Kingmaker - Characters and Animation
 

Pathfinder: Kingmaker continues to make progress towards its goal and has had a couple of updates. The latest is about character animation and the other about a potential companion.

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Each update just make me want to play this game more and more :D

…diverse gender system…
might cancel pledge

You might grow up and be an adult, too. ;)

+1 paisley shirt of befuddlement

Upgrade with lasers and reflective tape. ;)

What does a diverse gender system even mean?? Are we going to see genders besides male and female in human beings??

P.S. That shirt!!!

Looks good but please shrink that sword. Well, maybe if a Giant race is available

I doubt that is what he meant. English is not his first language and I think he means in the context of adding particular female and male feelie things to the character system in terms of animations and character backgrounds and customisation or things like that.

That shirt has Hawaiian all over it, perfect for eating messy food with.

Agreed! This sort of sword belongs in Final Fantasy 7.

I wish I could say the same. I'm just not a fan of that art style.

I think he is talking about the ability to create different builds, for example, like built/very masculine females or skinny/feminine males if player wishes to build one.

Thats a pretty cool level of customisation. I always wanted to be able to change the weight and height of my toons in baldurs gate. My main character in nwn was a grey haired older experienced fighter with a pot belly. After all the premise was that they were recruiting the best of the best. Everyone kept referring to him as a fresh faced newbie which kind of ruined it for me through.

It's populist garbage to increase sales.

Just the ruleset alone makes this game automatically better than PoE/Tranny/Numanuma.
:)

I suspect that'll lead to much better combat and actually fun character building.

I think they will get their half million but it seems they are not going to get much more than that.

I still haven't pledged but more than likely to do so simply because I am like the rule system.

That shirt is vivid.

Looking closer at the art style, I'm not seing the issue, really. What's the problem?

If you're talking about his shirt, I think it's not colorful enough. ;)

Besides that my only complaint is Amiri's huge sword. That gives me JRPG vibes I really dislike.

Usually there will be a significant increase of pledges at the end of the campaign. I think they'll finish with ~$650-700k.

Oh, it's the exaggeration?

I think it's within the realm of the reasonable. I do prefer a more plausible style - but it's harder to pull off well, I find.

Also, you run the risk of having a sort of dreary and drab game.

Dragon Age Origins is a good example of a more realistic art style that really didn't do much for the game, in my opinion.

Carrying Giant Swords have been around in D&D before Pathfinder existed. You get a feat that lets you use one size larger weapons but with an attack penalty.
She uses two hands to wield it. JRPG vibe would be her using one hand to use it.

I also think the 2H sword look little too big but not a big deal for me :)

Maybe there is an enchantment on the sword to make it lighter to carry? I hope they try to justify it somehow with in-game lore, then I can be okay with it.

At least it's not Owlcat's invention: She looted the sword from a dead frost giant and it's explained how she can wield it. Her strength value (30 at level 12) justifies wielding it.

Still I don't like it. To me this as always looks like cheap gimmickry.
But as long as that's not the norm in Pathfinder it imho is a minor flaw.

I'm betting you're wrong. Most kickstarters I've supported have made circa an extra 20% in their final 48 hours. The big exception was Bard's Tale 4, but they offered a lot of free games for those who pledged in the first 48 hours, which may have meant less pledges at the end. Owlcat is making somewhere around 1-2% per day at this point and have 22 days to go. I suspect they'll be well over 500k before the last 48 hours. So I'm guessing they'll be around 750k.

Unless it's made out of titanium, most people wouldn't be able to lift a sword that big. It'd almost be like fighting with an anvil.

Most people aren't heroic warriors capable of killing hundreds of monsters either.

It's not realistic, but I think it's fine.

High quality GUI and good looking character art. Doesn't feel fun though.. All those realtime animation systems and superb grass reacting to the wind, uh.. lets hope it will contain some fun.

Swords are not as heavy as you think.
So a giant sword could have been 4x or 5x that weight. 18kg for instance. In that video she has 21 Strength. 18 kg is nothing for someone with 21 Strength. That is the Strength of an Ogre in Pathfinder. They can use such swords normally. Ok, they are bigger but that is why this Barbarian girl has an attack penalty when using this sword and needs a feat for it.
Bigger problem is that she is a girl while she is as strong as strongest men on Earth. Girls cannot become that strong, they don't have the needed genetics.

