Iolo

I agree. The higher price of games does not excuse piracy. Game companies are a company. They need to make a return on their investment and they preferably want to make that return beyond the original cost of investment as soon as possible. There is a tradeoff here between cost of game and perhaps more sales due to a lower priced game. The price that you see games at at Amazon or in stores is not the price that the publiser receives either. There is the middleman, the distributor, who buys at one price from the publisher and sells at a higher price to the end company who in turn sells at a slightly higher price to the actual consumer. Of that $50-$60 game you see at Electronic Boutique, the publisher may only receive $36-$40. If you buy directly from the company's own online store, you are actually giving them a better return on their investment. Like Gromnir says, this is a luxury. And you don't need to be rich either to afford it. As someone who works in the software industry myself, I am against piracy. If you have a favorite developer, support that developer by buying their games. It will trickle down from the publisher to the developer anyhow. I am fairly certain that this is just the economics of today's environment and nothing at all to do with being greedy. I suggest you go and look at EA's or Interplay's or other company's actual sales and profit margins and tell me they are still money grubbing. Interplay by the way aren't making money.

BioWare employees have posted on their forums when asked why they don't do a BG3 that they don't have the rights. One would think that Interplay would have that right but they lost the ability to due to their amending their contract with Atari. That would imply that only Atari can do a BG3 but it could be developed for them by BioWare or any one of a number of other companies. To be honest, I am uncertain what the real truth is but BioWare definately can't do it because the BG games were published by Interplay who owned the trademark for the PC games. After the acquisition of ownership of D&D electronic gaming rights by Atari from Hasbro, that is all Interplay could do because at some point after that time Atari renegotiated the D&D rights with Interplay and Interplay lost a more general right to do games with the Forgotten Realms license or D&D license. Instead the terms of Interplay's D&D license became such that they only could do D&D games with Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale in the title but they lost the BG part of that agreement (on the PC) as well. I am uncertain of the Icewind Dale part of that agreement. This is why Jefferson was cancelled. It was going to be Baldur's Gate 3 because they could only do games with BG or IWD in the title (and the type of game it was wouldn't have worked as an IWD title). However, Interplay negotiated with Atari for a double extension of the console BGDA rights at the expense of the PC BG rights instead of a single extension for the console and a single extension of the PC games. Blame Atari and Herve Caen and other Inteprlay management for this mess.

If a Silent Storm expansion made the list (which it did), then probably so should UFO: Alien Invasion.

Pardon my ignorance but what is Hentai? It's a Japanese genre?

There is currently a petition to save the show. Already there are more than 23000 signatures: http://www.petitiononline.com/ai5d0162/petition.html I am uncertain about ratings. I read that it was the number 2 show on WB in the 18-34 age range (and I don't know what is number 1). That time slot, 9 PM on Wednesday, though is dominated by the West Wing in first place. I think one issue for the cancellation was that the budget for the show was high. That was a factor that led to how some of the episodes this season were filmed. As said in the press release, the network is however considering doing some TV movies next year which indicates that the network recognizes the show has a loyal following. More thoughts on the cancellation can be found here: http://www.spoilerslayer.com/archives/002777.php Joss Whedon, the show's creator, also posted his comments which can be read here: http://www.spoilerslayer.com/archives/002782.php Another thing to consider is that the WB is resurrecting Dark Shadows again (another vampire/supernatural) series for next season despite the lack lustre ratings of the show the last time it was brought back in 1992. They may not want to have two vampire shows.

Despite the rumors late last year that Angel had been confirmed for a Season 6 (as indicated by Kristen over at E!), the WB has stated that this will be the last season of Angel: http://thewb.com/PressRelease/Index/0,8341,156980,00.html This is a disappointment because Season 5 of Angel has been doing well in the ratings (for WB) and has received critical acclaim. This season is easily better than the last few seasons of Buffy. I suppose there's a possibility of it moving to UPN.

How do you know this for sure? I know this from here: http://www.obsidianent.com/games.html

I tried uploading a couple of pictures but really didn't care for the drop in quality from the reduction in size that the board gave so I don't bother going with an avatar.

I think that's unlikely to happen where Interplay would be willing to give up its intellectual property, the Jefferson engine and content, to a different publisher. Even though Jefferson was more or less shelved and will probably never be released, aspects of it such as art or models can still show up in other projects such as BGDA3. The engine could be reused for another PC game or perhaps ported to the XBox. In short, it is not going to happen. It's one thing regarding a license to be handled by someone else but in this case it's their own IP so I doubt it would happen. I have seen cancelled project show up in future projects before. Ultima Online 2 (whatever name they gave it) is an example of that where some aspects of the game were used in an expansion pack to the original Ultima Online game.

