So, I finally got around to watching the undead gameplay video... and, I must say... undead kinda seem BS.
My criticisms?
1. Boy is terrified of Fane without hood. Hood back on? Same child reacts like Fane is a living human... which is stupid. Does he have the memory of a gold fish? Will all NPCs somehow forget that they saw undead a few seconds ago? If Fane gets revealed, or any undead, that NPC should permanently have the same reaction... unless the mask is used, changing their appearance.
2. The mask. So, let me get this right- not only does Fane LOOK like that race, he gets their abilities AND knowledge of their culture? That is ridiculous. Unless you are an undead elf, you shouldn't get corpse-eater as undead. Unless you are an undead lizard, you shouldn't get fire-breathing. I personally think that is 100% BS, because there is no good explanation of how that would even happen, unless corpse-eating and fire breathing are nothing more than genetic, physical traits (meaning, not learned, taught, or practiced).
The only thing I can hope is that it will be sincerely difficult/expensive to gain access to the ingredients necessary for the mask.
3. Poison healing. It looks to me like it would be way more convenient to be undead than living. The need to make poison potions? Please. Poison wands, geomancer skills. Poison surfaces don't disappear. There are no healing wands. That means anyone with a wand can remotely heal undead, without any magical skills. There are geomancer skills which create persistent clouds of poison, no persistent clouds of healing (without bless, which will apparently require source points to use and is only available around level 5 or 6 at earliest).
I played through the alpha, beginning to end. There were some undead fights, but 80-90% of encounters were against living opponents. So, unless things are vastly different in the full release, or later acts... most of the time, using poison will be very strategically viable against enemies. Meaning to say, spreading poison all over the place for undead party members (hypothetically, Fane and player) is super practical.
4. AI 2.0. So, if the AI realizes that undead party members are healing from poison... they will use healing on the undead party members? That is bad for the undead party members, yes, but also bad for the AI, as well. Cooldowns. Means they can't heal themselves now, meaning that they die sooner. Also, doesn't change the fact that there is poison all over the place... which is killing mortal AI. So, they set it on fire and now burn their AI party members? Sounds like undead party members with high fire resistance will be practically unstoppable. Lay down poison clouds to heal, laugh if AI is "smart enough" to ignite the fields.