Eh, the GUI looks a lot like Pillars of Eternity/Tyranny to me, and I find that a bit too modern looking. I wish modern devs would take more chances with UIs. I want more Arcanum-style, i.e. unique, charming and capturing the essence of the game world. Less homogenization. UI design nowadays seems so concerned with form and function that they sacrifice a lot of immersion and "feeling" of the UI. Even RPGs like Skyrim are terribly guilty of this (other than the Perk Chart, of course. That was decent.)

I love the look of the text description of items, though, with the scroll and the text. Nicely done there.

The giant sword, eh, it actually looks kinda cool to me, but I grew up with Cloud wielding the Buster Sword in Final Fantasy 7, so yeah.

I'm interested in this for the nerdy, old-school ruleset. But I'm curious. How does Pathfinder handle melee? I was discussing this with a friend earlier, and I actually prefer melee attackers to not have a ton of active combat abilities. I might be in the minority there, but having to manage melee abilities all the time just feels a bit…I dunno, cheap. Especially when the melee fighters abilities start to resemble MMO hotbars. I prefer a more simulation approach like BG/IWD. But that's just me.

Overall, I'll definitely be checking this out whenever it releases. If I had to guess, I'd say that this game will be more old-school than Pillars of Eternity 2, which works for me. :)

I don't have an issue with the overly large sword, but I definitely don't like how cartoony the game looks overall. The colors are too soft, and everything just looks a little too "animated" for my taste.

Modern isometric so far tends to have a cartoony look. What happened to the old isometric look? I'd love to see an actual modernized Infinity Engine-style isometric look. I love how old games from that era look, even strategy games like Eador: Genesis, the first 2 Diablo games and what not.

Diablo 2 was cartoony too :)

No, not like that. The only game I can think of that's comparable is Divinity: OS.

Not sure if cartoony is the word I'm going for. A lot of modern isometric looks a bit cheap to me. I'm not sure why. Divinity: Original Sin is an example of this, but that also has a rotatable camera and is not really isometric.

I really like the look of games like this:



And of course the Infinity Engine games. These types of styles seem more tightly detailed and denser to me.

You can split hairs if you really want, but any game with that kind of view is generally considered isometric.

People complaining about the sword? Well, I never liked it either, looks like a FF game. But it is not owlcat's design. This is Paizo's design - including the barbarian - and is old, since the first corebook. To tell the truth, I never liked pathfinder's art, it's full of unnecessary and unrealistic details. For me, D&D 5th art style is the best (see my avatar). Pathfinder did not outstand because of its art, but because of its system, that's better than D&D (IMO anyway).

And let's be honest it's not all that "cartoony", it's just that sword, the rest of it looks nice. Furthermore, Divinity: OS is the worst in that area. D:OS has this childish looks that resembles Word of Warcraft - or whatever - and I don't see many people complaining about this. And that's because in the end the game was good enough so that people don't mind it. And I think it's gonna be the same for Kingmaker.

Mmm, no. Historical weapons are much lighter than that lump. The only thing that is good for is a giant paperweight.

What do the historical documents say about heroic fantasy and a strength of 20?

Seriously, I don't think you're getting it. They're not going for realistic here.

It's within the realm of the plausible for heroic and high fantasy - which is exactly what Pathfinder is.

Take a look at the source material before you speak, please.

https://www.google.dk/search?q=pathf…M5PDLgu0h6U8M:

The game is about fantasy heroes doing fantastical stuff. It's really not that complicated.

Yeah I agree. The giant JRPG sword is naff but the rest of the art is fine. I don't have any problems with it.

I think a lot of people (including me) complained about art style in D:OS.
Pathfinder imho is a lot better in this regard.

The game definitely has a cartoony look. There's no doubt about it.

I'm not saying it's an inherently bad thing. I'm just not a fan of that look for most games. That doesn't mean other people won't like it.

I didn't mind it as much in Divinity: OS because Larian has always had a deliberately silly style in their games with all the humor and pop culture references. That said, I'm not big fan of the visuals in D:OS.