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500MetricTonnes

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Posts posted by 500MetricTonnes

  1. @500MetricTonnes

     

    Strictly speaking, you have a very decisive advantage over the various Flankers and Fulcrums in the form of the active radar homing AIM-120C AMRAAM (it's in my sig!) allowing you not only track-while-scan, but also launch-and-leave capabilities over the Russian fighters' semi-active radar homing (meaning not only can you simultaneously engage multiple targets across a roughly 75 degree axis, but it also forces the enemy fighters to go defensive and lose the track on you, causing their own missiles (if they launched them) to go blind, and if your Slammers didn't score a hit on them you have a decisive advantage in the merge.

     

    Seems you're having some problems against the Sunburns due to not mastering the AN/APG-73 radar with look-down, shoot-down capabilities specifically tailored against supersonic sea skimming threats. There was a very helpful interactive website that can help you with that:

     

    http://home1.stofanet.dk/baskat/mainpage.html

     

    Good luck. Jane's F/A-18 and Jane's F-15 were my next favourite sims to Falcon 4.0.

     

    Yeah, having active radar homing missiles is a big advantage during the first two phases of the game. Sure, you have the option of using the AIM-7 Sparrow, but why would you ever use that? I also recall that you could get missile targeting info via the AWACS datalink, meaning you could launch missiles without even having to turn on your radar at all. However, once you reach the third campaign phase, you start encountering Su-35s, which are armed with the R-77 missile. It's about on par with the AIM-120C, (I think it has a slightly longer range) and it will make your life...unpleasant.

     

    As for the carrier attack mission, the advice I remember getting on the SimHQ forums was that it was best to shoot down the Su-33s before they launch their missiles, because the Moskit missile travels at Mach 3, making them extremely difficult to shoot down unless you attack them head-on and at close range.

  2. Another old game I recently dug up and reinstalled is Jane's F/A-18, which I first played back in high school. I personally regard this game as one of the most hardcore military flight sims ever developed, edged out only by Falcon 4.0 (which I consider the gold standard for detailed aircraft and avionics modelling). It's one of my favourite games...that I'm absolutely rubbish at. It took me weeks just to learn the basics, let alone achieve any level of skill. Maybe I just suck at flight sims.

     

    This game is hard, in the way that only hardcore flight sims can be.

     

    F18-cockpit-low.jpg

     

    The main campaign involves a civil war in Russia between the government and some communist splinter group, who takes control of the Kola Peninsula and the Northern Fleet based out of Severomorsk. Naturally, 'Murica just has to shove its nose in other peoples' business, so the USS Ronald Reagan carrier battle group is dispatched to show the commies what-for.

     

    The problem? The pilot they chose to lead strike missions against the communists...the individual entrusted with a multi-million dollar piece of military hardware...was me. Air combat training? Pfft...I read the game manual. That should be good enough, right?

     

    fa18-wing.jpg

     

    The flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan. With a namesake like that, you just know this campaign is going to be a utter debacle of dunderheaded buffoonery. For no reason at all, I named my squadron members after characters from Star Fox.

     

    I've never actually managed to complete the official campaign. There's one mission that always trips me up, where the Ronald Reagan is attacked by Su-33 Flankers from the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. Each one is armed with this bad boy right here - a sea-skimming, supersonic anti-ship cruise missile. Due to my utter lack of ability as a naval aviator, the Flankers invariably penetrate our feeble defence and send the Ronald Reagan to a watery grave, resulting in 'Murica running home with its tail tucked between its legs. DISHONORABLE DISCHARGES FOR ALL!

     

    So what have I learned from this game?

     

    - Don't mess with Flankers. They are not your friends.

    - MiGs are the annoying little brothers of the Flankers. They aren't your friends, either.

    - The Tu-142 might make a tempting target, being so large and slow, and you might, like me, decide to come up from behind and gave it a taste of your Vulcan cannon. Unfortunately, it's got pair of radar-aimed tailguns to discourage such buffoonery.

    - Be REALLY sure of your targets when attacking with the Harpoon anti-ship missile...lest you end up sinking your own carrier.

