It probably all boils down to terminology and how to interprete it, but to me 'acts' bring foward a vision of being restricted in your travels. First you have to kill some bad guy and then the door opens to the next act. This does not mean you can't go back after that. But first you have to kill that one bad guy (or girl <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />).
I don't know how it will be implemented in Riftrunner of course.
Speaking of terminology, I have to admit that the expression “An Act” comes from theatre acting.
It was a tradition for so long that a play should be composed of three acts.
Act one was an introduction of the characters and creating conflicts.
Act two was the climax or the crisis of the play that demanded resolution.
Act three was the catharsis, solution, answer, or even death of the hero(s), simply the end.
That is why it is quite difficult to imagine a free pass between acts, I do understand that.
In role playing games, however, the act is written for you to follow for a maximum entertainment by following a logical storyline sequence. Opening this architecture means that you are allowed to “screw” the story and it does not mean that the story is fundamentally “screwed”. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Now please realise that whatever you did in Aleroth there was no way ever that you could escape from being killed by the dragon rider and revived by Zandalor and get introduced before you crossed the bridge to Rivelon.
It is that cut-scene that marks the graphical boundary of act-one rather than the wooden walls of Aleroth and Zandalor is playing the biggest role as the act demarcation character because he is always involved in act transitions. However, you could still invest in your “Elven sight” and toss a teleporting pyramid across the river at the north and cross to act two without ending act one. So the computer role playing game player have such tricks with which he may literally “screw” the plot of a game that was never intended to be that way.
I think there is no point in discussing what a player can or cannot do within an act or across acts, because the issue is whether there are such acts or not to begin with. Being able to bypass a barrier does not mean that the barrier does not exist, and being able to manipulate the sequence in which you play the pieces of the acts does not mean that the acts do not exist.
Kind regards.
