GhostofAnakin

For mature audiences -- this must mean there are going to be boobies!

It's said to be non-linear, though I'm not sure to what extent.

I'll admit I'm excited for this Cyberpunk game.

If this new IP turns out to be like a Blade Runner RPG, CD Projekt Red will be my new favorite developer (sorry Obsidz). Loved Witcher 1, loved Witcher 2, and am very intrigued about their new IP.

The pregnant girl is the wife/lover of that other elf that talks to Cedric right when you first meet Cedric. She wasn't actually Cedric's love, so I don't think she'd be motivation for him to seek revenge. And even then, the person he'd want to seek revenge against would be Loredo, the boss of Flotsam. So he wouldn't need to go traveling to the places in Chapter 2 and 3 to track him down.

I don't mind the character, for what he is. I just don't see how it's a good idea story-wise for him to be available as a choice to follow instead of Roche or Iorveth. Cedric's story is all about Flotsam and the area around Flotsam. He's not -- and doesn't wish to be -- involved in the politics that take place in Chapter 2 and 3.

Probably because Cedric has no motivations other than drinking his sorrows away so he doesn't have to remember his past? Of course the developers made the player choose between Roche or Iorveth instead of Cedric; Cedric wasn't going anywhere. What was Chapter 2 and 3 supposed to be about? Geralt and Cedric seeing who could drink the most beers, or kill the most monsters with traps? The other two had motivations that carried them forward in the story. They had, for their own reasons, motives for being involved in the conflicts that took place in the chapters after Flotsam. Cedric, even if he didn't die, had no motivation beyond his next drink and making sure people don't get killed wandering into the wilderness around Flotsam.

Game of Thrones' story is actually pretty good so far ... but that's the only part of the game that's been entertaining for me. The combat is kind of ... reminscent of KOTOR combat, where you queue up orders. But the problem is, at least for me, most of the special attacks take so much energy that you can't do them often. So it's basically a bunch of normal attacks the majority of the fight. It's also not so fun because you sometimes face hordes of enemies against you, or you and a companion, and they just overwhelm you. The exploration is non-existent. You walk around a certain area (ie. a village, a castle, a city) but a lot of the doors are inaccesible. They're just there for show, or until a quest requires that door to be accessible. And you can't really interact with many people, other than quest-related NPCs and shopkeepers. So while some cities, like King's Landing, are actually quite large, they feel small since there's not much to actually do in them other than run down the streets to get from Point A to Point B in your questline. There are barely any quests. Each "chapter" has 1 main questline, and then ranging from zero to 3 or 4 sidequests. The main quest takes up the bulk of your time, since it's the only one that has any real substance to. The sidequests aren't necessarily your typical fetch quests, but they're short and don't have much substance to them. The characters are decent enough, though not overly memorable. The voice acting also seems like a lot of the performances were mailed in. Basically, if I wasn't a fan of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and if the story wasn't at least decent, I'd have given up long ago.

God, that really is a terrible list. If that's all there is to look forward to the rest of this year, with regards to RPGs, I'm going to be playing everything *except* RPGs.

I've been underwhelmed by everything they've released since KOTOR II. The Force Unleashed games, expecially, disappointed me. Hopefully it's not just a rehash of The Force Unleashed, but staring one of the Clone Wars era characters.

I'm about 6 chapters into Game of Thrones. It's not very far in, really. Each "chapter" is basically one quest. The story is actually pretty good so far, but the stuff in between story cutscenes is lacking. Probably because you spend most of your time running around places with doors that don't open, people you can't interact with, and maybe one or two fight sequences between beginning and end cutscenes that move the story along.

If Bio/EA is going to insist on pushing the MP portion of the game as being more important than SP -- as witnessed by all the DLC they've released for it, yet still can't be arsed about making sure the import bug is fixed completely or the EMS issue -- they really could add more than one game type. This "horde mode" got real boring, real fast.

Which is one of the subtle differences that occurs depending on your choice that make the Witcher 2 such a good game. I like that better than the exact same thing happening, no matter who you side with.

I decided to go out and get A Game of Thrones. It's solid so far, though there's not much character interaction early on. Haven't seen any effects of the choices I've made so far, so I don't know whether it has an effect or not.

You can also refuse to give Iorveth the sword and side with him.

Do you have a save right before the Iorveth/Roche choice? That's what I did on my second play through. I made a save there, so I could skip all of Chapter 1 in future play throughs, and just play through with whatever path I chose.

BioWare should have just made a single player KOTOR III instead of going through with the TOR MMO.

I'd thought perhaps they'd already made the announcement, and was hoping for a link.

Wait, what? Which IP is this?

You're going to be holding off forever then. The current ending is the "real ending". All they're doing (unless they go completely opposite of what they've said they're doing) is expanding or adding clarification to the current ending.

It really is, especially because of just how divergent the game becomes depending on your choice between Iorveth and Roche. It's the same overall story arc, but you get to see it through two different "eyes". Folks who don't want to play through multiple times to see all possible scenarios might not like it, but for someone like me who enjoys multiple play throughs with outcomes that differ, it's fantastic.

Re-playing Alpha Protocol, I'm reminded of what a gem the game actually is. And to be honest, the combat isn't anywhere as bad as some folks make it out to be.

That's what I was getting at. In other games, particularly ME1, it was sort of like, "well, minor issue, but no biggie.". With AP, it was more, "OMG what horrible, horrible shooting mechanics! Totally ruins my experience!"

Yeah, I never understood the majority of the complaints the reviewers had that caused them to dock major marks from Alpha Protocol for. The graphics weren't great, but they are hardly worse than a lot of games that scored highly. And in my multiple play throughs of Alpha Protocol, I ran into less bugs, glitches, crashes, freezes, etc. than I did in quite a few games released around the same time. Heck, I had more freezes and crashes playing Skyrim than I ever did with AP. Mass Effect 1's combat had the same "issue" as AP's: you could be shooting someone with the aiming recticle center mass and still not "hitting" them. Yet I don't recall reviewers hammering Mass Effect 1 for that feature. It's like reviewers scored Alpha Protocol badly because it wasn't what *they* thought it would be, not necessarily based on its merits for what it actually *was*.

I decided to go with another play through of Alpha Protocol. I'd never gotten around to trying the Recruit background, so I went with that this time. I still hate sneaking around, so I'm playing more of a run-and-gun Thorton. I'm going to try siding with different factions this time, though for whatever reason, I tend to gravitate toward the same characters even when I'm trying not to.