    - Russian surface-to-air missiles are extremely deadly and do not, in fact, merely tickle.

    • Like 3
  3. Well that's just cheating...there's a difference between horribly cheap tactics and an "I Win" button. Hell, part of the fun of Infinity Engine games is finding new and unique forms of cheese (remember the old "Chain Contigency + Project Image" trick?)

     

    Oddly enough, I had just finished Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition prior, and this sort of strategy would not have worked there. Black Isle evidently anticipated this, and so if you attack one member of a group of enemies, they will all come after you, even if you can't see them.

  4. Just finished playing Baldur's Gate: Enchanced Edition. I have discovered the most AWESOMELY CHEAP method of defeating Sarevok.

     

    What makes the final battle difficult isn't Sarevok himself, but his lackeys. There's Semaj, a mage who casts Greater Malison and Chaos, which can easily wreck your entire party, and Angelo, who's equipped with eight Arrows of Detonation (they go off like fireballs, and can easily waste your party in a few rounds). Finally, there's Tazok, who's just a strong melee fighter.

     

    The solution? By that point in the game, I had about a half-dozen Wands of Fire with me, so I decided to put em' to use. I had Imoen creep forward on the right side of the symbol of Bhaal, just enough to reveal the rightmost corner of the platform Sarevok and his lackeys are standing on, but not so far as to trigger the dialogue with Sarevok.

     

    I then had Imoen use the Wand of Fire to attack the spot on the ground just in front of the rightmost edge of Sarevok's platform. When the fireball went off, it did damage to Tazok, Angelo, and Semaj, but since they were still concealed in the "fog of war," they did not come down to attack me even as I was blasting them. Eventually, Angelo decided to come get Imoen, so I had her and the rest of the party retreat back outside the Temple of Bhaal. Angelo immediately followed her outside (the Enhanced Edition differs from the original in that enemies can follow you from one area to the other, as in BG2), but he was totally surrounded by my party, who instantly hacked him to bits before he could get a shot off.

     

    I went back inside and had Imoen resume her concealed Wand of Fire assault. Tazok soon fell, and Semaj lost morale and started running around like a chicken with his head cut off, allowing my party to hack him to bits. I then had my PC approach Sarevok, now all by his lonesome, but before he could get to her, she summoned up a horde of monsters to keep him busy while the rest of the party bombarded him with arrows and Magic Missiles until he died.

     

    Total damage taken during the fight? ZERO.

     

    ftkb.png

    • Like 2
  5. I thought KotOR2 was a clear example of "good concept, botched execution." LucasArt's releasing it before it was finished certainly didn't help matters.

     

    In terms of writing and characterisation, it's flatly superior to the first game. But the way the game handles things leaves a lot to be desired:

     

    - Peragus: This section felt like something out a survival horror game like System Shock. The problem is, it wasn't scary or spooky at all, and it becomes a drag on subsequent playthroughs.

     

    - Kreia: she's one of the most well-written Star Wars characters, but the way the game forces you to put up with her is immensely irritating. She suffers a bit from what I like to call "Wesley Crusher Syndrome," where the writers are so enamored with a character that they shove them down your throat at every opportunity. Kreia lectures you no matter you do. She lectures you via telepathy if you choose not to take her with you. She lectures you if you forget to brush your teeth and comb your hair in the morning. You'd think that her sociopathic, proto-fascist philosophy would start setting off warning bells in the mind of a light-side Exile, who would take steps to create some sort of contingency in the event of her inevitable betrayal. (In that way, KotoR2 reminds me of NWN and Throne of Bhaal, where despite the game practically screaming in your face, "THIS CHARACTER IS EVIL AND WILL BETRAY YOU", you are forced to go along with their manipulations).

     

    - I don't like it when games force me to take along party members. Visas Marr attempts to kill my character, and yet I have no choice but to let her join my party. Why am I not given the option to either kill her or sending her packing? CREEPY VISAS IS CREEPY.

