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I like the suggestion by TAS about being able to select special effects on your weapons, and different fees for different effects, and the affect of those effects on opponents.

I've had a few more thoughts as well.

Dryads, Elves, Dwarves, Half-Giants, Humans. Yes, keep all of those for DS3. And, like I've said in an earlier post, add more options beyond those, and within those (types of Elves, for example, and types of Dwarves, and types of Humans, and this isn't just about skin color). I guess it would be difficult to work Agallan Giants into the game, due to their size and the limitations of the screen, but there are other options, some of which I've suggested already. I've got a little more to say about this below in the potential spoiler paragraphs.

But while I'm on the subject of character races, I was pleased to see that Tolkien's Sindarin, with additional material developed by Tel' Mithrim (and possibly others), had been worked into DS2. I would like to see that continued. At the same time, though, I was very disappointed by the mispronunciations of Sindarin found in DS2 (and which have continued in DS2BW). Come on, guys, the Appendices in the back of The Return of the King tell you how to pronounce things, and there's also Ruth S. Noel's book The Languages of Tolkien's Middle Earth, which also has a pronunciation guide. Celeb'hel is NOT "Seh-lehb-hehl." It's "Keh-lehb-hehl." C is never "soft" in Sindarin, but always "hard." "Edhel" is NOT "Ehd-hehl." It's "Ehð-ehl." That dh there is the same sound as the "hard" th in the English words "the," "these," "those," etc (it's the Old English letter Edh, rather than the Old English letter Thorn). In addition, DS2BW has at least one big mistake in the use of the language, in which the Vai'kesh leader says "Blah blah blah his mellonamin blah blah blah." HIS mellonamin??? Okay, look. "Mellon" means "friend." "Mellonamin" means "my friend." It's a compound made up of "mellon" and "amin" ("I, me"). So the Vai'kesh leader is saying "his my-friend"? What the heck does that mean? The Vai'kesh may speak a different language (more likely a different dialect, at best), but it's obviously not completely different from the language of the Elves in Aman'lu, since they were Aman'lu Elves at one time, so no Vai'kesh would make a mistake like that. "His mellon" would have been fine (although the double-L there isn't just an L sound, either -- it's an aspirated L).

(SPOILER?) About Storyline and Theme. In Ehb, your character saved the Azunites of Ehb from an ancient enemy they had locked up. In UP, your character again saved the Azunites, this time of the Peninsula, from the idealistic assumptions of their leaders, after running all over the place gathering Townstones for their leaders and then using them as directed. Both of these weren't bad. In LoA, you had to save the entire world from the foolhardiness, laziness (or was it cowardice?), and arrogance of the Utraeans (and the laziness or cowardice of everyone else, with a handful of exceptions that wind up being your party's NPC members). This was getting a little less likable. Your character is being used, just as his/her family has been used for generations (and which has recently, a decade or two ago, resulted in the deaths of both his/her parents), by people too lazy/scared/arrogant to do the job themselves. The presence of the "Historian" Therg in so many places makes you wonder just what's going on, and why he doesn't involve himself in the struggle. Still, it's not too bad if you assume some sort of "Prime Directive" code of conduct, and assume that Therg is not only "much more than a mere Historian," but also much more than he appears to be (some sort of divine being, maybe, and not just an Utraean). Then in Return to Arhok, one of the first things you are told is "In a final, selfless act, ..." you've allowed yourself to be frozen for umpteen years. Um, excuse me? I did no such thing. Once the LoA quest was finished, I was pretty disgusted with those people, the Utraeans and the people of Arhok both (that's not to say that I didn't like the game, because I did, the atmosphere was really much better in many ways than DS1, even with the additional content added, in part because of the new climate/weather/sky stuff), and the last thing I would have done would be to allow them to freeze me so that they could exploit me again. At least the Utraeans had, supposedly, realized the error of their ways and were trying something to make amends (although I don't think that their religious ritual of atonement was the only thing necessary for them to do). Now in Return to Arhok, we see that the experimentation has continued (if not by Utraeans directly). Well, okay, another threat to the world. Gotta deal with it. So then along comes DS2, and you encounter ill-tempered people from the beginning (Celia's self-righteous arrogance is what leads to the exploitation of the Dryads in DS2BW, and I can't count how many times I wanted to pummel that one Dryad shopkeeper whose flesh was crawling because she was dealing with "a follower of Valdis," even after I had killed Valdis!), so it's no wonder you're willing to trust the "Scholar" when he comes along and is relatively kind. And you would have done the things he encourages you to do anyway, after all. Valdis has to be stopped. Unfortunately, it wasn't Valdis who was the real threat. A threat, yes, and in need of being stopped, yes, but the real threat ... well, we know how that played out. Still, I felt more exploited at the end of LoA, and the plot twist at the end of DS2 was interesting, and gave you a hint of things to come. Because I haven't gotten to the end of DS2BW yet, I don't have much to say about the storyline/theme there, but I will note that the experimentation is extreme in terms of how horrific and gory it is, probably a little excessive (but, related to a different topic, I will say that the Bound Drayds have some visual appeal in some respects, so if someone can do an armor mod in which the bottom half of the Dryad Dervishes is part of the armor mesh, that would rock -- I'm thinking of the thigh boots and bikini bottoms, or better yet, and probably easier, if someone can make an armor mod that looks like the armor the Bound Elf Guards are wearing, but allow for different skin tones so that, for example, a Dryad character could wear it, that would rock).

(SPOILER?) I haven't finished DS2BW yet (I'm in Part 2), but I have read PapaGamer's Walkthrough, and it looks like most of the Dryads are going to be destroyed by the Overmage's exploitation, but Kirani, Ithara, and a few other NPC Dryads are apparently still around at the end of the game, to say nothing of Taar and Deru (at least if you have them in your party) and your own character (if you're playing a Dryad like I am), so the Dryads would survive (though perhaps in reduced numbers), and therefore can be retained in DS3. The Elves in DS2BW have been whining and ready to give up, they've been talking about how their race is coming to an end, etc. Gloom and doom stuff born of depression. Having not yet gotten to the end of the game, I don't know how that's going to work out, but I hope it's just emotional, and not actual. Since they've lost their visions, perhaps they just can't imagine a brighter future simply because they have no precognition of such a future. That's what I'm hoping, anyway, and by the next Age, they should have gotten over that (though it would be nice if their precognitive abilities returned). Anyway, I want to see both Dryads and Elves in DS3.

~~~
Giovanna