Iolo

I would have preferred some comment from Feargus or other Obsidian employees regarding whether they would consider making a TB game, as opposed to the merits of each or whether the sales would justify the cost. There are certainly ways of improving the speed of TB combat as well without sacrificing tactics and the benefits of TB (I suggested a couple previously in this thread). I saw this post on RPGCodex (who prefer TB) from Feargus himself regarding game systems and TB versus RT: http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3107 My reading of his post indicates that he would prefer to make a RT game but thought it was interesting to bring up as well as the point about making small games that they self published. If they have an existing engine (hence the small game comment) and come out with a good TB game with good set of tactics and options available, I would consider buying the game.

Well it did ship at the end of 1999, before BG2 and the later IE games so it's understandable that graphics are dated. I don't recall there being a problem with the mouse when I played it though. Combat wasn't as good as it could have been but there are some great spells and spell cut scenes (copied from Final Fantasy). I liked the meteor swarn spell (I think that was it). It's the storyline and the dynamic alignment and faction system where the game shines. I liked Morte and the other CNPCs as well.

Frankly, I think Jude Law is too young. Bond never seemed to me to be someone too young. Jude Law is 31. Bond should be early 40s at least. Too bad Brosnan left. He may not be the best bond but he was still good. Better than Dalton in my opinion.

Nice list. Here's a WW2 RPG called Weird War Weird War

Freedom Force is really fun and you can get it very cheap these days. Some people have said they picked it up for between $5-$10. It is short but at that price it is still worth it, providing that you don't find the game too cheesy as alot of the dialogue and plots are intended to be very Silver Age comic style. I wouldn't think of Freedom Force as an RPG and more of a squad based tactics game with some RPG elements. The RPG elements are how you decide to build up the superheroes and their powers after they join your team, decided from a set list of possible superpowers that hero could have. The game is also very linear and is mission based. I should note that you don't directly create your own superheros in FF and I never did. What you do is create them outside of the main campaign and they receive some sort of score or prestige points. Once you have that amount ingame (from playing with the regular characters and completing missions), you can import that superhero character into the main game. Otherwise, you just decide how to advance the super hero characters that join your team in game but that's still fun.

I don't think it would be feasible these days to get the Planescape license itself anymore. Like Dark Sun and most of the former campaigns, it seems to be in limbo. That is a shame because Planescape Torment was Black Isle's best game. A game that is similar in theme and style would be great though.

Greyhawk came before Forgotten Realms. I hear there is less munchkinim in Greyhawk than in FR.

The Combat and engine had a good implementation. If that was combined with a better story and more role playing goodness and it was longer, it would have been a good combination.

Sakabatou?

Quite possibly. After Fallout 1, Cain hasn't had great success,

TOEE has a defense option. A couple of them I think.

At the moment, it doesn't really look like they need more mods than three that currently exist. When the game gets announced and there are forums created for them, then it would make sense for there to be more mods.

Do you mean Cain or Caen?

I'd support Interplay selling the Fallout PC license to Obsidian (which they cannot currently afford) or possibly them licensing from Interplay the right to the game (but Obsidian uses a different publisher and isn't paid by Interplay to develop the game). Either would be good and would give Interplay some cash with no risk. I don't think it would be a good idea to develop the game for Interplay. Too many problems as others have stated in the past with Interplay dealing with the external developers.

Which explains why their rules implementation have never been too faithful.

Seeing how Greyhawk is now the default setting of D&D, i'd be wise to say many many people play it and just dont realize it. And Living Greyhawk f***ing owns faces. Down with Forgotten Realms! ToEE was good because it was the basis of D&D, dungeons, loot and monsters, which is what the intial design of Greyhawk was, too. Concidering that most suppliments thats been done is for Forgotten realm, from offical channals that is, I think even putting the greyhawk gods in the PH was kind of strange. I think they wanted to put some life back in that setting to sell more suppliments, but that it did not work out very well. And now they are going to make a new world that they want us to buy, to increase sales. I think the plan all along was to have Greyhawk be fleshed out via the RPGA in its Living Greyhawk world. Even so, there were still some Greyhawk modules like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and others.

In addition to doing what TOEE does where enemies move together if possible (depending on initiative and PC's initiative) and showing the initiative order, a TB game could go back to the the original Pool of Radiance did where you could specify that a character act automatically in subsequent rounds using scripts and AI until the player decides to cancel the action. Another option would be to queue up commands that the individual PC would do in subsequent rounds until you either cancel it or all the queued actions run. It could be done so that you can remove a character's queued action (but not add them) when it's not the character's turn although that wouldn't be necessary. This is in addition to what 9 would do where you can decide to quickly resolve a battle almost over or avoid it completely and let the computer resolve it. Another option (that would be configurable based on player setting since you may not want to turn this on) would be to allow the player to eliminate the wait for models to move. The model immediately moves to the final destination (after possibly showing briefly the path that the model will make) with no movement animation in between except in the case where an attack of oppurtunity, a readied action, or overwatch mode or something similar where a player's character is operating out of their normal turn would take into effect by that model moving near them. In the case of someone acting out of turn due to the reason above, the model would appear on top of the highlighted path where the attack takes place. It may not be realistic but it would eliminate one complaint that people like SP raise about turn based games.

Actually they are 9 years old, having been founded in 1995. Their first game Shattered Steel, which wasn't an RPG, came out in 1996. After MDK2, they seem to have been focusing only on RPGs although Jade Empire is a bit of a departure. http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/ I agree that they have been very successful, largely because of Baldur's Gate 1 which despite its flaws put them on the map and sold well for no other reason is that it was the first really good D&D game for many years. At the end, I think SSI was just putting out recycled crap like Death Keep. I am not sure if I would call NWN very ambitious since it wasn't the first game to have a DM or a toolset to make modules. Vampire was the first one there to my knowledge. There was also a D&D game to make modules back in the early 90s by SSI. The first game with the name Neverwinter Nights was the first online D&D RPG and it ran on Amerca Online for years. I would say NWN was more ambitious than BG series or any game they did previously was but not as much as it may seem. Besides, it wasn't that risky because being D&D and being made by BioWare meant they were guaranteed a certain level of sales success since the majority of the players only bought it for just the single player campaign and never used any of the other features. There are also some sales figures on that page I linked to above if you are interested.

Not necessarily. JKIII:Jedi Academy came out a little more than a year after Jedi Outcast.

Fallout : Brotherhood of Steel, a console game for the XBox and Playstation 2. It's a poorly conceived title where the only similarity with the original Fallout games is name and some post apocalytpic elements. It's not selling that great either.

I was really looking forward to TOEE but was somewhat disappointed by the quantity of bugs so I haven't bought it yet. Just played the 6 hour trial. I really liked the engine and the combat and the rules implementation. Since it is turn based, I definately would have bought it if it wasn't for the bugs. I am waiting for Steve Moret to do a few more patches before I will consider buying it and by that time it may less than $30 so should be a good deal for the money, regardless of the lacklustre plot and disappointing side quests. If it wasn't for these negatives, TOEE would have lasted longer in the top ten list on NPD's numbers than the two weeks it was number 5. Word got around.

Actually he isn't being annoying too much. I have been somewhat impressed by his change.

Not getting into details of this conversation. But SP1.0, you might want to consider just that maybe some people like TB combat. You have your own opinion but by stating your opinions to the contrary they will not change. And why should you want them to? If you feel strongly about an opinion and if anyone does, we all realize that will not change. But don't give a hard time to people who feel otherwise than yourself. I want a TB game too and I think Obsidian can deliver on that. Your opinions are irrelevant.