Jorian Drake

I hope you will allow a special "pet" to be an exception of the max 6 companion rule, I think here of the cat/dog/wolf/tiger/falcon partner mainly for nobles/hunters/druids/shamans/animal trainers and similar as for "godlike" character races, I suggest you look at the godling classes you can find for the Pathfinder RPG to get some inspiration on how they could work and advance through leveling/experience gain, also throw in heritage of various mythical/legendary creatures, both European or Asian originating, although Indian creatures and gods could also be interesting if built upon if they act as source for godling/godlike powers for these special classes and abilities

I personally like a lot of the weird and funny Japanese demons and mythical creatures often depicted in manga and anime, my favorite one is however the snow woman/witch as she is depicted in various tales either as evil or good (or both), I believe partially the Japanese and Russian folklore was that inspired the White-Haired Witch and the Winter Witch in the Pathfinder RPG as well. It might also be fun to play as some shapeshifter or half-demon, using again a Japanese manga/anime example, Inuyasha comes to mind as an interesting concept for that.

I actually like to play now and then a paladin in RPG-s to be something like a Jousting Tournament master, or the char may be like King Arthur. Honestly though, I would prefer to throw out the concept of "classes" alltogether, and get the ability to handpick the skills and strengths of the char on my own (EXAMPLE: you want to have a sneaky noble thief who is also looking great in full plate and has the muscles to wear one properly? sure! but then you won't have enough points to spend on making him also a spellcaster or shapeshifter)

Water mage, honestly, fireball tossing is fun for a while but I had enough of Fire Mages, I do hope one can be a water magic/healing focused sorcerer. Say what you want, but up til today the only remarkable depiction of water magic I can think of is from the Last Avatar series, so if the team has no idea how to make spellcasting animations interesting and refreshing consider to add martial arts movements like those in Avatar, especially the Fire and Water tribe ones were great in my own opinion. (or perhaps create more than one magic casting style, and one could be "oriental" which would b e like that, and all would have different animations and maybe somewhat different mechanics/bonuses)

It can easily be done if handled as in KOTOR2 or Mass Effect2. Let party members handle a certain mission/objective, like guarding a bridge, or sneaking behind enemy lines, or remain at the camp as reinforcements. Of course this would have to be shown to the player (both the effect and actual action) to don't get the player feel detached from the situation, plus there could always be surprises like the enemy flanking the group and suddenly those who remained as reinforcements at the camp have to fight enemy in the camp itself. While the events would happen at the same time, the player would see the scenes after one another (to be easy on the eye but also to allow a certain "spotlight moment" for the party characters in their own scene)

No worries. Josh, Chris, and all the others know how bad spoiling a story can be, I assume the info will be mostly everyday knowledge about the world and its lore, nothing too revealing. Although I do hope they might go more into detail on the ability to customize character/shield, and what there is to know about owning land/castle (if possible even a whole city) in the game, I always loved the possibility to own and upgrade territory like in BG2 or NWN2 and would love to see this option explored more with a more detailed option allowing to train and equip (city/castle) guards with quality gear with your CoA/banner on it. Plus construct some additional buildings for yourself or NPC housing.

