catch up with you, though.
MotB did really well for making Good, Neutral and Evil aligmnents equally viable. It was Lawful and Chaotic where it kind of underperformed. The few choices they were presented in always gravitated either towards good or evil. But not as their own things.
Then again, none of the IE's or NwN games were all that great in the Law vs. Chaos conflict. And instead told Good vs. Evil all over again and again. Nothing like what Kingmaker did.
True, I think PS:T did a pretty decent job both of tracking your character on the lawful/chaos axis and of showing some extremes (like Vhailor and Modrons). But ultimately the good/evil axis is the more important one & to be honest I think that is sort of appropriate. I feel it is really hard to be very strongly aligned on the law/chaos axis without becoming either rather apathetic (like Modrons) or sort of evil (see Vhailor). Even a Paladin should usually be lawful good instead of lawful good.
You could create your own characters in D:OS2 as well, so I never thought you couldn't in BG3. The thing is that there was absolutely stupid to make your own character in D:OS2 because the game was made for playing one one of the pre-made characters. They had special plots and story integration/connection that you would lose out on if you didn't pick one of them.
This is why I stopped playing D:OS 2 after one hour and regretted buying it (on sale, even). I absolutely hated their cast of premade characters, even as companions, much less having to *be* one of them. Hard pass.
So far, most problems that i had with dos2 aren't on bg3.
In my list of things that i din't liked on dos2, only thw short range for ranged weaponry and the slow animations appears in the gameplay.
Cooldowns
Bows with 13m range
Wow style endless number inflation on gear
Nothing epic to be learned. IS not like gothic 1/2 where when you get a new spell circle, a lot of opportunities open and if you are focused on melee, getting the Uriziel or Beliar's Claw is a HUGE progression.
Dumb initiative system
Dumb armor system
Too much focus gimmicky environmental puzzles
Extremely slow animations that makes even trash encounters takes eternities
The story from non pre made characters isn't that good
Only one summon limit
We will see above 7 and 9 I guess. And I think party based initiative with 5the edition abilities qualifies as 5 for me.
Yep. You are right. To be fair, one summon limit would't be THAT bad considering that animations are extremely slow. On PnP, one thing that i do, is simplify the calculations. Eg - If you have 30 skeletons, each one with 50% of chance to hit enemy AC, i just assume that 15 will gonna hit and use the average to the damage. Also ruled that each one will have only one HP vs melee attacks.
But in computers, there are no reason to put a hard cap on summons. Computers can do all math for you. I an playing Gothic 2 with the RETURNING addon as a necromancer and be able to learn demoniac language, having dialog options reflecting my class, etc; is epic. Also, there are no limits to how many summons you can have. But each minion has a mana cost to summon and maintain. There are a expensive skill that only Xardas can teach who allows you to use your own lifeforce to maintain your army but even with this skill, some creatures takes too much mana. I tried to attack the Ice Dragon with a army of 63 demons BUT due the high amount of particles, the game crashed...
On NWN1, it and the lack of +CL ruined Pale Masters. On BG1/2:EE, the limit of 5 summons is awful IMO. Makes no difference between teh summons. A lv 20 wizard can't have 6 skeletons BUT a lv 1 wizard with few scrolls can have 5 Efreets. 3.5e rule of allowing you to have your caster level * 2 hit dice worth of creatures is the best one. That way, you can decide between quality or quantity and everything in between.
vanilla bg1 proved that having more than 5 summons is kind of game breaking,
back in the good ol' days of vanilla bg1 when you cast animate dead i believe it summoned 1 skelly per level, or something like that, then you could set all your spells to animate dead and monster summoning 3s and wands of summoning, and you could summon so many creatures ( even if they were all weak ) it wouldn't matter what the enemy did;
they would get confused and stuck around all your summoned nonsense and then you could just bombard enemies with ranged attacks/spells, tis a lame strategy, but could be done none the less
and then could you imagine if you had no limit in BG2? hoards of earth elementals or mordenkainen's swords if you had multiple wizards, it would be very game breaking, even though you can only summon 5 creatures in SoA/ToB they are still incredibly powerful creatures ( especially the level 6 elemental spells )
but if you think that is hogwash, you can always edit your .2da file ( SUMMLIMT.2da ) with an infinity engine editor ( like NI for example ) and increase the limit pass 5, you could set it to 99 if you want and just have an entire screen filled with summon creatures if you desire
No, i don't think that is either 1 summon or 99 summon limit.