Yes they got a double extension to BGDA as opposed to getting a single extension for BGDA and a single extension to BG PC, thereby throwing all the money down the drain that had gone into Jefferson/The Black Hound. And people claim that Black Isle cost Interplay too much money. Maybe if Interplay would actually allow Black Isle to have COMPLETED a game they would not have.

Regarding Stalker: It sounds more like Deus Ex 2 which isn't an RPG to me. Using the player's skill rather than the character's skill is not an RPG. Still could be good.

I never said they would give up the rights. They are a publisher and they could have Obsidian or BioWare develop the game for them.

Yes I think Atari has it. Of course Atari could give it to BioWare or Obsidian to develop a game with it. I would love to see that happen and Interplay be stabbed in the back. As much as I'd like to see Jefferson, Obsidian could probably do a good job with BG3 and have similar ideas if it's not the same game. But Obsidian's first game is multi platform (PC + consoles) so we know this wouldn't be it.

Well Strider did say this earlier:

It's a real shame that TOEE shipped in the condition it did or with the lacklustre plot and quests it did. If it was the game it was promised to be and it sold real well (which it did in its first two week but dropped down due to word of mouth), you may actually see a renaissance in TB games because someone would have shown that they can still sell. At the moment, I can only think of Metalheart as a TB RPG coming out and I haven't followed that one too closely.

Agreed. I would think that JA2 and Silent Storm come more under the category of squad based tactical game with RPG elements. Fallout Tactics was also one of these as was Freedom Force (and presumably the sequel). There are so many MMORPGs though it would deserve to be a separate thread. By the way, Weird War I think is based off of a P&P RPG by the same name by Great White games. Just saying this in defense of the developers of the game as it was probably not their choice for the name.

As implemented in some games or in some ways, it is old fashioned. There are definately ways to improve turn based so that you don't have games like POR2 where the Zombies take forever to move and at the same time not lose anything. I suggested in an earlier post in this thread for instance a way to eliminate the animations showing the movement of models (without losing any tactics or advantages of TB) which of course could be optional. ShadowPaladin mentioned in the other thread JRPGs which are turn based sell more because they don't have movement (a ludicrous statement if I ever heard one) so I suggested here removing movement from PC RPGs. There is still movement of course but you don't need to show the getting from point A to point B because you know that will happen. The path would be first shown and then the model either gets to the end point or is shown to be interrupted on the way by either an Attack of Opportunity or a model having a readied action that comes into effect. Should be optional of course since some may prefer to still show the movement animation (which could be cool to see in some cases).

The only mini game in my opinion that was a bad idea was the shooter on the Ebon Hawk. You couldn't save during the mini game. If you die during the mini game, you may have lost some ground if you didn't realize you should save the game before you get to the point where you can't save. I actually died during the first time with that minigame. What they should have done is at least do a save game automatically before the save game begins (so you definately have a save game) or allow you to save during the game. Beyond that, that mini game just seemed forced and out of place as it's the only combat in the game where the player's skills and not the character's skills are used. It also should have been optional after doing it once (for instance you gave it to Carth or Canderous). Good you liked the game. I liked it overall and thought it was one of the better XBox games that I ownl but I just had a few problems like with that particular mini game. The game could have used more options during combat as well.

Take a look at the Developers group under Members. 16 employees mentioned there although I think not all are listed (as supposedly there are more than 20 employees). Nice list and lots of ex Black Isle names that I recognize. Ultima 4 was probably the first CRPG I played back in the early to mid 1980s on a Commodore 64. I spent months playing that game so good inspiration. And regarding Planescape Torment, I'd like another game like that.

Being that no other MMORPGs were on the list like D&D Online, I wouldn't think so and didn't suggest any and figured it was single player only RPGs. Console "RPGs" aren't on the list either like Forgotten Realms or Jade Empire.

hmm.. maybe I shouldn't say gameplay-wise, but rather engine-graphics wise. The dialogues were interesting, although after the fifth 'Duster-philosophy' dialogue I got a bit tired of these quasi post-death explanations. When I said gameplay I meant the way the game runs. It felt almost TB'ish. This game with a Jefferson engine, with a higher-resolution, would probably appeal to me. But what did you expect? The game shipped in 1999 and BG2 and IWD shipped in 2000. It's understandable that the game's engine would be more dated. The PST team were working off of the BG1 engine.

Connery was king. Yes but I think Connery is getting a bit old for action movies. He is over 70 now and in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (a terrible movie) he wasn't that convincing to me.

Except he is Australian (although he plays a Canadian in the X-Men movies). James Bond should be British.