Iolo

Baldur's Gate 1 wasn't "close to non linearity." Baldur's Gate 1 was not linear, at all. I think it was a relative statement. It was more nonlinear than BG2, NWN, and KOTOR. In a sense it was more widopen because you had the freedom to go to alot of places on the map because of the wilderness areas as opposed to what BG2, NWN and KOTOR did where you can only go places that the game has opened up for you. In all three of those actually, you're kind of forced to go along the main quest just to open up more areas to explore.

And the problem with BG1 was that all the fans complained about that so they changed it in their future games. That's a shame really. You shouldn't listen to much to fanboys on a message board. They don't know what they are talking about even if they think they do and think they know what they want.

They better not screw up the third Star Wars movie. The descent into becoming Darth Vader is too good a story to screw up, which is actually why I think Star Wars would have been better server by NOT doing the prequel movies so that the memory of the originals wasn't affected.

The problem with KOTOR is that you have no choice but to do the main quest. If all areas were always available, you wouldn't have this linear progression to have to get to the next area even if you just want to do side quests and ignore the plot. Fallout series and Morrowind allow you more non linearity in not following the plot. In fact, in Morrowind, I didn't even both with the main quest until a few months after playing it. Instead, I just explored around Seyda Neen. This was also one of the problems with BG2, despite it being pretty good in other areas.

Sounds more like you want a FPS though than an RPG sequel. It's unlikely they will change the format of the game too much in the sequel. It will probably use the same engine (with improvements implemented by BioWare).

Yeh but I think BioWare has always had a problem with doing linear games. The game that allowed the most linearity was actually their first D&D game, Baldur's Gate 1, but because people complained about all the wilderness areas they removed the feature in all subsequent games.

No it didn't. LOTR came out in the 1950s. D&D came out in 1974/1975 and heavily borrowed from LOTR in its initial incarnation to the point that Tolkien's estate forced TSR to change Hobbits to Halfling and Ents to Treants for instance. Of course there were other influences to D&D such as Jack Vance's books as well among others.

How do you know for certain? Probably the fact that on the main Obsidian Web page it is stated that their first game will be for the PC and for the consoles and that the rumours are that the game will be KOTOR2. Of course, that doesn't mean the sequel can't have more roleplaying in my opinion.

I hope not either. I didn't care for this kind of thing in FOBOS and seemed out of place there in a Fallout game. Popular music works in driving games, like GTA3 I guess.

I guess that material is weak at the neck then because Mace Windu decapitated Jango Fett in AOTC.

DRM? Digital Rights Management I would say in general making Windows XP open source would be a bad idea. Just look at the news article about some source being leaked and supposedly some researchers looking at that and finding some potential security holes. If the entire source code was open, without question there would be a lot more viruses or worms on Windows platform exploiting holes hackers find in the source before MS has a chance to plug them.

I agree. They felt more like swords.

I think BioWare then neglected that fact in KOTOR as all of the non lightsaber melee weapons were made out of cortosis. They didn't short out the lightsaber. BioWare's reason for saying they were made out of cortosis was to explain why the lightsaber just didn't cut right through them.

Technically, it would limit the designer. But look at it from this perspective, using an established ruleset allows designers to instead focus more on story, roleplaying and the crux of the game itself and less on the rules and how to balance a new system they create. Even this said, rules implementations and balance issues still come into play like if you are developing a RT game using a TB ruleset for instance but not as much as if you created a ruleset from scratch.

Nope, I can spend allday rolling up PC's and won't have RP'd a bit. Both DE and KotOR have lcompletely linear stories, they work out the same no matter what, both have mutiple endings, DE has 3. But DE allows you play the role of JC Denton better than KotOR allows you to play Karzak the sith. And then in the sequel they ruin it by taking the cop out of having all 3 endings have happened (which in effect makes JC Denton a bad guy). So it really was no choice. I am not certain DE allows me to play the role of JC Denton better. The number of side quests are less in DE for instance. At some point, you need to consider what IS the definition of an RPG. When in doubt go back to the original source, P&P games. This includes D&D or White Wolf's games (as well as Star Wars D20) among others of course. KOTOR is more similar to these than DE is.

Nowadays, I wonder if it was really FOBOS that was Fallout Fantasy. Most of the rumours applied more to FOBOS than Fallout Fantasy (Lionheart)

Sure. Arguing on the Internet is always fun even when pointless.

I agree (and with your signature as well). Deus Ex had more roleplaying in terms of having a better story and more ways in terms of how to complete objectives but that was about it. Both were very linear. However, KOTOR has character creation and more ways in which to advance your character's development. So Deus Ex is not more RPG than KOTOR.

Any computer game that is D&D needs to be approved by WotC. While I may agree in theory with you, in practice that means only current official campaigns such as Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and the upcoming Eberron. Savage Frontiers, Planescape, Dark Sun and many others are all currently discontinued. I too think Drizzt is overused. There are more interesting NPCs in FR like the Seven Sisters or that guy in Waterdeep who started the Harpers. I am bad with names at the moment. But why always so much focus on Drizzt. The problem with not using an established ruleset is balancing, name recognition, bredth of implementation, etc so that's why D&D is common.

Thanks god I didn't put my birth date in there (and I suspect it would be higher than many here). But happy birthday, Pax.

These sort of discussions are always pointless. If you beleive that God exists, then he does, for you. No amount of arguing will change that.

heh, doesn't that kind of kill the role playing? I'm not against it, but it would seem like those anal guys around wouldn't like this. No it wouldn't actually. 'Role playing' an evil character for redemption or going worse into the dark side would still be role playing and to some extent the game would probably play like Planescape Torment. The character in Planescape Torment certainly had things to atone for.

It was so long ago then it would be a hard case to say that they copied it from FF4. Just about everything in a CRPG has been done at what point or another. I am sure it wouldn't stop something from saying it though just like how some talk about how much Planescape Torment stole from Final Fantasy (and I don't really mean the spell cutscenes either).