LadyCrimson

@Malcador - that Police Quest 2 reminds me Beverly Hills Cop, a little. Botanicula was another one that I liked just about every single track, from the short to the longer. Liked how they used music and sound effects with occasional vocal exclamations and stuff. Melodic to silly.

Help, I can't stop making Xmas avatars! *checks herself into the silly farm*

As long as movement speed is faster than Diablo1's town movement, I'll be happy enough. God, that game's movement speed was annoying even during original release. Yet I still played it forever. I liked the combat in New Vegas - when I didn't use VATS. I'm not sure why I liked it so much, maybe because of the sniping. I always like sniping (one reason I like Borderlands too0. But typically I'm not into first person perspective much. Too often it = a viewing arc that feels far too restrictive, (no peripheral vision) which drives me crazy. I'm not always really sure what people mean by boring combat either - well, at least outside of the clickclick of original Diablos, that I understand. Outside of that however....there's clunky or overly complicated combat mechanics/UI, which can often put me, personally, off a game. But I'd guess most people are referring to complex strategies in combat, vs. just rapid sequences of spell/attack hotkey-mashing.

Never played Ultima Online. From the pictures, that looks like it'd feel awkward to me. Again, not saying it wouldn't/doesn't work. But I don't think I'd personally like it.

I couldn't get into Arcanum when it was released. It just felt awkward for some reason. I haven't tried since. When I replayed a bit of BG1 a while back, I had little difficulty adjusting to the "age" of the game itself, but it didn't take long for my memory to kick in and make it hard to want to continue for long (another game I originally played 100's of hours on).

Actual ship to ship battles (vs. chrs. fighting H2H on a ship deck...), for me, only work in strategy games...I'm having a hard time imagining it in a 2d/isometric party game where it wouldn't feel out of place because of UI methods or other concerns. Not saying it's impossible, but I don't have a picture of it in my head. But the notion of pirates/piratey-themes and quests being a part of the game is often appealing. Pirates the P.E. expansion

I don't have RPG fatigue, I have gaming fatigue in general. Old or new, AAA or indie. At the moment, the only games that capture my attention for more than 30 minutes at a time are the older design/building focused ones. So I can sympathize. I personally couldn't play Skyrim for more than about 10 hours, however. The last RPG that I spent time on (months, 100's of hours..) was New Vegas, and I'm starting to feel like that was a last hurrah. Either that or I'm tired of these modern 3D rpg's that are pretty, but feel soulless and detached. So I'm also hoping P.E. changes that, or at least, by the time P.E. comes out, I'll be out of gaming fatigue again .... no pressure, Obsidian, no pressure. As always, the usual advice applies - take a (very) long break from gaming of any kind, or play something different than an RPG. Everything gets old if you stick with it uninterrupted for too long.

Haha....much better with the black. I was too lazy.

My memory of BG1 is definitely a lot of walking around, peeling away the fog of war, but with not a whole lot in it. At the time, it didn't bother me...I like the exploration/discovery part, even when there's not a "whole lot going on." Even today I'll explore every nook in games. I can't help it. I know there's likely nothing "over there" but I must go look anyway. P.E. could have a little less of it as a compromise, but I don't want to have nothing but a lot of separate, small, "random encounter" maps or whatnot. The game Summoner used that tactic (albeit in a much different way than P.E. likely would) and while it wasn't awful, it didn't give me that sense of exploration either. Neither did BG2, for that matter. Of course...hopefully I'll at least get a big dose of exploration fun in the "endless dungeon."

My sister-in-law and her husband are back in town again this week. They want to go to Alcatraz apparently - I might be the only one of us four who's been there once. A long long time ago with my cousin. I guess if we can book the boat ride tour, I'll be spending Thurs. on an ex-prison island. I can pretend there are zombies .... If it's sunny-ish I might get some pleasant photos. Or, if we can't book a tour for some reason, we'll be doing ... something else.

Didn't want to derail the other topic or start a new thread just for this, so since this one already has a lot of "photochops"/humor in it... I think I've picked on poor Forton enough.

Well, I definitely like memorable characters, but they don't have to be ... like Minsc ... in order to be memorable. Minsc/Boo were fun, but I found others to be just as fun. There's plenty of exaggerated personality quirks/archtypes that could be present and I do think that the game could use at least one colorful/odd companion. If they're all uptight, formal-speaking, "save the people/trees!" type folk, that would be ... rather dull. imo.

Eh, I tend to play largely as "myself." Only sometimes I make decisions in the game that I wouldn't in real-life. Like steal every gold coin I can get my grubby hands on. But in terms of how I might answer the average NPC question during dialogue or what "path" to choose down the main questline...mostly me. If I like a game enough for multiple plays, I'll start doing things that aren't my natural inclination, if I suspect there might be different content/options to be seen by doing so...or just for some LOL's. That's also when I might do some meta-gaming, also for the lol's.

That's awesome, Guard Dog. Must feel great. Celebration time? ----------------- ....I'm in a Xmas-y mood. Can you tell? Next I'll be baking cookies. (edit) hm, santa hamster isn't quite as cute when bigger than its original size.