IMO the ideal should be like 3.5e rule. You can have your caster level * 2 HD worth of creature. So a Efreet takes 10 hit dices. A lv 9 wizard can have 18 hit dice worth of summons or a Efreet and 8 1 hd skeletons BUT not 2 Efreets.
The mod warlocked reworked for NWN2. It makes even the Invocation "the dead walk" more P&P like "- The Dead walk now works as DnD. It animated 1*Caster level (max 20) of undead and put them under your control for 1 minute. You can cast it as many times you want but you cannot control more than 2*Caster Level HD of undead. Those in excess will be removed from your control." https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/warlock-reworked-102g
Keep in mind that 5e necromancy is ALREADY extremely weaker than 3.5e or AD&D. Finger of Death is far more limited as any spell above tier 5 AND no longers OHK the target.
True, I think PS:T did a pretty decent job both of tracking your character on the lawful/chaos axis and of showing some extremes (like Vhailor and Modrons). But ultimately the good/evil axis is the more important one & to be honest I think that is sort of appropriate. I feel it is really hard to be very strongly aligned on the law/chaos axis without becoming either rather apathetic (like Modrons) or sort of evil (see Vhailor). Even a Paladin should usually be lawful good instead of lawful good.
The various factions of the City of Doors really did honour all alignments equally. Which is why I came to appreciate Pathfinder's world building more and more. Hellknights are its take on Mercykillers and Freemen are basically the Revolutionary League, to name two of Golarion's organisations. And I am sure there's also some unoraginized mess like the Xaositects on that planet as well somewhere.
Well, okay, at the least you guys have convinced me I should give MotB another try, maybe with a paladin this time. I'll put it on my list of old games I want to revisit some time this year.
I'll have to stay in "wait and see" mode about BG3. Despite the reveal having increased my pessimism about it, I won't dismiss it entirely as a possibility for me to buy and try it out. I hope Larian can surprise me with something completely different from Original Sin. It would be a nice thing to be pleasantly surprised rather than to have my pessimistic expectations proven right.
Just a note. See how P:K developers use the UI from the first game (and the game will be most likely fully released before BG3). This is what they say: "The UI in current videos is placeholder UI from the Pathfinder: Kingmaker, that we used to make our versions quicker and be able to present the game. We are going to make an overhaul, art in the UI will be completely different and usability will be enhanced."
Sounds very similar to how BG3 is using a lot of assets from D:OS 2. It's totally ok for games at this stage - one could say both games are at the pre-alpha stage.
Interesting but not only the UI who remembers me of DOS2. The 3d models too.
I guess the approach towards using old assets is the same. It's all placeholder (I mean, have you seen the D:OS 2 pre-alpha? It used all the assets, including models, from D:OS).
Just a note. See how P:K developers use the UI from the first game (and the game will be most likely fully released before BG3). This is what they say: "The UI in current videos is placeholder UI from the Pathfinder: Kingmaker, that we used to make our versions quicker and be able to present the game. We are going to make an overhaul, art in the UI will be completely different and usability will be enhanced."
Sounds very similar to how BG3 is using a lot of assets from D:OS 2. It's totally ok for games at this stage - one could say both games are at the pre-alpha stage.
I agree that the UI will still change substantial, but two comments.
It is one thing to do that when doing from one game in the series to the next. But it is different when you have to win over the fans of a beloved franchise and you know that they are afraid that it will look like a different game. At the very least it was extremely naive from a marketing perspective that this would go over very well.
While the UI will change, I think it will be cosmetic changes. Elements will be moved and buttons will look more like BG. However, BG was very minimalistic in the game window while the D:OS series tends to present a lot more information on the screen (status effects, hp bars, stealth detection, etc). This is still a stylistic break, where I am much more doubtful that it will change. And when I play PnP I wouldn't give the players exact enemy statistics during combat, so it is not a change I like.