     

    - As I've implied above, there's a number of times in the game where my character is made to do something stupid in order to advance the plot. A lot of RPGs suffer from this on occasion (like in Baldur's Gate, where CHARNAME can't figure out that "Koveras" is actually "Sarevok" spelled backwards), but it felt extremely grating in KotOR2. If my character knows there's a huge bounty on Jedi, and he meets someone who identifies herself as a bounty hunter, why would he agree to go back to an apartment with her?

     

    - CREEPY VISAS IS CREEPY

     

    - The game was just too easy. I played as Consular with nearly all my points put into WIS and CHA, and by the time I reached Telos I was basically just walking into rooms full of enemies, shocking them to death with Force lightning, and then repeating the process for the next room. The only time the game was remotely challenging was when I was forced to take control of other party members.

     

    - The ending: Yes, I realise the developers ran out of time, but knowing Revan and the Exile's ultimate fate in SWTOR transforms an Empire Strikes Back-esque downer ending into a full on shaggy dog story. No matter what choices you make, the Exile is destined to die stupidly and spend the next few centuries as Revan's personal crisis counselor.

  6. I haven't played DA:I (because I have a personal policy of not giving one cent to EA), but I have watched an LP  of the game on RPGCodex, and my general impression is that DA:I is some kind of Frankenstein monster of gameplay elements lifted from other titles and crudely stitched together. A little bit of Skyrim here, a little bit of Assassin's Creed there, and so on. BioWare's gone from being trend-setters to trend-followers.

     

    As for their other franchises, Mass Effect started out well, being a space opera RPG with occasional elements of hard sci-fi thrown into the mix. Then the sequel turned it into a Gears of War clone and made Shepard into this brainless, one-liner-spewing action hero. The third game was so terrible it became a meme. They had this universe with so much potential, and they squandered it making games that could have come from any other developer.

     

    SWTOR took the KotOR story out behind the shed and shot it in the back of the head, all because EA/BioWare saw World of Warcraft making money hand over fist and they wanted a slice of that pie.

     

    The message I've been getting from people like Gaider and Laidlaw is that if I happen to enjoy the games they've made prior to their acquisition by EA, then my opinion is invalid. BioWare's reaction to the furor surrounding DA2 - blaming fans and insinuating they "couldn't accept change!" instead of owning up to their mistakes - ensured that I will never again give them one cent of my money.

     

    So really, they're obviously not going to "return to their former glory" in my eyes because they've changed their focus to something that has no appeal to me. I have little interest in their terrible romances and their watered-down gameplay that serves no purpose but as filler between cutscenes. They apparently believe that the purpose of a game is to tell a story, rather than offer compelling gameplay. That's a design philosophy I despise.

     

    • Like 5
  7. When I played Dragon Age: Origins, I kept thinking how great it would be if you could play as a female blood mage, then persuade Alistair into becoming king and keeping you as his mistress. Then, you'd use blood magic to manipulate his mind, effectively making him your puppet and making you the shadow queen of Ferelden.

     

    And while I normally hate BioWare romances, I thought this was good for a laugh:

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHPkgeGiq4o

     

    Y U SO STUPID, LELIANA???

    • Like 2
  8. The thing is, KotOR2 had many elements obviously inspired by PS:T. Kreia is clearly based on Ravel Puzzlewell, Darth Sion is very much like The Nameless One, Mira has some similarity to Annah, and so on. Hardly surprising, considering it was developed by many of the same people.

     

    But...splitting Revan into some Jekyll-and-Hyde creature? That's not Kevin J. Anderson level of stupid, that's...that's...

     

    ...hell, that's Jedi Prince level of suck. Not quite The Star Wars Holiday Special level of suck, but I figure it's only a matter of time.

    • Like 2
  9.  

    I've been playing PC RPG since Ultima IV: The Quest of Avatar in 1984 or 1985.   Since then I've played and completed dozens of RPG, and played close to a hundred RPG (if not more.)  So I think I have more experience in playing PC RPG than most amy of you guys.

