Volourn

"I claim that's not true. But I am measuring an Iraq BEFORE the 1991 war, BEFORE a decade of the harshest economic sanctions ever. When do you want to compare "after the war" against? Saddam in 2002, after 12 years of sanctioning terror? Saddam in 1992, in the middle of war? The closest we have to a Saddam-led Iraq in a normal state is before 1991, which is when we can compare it to "after the war". " You DO realzie that Saddam was the ruler after the First gulf War. iraq's troubkles were directly the result of Saddam's rulership and HIS decisions. Iraq, along with Isreal, were considered the 'prime' countries in the ME to take the next step into modernization. However, Hussein screwed that up. Iraq's downfall is 100% Saddam's fault so how can anyone claim that Iraq was better off with Saddam in charge. Have you not forgotten the Iraq-Iran war which lastest for YEARS and cost MANY Iraqi lives and is what they ultimiately to Iraq's ruination because it resulted in Saddam thinking it was a good idea to invade Kuwait. Sorry dude, but Iraq was worse off with Saddam in power. His history of dictatorship is evidence enough of how horrible he did with that country. He was pretty successful as a dictator. He was absolute failure as a leader. HE *ruined* the country. Period.

"Character design in FF8 was as cliche as any other FF. FF9 and FF10 are more unique." No. "Do you put an effort to appear as a retard or does it come naturally?" Please tell us how unique and special TOEE artwork and graphics are again. Thanks.

"7 and 8 definitely feel a bit like retreads/recreations of 6" O RLY? 8 is nothing like 5 or 7 in terms of grahpcs, artwork, and the like. FF8 iis the awesomness of art design.

"1. Disciples II 2. Shadow of the Colossus 3. Planescape Torment 4. Final Fantasy X 5. Myth 2 (modest but convincing) 6. Witcher 7. Temple of Elemental Evil (completely generic, but pleasing on the eyes) 8. Gothic 2 (in its own rough way)" HAHAHA L0LZ This list is your best examples? And, it gets worst with #7. HAHAHAHAHA!

"Except that its Frazetta who defined much of fantasy in general. Most of the artist who came afterwards strived to copy his ideas. So much for your knowledge of fantasy illustrators. " I don't give a crap about fantasy illustrators. I commented on the pics themselevs. the who is irrelevant to me. That is reserved for super art geeks.

Except thata rt is generic. It's typical fantasy. It's good but nothing special.

"Not lately though" Blatantly not true. "I just had to look at your sig" HUGE difference betwee NWN series and NWN OC. And, again, I haven't played LV so I haven't actually bashed it. Saying I'm not gonna pay full pruice for it b/c I loathedn FO3 and AP is not the same as saying itself is awful. It's about risk-reward factor. "100 hours worth of playtime is the mark of a very ambitious game to me." Does this include replays as I have NEVER played a game that was 100+ hours. Not even the mythical BIowarian BG2 of 200+ horus which is baloney. Besdies, it is very easy to make a game 100 hours if one wanted to. To make a good 100+ hour game is impossible and has never been done. The closest are sports game but since the game play doesn't really change it really doesn't count or NWN with its mods but those worka little different. I guess MMOs have 100+ hours of gameplay but they are extremely repetive as well.

"Iirc, in BG2 bosses were immune to insta-death mechanics." No, they weren't. BG2 tried to follow D&D rules and 'bosses' tend to (not always) follow them as well. I wans't dissing BG2, btw, as I have no problem with instya killing bosses within the rules. "BG2 did it" is not really an excuse in 2010 anyway." Yes it is. If people are gonna still claim that BG2 is 'best game ever' 9or one of the best), you better believe its strengths and weaknesses and qualities still matter. I don't think is a weakness though but a strength.

Many of the death spells, inprisonment, and a host of others. You could also use weapons to do it including the anti undead ones.

BG2 did as well. *shrug* P.S. Two Worlds 2 should be fun!

"but of course you still think NV is worse than NWN, so I forgive you" You sure about this? Or are you making up stuff again? I have no real opinion on LV as I haven't played it yet. "comparing NV to FO3 is kinda stupid when looking from this perspective" I loathe FO3. You bashing it doesn't hurt me in anyway and is irrelevant. "when we say ambition we usually mean the amount of NPCs, quests, locations, links between these and making it all work, writing a good backstory and not ****ing up in the process" All that is irrelevant. That's not ambition. That's what called making a game. Ambition is actually taking risk. AP, while not the most ambitious product, is way more ambitious than LV was. PST, and NWN were boith way more ambitious despite being D&D games. Arcanum was more ambitious than TOEE for obvious reason. All the stuff you mentioned is about making a game good not making it 'ambitious'. Ambition is about pushing the envelop not just doing stuff that's been done for years. RPGs with npcs, quests, locations, links between them,m and making them work has been done for DECADES.

