My reactions:
Personally I'm breathing a sigh of relief. If anyone was to change my mind on procedural generation, it would have been you guys, so I was trying to keep an open mind about it, but I must say that I'm very glad to hear it's out of the plan now! Being a family man with a busy career and four kids means I don't care much about replayability, but the emphasis is on highest quality one-time experience, and that mean hand-crafted. I'll pay premium for that, and I know I'm not alone in that sentiment.Procedural generation is gone. Long live the editor! Every map and every encounter will be handcrafted.
Sounds intriguing. I haven't really gotten into tactical RPGs since I've always preferred adventure, exploration, story, and puzzles. But I have played some in the past, and I trust you guys will get it right and make it worth engaging.Focus on deep and tactical combat system. We want to make the combat really challenging so that every action you make every turn is a careful choice. Like playing chess with fantasy characters.
Fair enough on the "not filming a movie", but I personally like a lot of story text, it draws me in.Focus on fun gameplay mechanics. We are not writing a book, not filming a movie, we are making a game, and gameplay is king.
This sounds really good, like you don't want to waste my time, which I greatly appreciate. In the process, you end up making a very high quality game which inspires strong fans and very positive word of mouth via articles, reviews, etc.No fluff. We want to make a tightly focused game, the same design principle we had with Grimrock. No filler content. Less is more. Or as Antoine de Saint-Exupery puts it famously “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Some players seemed to really enjoy the hardcore settings in LOG2 and I can totally understand why.