Kordanor

Each additional voice basically kills one additional character. Because the biggest chunk of cost will no doubt go into the voice acting of all the lines. So I'd rather have just 3 voices instead if losing out on one more character for each voice option. Regarding the IMP btw: In the stream it was mentioned that the IMP will not have a talent selection, but will have one additional trait compared to others. So you can make him unique that way (like being the only night vision machinegunner or something like that)

Was mostly referring to his presentation in the portrait and trailer. There is some truth in the other thread, that Ivan is modelled after Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat. He makes the impression there, but now he looks more sunburnt and unshaved. Also lost a bit of the contours of the Arnold Face.

Very true. Having "gimped" pre-skilled characters has been the bane of many RPGs. Wasteland 2 is the most recent I can think of. You really wanted to find the characters as early as possible so that they aren't gimped yet.

Hrm, I think I pushed most of my mercs quite far in all of the games. Maybe not to 8 or 9, but my Veteran Super Soldiers were guys like Razor and Haywire. And in JA DG I also played enough to make everyone very elite. The last level is still 10 so it will definitely not be inflationary. But ofc you got a point. There should be a decent curve. But otherwise You would also never hire a guy like Magic, Shadow or Skully because at the point where you could hire them, your guys like Biff would already have out-veteraned them ^^

The issue with having different skills for different weapon types is that from a gameplay perspective you would restrict the characters and push them into some directions. You have that in some RPGs where you can use a sword or a blunt weapon, always use sword, and then will never be able to use a blunt weapon properly even if you find the best one, just because the transition is not worth it. The only way I could imagine that is that on top of marksmanship you can have 10 "expert levels" for the weapon types. But that would make it way more complicated. I think with the different traits and so on that should work well already and give much more flexibility, so that, like in the previous games, mercs can start out with pistols, switch over to Uzis, then rifles and finally snipers and assault rifles.

Reaper can be seen in the background in the Interview with Ian. I somewhat agree on these two characters, but I think same is also true for many others. It's a bit of a reinterpretation I guess. Mostly it's like characters are either looking "too clean" or "too rough". Like Ivan seems like he became a Gopnik as was stated before. Ice looks even more innocent and like a young greenhorn in the portait, though he is pretty much a veteran. Blood is the opposite and looks like he has seen Rambo a few times too much. Wolf looks a bit like Elvis, very "clean", not like a Lumberjack. Same with Nails. He looked like a Hobo or a very rough biker in JA/JA2. In Ja3 he looks more like a student which goes biking in his time off.

Wohoo! Some spicy details! Generally I like the setup of having a classless system and I think the Perk System (which reminds a lot of fallout) is a great compromise. Another change I like is the removal of stat losses. For me this was an instand-reload/restart. Yes, even with ironman (which in JA is not true ironman, just no saving during combat), this to me always felt same as if the character died and I would just restart. So removing it, and maybe adding a serious wound, or debuff or something is much cooler. The one thing I am most sceptical about is the unique Talent point. In general I don't think it's a bad idea. And "overly fantastic or unrealistic effects here" sounds it should be ok. But this is then in stark contrast to Fidels ability. Of course that depends on multiple other factors (like availability of grenades), but if grenades work like they did in the old trailer (as in, they always hit, do tons of damage), thats a problem. Throwing grenades in JA1/JA2 was more an act of desparation, or if you were really sure you were going to hit someone. You invest a ton of AP, you might need to be close, you might miss, and the grenade might not go off, you might even hurt yourself. Grenades in the trailer looked like "you select where it lands and it goes boom", and 2 grenades basically will just kill everything, guaranteed. And this might be the opposite of what was intended. This might make Fidel the "Only viable option for grenade throwing". Again, I don't know the cirumstances, and hopefully grenade throwing also has been changed since the trailer.

In the end you need to prioritize. I mean sure, maybe you get animated faces, but the tradeoff would be no bullet physics, or no mods, or no militia, or less character or... I mean you can say for every single one that's essential. Ofc I would prefer animated portraits as well, but I dont think it's the end of the world.

Nah, this is no problem. Studios do that all the time. Also with other langages. So the lips of animated characters move differently in each langauge.

In the end it's down to costs and rentability. And imho one of the reasons nobody reached JA2 is also because JA2 was also an unreasonably scaled project, which just happened to work out. So it's probably better to have an overall good (but maybe not expansive) game, and then add on top of that later on via content patches and DLCs. Additional Mercs being one thing which can be added later. But the animated portraits is also something which can "easily" be added afterwards via content patch. Just as comparison: Something which breaks savegames or something which requires all voice actors to come back to the recording studio is something which cannot easily be expanded afterwards.

yeah, but pre-orders are already considered rip off, as you buy a product you don't know will be any good. Crowdfuning even more. That way you even pay money taking the risk, that you wont get anything at all. Generally that casts a rather bad image on the publisher.

Just wanted to mention that a suppression mechanic is in the game, you can see it at this timestamp where Livewire get a suppression debuff. So far we didnt see what this is doing though. https://youtu.be/1a9oprKEl8A?t=189

Hey there! The game is actually produced and published by a real (and huge) publisher. So a gofundme campaign would be super inadequate for this game.

