So far I’ve found that spells are still plenty useful even with the DoS-like environmental attacks - the vast majority of barrels that can explode are contained (in Act 1 at least) in a pretty concentrated area (the Goblin camp and ruins they occupy). Whereas DoS2 had barrels around every corner it seemed, and…

It’s more “only run in the format I decide for myself”.  Other people are free to run whatever self-imposed rules they feel like.  Nothing is stopping anyone else from doing 100% runs, no hacks runs, anything goes runs, whatever.  So yeah, let people enjoy things.  Let them run whatever rules they feel like.

Can’t wait for all the people to come out and say that this game is now RUINED FOREVER because Miles is wearing slightly different shoes.

Echoing the comment below, you’re not being an asshole at all. That’s a terrific question—albeit one I certainly don’t have the answer to. As mentioned, I think the developers at Obsidian did a service in how considerate they were to include a slider for this sort of thing. But something like that also means more work…

I think the actual release is like a year or two off? I’d imagine aside from a few people, the goal would be to let it get a little more finished before covering what is, right now, a bug filled experience. 

“only way to be fair, right?”

It’s a fair question. But even people who don’t strictly have arachnophobia don’t like spiders. It’s not that hard to just... not put them in the game,

My brain tends to make an exception for web-slinging superheroes.

Yes it is.

Good article - thanks for sharing. I was reading it thinking “Kotaku needs more writers like this” and got to the end and saw it was written by Cecilia D’Anastasio. Ha.

Our SMB2 also had more Miyamoto in its DNA than Lost Levels and had greater influence on later Mario games. It’s not very often you see flying bloopers and poison mushrooms in later games.

It really doesn’t. The only reason we got this reskinned game, that was also a miyamoto pet project, was because the game they did make and plan to release was deemed too hard for wussy western gamers. Largely because of one singular guy said it was. And he was probably right, to be fair.

They’ve mentioned they would like to add more races. I got to speak to them at PAX East and got the impression that they would like to include all the races in the PHB at least eventually.

Was a little surprised Dragonborn weren’t in already given how prominent Lizards are in Divinity.

It’s still one of the most amazing stories in gaming history that Nintendo scraps a true SMB2 for being fanhack difficult, redresses a different game, and THAT game also happens to become a stone-cold gaming classic of its own right. They just had all the golden horseshoes.

A Life Domain cleric of Lolth?

What I mean is: if you can offer customization options, great do that. If you can’t, then think harder about the characters you are designing (I mean as NPCs in the world or as the main character players will pilot). Do they all need to be beefy white guys named Chris or can you mix it up a little bit. Players are…

Yeah, most games give you a choice between stubble, and straight beard hair, maybe with a couple of lengths if you’re lucky.  I’m a white guy with a slightly curly beard, and even I have a hard time finding something that looks like my facial hair.  

I’m not a beard haver so when I thought about it I realized I missed that actually, the beard options don’t include coarse hair (i.e. the kind of long beard you’d see on a black dude). Gonna keep an eye on that going forward