I'm *really* glad Obsidian is doing great work. I really love his games.

But *wow* his commentary is painful. Do people really think all of those things to themselves when playing?

I have played it too much to watch a complete newbie play it, I think. At least that is how I felt when I was watching part of his Let's Play this morning. :/

Maybe if I was there to provide my own commentary back...

WHY IS HE NOT USING THE UNOFFICIAL PATCH.

Anyway, I like Mr. Avellone a lot as a writer, but I have yet to watch it. What was painful about it?

Because he apparently things game breaking bugs are totally fine and dandy to get the "real experience" *eye-roll*

He admits he was wrong and is updating to high-res in the next update (and also doing it in shorter chunks)

I was excited to watch him play thinking that some useful commentary would be inserted at moments that seemed significant. The only comment that came close was the text and voice-over contrast but that is pretty much common knowledge from playing obsidian's games. He did caution at the beginning that he was just going to sit back and relax throughout the playthrough. At least he acknowledges his prejudices in puerile comments; a mildly amusing characteristic with some value towards his audience.

It's a shame they couldn't have gotten Tim Cain, though. That would've been pretty awesome.

It annoys me that he's chosen a character that pretty much is not viable. If you can just barely survive your first fights with an ailing wolf, then there are lots of spots later on that you can't get through. This game is not designed in a way that will let you finish without combat.

Also, the ep your entire party earns is affected by whether your main character gets involved in combat. If you step back and let the underlings fight for you (or if your main character can't get any damage on your foes) then nobody is going to level. (Or at least, this is my -untested- understanding.)

Actually Arcanum is on e of the few games where making a non-combat character is perfectly viable.
The game does a good job of providing solutions other than combat to many quests, and there are plenty of companions who are good at fighting to help you out when you do need to fight.

And yes, the PC gets xp whenever he actually hits something, but you're capped at level 50 anyway, and if you do most quests, you'll reach the cap whether or not you're actually fighting.


Note that I haven't actually watched Avellone's video, so I don't know what kind of character he's playing, but Arcanum, with the exception of a few difficulty spikes like the mines, is easy enough to be completable with any kind of character.

I have to agree with mystral. One of the pluses of Arcanum is that a pacifist run is perfectly viable; but you have to commit to it from the beginning, and it helps to have played the game through at least once, so as to have at least a rough idea of what you're going to be up against.

(It also helps to RTFM and stop playing the "Lol look at me I'm a n00b" card, but that's a different story.)

As far as XP goes, you do get more for doing your own fighting; but also from completing quests, and you still get a fair percentage from all the damage your followers deal. So unless you stick pretty much exclusively to the main story line, you'll still reach level 50 either way. More importantly, so will your followers, which makes your team pretty much invincible. Especially if you know enough to head to Ashbury early on and grab the "worthless mutt" ASAP.

I could only stand to watch the first ten minutes; the guy was all clueless talk-talk-talk, and pretty much so was his build. But he freely admitted that he had no idea what the stats did, or even what some of them were; my guess is that someone somewhere told him that a pacifist run was possible, without providing him* with any of "the least you need to know".

*Probably at his own request; note my observation about how much he seems to like playing the n00b card.