     

    RPG has NOT been "going downhill;" (btw, "downhill" is one word.)  IMO, RPG has been getting better in the past ten years or so.  Not just in terms of product quality, stability, presentations, mechanics and execution, but also in terms of storytelling, characterization and contents. In a lot of cases, an average-rating RPG today is better than the highly-rated RPG from the 1980s and 1990s, (which means today's standard is much higher than before.)

    Wow. Troll THAT fat surely could use some diet.

     

    Btw, here. One decidedly old interview with Laidlow about DA:Inquisition. "DA:I was inspired in a lot of ways by Planescape:Torment". Reaction of absolutely 100% people in comments is most amusing thing about it - "How dare you even pronounce that name, jerk!"

    Games have become whole lot better in terms of storytelling recently, uh-huh. original.gif

     

     

    What? What sense does that make? DA:I is your typical "chosen one saves the world" story that gleefully embraces every RPG cliche known to man. PS:T is a much more personal, character-focussed story that works to subvert many of those same cliches. PS:T is heavily centered around dialogue, while DA:I is much more action-oriented. I get the feeling he's just name-dropping a well-regarded RPG to gave DA:I more credibility.

     

    And it's not that games have gotten better in terms of storytelling, it's that they've become more "cinematic," with gobs of time and money spent on Hollywood-level voice acting and production values. My theory is that the game industry had long had an inferiority complex, with the mainstream media deriding video games as an inferior form of artistic expression compared to books, movies, and TV shows. When technology advanced to the point where games could deliver a true "cinematic experience," many developers felt that this was a chance to prove that "games ARE art, damn it!" and so they immediately set about trying to turn games into movies, reducing the player to a passive recipient of the story and gameplay to mere filler...something to take up time between cutscenes.

     

    A game like Mass Effect 3 is the logical endpoint of this design philosophy. With the exception of FFXIII, I don't think I've ever played a game that's more ashamed of being a video game than this. From beginning to end, it so desperately wants to be a Hollywood blockbuster, with sweeping camera angles, sad piano music, and oh-so-tragic moments where characters nobly sacrifice themselves for the cause! And all the while I kept thinking, "Why not just have the player pick Shepard's personality at the beginning and show the player nothing but cutscenes for the rest of the game?

     

    Compare to this to the original Fallout. If I give the Vault Dweller an Intelligence stat of 1, he'll be unable to communicate in anything but oohas, ahhs, grunts, and growls:

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuBjeLiWhek

     

    Such a character won't be able to get most of the quests, because everyone will dismiss him as an idiot. Yet the game can still be completed this way. On the other hand, a character with the right stats can finish the game without firing a single shot. Story and gameplay are integrated, so that one character might have a completely different path through the story than another.

  10. The thing about ranged combat in Skyrim is that, in order to do damage, you still have to hit the target. And that is entirely contingent on the player's ability to aim. I know several people who are absolutely rubbish with first-person shooting mechanics - either they find the first-person perspective disorienting, or they simply lack the reflexes and coordination necessary to hit targets - and for those people, their character will always be terrible at archery in Skyrim, even if the Archery skill is maxed out.

     

    And even if your damage output does scale with your skill level, all but a handful of enemies scale with your level anyway, making your progress ultimately meaningless.

     

    Again, the more you "actionise" RPGs, they become more about "you", the player, than the role you're assuming. And the role is central to an RPG. Bethesda doesn't really understand this, and their games are perfect examples of cargo cult design - including features and gameplay mechanics without understanding the purpose of said mechanics. If you want to talk about "RPGs going downhill," then look no further than Fallout 3. The first two Fallout games are some of the best RPGs ever made, and then the franchise got handed to a developer who made a complete hash of it.

  11. Part of the problem is that developers (and many players) don't seem to understand what separates RPGs from action games.

     

    In an action game, my character is just an avatar for my skills and abilities. In a game like Doom, for instance, Doomguy's ability to aim and hit the demons is based on MY aiming ability with the mouse and MY reflexes. He cannot succeed or fail independently of the player.

