Well, that's all well and good, and I'd be thrilled if this game changed my mind about turn-based combat.

What I don't like is people suggesting that if it's not turn-based, then it's a mindless, shallow clickfest where you mash a single button with your eyes closed to win every battle.

There are tactics with real-time w/ active pause. Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, Drakensang anyone? Tactics, strategy, deliberation and party management can still be a part of a game's combat without the game ripping the control out of your hands at every turn and making all the pauses for you. It wastes time, and even at best makes combat more like a separate mini-game.

Oh my getting spoiled with all the reviews,vid,screenies..

1st of all, as stated in one of my previous posts(sorry for spamming your blog,I'm just really interested),TB is (or has not ever been) a prefered style of mine.I was very much a fan of the action-pause system (so exhilirating taking on a boss that by all definitions should squish you like a boss and win, after an obscene amount of potions ^^)..BUT Larian would not be Larian if they wouldn't have succeeded in somehow (the vid) convincing me that this might actually be AWEsome (am I this easy?! =)

2nd - Art style is a wee bit less my thing, although again not true exactly, I have no outspoken opinion on artstyle, but I am wondering about the "glow"?.I'm hoping it's like in GW some sort of result of maxing the graphs, so that it can be disabled or minimized by toying a bit with graph settings.The cheerfullnes doesn't bother me, the glowing is not really my thing (sorry lar)

3rd - The dialogue system seems fabulous, it even received some very interested looks from my BF who is not realy an isometric fan (so I'm rooting for that ^^).I agree that it also offers some very nice SP possibilities.Also I'm quite curious how/if the choises you make will have an alignment/reputation/-ish influence and if yes, how that influences the world around you (In dd it was very well present if i recall correct, and it was so..lifelike)..and yes ofcourse I'm looking forward to some very funny conversations ..Maybe it's wishfull thinking but in DD and BD I sometimes really had the impression I could hear the flemish humour in the conversation, maybe I can rustle up an example as I'm playing DD again

4th - storyline..Ofcourse for this I need to play the game but I'm not worried.This is one of the things where you guys have never dissapointed me so, I shouldn't see why you would start now =p

5th - world interaction and combining (bit on same tree for me) - finally..a game that does this again..I remember doing the dishes in DD,or pouring a beer ^^ creating a bed from two haystacks..the more the better, a vision you clearly share *hero*

1Q though, I thought somewhere I read something about moving on "zeshoeken" (sorry don't know the english word)..I'm presuming/hoping this is only in combat mode, and that exploring is just RT no?

I am very much looking forward to this, very curious about the music too..I remember with DD it was playing in the background for hours sometimes before I noticed, because it was just that good..Twas the soundtrack of my life during the times I played it ^^.. If your revenue could be ensured by my mouth-to-mouth commercial you'ld all be rich, but since that's not happening I'll just keep sharing this and talking about it to whomever wants to listen.. (and even those that don't want to :p )

Sounds like a good game, provided installing Steam is not a requirement, as Steam
is a deal breaker for me.

Too many good games requiring Steam nowadays...Steam DRM that is.

So I'll say it here: no DRM = day-one buy from me, even though I'm less than excited about the game so far. I support devs who shun DRM, plain and simple.

The idea is that the inclusion of the cooperative mode actually increases the quality of your single player experience. How that's going to work exactly I'll reserve for a future post, but rest assured that we're focussed on making single player as cool as we can.

I can only corroborate what Swen said before: the single player experience is just as important to us as the multiplayer one.

Yeah, I've seen that which means we didn't communicate very well, but t think the debate is going to move away as we show more and more stuff. The cooperative mechanics translate very well to party mechanics in single player, and the system is much more complex than might be surmised from the little details we've shown so far. Rather than type essays about it, I think we'll address this in a future video under the motto show, don't tell