That was an excellent presentation of the game. This demonstrates it is much more than a simple extension even though the adventure is said to be shorter than BG is. I like the graphics very much (the map, the new creatures). When I saw the boars, I immediatly thought about one of the first PoE map where you have the privilege to be humiliated by a couple of boars if your team of newbies goes there unprepared. I am also curious about several features related to the "scalable" AI and all AlexT comments from a general perspective.
One little question: does Beamdog plan to refresh and officially document its own specifications replacing the data found on the IESDP mirrors ?
we can no longer separate the duo companions. Does this mean the old trick of leaving (say) Khalid in the top floor of the FAI then removing him from the party will no longer work? What about killing one of the partners?
The new AI feature seems appealing, espcially for my storied play through. Having a mage like Edwin "accidentally" toasting the meat shields would be so much in character for him.
I do have a follow up question regarding the scaling difficulty. Will XP be scaled down for encounters when fighting the extra critters.
For example, @bengoshi stated that when yoy scale the difficulty up, it will add a couple of archers and a cleric to the already established meleers.
So assume on core, there are 5 fighters in an encounter worth 100 xp each. If on a higher difficulty, you add 4 archers and a cleric. Would the all be worth 100 xp (doublinghe xp gained and curtailing the difficulty with faster leveling) or will they be each worth 50 xp?
First of all let me may say I'm really looking forward to Siege of Dragonspear. One thing that really bothers me from the livestream with the dialogue and inventory screen though is that horrible sans serif text font - it looks nothing like Baldur's Gate 1/2's style and looks really out of place. I would really like the option to use a more classic feeling serif font like was used in BG 1/2. I understand this has been done for ease-of-use, but I think a lot of people interested in this game have no trouble reading text and would appreciate a more classic BG 1/2 feel. I don't have a problem with it on really small over the head text, but on larger text it just looks out of place - in particular the capitalised sans-serif CONTINUE and END DIALOGUE buttons just look obnoxious and ugly.
Just to add I noticed this change in the livestream from yesterday and in previous versions I much preferred the look and feel so I really, really hope they let us switch this like they will the health bars and font-size.
That could be because if they focussed on more storyline gameplay it would probably have had massive spoilers and consist mainly of someone clicking through dialogue boxes. Fun to play, yes, but probably not very exciting for a presentation...
I thought it looked a little bit dense and combat-centric, but then they were just clicking options to go for combat each time for the demonstration. Also I think they were avoiding spoilers. For some reason that dialogue font really annoys me as it just looks too modern and doesn't fit with the style of the old infinity games. Pillars of Eternity is a modern game built for high resolutions and they do just fine with serif fonts, don't understand why they are fiddling with stuff like that. Please make it an option - like an easy-read font or something.
Perhaps the font was a placeholder to test .ttf support. They may have something closer to the "classic BG" font for the final release. Although a clean font is much better for readability, especially on small screens.
Thanks @AstroBryGuy for the link. It sounds very much like they may give options or it will at least be easy for people to mod. The presentation looked good otherwise.
I liked what I seen, this stream has made be 100% sure to buy this expansion. I will probably just wait a few days to see if the release is overly buggy (some bugs are expected).
Okay, I read this in @bengoshi 's summary (Not really a spoiler, but)
Skill checks as well as well as infravision checks.
Will this be radically different from bgee1+2? If so, will this feature be added to those as well? That is, will it 'stick out'? That is, (eg) will infravision be extremely useful in SoD, but not in the rest of the game?
Comments
Maybe it's a sign that all ToBex features will be implemented.
I have no interest whatsoever in buying Siege of Dragonspear or anything else from Beamdog, but thanks anyway for tagging me.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/706118/#Comment_706118
(if you are using Chrome you can also download "ReChat for Twitch" if you want to get any chat text you missed).
I like the graphics very much (the map, the new creatures). When I saw the boars, I immediatly thought about one of the first PoE map where you have the privilege to be humiliated by a couple of boars if your team of newbies goes there unprepared.
I am also curious about several features related to the "scalable" AI and all AlexT comments from a general perspective.
One little question: does Beamdog plan to refresh and officially document its own specifications replacing the data found on the IESDP mirrors ?
I do have a follow up question regarding the scaling difficulty. Will XP be scaled down for encounters when fighting the extra critters.
For example, @bengoshi stated that when yoy scale the difficulty up, it will add a couple of archers and a cleric to the already established meleers.
So assume on core, there are 5 fighters in an encounter worth 100 xp each. If on a higher difficulty, you add 4 archers and a cleric. Would the all be worth 100 xp (doublinghe xp gained and curtailing the difficulty with faster leveling) or will they be each worth 50 xp?
When I wrote that part, I meant they said that it should work like it does in BGEE, because there were questions on the forum, like https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/46712/npc-connections-sod#latest by @Maiverick, whether the connections existing between 2 characters in BG 1 would still exist in SoD.
So I guess it will be possible to separate duo companions using different tricks, just like in BGEE.
Perhaps the font was a placeholder to test .ttf support. They may have something closer to the "classic BG" font for the final release. Although a clean font is much better for readability, especially on small screens.
(Not really a spoiler, but)
Skill checks as well as well as infravision checks.
Will this be radically different from bgee1+2? If so, will this feature be added to those as well? That is, will it 'stick out'? That is, (eg) will infravision be extremely useful in SoD, but not in the rest of the game?