I agree that there are 2 franchises in the Larian case and I can see how this can upset BG fans. But if for the developer it's the way to minimize expenses and provide a better finished product in the end, why not do that? It's not a question about naivety or marketing, at this stage, IMHO. It's a question about business, expenses, and spending on things that really matter, at this stage of the game development.
We'll never know about the scope of the UI changes. See what a long process it was to create UI for PST:EE, for example - http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/10/ins-and-outs-of-planescape-torment.html . And it's the UI for an EE (so the developers had done other EEs before and had the base game).
About statistics - not sure. I think this is exactly the type of feedback they'll want to hear during the Early Access period.
I agree that there are 2 franchises in the Larian case and I can see how this can upset BG fans. But if for the developer it's the way to minimize expenses and provide a better finished product in the end, why not do that? It's not a question about naivety or marketing, at this stage, IMHO. It's a question about business, expenses, and spending on things that really matter, at this stage of the game development.
We'll never know about the scope of the UI changes. See what a long process it was to create UI for PST:EE, for example - http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/10/ins-and-outs-of-planescape-torment.html . And it's the UI for an EE (so the developers had done other EEs before and had the base game).
About statistics - not sure. I think this is exactly the type of feedback they'll want to hear during the Early Access period.
First impressions matter for marketing, no?
For the rest, we will just have to see, though I still think the PST:EE UI changes are mainly cosmetic - which is a good thing I hasten to add.
I am keeping an open mind (I think), but at the same time my expectations are certainly lower than yours since I tried the D:OS games and thought they were decent games, but nothing special, while you seem to appreciate them a lot more. Which is fine, of course.
Comments
So far, most problems that i had with dos2 aren't on bg3.
In my list of things that i din't liked on dos2, only thw short range for ranged weaponry and the slow animations appears in the gameplay.
Unless you become an Adversary maybe?
We will see above 7 and 9 I guess. And I think party based initiative with 5the edition abilities qualifies as 5 for me.
They (Larian) have stated that they want choice to be ultra meaningful in this game, so this might be a possible.
(Pretty much every CRPG developer says they want choices to matter, although few manage to deliver perfectly on that premise. Remains to be seen in Larian will with BG3).
Seriously?!
As @Ammar correctly points out, in MotB the game gives you some nice in-game rewards for choosing to not eat souls, Okun indeed being the awesomest reward of all. The way this is currently set up in BG3 is blatantly lame. The only thing I will grant is that maybe there will be some in-game reward you get that hasn't been revealed yet. Maybe.
Yep. You are right. To be fair, one summon limit would't be THAT bad considering that animations are extremely slow. On PnP, one thing that i do, is simplify the calculations. Eg - If you have 30 skeletons, each one with 50% of chance to hit enemy AC, i just assume that 15 will gonna hit and use the average to the damage. Also ruled that each one will have only one HP vs melee attacks.
But in computers, there are no reason to put a hard cap on summons. Computers can do all math for you. I an playing Gothic 2 with the RETURNING addon as a necromancer and be able to learn demoniac language, having dialog options reflecting my class, etc; is epic. Also, there are no limits to how many summons you can have. But each minion has a mana cost to summon and maintain. There are a expensive skill that only Xardas can teach who allows you to use your own lifeforce to maintain your army but even with this skill, some creatures takes too much mana. I tried to attack the Ice Dragon with a army of 63 demons BUT due the high amount of particles, the game crashed...
On NWN1, it and the lack of +CL ruined Pale Masters. On BG1/2:EE, the limit of 5 summons is awful IMO. Makes no difference between teh summons. A lv 20 wizard can't have 6 skeletons BUT a lv 1 wizard with few scrolls can have 5 Efreets. 3.5e rule of allowing you to have your caster level * 2 hit dice worth of creatures is the best one. That way, you can decide between quality or quantity and everything in between.