type of armor, etc also: enchantment variants, various power levels of those enchantments, an ability to experiment and research/name your own enchantments, and of course in this modern age of rpg-s we should also be able to decide how an armor looks like (style) and what colors it uses, similar to how you could in NWN use the editor to make armor and weapons, but this time design it proerly ingame, and maybe give/sell your own creeations to NPC costumers or equip a whole little personal army (city guards?), naturally all wearing that fancy Coat of Arms/banner of yours/your family/your faction Dragon Age 1 had an expansion which allowed one to change Coat of Arms/symbol (from now on CoA for simplicity reasons) on shield, NWN1 had a knight/jousting tournament styled expansion, I never understood why a game in which nobles and knights (or basically any kind of groups like guilds or realms) exists and allows a player to join or lead one of them (or even begin as one, as example in being born to royalty/nobility) doesn't allow a full access to customization of the personal CoA, heck even old games like Warlords 2 allowed you to make your own realm CoA, or even street racer or gang games like some Need for Speed or Saint's Row allows you to make a symbol/uniform style which is not just fun but also allows one to get more deeper into the game atmosphere, get attached to the character and story. I don't get it why things like the DA1 CoA placement on the shield didn't get into sequels, I blame the simplification of recent games. I go even one more step further in listing possibilities: in a fantasy setting certain symbols and colors could mean something, so making at game start your CoA could influence how people look on you, as example a black dragon on your shield could remind people of an usurper for a throne or a bandit lord, a white unicorn on pink background may be the banner of the princess's favorite, a golden griffin on royal blue background may be the CoA of the former royal bloodline which was assumed to have been died out, a white tower on a blood red background may be the CoA for a family that lost its mountain castle and lands to orcs we could even give some meaning to specific colors like white, black, green, or pink, heck even a minor bonus to some stat or skill, and of course if we give meaning to symbols and colors in heraldry then we need people to talk about the choice of CoA, fear it or say how great it is or mock it (three red hearts on pink background, I am sure many would mock it, especially if used by a gruff old male war veteran... not in his face though) Imagine somehing like the Statler and Waldorf pair from muppets discussing your flag, one supporting your choice of symbol/colors or your heritage, while the other basically always opposing and mocking them, at the end of course they would both agree on something usually not in favor of you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14njUwJUg1I I think it would be fun, no idea about you though

I think the use of tunics, robes, etc over armor would be great. now THIS would make for an interesting concept if we imagine an armored mage, who despite using sword and full plate still wears a mage robe and a pointy hat on top of it ^.^

Josh: Damage Resistance to armor is good, better than AC, but please consider that various methods of creation or materials used for the armor may make a light armor more durable than a standard steel full plate, as example a dwarven/elven metal crafted light chainmail. Even deflection (which AC basically always was) may still work, if as example adamantine in this world has the property of blocking many hits as they slide away -instead of that the DR stops the damage- so it may still be experimented with light armor tha has great DR, or heavy armor that may have high AC in case you didn't fully drop the concept of AC to begin with. As for armored mages: I love those, never understood the need to restrict mages to pointy hats and whatnot, sure you can make requirenments for learning skills and powers/spells mentally very dependent so the character has no time/energy left -usually- to also do physical training and excercise, but there should always be exeptions. Those who go to become mages and already have physical traits like being more naturally tall and strong would more likely choose to wear armor than his skinnier friends. A noble family which is renown for skill at sword and with magecraft would require from its sons and daughters to traditionally be trained in them, battle and war mages would probably be willing to take their time to train for close combat in armor, and train in use of 1-5 weapons. These warlords -magelords- would probably trade in most of their defense spells for area control and ally support spells anyway.

okay, thanks, then I can finish without worries, although there was no DS4 announced yet, I hope somehow the decisions could be carried on to it (not just Dragon Age/Mass Effect do things like that, and I got really used to this ability, plus in some other games it is really annoying your choices don't matter in the end as newer installments override or ignore everything)

Just got the game and the dlc, am close to the end. How does the decision to tell the truth about the king's death and plot against him matter in the outro? What happens if you give the mansion to Leona and spare the wizard Gent? Does it matter if you don't have good/basic influence with all characters? Does it matter if one has influence maxed out? Is the ending in any way different based on what character you choose? I also didn't notice any chance at romances, are there any ingame? The DLC choices, do they matter in any way, as in telling the truth about the stolen chalice or keep the secret of the monk/nun? thanks for the answers beforehand

Sadly , the gamers of this gen find that boring. They only care about co-op /MP no matter if the game have a weak plot/story. Ex. L4D games. I rather 100 times buy a RPG with a good story than a game focused in co-op /MP with weak story. This is not a new phenomenon. Wolfenstein 3D wasn't played for the story. Doom and Quake had their online success. Counter-Strike. That's the continuation of an old trend. it all goes back to tetris and arcade games like TRON