     

    However, in an RPG, my character is a completely separate entity from me, the player. In any given situation, my character's success or failure depends on HIS skills, HIS abilities, HIS strengths and weaknesses...NOT mine. In Fallout, for example, if I direct the Vault Dweller to attack someone with a pistol, whether or not he hits an enemy is based on his agility, his skill with firearms, the enemy's armour, the enemy's ability to evade, and so on. My "twitch skills" never come into play.

     

    This is why RPGs have character stats. They are way of defining the player character independently of the player, allowing the game world to react based on his qualities. Without them, you do not have a character, just an avatar for your own skills. You could try pretending to be your character, but the game won't care, because your character has no defined characteristics for it to react to.

     

    Consider a tabletop game. When my character goes to attack a dragon, whether or not he succeeds isn't dependent on my ability to whack the DM over the head with a plastic sword, but on my character's skills.

     

    This is why "actionising" RPGs is such a mistake, as it blurs the distinction between the player and his character. In Skyrim, I played a character who had the lowest possible Archery skill. In other words, his stats defined him as someone who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a bow. Yet because I had good aim with the mouse and keyboard, my character was a veritable sharpshooter. In another instance, I could pick the hardest locks despite having abysmal skill in Lockpicking, just because I was good at the lockpicking minigame. In both cases, player skill trumps character skill. And THAT is poor RPG design...because an RPG isn't about you, the player, but the character whose role you are assuming.

     

    "RPG" is one of the most abused acronyms in gaming. Mass Effect 2 is the worst example. It was sold as an RPG, despite being nothing more than Gears of War-style third-person shooter with a dialogue wheel. Sure, there's XP and levels, but Shepard kills an YMIR mech at level 2, which are some of the toughest enemies in the game, meaning that all the levelling system does is let you kill the same enemies more quickly. "Dialogue" and "choices" don't make it an RPG, because A: those have been featured in numerous adventure games (Monkey Island comes to mind), and B: ME2's dialogue and choices are so shallow that you could remove them and the game would play almost exactly the same...which is precisely what ME3 allowed you to do.

     

    And as I've said before, "actionising" RPGs isn't because it makes them better, or because it's any sort of "evolution." It's done because the large publishers believe that only shooters and action/adventure games will sell.

    • Like 4
  12. Ugh, The Witcher. I don't think I've ever endured a series that rubbed me the wrong way as this one did. Now, I personally loathe "dark and gritty" fantasy, so obviously The Witcher and the sequel weren't really aimed at someone like me, but I decided to play them regardless because people kept falling over themselves praising them as some of the greatest RPGs in the last decade. And I had just finished playing Dragon Age II, and I was eager to find something to cleanse the palate.

     

    Let's just say that I managed to finish DA2, though I had to force myself to do so, and accomplished this feat only with the aid of copious amounts of vodka. I never finished either of The Witcher games, which is odd, because both of them are better than DA2. My reasons?

     

    1: I hate Geralt. Hate, hate, hate Geralt. He's the grim, cynical, world-weary anti-hero who speaks in a gravelly monotone and his only facial expression is a po-faced grimace. I loathe this character type, partly because I feel like I've seen his like a thousand times before. He's supposed to be an outsider, considered something less than human because he's a witcher, yet women are regularly throwing themselves at him. And of course, witchers are sterile and immune to disease, allowing Geralt to engage in numerous sexual encounters without any consequence. How wonderfully convenient. His whole character feels like a juvenile power fantasy and a shameless, alienating manwhore. I spent most of the game wanting for him to die horribly.

     

    2: I hate the world Geralt inhabits. I get it, this is supposed to be some dark, gritty, morally ambiguous world, but I never once encountered an NPC that was even remotely likable or whose plight I cared about. Everyone is either some irritating, loathsome, completely amoral, despicable swine or a hapless oaf scrabbling to survive like a vagrant. The writers present the "darkness" of the world with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the groin. In the first game, one NPC quips "I can't sleep over the sound of my neighbour beating his wife."

     

    Really? Really? That's one step removed from Borat. I kept expecting someone to tell Geralt, "This is Urkin, town rapist. Naughty, naughty!"

