Grimrock

Well, IMHO there should be an option to import characters from LOG 1 to LOG 2. The essential feature of each RPG is experience and progress of your character(s). It would be nice to play the same pack after sequel is going to be released. And in many old fashioned RPG's e.g. EOB or ISHAR that option was possible. Please consider it before final decision is made!

Cezi

Unfortunately due to the magnitude of all the changes, that won't be *EDIT* possible.
Largely, it had to them being a break out developer team, they did not have the team size or capital to have LoG1 broad enough to be well scaled on.
It's something very understandable, and likely not to happen much more in the future.

"Eye of the Beholder" did this pretty well; (meaning EOB1 not EOB2, which did allow direct import from EOB1). The method was simply to allow the player to manually adjust the values to fit their PCs; it works. *Though I'm not particularly a fan of that method, as it might allow for maxed stat PCs at level one... but some variation might be possible. For example: the game might allow the player to create PC from level 1 to x (whatever starting level they wish to support), and the game could be designed to take that into account at the start.

I find that MOST games where you import characters lead to an unsatisfying progression system. There are exceptions, the SSI Gold Box games worked *OK*, but required sort of artificially clamping progression within each title.

I think import would have to leave your new characters with very little to make the sense of progression work, and that would just feel awkward as an import.

I don't mind the idea in principle however.

It's not a straight sequel anyway, and story-wise would make NO sense to import characters, as they will be completely separate stories and timelines.

Komag wrote:It's not a straight sequel anyway, and story-wise would make NO sense to import characters, as they will be completely separate stories and timelines.

It's true... But the option would [could] allow PC import from user mods... Though it would probably have to interpret the PC into something compatible, and strip out any inventory that is undefined.

Komag wrote:It's not a straight sequel anyway, and story-wise would make NO sense to import characters, as they will be completely separate stories and timelines.

In some old games you could import from one whole series to another, so that is not necessarily an obstacle. Most important would be the completely overhauled skill system.

While it's a little sad that LoG2 probably won't allow you to bring your characters with you - I do think it's a better decision. If the game were forced to be direct sequel, just so that you could bring your characters with you - it would be quite restricting to the story. I like the idea of exploring a whole new tale in the world of Grimrock.

Similarly, it's likely that the new system is so different - the only way the import would work would be "Here's your fighter, he's got 50 skill points to spend". What's worse, is that Almost Human would have to spend a lot of time worrying about balancing the game for different levels of starting characters. They either reduce the power of your imported characters significantly to fit the level 1 campaign, or they would have to write code to change the difficulty depending on your character levels / load-out. That would take a lot of time that could instead be put into more monsters, items, quests, etc.

Bottom line - I think it's a shame that you can't bring your characters with you - but I definitely think it's the right decision!