Ivan the Terrible

Gluupor. Of course.

Best strategy game of 2004.

You can play the music outside the game with the toolset. So if someone got busted for downloading the NWN soundtrack, I would find it very funny.

If Obsidian does end up making KOTOR III, I really hope they've taken notes from the reaction to II. I think they can make a great game, but it requires releasing a finished product, especially for Consoles.

Alright. Let's see, bad ideas, plot inconsistencies, piss-poor dialogue....I'll start off with plot inconsistencies. - Depending on who you talk to (Jolee Bindo and Canderous being the two offenders I can think of off the top of my head), the old Sith Empire was either destroyed way back when and now replaced by a new one created out of whole cloth by Revan and Malak, or still existed after Tales of the Jedi and just retreated back into it's Empire, apparently while the Republic just sat there and watched. The game can't make up it's mind whether the Sith you're fighting are brand new or old with new leadership (check one of the random dialogues on Dantooine; 'I hear the Sith are beating the Republic pretty bad. They must have spent the whole time building ships since we beat them last time.') - The Leviathan is 'Saul Karath's flagship.' According to the Bioware website, it was his flagship during the Mandalorian Wars, as well. Yet, astonishingly, it looks exactly the same as the Sith warships coming out of the Star Forge. What a coincidence! - The Jedi Council decides not to send a Master to accompany Revan because the presence of such a figure 'would serve only to attract attention to your mission, dooming it to failure.' Apparently, however, travelling with the single most wanted Jedi in the entire Galaxy is enough to let you slip under the Sith radar. - Saul Karath tortures you to get the location of the Jedi Academy (though he already knows the location and is just testing you), and Bastila is greatly upset if you tell him where it is. Earlier, she shares a vision with you of Revan and Malak on Dantooine, accessing the Star Map; does she think Malak just didn't notice the HUGE JEDI COMPOUND a little bit in the distance when he came to the planet? - The constant inability of your party to detect that, yes, you're a monstrous, collosal bastard is a near constant. You can spend the entire game butchering everyone and everything, torturing innocents for grins, and Mission will still be astonished that you've fallen to the Dark Side on the Rakatan Temple and think you haven't fallen totally. - Speaking of the Star Map on Dantooine, the council sends the Jedi Nemo to investigate the ruins; you find his body when you arrive there. Earlier, the vision you receive shows Malak warning Revan that the Jedi Council sealed the archway they're about to pass through, and that if they pass it they will surely be banished. Soooo....why in god's name would they send Nemo to get killed if they knew about the Star Map and were simply feigning ignorance for Revan's sake? For that matter, why not just tell Revan the truth and inform him about the Star Map if they knew about it? How does that compromise Revan's identity? - So the Sith are searching tirelessly for Bastila....and yet no matter where you go, even on Taris where the whole planet is under quarantine in order to prevent her escape, even if she walks around with her double-bladed yellow lightsaber on constantly, the Sith have no comment on her presence. You'd think they would go to the trouble of putting up Wanted posters, or at least giving a description to their men. - So do the Wookies on Kashyysk know that Chuundar negotiated quotas or don't they? Some Wookies will be enraged at the notion that Chuundar is working with slavers in any capacity....and others will tell you that if they kill any Czerka guards, the quotas Chuundar negotiated go up, while apparently the Wookies who don't believe Chuundar works with slavers have no comment on the footpaths for outsiders that travel right to their village gates. Which is it? - Dustil needs proof that the Sith are not on the moral up-and-up.....having been taught at an academy where they regularly use prisoners for target practice, are encouraged to betray each other, and are learning to use what even they openly call the 'Dark Side.' How dense can you get? - Calo Nord apparently tells Saul Karath about Carth Onasi and Bastila Shan escaping from Taris....and yet due to the nature of the level you fight him on, it's impossible to have them both in your party in the same time, since you need Canderous with you. - Lightsabers are rare enough that the comparitively tough Sith guy in the basement of the base on Taris says his master will give him his when he earns it by killing you. They're also common enough that every two-bit wimp of a Sith apprentice has his own after Taris, despite being pushovers in comparison. - So no one knows what Revan looked like due to his hood and mask. Somehow, I find it interesting to think of Revan as a Light Side Jedi dressed in a solid black robe with a menacing mask. No wonder everyone was so shocked when he fell to the Dark Side. I'm sure there are more, but that's enough for now.

Yep. Nothing makes a game quite come to life like getting to imagine that your character is saying something interesting when he's instead restricted to flat, generic dialogue designed to avoid conflicting with someone's conception of their character. My Dark Elf character from Morrowind (I forget his name) was one of my favorite characters ever; the one-word conversations options which I imagined consisted of brilliantly witty verbal sparring was among the best dialogue I've ever pretended I read. [/sarcasm] But seriously, most RPGs have to straddle a balance of custom design to give the player a sense of freedom and pregenerated history or traits to give the plot something to grab hold of: think BG's Bhaalspawn, KOTOR's Revan, Fallout's Vault Dweller, Fallout 2's Chosen One; all with that one trait which allows the Developers to hook the character into the plot. Without anything pregenerated, all you've got is a flat, generic storyline in which your character is completely incidental and boring. PS:T tips in the favor of the pregenerated, with your past already documented....but unlike JRPGs, where both your words and your actions are already pre-designed, PS:T did allow you to play the present Nameless One incarnation as you saw fit. It's thus unfair to compare PS:T to a JRPG. It certainly comes nowhere near the 'spoonfeeding' seen in your average Final Fantasy game.