Yeah, everybody knows that at one point Iraq (along with Isreal) was a a sueprstar of the ME as far as being morernized. But, Hussein ruined that with his decisions, and destroyed the country with his wars, and his mass murders, and his death grip of the country. Thanks mkreku for helping the cause to prove Hussein waasn't a positive for Iraq.

"Fallout: New Vegas is right at the top of the heap of ambition." No, it isn't. Quality aside, it's a semi sequel to another game using the same engine and basically plays the same. That's not very ambitious at all. That's what's called 'doing more of the same'. I have no problem with that as long as the game in question is good but it certainly isn't ambitious.

"Obs got NWN & Kotor sequels because they where the only other game company that makes story driven rpgs." Nah. How could that be when before thsoe two games Obsidian had made zero games. They weren't known at all. They got NWN2 and KOTOR2 because of Urquhart's connections to BIO, and BIO making a push for Atari/LA to hire them after BIO turned down the sequels. "Without wasting a thousand words on this, it's like there's a war on and people are dying, and some people are complaining that it shouldn't be this way, and you come along and say look it's war, people are gonna die. Which is fine. But then you go so far with it and make so much effort to stress how lamenting the deaths is completely pointless, that after a while, effectively, you end up being an advocate of war killing people. " Nah. It's not like that at all. Nor am I an advocate of the pragmantic view. If I were I'd be pro Bethesda consideirng how successful they are yet I loathe their games. Andm, while I'm often accused of being a BIO 'fanboy', I don't go out buying all their games (no sonic rpg for me). I believe people should buy games they think they'll enjoy. No hidden agenda, no pragamitism nor should we care about what's best for companies but nor should we fool ourselves into thinking our personal opinions mean squat.

"I'm waiting for Volourn to one day realise the irony in dedicating thousands of posts to declaring how people's opinions don't matter, only the publisher's, thereby actually helping spread the publishers' interpretation of things, but it just wouldn't be fun without it, I guess." Publishers fund the games, and if they feel a game is a fialure it means they likely aren't going to be as interested in publishing games like it or from same company again. In a similar situation, a certain movie called Superman returns made about $200M at the box offiice and by everyone with knowledge of how movies work, it was considered a flop. That's right.a $200M movie was considered a flop. Obviously, it did not make enough money to be considered worthwhile. Now, a new Superman is being in the process of getting picked up because SR wasn't worth sequels as planned. The 'fact' (if it's even true since no hard numbers have been delivered by those who actually know) that AP has sold 700k+ (or even a mil) is irrelevant if it's not enough to cover Sega's costs of paying for its development. My question is why would Sega lie about AP being a flop? They get nothing out of it. Heck, they even went out of their way to spin the cancellation of Aliens RPG to sapre Obsidian's feelings so why would they diss their own product. For ****s and giggles? Come on. It should be noted that BIO's own JE has sold between 1.5M-2M copies yet is considered BIO's wussy step childbecause it didn't come close to the 2.5-3M their other games tend to sell. There is no irony. Because, i'm fully aware of the big picture that opinion doesn't matter either. Our opinions only matter to us, but it certainly doesn't matter to the Segas, Obsidians, Biowares, Bethesdas, Troika,s Ataris, Electronic Arts, and Blizzards of the world who look at the big picture not what us net board geekies think.

"You missed my point entirely volo... I mean after we'd basically annihilated the iraqi military machine in 91 they were in negotiations with us and an uprising was taking place in the south. The Iraqi military commanders asked to be allowed to launch their helicopters (not saying for what, but basically to turkey shoot any rebel in existance) and the American commander gave permission. If he hadn't Hussein would have fallen then due to a populace uprising." You missed my point entirely. I didn't diagree with you, but the point is, the reason that the Amerikan commander 'gave permission' is ebcause other countries didn't want a full scale invasion of Iraq to take place and Bush SR decided to do what the majority wanted. *shrug* EVERYONE is responsible for that. "Yes. As heard from people who've actually been there before and after. You could walk the streets freely, there was order, now there are people with guns on every corner and death. Lofty ideals are the last thing on someone's mind when they go through that, trust me." No.. As heard from people who've actually been there before and after. You can be non Sunni and have more than spaghetti power, and not be murdered because you disagree with those in power. Also don't have to worry as much about the Iraqi gov't wiping you out almost completely. *cough* Iraqi Marshes *cough* Trust me.

"I mean, Obs people aren't some bozos picked up from a local pub, they have a serious rep from Interplay/Black Isle." And, that's why they keep getting high profile 'slam dunk' contracts like KOTOR2, NWN, LV, and even DS3. "Didn't Alpha Protocol sell 700K?" Doubtful, and even if it did it obviously wasn't enough. " Seems ok to me. " Again, your opinion on the matters is irrleevant. If the publisher says 700k sales isn't good enough it likely means the game didn't sell enough to make the development worthwhile hence a failure. "Considering the game got delayed over and over again." That has nothing to do with it. Penty of games get delayed yet are successful. Very few games, btw, get released exactly when they're first announced to be released. *shruG* AP is ntohing special in that regard.