"Do you want Alpha Protocol 2?" Oh yes, very much so. It deserves atleast one sequel, would be great if your save file / decisions of AP1 would carry over too

It would be nice if this actually accounts for both sides. Naturally your critisism is allowed but you also come across sometimes as insulting and arrogant. While my post was directed towards a specific person as a reply, I think everyone reading it can see the meaning can be applied to majority of the posters lately. people have to chill out a bit

... I don't tend to log in a lot to comment anymore since years, but I just can't let this go without a word. 1. The game is called Dungeon Siege 3, you may or may not agree with criticism but sure as hell one who plays it should care about DS1 and DS2 or atleast not insult the people who are fans of the previous games, not to mention remember that this is THEIR franchise no matter what you may think, and without those "ancient" "crappy" games there wouldn't be any DS3 either. 2. Get your act together and stay polite, there is no need to insult people and show in what a barbarian society we live in by flaming/trolling around. I don't know yet what the game will be like myself, am unable to even play the demo atm, but I do know from my own past experience that if a game has no (or lacks) resemblance to its predecessors then it loses its original fanbase and has to rely on the shaky chance to get new fans, sometimes that works as in case of Fallout 3, other times (and that happens a lot more) it fails terribly and means the end of a franchise/series. This is an universal truth for movies, books, TV series, ect, not just games. Well, I'd hate to see your reaction if they made halo into a TBS game. I actually would love that, but I still would understand the complains of the original fans and I wouldn't insult them over their perspective

hmm, I thought those were the companions and you can still create your own character...

a female what? lapdog?

actually I know for a fact that reviewers get bribed, I myself also reviewed a few times for a friend of mine who works as a reviewer and as he doesn't like RPG-s or adventure games I quite often did his job in his name for a good time, he didn't had to bother with what he didn't like and I had the benefit of playing the games that interest me for free, the amount of **** that happened around the release of AP was baffling, and if you re-read the reviews of the time of the release you will see yourself how absurdly ignorant, blind and insulting most are. No, I don't want to say that someone tried to bribe me personally, as I myself ended doing that (reviews in his name) about 4-5 years ago for him, but we still talk about things freely and he told me they also tried to bribe him, but while he is a lazy ass he is not a moron so he declined. Of course such things don't have any real evidence either about the fact that they were tried to be bribed or by whom, so you can't do anything against them, and in the end it is up to the people who write about the game if they do it properly or not. Also, bribes can take a multitude of forms and money is just the most extreme, the usual things are little gift packages or tickets to some exclusive show/media event or a limited edition box for something. The sad fact is that even without such acts most reviewers don't even bother playing the game they review and some only visit a few other review sites and wikipedia to whirl up an article so they don't have to actually work, atleast my friend "hired" me for the genres he himself disliked, "next-gen" console players instead tend to bash unsimplified things just for not being their ideal "lovechild" of a game as they don't even bother to focus on writing about genres they know about.

More than 7000 euro Gorgon gets a cookie

whomever worked together with Kane can't be incompetent

Way underrated. Game is really good fun. no wonder if you consider what huge negative propaganda crusade happened against Obsidian/AP, silly people who read pre-paid reviews these days can't decide for themself what game they wish to buy/play and then decide on their own if they like it or not, I am still angry how so many people being bribed to write a negative dirt-throwing article weren't revealed. It is already stupid that some reviewers get paid for making positive biased praises but its wrong on a new level to have now even similar thing with people getting paid for writing bashing reviews

ratings are overrated, most movies or anime are more mature in content and/or story than what 'M' stands for in Dragon Age 2 but I do hope you were only sarcastic, Bioware is on the downward spiral I wish the actual "mature" games would finally grow up enough to really be worthy of the 'M', it is better if a game doesn't try to sell itself as something it isn't to begin with

no it doesn't, and a good find btw

for me "dungeon crawler" is a spider or a rat, would call a beholder that too .... if it would have something to crawl with and I don't call Diablo an RPG even as I liked it, although I do call Oblivion one, but a very terrible one at the same time EDIT: Tale, sig, Darkwing Duck?