GhostofAnakin

Having to do the solo sections of DA:O playing as a mage is frustrating. I'm not so tough when I don't have my tank fighters making sure enemies aren't able to get into melee range with me.

Understanding various languages could be tied to the character's intelligence stat. The higher the stat, the more languages the character can recognize and successfully translate.

Finished IWD tonight. It was quite amusing when I'd lost all my tanks and was left with a bow-specialist rogue and my puny mage to take on the final boss. Thankfully he was down to "almost dead" status by this point, but I figured I was toast since my mage had also pretty much exhausted all his best offensive spells (which the boss seemed to be largely immune to anyway). Just when he approached my final two party members and was about to take a swipe, my mage killed him with a thrust of his trusty dagger. Phew. Now onto Heart of Winter.

And then Bio had to go ahead and ruin it with the DA2 and, more recently, abhorrent ME3 endings where you simply could not walk away happy, neener, neener, artistic integrity.

Where are you folks buying your PC gaming rigs? I've never owned a PC capable of playing all the games that was as cheap as a XBox360 or PS3. Consoles are more convenient for technically inept folk like me. I don't ever have to worry about whether my PC can run a game when a new game is released with my console, which is something I always had to check for when I used to play games exclusively on PC.

Reading that other thread about Dragon Age 2 got me interested in trying another run through the DA series, starting with Origins. I'm finding that the actual main quests are boring, but I'm getting more enjoyment out of the sidequests and reading the lore, whether through codex entries or character dialogue.

Still pushing through Icewind Dale. I'm finding I preferred the earlier portions of the game to the later ones.

Quad-titted Alien chicks. Preferably blue. Casey Hudson's asking fans what they want to see in it? I have a fear that they'll listen to the wrong group of fans, and we'll end up seeing either an MMO or a CoD-esque shooter. Or even a strategy game, which while I know some on here are fans of, I simply don't want to see made in place of another RPG. So my "suggestion" is for them to not listen to any suggestions that involve changing the game into something other than an action/RPG. The only other suggestion I'd offer, if I thought there was even the slightest chance they'd listen, is no endings like ME3 where they introduce something that wasn't even known to the player for 99% of the series, which in turn completely ruins the previous 99% of the series. Stop trying to be "artistic", because frankly, you're not talented enough to write a story with that kind of ending, and stick to doing what you do best: simplistic, straight forward stories with only minor twists, but are otherwise decent fun.

BG-style. It allows players to rest when they want, but with the potential for an ambush at random times.

Still playing through IWD. The chapters seem to fly by after Chapter 3.

Ah, gotcha. In any case, these delays seem a bit worrisome, especially when combined with THQ's own ... difficulties.

Max out your pistol skill tree, especially the chainshot thing.

I assumed because of your OP post here. Early fiscal 2014 would be ... the first quarter in 2014 (ie. Jan to Mar), no?

I would actually be totally for this.

Other than the obvious Duke Nukem Forever-types, is it common for games to be delayed for an entire year?

I don't want my rogue to be able to do as much damage as a fighter in combat. There should be a discernible difference between the effectiveness of the two classes when it comes to how they perform in battle, not just the fighter having more HP than the rogue. Otherwise, it makes using a fighter useless since I can just use a rogue who can match his combat prowess, but adds much more non-combat ability to my party.

Making my way through Icewind Dale. Finished that Elven tower, but for whatever reason I can't finish the one quest to give the barrel of holy water to the priestess. It's in my inventory, but there's no option to give it to her when I engage in dialogue. That's the only thing left for me to do there.

I did all that, and it still gives me issues. Some stuff shows up, like Shale. But some stuff gives me an error message when loading. Edit: One issue seems to be that some of the DLC requires the newest update. For some reason, the newest update causes the top corners of my TV to flicker during dialogue, which becomes very distracting. So I prefer playing with an older patch so I don't have to deal with those flickering corners. But when I play with an older patch, the DLC simply won't load.

Speaking of re-playing, I can't seem to play DA:O offline. It lets me play the core game, but if I try to load any of the DLC it gives me an error message. Apparently the only XBox360 you can play the DLC offline with is the one you originally downloaded the DLC to. Even if I use my same Live account, I can't use the DLC offline on my new XBox360. Who came up with this bright idea?

No. I'm tired of these suggestions to turn every single player game into an MMO.

Next item on the agenda: Should Project Eternity deal with teenage bullying?

I could have sworn I was posting on the Project Eternity forums, not the Sims forum.

I prefer the BG-style quest journals, but I'll be okay with the newer ones so long as: 1-It's sortable by the various states of the quest (finished, ongoing, etc.). 2-It's detailed enough that I know what the heck I'm supposed to do. 3-IT UPDATES when I complete various stages of it (holy hell ME3 keeps coming up when I think of things not to do in a game).

My point was less that continuing story arcs are impossible to make, and more that it seems like too often it ends up resulting in a mess. You're 100% correct that it stems from bad planning, but that's what I was alluding to. I just think that planning for a sequel (or a trilogy) when the games are likely to be spread out over 4 to 6 years ends up causing all sorts of issues, whether that be due to bad planning from the start, or from coming across issues along the way that they didn't anticipate when they first laid out their plans for the series. So doing self-contained stories, with only the world as a whole changing (as opposed to necessarily carrying over the PC's story over multiple games), avoids this because if something doesn't work after the first game, or if they want to move the overall story of the game in a different direction in the sequel, they can do so without having to be constrained by carrying over the PC and his story as well. I disagree. I think the reason KOTOR II felt richer was because of Obsidian's ability to tell a deeper, more thought provoking story. KOTOR II could have had proper closure with no real cliff hanger, and it still would have felt like a rich story because of Obsidian's skill. The ending didn't detract from KOTOR II's greatness, but it did leave me waiting for an actual ending to that story that never came (until Karpshyshyn's novel, which sucked). Besides which, my point with this example was more a continuation of my above point, that when you write a story that involves an assumption or a suggestion that another game is to follow to wrap it up, then expectations of that next story are there and disappointment arises when that story doesn't come. Which falls under the whole planning for a multiple game story arc and the issues that arise with doing so.

Villains who have depth, and whose motive goes beyond simply wanting to have unlimited power.