Your opinion (and mine) are absolutely irrelevant in determining success and failure for a game. AP was a failure. Sega themselves said so and they have absoluitely no reason to want that to be the case since they published it. Case closed.

"I'm interested how it came to be that Obsidian primarily does sequels to successful games of other studios and why they can't/won't/don't persist in doing unique/licensed IP's. You have to admit, its not exactly usual for a company to do sequels by trade." They tried with AP,a nd it basically failed. Not to mentioned the non released Aliens RPG. Meanwhilke, their games based on sequels to successful games have done well. Even the much maligned KOTOR2 had solid sale figures, and there's a chance that LV will end end up selling more than any game BIO has released. Why make 'original' games when you can run a successful business doing otherwise? "that's what a good company should be doing. correcting others' mistakes and rubbing their faces in it" That's one biased viewpoint. Another biased viewpoint is they're leeching of others' names and success to get 'easy' money. It's easy to sell a NWN2 than an AP1 since people are gonna see it as a sequel to a BIO game. Same with FO: LV which is tied with Bethesda. The game that needed to be sold based on Obsidian's name - AP - didn't do so well. L0LZ Me? I don't care which route Obsidian takes as long as they make good games. NWN2, MOTB, and KOTOR2 were good games. SOZ, and AP were not. Case closed.

"Hell, if we (america) hadn't been complete idiots in 91 he'd have probably gone down then due to a civil uprising because he had no air support. " I agree, but Amerika is far from the only coutnry blameless than that. It was poloitics. Bush Sr only backed off taking out Hussein because ME countries as well as the European allies.were dead set against a full fledge invasion againast a fellow ME country even if Hussein himself wans't exactly popular. That's what haoppens when the 'politically correct' thing triumphs over the morally right thing. Iraq could have been freed from Hussein then, and I have a funny feeling that it would have been much cleaner since Iraq War part 2 there was a lot of mistrust from Iraqis who remembered that betrayal.

"Life in Iraq now is far worse than it was under Sadam." No.

"says you, who thinks taht Jade Empire had a brilliant combat system " I don't recall calling it 'brillant'. "Let me just warn you that arguing with him is senseless. " Hey, at least I don't spam and troll threads dedicated to games and develoeprs I loathe like some people posting in this thread. "Maybe you can expalin better than me since you've played DA:O on the xbox too. But if I understand, the problem is that it's more difficult to position charachters using the analogue stick while the game is paused." You can select where a character is going to move when the game is paused. You can completely take away any AI the party has if you want, and play it like any old fashion RPG where you have 100% control oif what the character will do. Just let me put it this way, the last you thing you should do is listen to PC gamers who have never played the 360 for more than 5 minutes when they tell you what's wrong with the console version. They simply are ignorant PC lovers who base their opinions on other PC gamers' opinions. The only thing the PC version has that is 'better' than the console version is the over the top view. That's it.

"And you can't select moves while the game was paused so it allready played like an action RPG " This is blatantly false. "I've played DA:O on the PC but that's what I read about the consolle version." 'Nough said. "that's what made it so good" Except, TW's combat was horrible. Horrible at the levels of crappy combat games like BL, AP, and KOTOR. "He holds BioWare to a higher standard than other game companies because of their history with the Baldur's Gate games." Which is another example of his silliness since he has bashed BIO games non stop since. Since BG2 was released, BIO has made NWN, KOTOR, JE, ME, DA, and ME2 - all games Boo has bashed repeatedly as being crappy and criticized non stopn yet he claims to hold them to a 'higher standard'. Boo should simply move on as BIO hasn't met his 'standards' of having a hamster as the best npc ever in almost a decade. L0LZ

"@ Vol. Which just goes to show you know jack squat about action games." I've been playing action games for decades. I play theme nough to know what I like and what i dislike. I coudln't give a crap if you think toherwise. Afterall, you are the one who thinks a hamster is the best npc ever. LMAO "Volo, you're exaggerating. BG combat was completely different, because you weren't fighting, you were commanding units. comparing DA2 to BG is like comparing, I dunno, Castlevania to Starcraft2" Nah. Not really. In DA2, you control up to 4 'units' as well. Youw ere definitely fighting in BG2. What BG2 did you play? I fought, and killed thousands of enemies. And, outside of the obvious graphical differences, the game play looked the same. There are differences, of course. I'm not saying DA2 has better combat (afterall, BG2 is one of my top 3 games ever); but to pretend they' re not alike is silly. What evidence? Go watch a video of a BG2 preview video form before it was released.

" In fact, without the storyline (which is bound to be praised) the game's combat segment, looks exactly as it is - mediocre - just like Jade Empire. " Lie. JE's action combat was sueprior to most full fledge action games. And, better than certain BIO RPGs. P.S. That DA2 combat resembles BG combat anyways. If youw ere to view BG combat in real time, that's basically what you'd see except it be slow as hell. R00fles!