Addition: I think the point some have made about not wanting to have to carry oodles of "torches" around with them is a valid one. That always becomes annoying, if the torches are timed-used and you have to keep switching them out. Since this is a fantasy game with magic, that's easily circumvented by having a basic light spell that all magic-casting characters could cast (not just a wizard). I don't know if anyone has played the old aRPG Darkstone, but I liked how it dealt with dungeon lighting + magic light spell. Altho, in that game, it occasionally did get a little too dark in some corners (it was blocky 3d with dynamic lighting or some such). Most of the time tho, imo it was almost perfect. That's just me tho. (and I know P.E. wouldn't do things in that exact fashion, being non-3d...just an example of what I like)

I've never advocated that level of "reality" for anything, the flashlight thing was just an easy example. But whatever. If Obsidian wanted to have a difficulty option for bathroom breaks as well as eating and drinking, they're free to do so. In my previous post I made a point that I don't want it to actually be pitch black. I do, however, like there to be a difference from "daylight outside" to "deep underground cavern." That's the atmosphere part. If everything is going to be brightly lit, imo one may as well just adventure in outdoor spaces and have it be 12noon all the time rather than unexplored, mysterious, deep caverns ala the "endless dungeon." Like I said before - have it so you CAN play without needing to use torches or light spells if you want (like very bright moonlight, perhaps), but also where extra light sources make things brighter/more colorful in a further radius or whatever.

@melkathi Interesting. If you can play, in some fashion, like a freebuild, I might like it more then. I definitely don't want to do the "be attacked by AI when you still have nothing but a rake and a hoe" type thing that often anymore. Having some ruler send requests for goods or armies or very occasional combat is fine (like in the Caesar's), or gameplay that lets you largely avoid combat via other options, is fine.

Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday is still the best Doc Holliday. Also...I have a friend who really wants to see the Red Dawn remake. Pestered me all weekend about making a time for it. I'm running out of excuses. I might have to bite the bullet and do it...BFF and all that....

Cable box broke. Guess I have to call them to bring a new one before hubby gets grumpy. Raked up a huge pile of leaves that won't all fit in the giant leaf bin the city gives you, and that's barely what's on the ground. You rake up just the walking areas, 1.5 days later it looks like you did nothing. Stupid trees.

I just woke up so I might not be getting the whole gist of your post, but one big aspect imo is that isometric + complex UI + certain types of combat are hard to deal with on consoles and the more limited control/hotkey options. Thus as the gaming industry grew and the US AAA wanted more and more of the "mass" market for giant sales, vs. catering to smaller but fiercely loyal niche audiences, they've gone down certain paths. Now, I'm not saying that's all of it by any means....but I do feel like it's a fairly important aspect of the change in cRPG's in the US. It's not just RPG's, btw. I feel somewhat similar about strategy games. Not just AoE type RTS, but all forms of it. In terms of combat ... outside of the controller vs. keyboard aspect ... I don't know. I don't get the feeling companies think "US gamers don't like RPG combat." In fact, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by RPG combat, outside of number crunching and more party options and so I'm not sure if I'd agree with you or not.

I think combined with the music and (what sounds like) maybe a tiny bit of reverb, it fits the scene and mood. The delivery and timing (pacing/acting) works well for me. But I guess I'm picky about the monotone/colorless thing (maybe there's a better word, but monotone is the only one coming to my mind right now). If the narrator is supposed to be something like HAL, that would affect my opinion (HAL's voice is great, because of what HAL is). If narrator is human...a little staid for my tastes.

Bouncing between old city-builder games and still Miasmata, although starting to focus more on the former than the latter. Been a while since I did the CB games...nice break from all the action-y I've been playing. Still have a hard time sitting still for too long, however.

Hm, I had Anno1404. Didn't play it a lot, probably a little too strategy/politiking for me vs. city building and I think it didn't have any freebuilding either. 2070 looks nice tho. Does it have a map editor? Wish Caesar-4 had been a bit better of a game...it looked fairly nice (for 2006) but it wasn't quite as good gameplay wise, and was still too limited in how many houses/walkers you could have before it started to laaaag. I'm the type of building geek who, during the Caesar3 days, did things like the below pic to plan out housing blocks. (pic's not actually my design, but I made many like it).

Yeah, I know someone who's been doing some mod work occasionally. She really enjoys doing it, but she got some harsh criticism when she put samples on public YouTube. People can indeed be overly cruel, vs. some tough but fair criticism. I think she needs some more time, but what I like about her is that she tries to make her voices distinct and they feel like characters. It just takes a lot of practice and time to find one's own "voice"...like with any acting or public speaking or artistic venture. My own voice probably sounds like a nasal foghorn. Heh.

Those are good points, and I'd agree. Sometimes those things are a big part of it. With amateur mod work, I often feel like there's just no life in the voices...things are recited too much in a monotone or too much all at one even speed (no different length in pauses, no difference in emphasis etc) ...doesn't sound like a natural spoken rhythm. Or, like you said, it doesn't match/jibe with the rest of the game sounds in some way, which is jarring.