vanilla bg1 proved that having more than 5 summons is kind of game breaking,
back in the good ol' days of vanilla bg1 when you cast animate dead i believe it summoned 1 skelly per level, or something like that, then you could set all your spells to animate dead and monster summoning 3s and wands of summoning, and you could summon so many creatures ( even if they were all weak ) it wouldn't matter what the enemy did;
they would get confused and stuck around all your summoned nonsense and then you could just bombard enemies with ranged attacks/spells, tis a lame strategy, but could be done none the less
and then could you imagine if you had no limit in BG2? hoards of earth elementals or mordenkainen's swords if you had multiple wizards, it would be very game breaking, even though you can only summon 5 creatures in SoA/ToB they are still incredibly powerful creatures ( especially the level 6 elemental spells )
but if you think that is hogwash, you can always edit your .2da file ( SUMMLIMT.2da ) with an infinity engine editor ( like NI for example ) and increase the limit pass 5, you could set it to 99 if you want and just have an entire screen filled with summon creatures if you desire
i would not really say motb encourages you to be evil. the whole point is getting rid of it. the ability you get to restore spirits insted of eating them after you get okku is the games way of saying just because the power is evil it can still be used for good.
If anything I would say that MotB is one of the few games that has a hook that really works for everyone. In most other games (including BG, main NWN2 and KOTOR 1) you can always ask yourself why your character does not simply flee to a completely different region to escape the conflict.
Anyway, I feel that at least in the short-term realistically speaking evil should offer greater rewards. Doing what is best for yourself regardless of the cost for others is pretty much the definition, so unless you play someone who kills merely for fun you would mainly do evil acts if they benefit yourself. Long term those acts might well catch up with you, though.
Then again, none of the IE's or NwN games were all that great in the Law vs. Chaos conflict. And instead told Good vs. Evil all over again and again. Nothing like what Kingmaker did.
No, i don't think that is either 1 summon or 99 summon limit.
IMO the ideal should be like 3.5e rule. You can have your caster level * 2 HD worth of creature. So a Efreet takes 10 hit dices. A lv 9 wizard can have 18 hit dice worth of summons or a Efreet and 8 1 hd skeletons BUT not 2 Efreets.
The mod warlocked reworked for NWN2. It makes even the Invocation "the dead walk" more P&P like "- The Dead walk now works as DnD. It animated 1*Caster level (max 20) of undead and put them under your control for 1 minute. You can cast it as many times you want but you cannot control more than 2*Caster Level HD of undead. Those in excess will be removed from your control." https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/warlock-reworked-102g
Keep in mind that 5e necromancy is ALREADY extremely weaker than 3.5e or AD&D. Finger of Death is far more limited as any spell above tier 5 AND no longers OHK the target.
The various factions of the City of Doors really did honour all alignments equally. Which is why I came to appreciate Pathfinder's world building more and more. Hellknights are its take on Mercykillers and Freemen are basically the Revolutionary League, to name two of Golarion's organisations. And I am sure there's also some unoraginized mess like the Xaositects on that planet as well somewhere.
Lae'zel: You've a sharp tongue, elf.
Shadowheart: Half-elf.
Neera anyone?
I'll have to stay in "wait and see" mode about BG3. Despite the reveal having increased my pessimism about it, I won't dismiss it entirely as a possibility for me to buy and try it out. I hope Larian can surprise me with something completely different from Original Sin. It would be a nice thing to be pleasantly surprised rather than to have my pessimistic expectations proven right.
Not really. Here are some 5E examples.
Gotta say I like Zhjaeve more. At least she wasn't intentionally made into a waifu.
Is it just me or does she look like an undead?
Sounds very similar to how BG3 is using a lot of assets from D:OS 2. It's totally ok for games at this stage - one could say both games are at the pre-alpha stage.
I guess the approach towards using old assets is the same. It's all placeholder (I mean, have you seen the D:OS 2 pre-alpha? It used all the assets, including models, from D:OS).
I agree that the UI will still change substantial, but two comments.
We'll never know about the scope of the UI changes. See what a long process it was to create UI for PST:EE, for example - http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/10/ins-and-outs-of-planescape-torment.html . And it's the UI for an EE (so the developers had done other EEs before and had the base game).
About statistics - not sure. I think this is exactly the type of feedback they'll want to hear during the Early Access period.
First impressions matter for marketing, no?
For the rest, we will just have to see, though I still think the PST:EE UI changes are mainly cosmetic - which is a good thing I hasten to add.
I am keeping an open mind (I think), but at the same time my expectations are certainly lower than yours since I tried the D:OS games and thought they were decent games, but nothing special, while you seem to appreciate them a lot more. Which is fine, of course.