     

    These two factors destroyed any interest I had in the games. Sure, they offer choices more complex than "Kick the dog" or "Set the dog on fire and throw it into a pit of alligators," but since I hated the protagonist and the world around him, I had no real investment in making these choices. It basically came down to, "All right, do I want to see the Roche or Iorveth path this time?"

     

    I'm pretty much immune to whatever charm this series possesses.

  13. As someone who (regrettably) spent a good deal of time on BSN, I can tell you that a big problem is that there's a number of people out there who claim they want to play RPGs, but actually hate the core gameplay mechanics that define the genre. They'll claim that RPG mechanics are "outdated" and "stupid nerd crap," that a game is an RPG because I'm "making choices and choosing dialogue options," and that "streamlining" RPGs to play more like action games is "progress" or "evolution" and that anyone who disagrees with this development is "too old" or "just nostalgia."

     

    "What do you mean, my guy missed the orc? He was standing right next to him! This game is stupid!" - BAM! To-hit rolls are gone, your character can never miss.

    "What do you mean, the dragon wasted my Level 1 character? I can reach him, so why can't I kill him? This game is stupid!" - BAM! Suddenly every enemy scales to your level, so you'll never encounter anything your character can't handle.

    "What do you mean, I murdered someone in cold blood and my Paladin party member turned on me? This game is stupid!" - BAM! Now every party member goes along with your decisions, no matter how much it conflicts with their personality. (Mass Effect 2 was absolutely terrible with this)

    "What do you mean, I told the quest-giver to go plough himself and now I can't get the Infinity +1 sword? This game is stupid!" - BAM! Now all consequences for your decisions have been removed, and every player can see everything in one play-through.

     

    What these people really want is a shooter or action/adventure with more narrative interaction beyond "A space marine is you! Kill everything that isn't you!" I suspect their first "RPG" was something like Mass Effect 2, which is basically just a shooter with some superficial dialogue options and story choices. What they ought to be doing is demanding the shooter and action/adventure developers start adding more narrative interaction in their games instead of demanding that RPGs start playing like action games.

     

    So RPGs are constantly being "streamlined," which means removing any gameplay mechanics that might put off non-RPG players. Not because this makes RPGs better, but because they think it will improve sales. The major publishers (and many development studios) believe that shooters and action/adventure games are the only thing that will sell, hence all other genres are pushed to margins. Fifteen years ago, a game like PoE would have been backed by a large publisher. Now, Obsidian has to rely on Kickstarter for funding, because none of the major publishers consider it viable.

     

    Which gets us to a game like Skyrim, where Bethesda has removed attributes because they can't figure out what they're supposed to do. "Intelligence just increases mana!" they said, not understanding that Intelligence ought to govern things like the amount of skill points gained at level-up or what sort of dialogue options are available to the player. This was how it was implemented (albeit badly) in Fallout 3, which only goes to show that Bethesda cannot even learn from their own games!

     

    Skyrim is the perfect example of how pathetic RPGs have become. It's a game where a thick-headed orc can join the mages' guild, or where an axe-wielding barbarian can join the thieves' guild, simply because the developers don't understand RPG mechanics, or they're terrified that players' choices in developing their character might lock them out of certain quests (or both). It's a game where levelling up does nothing except allow your character to keep up with the level scaling. It's a game where the role that you play is completely superficial and totally irrelevant.

     

    People like to dump on BioWare, and I do that I lot myself, but Bethesda is much, much worse in every aspect. They basically make the same game over and over, only with more bugs and fewer features.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    • Like 10
  14. BioWare's approach to their franchises appears to be the following:

     

    Step 1: Load gun

    Step 2: Aim gun at foot

    Step 3: Squeeze trigger until magazine is empty

     

    The Sith Emperor is a classic example of where the Star Wars EU goes wrong. It's as if the writers looked at original trilogy and thought, "All right, let's take Palpatine and make him A THOUSAND TIMES more powerful and evil!" This is a Kevin J. Anderson level of suck right here.

     

    Really, I'm not sure what BioWare hopes to accomplish by shoehorning Revan into SWTOR like this. They have to know on some level that few fans of the KotOR games will accept what they've done with him. But people who've never experienced those games won't have any understanding of just why Revan is such an important character. So when they drag his carcass in their MMO, just who is it supposed to appeal to?