Why is Hearts of Iron 2 so much worse than the original?

I wouldn't call you a whore, anymore than I would call someone a whore for taking the opposite view of championing PS:T. However, I would recommend psychiatric treatment. KotOR simply can't hold a candle to PS:T in regards to story. Where KotOR's villains are one-dimensional, flat, and unconvincing (see: Saul Karath, Darth Malak), PS:T's villains are fleshed out and have motives one can understand, even sympathize with (see: Ravel, Trias.) Where KotOR's storyline is predictable and often non-sensical (an attempt to list all the loose ends, plot holes, and poorly considered ideas and dialogue would take all night, but I'll elaborate if you ask), PS:T's holds together remarkably well, given it's complexity, and takes an approach rarely seen in any game, RPG or no. Where KotOR relies on a Sixth Sense-style plot twist to sustain itself, PS:T goes for a slowly unfolding story that's rich and satisfying enough to grab your attention without a 'gotcha!' moment. Where KotOR ends with some of the most standard, uninspired endings imaginable (yes, Revan virtually destroyed the Republic and murdered millions, but now that he's been brainwashed to our side let's give him a medal and cheer as if nothing happened!), PS:T ends on the single most gutsy and fitting note I've seen in a game. Ever. In short, I disagree completely. PS:T is simply in a league of it's own storywise, and KotOR simply can't compete.

I'd wager this will be your type of RPG, then.

Further proof Japan must one day be cleansed of all life.

MMORPGs work if your primary interest in RPGs is the character stats and the monster killing. Those things fall pretty low on my priorities list, so I've never lasted long on any of them.

Same. At least for the years. Some of the titles I wouldn't agree with.

Holy crap. I've always been in the camp saying BG3 was a bad idea, regardless of whether it was related to the original series....but that description of Jefferson sounds damn good. Particularly the idea of it having an 8th level cap and branching out into a trilogy, like the original (well, being very loose with the 'trilogy' part.)

One of the most beautiful things about Torment: multiple playthroughs reveal more plot nuances and things you didn't notice before than errors. There are, of course, always problems in any game....but if you're holding off playing again for that reason, set your mind at ease. The plot holds together much better than you'd expect.

Probably my top 20, not my top 10.

Plenty of "intelligent" gamers are also Communists.

Essentially that's exactly it. As Green Knight points out, The Nameless One is condemned to fight in the Blood War which is a nice equivalent to burning in Hell. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> One of my favorite game endings of all time, and certainly the most gutsy.

It'll happen. We just don't know when. With Starcraft II, Blizzard simply can't afford to screw up. They could make out like bandits financially no matter what, of course, but if there's one thing you have to respect Blizzard for, it's that they never intentionally release crap. I think Blizzard will try to equal or even surpass the original, especially in the Multiplayer game. In order to do that, it's gonna take blood, sweat, and tears by the bucketful, not to mention lots and lots of time. If I were a decision maker at Blizzard, I would be scared out of my wits at the prospect of following up a game which has enjoyed such immense popularity; how do you top a game which had it's own television channel for Championship matches in Korea? So we'll see a Starcraft II, but probably not soon....hopefully not soon, unless they've been working on it in secret for god only knows how long.

You've got a point. Still, while he may not be trustworthy in regards to what is going to be developed, I'm guessing he's much more reliable when it comes to what isn't being developed.

This article says KOTOR III is 'well into development' and that Obsidian will be making it. Akari says KOTOR III is not under development. Anywhere. My money is on Akari.

Don't forget the Humungus. People of the NCR: There has been too much violence ...too much pain. None here is without sin. But, I have an honourable compromise. Give me the GECK and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away. I will give you safe passage in the wasteland...Walk away and there will be an end to the horror... You have one full day to decide!

Much shorter list, then: Fallout. You may or may not like Planescape: Torment. I loved it, many others loved it...but many others hated it, too. Fallout, on the other hand....you just can't go wrong with it. It's one of the best RPGs of all time, it's decidedly not Fantasy....and by this point buying it and the sequel together will cost you less than $10. Seriously, the thread should have ended when it was mentioned. Most RPGs are Fantasy, but Fallout is a shining gem of an exception.

They should have access to it. I'm no mod maker, but I'm listening to it from the editor. Definetely true. HotU really impressed me, while NWN followed what I consider a standard Jeremy Soule trend of having a few really cool tracks surrounded by a mass of generic crap.

Really, HotU is what I'm talking about....though I generalized because I landed on 'Forest Night' and thought, 'Hey, this is pretty good.' Who did HotU's music, anyway? It has a much different feel than the original music.

Well, ok, some NWN music. The tavern music did get old pretty quickly. I'm thinking the more epic stuff, like the HotU theme music or the music in Waterdeep.