SteveThaiBinh

And they're actually hosting a web page for Storm of Zehir.

Yes, because Russia has been aggressively campaigning to get them to sign up for Russian passports. During the days of the USSR, the communist government encouraged ethnic Russians to go and settle in the other republics in order to dilute nationalist tendencies. This meant that when the USSR broke up, lots of other republics were left with large ethnic Russian minorities. So the new Russian tactic appears to be: 1. Find a region with lots of ethnic Russians. 2. Encourage them all to apply for Russian passports, thus making them Russia's problem. 3. Encourage them to stir up trouble with their government (demanding independence etc.) 4. When their own government tries to keep order, send in the tanks. This could be applied in a number of former Soviet republics. They might not go for Latvia next, as that's already in NATO, but Ukraine is a possibility.

Filtered language notwithstanding, I think I agree. Can Britain better it in 2012, I wonder?

Please remember to post in a manner that is respectful of fellow community members.

Could I please remind everyone to be respectful in their manner towards fellow community members, and also to stay on topic (KotOR3). Thanks.

I knew those Swedes were plotting something. How about a visit to Dubai Palm Island, with lots of dead ends and full of rich famous people just waiting to be shot.

Of course I don't, not really. But the game does look to me a lot like Oblivion, in how the ground rises and falls, in how the trees meet the ground and how they look in relation to each other, so when I look at it, my memories of playing through Oblivion insert themselves into the Fallout 3 picture. Perhaps that's unfair, but it's what comes to mind when I look at the picture. Oblivion had a serious problem in that it looked very nice on high-end machines, but wasn't optimised to make the most of lower specifications - if you didn't have a very powerful machine, you had to forgive the game a lot, I think. So Bethesda has history here, and that too is in my mind as I look at the picture. I'm sure others have a different experience.

You should, you know. It's not as a good a game overall, but has some superb dramatic moments.

Give me Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing any day.

Second Chances - yes, within reason. But you have to make the NPCs and the game react to what's gone before. A good-aligned NPC should still give most quests to a PC with a bad reputation, but the dialogue (and the deal) should be different from the same NPC giving the same quest to the local hero. The more I look at this picture, the more I think this game looks like Oblivion, and that's not a good thing. I just know those trees are going to keep popping in and out of existence as I run around, destroying any sense of immersion.

I think anybody who's ever played a video game or thought about playing a video game should be made to sit in a pit where he (or she) can't hurt normal people.

Agreed. I'm told there were some decent parts later on, but I can only put up with so much combat before getting tired. The two skeletons who talked each other out of existance were a nice touch, though. The game had potential, but I don't suppose they'll make any big changes to the formula for another sequel.

This has veered a little off topic, so I'll lock it. The merits of controllers could be a useful discussion over in Computers and Consoles, though.

A new sidequest with a funny new supervillain and ticking bomb would work - "Mike Thorton and the Attack of the Black Widow" or somesuch, or is that headed too far into comicbook territory?

One of my favourite stealth sequences from an RPG was from Quest for Glory 1, where as a thief you broke into a little old lady's house and had to ransack her living room under the watchful gaze of her kitty. Having an unpredictable observer who might raise the alarm at any moment was very interesting - and you had to be very mindful of that cat.

The characters, in particular Kreia and Atton, and their personal histories and how these are revealed and how they impact upon the story. The whole thing works together so well. Apart from the end, of course.

Hi there. We know that KotOR2 fails to recognise newer video cards, and that usually this doesn't pose a problem provided you can still persuade it to install. I'd guess the crash is an unrelated issue. Could you please be a bit more specific about exactly where the crash occurs, and give some more information about your computer, as suggested here.

I don't recall a specific solution for this particular glitch, but there are a few times in the game when things that should trigger fail to do so. For most people, the only answer is to go back to an earlier save (and if that doesn't work, an even earlier save). Save early, save often. Best not to mess around with the Savegame Editor. As you say, that often leads to further problems down the line.

Have they mentioned where in Saudi Arabia it will be yet?

I'm sure the locations have already been decided, but my suggestions for Alpha Protocol 2 are: Riga, Latvia Nagasaki, Japan

I don't think this is an Alpha Protocol thread, and with the current title I can't really move it over to the KotOR2 forum, so I'm closing it.

I hated: Sacred. To be fair, it was the first full-on action hack'n'slash RPG I'd ever played, and I would probably have had the same bad reaction to Diablo if I'd encountered it first, but it said RPG on the box so I assumed I'd be getting something along the lines of Arcanum or Ultima VII, and instead I got a glorified table tennis simulator. I cried: I've only played all the way through Planescape: Torment twice, and both times it left me quite emotionally drained at the end, so I spent the next day or so drifting around the house unable to get into doing anything else. That's why I'm reluctant to replay it, even though I know there's loads of stuff I haven't seen and done. And yes, I did cry when my Nameless One It was partly the story, but to be honest it's usually a game's music that provokes, or fails to provoke, a strong emotional response in me.

For me, combat in KotOR was much more fun than in Mass Effect - you could actually sit back and watch what was going on, rather than frantically searching around for things to aim at and missing everything else that was going on (like background detail, or what your companions were doing). I prefer combat based on the character's stats. However, after two and a half games of combat based on character stats, it looks like Obsidian wants to try its hand at something different. I think that's understandable. So long as there's something in there that makes it possible for me to play the game without reflexes (Mass Effect-style auto-aim, or a very generous difficulty slider maybe), I guess it's okay, though it's not really what I'd choose myself. Why not an option to have the AI take control of Thorton? Presumably there's AI controlling the NPCs, but would it be capable of controlling the PC as well? It would succeed or fail according to how you'd developed his skills and equipment, plus if you were combat inclined you could watch how the AI got through an area, then go back and try it yourself.

I'm playing Caesar IV. It's pretty and Roman.

Poor Obsidian, they don't have much luck with patches. *gives Obsidian a hug* Anyway, apparently they're going to release something to solve the problem: Rob McGinnis talks about it here.