I kinda agree and disagree with all these points. ^^ 1) Art Direction: I like the art direction of the world. And don't think its too cartoonish. I also like how the AIM Mercs look (in the 3D world). However multiple enemies running around with Peg-Legs might be a bit too much. ^^ 2) Mercenary Portraits: I think they are a mixed bag. I think some are nice, some less so. I mentioned Nails in the other thread which almost looks like a template teenager model with a grey beard. And while its not a deal breaker ofc I would also prefer to have animations. 3) Voice Overs: While I won't say it was totally convincing, I thought it was ok. They were much more freakish characters in Jagged Alliance 1. 4) XCOM 2 Copy Cat: I agree in terms of, yes it's modernized. But I think you should not mix 2 different things here. Just because the interface is modernized it doesnt mean the game mechanics have to be dumbed down. Phoenix Point and King Arthur Knights Tale also have a modern interface and they work extremely well. And I think the modernization of the interface is also a necessity. There are also things in the JA 2 interface which just feel outdated and bad. 5) Combat Range: I somewhat disagree here. Check out the Gamescrom stream. You can see that you can attack these enemies which are somewhat far away. Not like 1km or even 100m, but enough to not make it look stupid.

The original interview has now been published in english and deedee is not mentioned there. So the Version by gamestar might have had that as off statement and assumption by gamestar itself. There it said "The mercenaries should all have their own personality, newcomers like Deedee as well as returnees à la steroid" So it's possible that deedee is not going to be for hire at all.

What I am saying is that in the article posted before (Gamestar, behind paywall) it is mentioned that Deedee is a new, recruitable character. From the screenshot alone that's impossible to tell. So its probably a "native" you encounter and you can then recruit (like Maddog in JA2) Bastien, as far as I know, is just some Gangster Encounter.

Personally I like their outfits and styles. Just some characters (from the portrait, like Nails) look too different, and kind of "generic" and "templaty". Not quite as bad, but a bit like if you used the same model for all characters and then just put a grey beard on a dummy which is supposed to be a 20 year old (as you see in some other games)

I checked the article. Deedee Boombastic is now confirmed as character (visible in the screenshots from the blog entry). Also Ian mentions Gus as a pick in his JA2 dream team. Now this does NOT mean, that Gus is a confirmed JA3 character. But it makes it somewhat likely. As so far developers kinda tried avoiding talking about characters not being in JA3, Wink in the Stream being the exception. Besides of that nothing in terms of new game info.

And Nails has far less and his darkbrown hair turned to black/grey. Wasn't it mentioned that between JA2 and JA3 barely any time passed? ^^

I'd like to pick up this point again. The new trailer had been released, and the same phenomenon is still visible as I described before: AT 2:51 you can see a shotgun attack, and if you go frame by frame, you can first see one single bullet coming out of it, showing the calculation and trajectory. Only then there is the shot with a animation of "fake bullets". Does this mean, that even the new trailer is showing an outdated engine?

Great to see that Ian is in and apparently at least partially responsible for development of characters, quests and the timeline.

2023 was mentioned in at least 2 interviews, ofc thats always subject to change. Afaik you dont need a release deadline. Only if you offer pre-orders.

Thanks for your answer regarding the ballistics! Speaking about turn based being used to simulate real time activities: (and I agree that you can miss at point blank because everything is moving) In the trailers we can see that characters mostly have 10-15 Action Points. Is the assumption correct, that the total AP scale changed? Can you still "keep" some points for the next turn? Also I assume that with "only" 15 AP, you will not simulate the difference of movement vs shooting anymore, will you? The Manuals of JA, JA DG and JA2 all basically spend a page on explaining that a fast and a slow person can travel different distances, but shoot the same amount of times, which in JA is reflected in AP for shooting being lower for people will less total AP. This already led to some weird situations in JA1/2 due to rounding. With 15 AP max, the rounding would be even worse if you keep the system, so I guess you removed that?

I think it's a good decision to give them their individual looks and I can understand that they don't go full customization as that would be tons of additional work, with a result that everyone looks the same at the end as the aim in a 100% effective scenario has to be that everyone looks like Shadow. OR they would need to have "Cosmetic" options where you can wear good gear but can opt out to actually show that. But again, tons of additional work. Especially if all characters have their own models, because then you can't just reuse the same west on each character, but you need to adjust it for every model, check for clipping issues and whatnot. Of course having everything shown PLUS the cosmetic option would be the best option, but I don't see how this is worth the effort.

A second interesting topic for dev diaries would be the characters. We already know from Interviews that it's going to be ~40, with about 30 veterans. But the only indications about their development were stats by Buns which were 100% the same as before (which could just be temp) and some comments about Tex which seemed to be a bit of a continuation of the story. The great thing about JA was also always the characters, and that included their development. Ivan only speaking Russian in JA1, but having learnt English until JA2. Hamous being introduced in JA1 as native, then having joined AIM in JA DG, then going on his ventures with his Ice Truck, where you then can recruit him as encounter in JA2. Lynx and Buzz, where Buzz was introduced in JA DG and they were a couple, and then between JA DG and JA2 they started to hate each other, and now they are enemies. So the question is: Do you continue their story from where JA2 left off? (Will their story have developed, their relationships, their stats) Do you consider any of the Games since UB as "canon" or do you "ignore" if anything story related happened there? Will you have a "Hall of Fame" type of thing, where you can look up the history of the Mercs which are not present in JA3 to see what happened to them?