     

    All in all, it reminds me of the awful Baldur's Gate novelisations that tried to establish a "canon" Bhaalspawn...and were almost universally hated by the fans.

    • Like 3
  15.  

    My issue with romances, at least as they are presented in BioWare games, is that they are ultimately based on what your character says, not what your character does. In a game like Mass Effect, romances essentially come down to this:

     

    NPC: You can talk to me five times!

     

    NPC: Say the right thing four times, and I'll love you forever!

    I think at the moment computer game environments are still rather limited in being able to express a developing romantic love. It's not just whether dialogue is written well, it's the whole question/response/rep systems available/often used in crpg's. Even if I like/appreciate the effort (vs ignoring it), it's not going to evoke emotional response from me. Too perfunctory, not in-depth enough. It's not romantic.

     

    My own imagination making up who gets to hook up with who, is still better. :biggrin:

     

     

    But at least in Baldur's Gate 2, you had a dozen or so "love talks" with your romantic partner, and they were timed in such a way that they were spread out across the game, giving the impression that the relationship was developing in a way that felt somewhat natural.

     

    I wouldn't say it evoked a emotional response for me, but then again, romance in games (or any media) doesn't evoke emotional response for me in general. (Actually, that's not quite true. The romances in KotOR1 made me pray for the violent deaths of all individuals involved. Guess that counts an "emotional response.") At any rate, while the BG2 romances weren't anything spectacular, I did feel that they contributed to development of the NPC's characterisation.

     

    Compare this to Dragon Age 2. I hit the "heart" button on the dialogue wheel when speaking to a character once or twice, then *bam* - there's a time skip and suddenly people start acting as though Hawke is in a relationship with that person. It's totally superfluous, simply thrown in because BioWare knows that their fans will scream bloody murder if romance isn't present. Or there's the Mass Effect example I mentioned, where I felt that the romance arcs with your squadmates actively diminished their characters, because it made them seem as if they were willing to throw themselves at Shepard regardless of what sort of person he is.

  16. I have always considered KotOR to be a trilogy. The first game was like A New Hope, the classic hero-saves-the-day story, while the second game was Empire Strikes Back - it was the darker middle chapter whose focus was less on heroics and more about survival in the face of a powerful adversary. Like ESB, it ended with the protagonists facing an uncertain future. Presumably, then, the third game would have been Return of the Jedi, tying up loose ends and bringing it all together for triumphant conclusion.

    But what never got KotOR 3. Instead, we got SWTOR and a terrible tie-in novel, Revan.

    Picture yourself as a moviegoer in the theatre having just watched Empire Strikes Back. Things like grim for our heroes - Luke has fought Darth Vader and barely escaped with his life, and has learned the terrible truth of his parentage. Han Solo is taken prisoner and frozen in carbonite. The entire Rebellion hangs by a thread. You think to yourself, "How are the heroes going to get out of this one?"

    So you wait and wait for the third film to be announced, but you hear nothing. Then LucasFilm says that the next Star Wars movie will be set 300 years after ESB and have nothing to do with the previous films. But, they reassure you, George Lucas is working on a novel that will explain what happened to the characters after the events of ESB.

    When the novel is released, you rush down to the bookstore to pick it up. Upon reading it, you discover that Luke went off to rescue Han Solo from Jabba's palace, only to get stabbed in the back by Boba Fett and killed. Jabba has R2-D2 and C-3PO melted down for scrap. Han Solo remains frozen in carbonite and Leia cries herself to sleep every night knowing she will never see the man she loves again. And just to rub salt in the wound, the latest film has Han Solo being freed after 300 years, at which point he's gone completely insane and has to be put down like a rabid dog.

    Your neighbours hear a loud thunk as you throw the book against the wall with great force.

    So let me ask you...how would you react to seeing the trilogy treated in this manner? Because that is, if you ask me, the exact treatment BioWare gave the KotOR saga. And when you understand that, you'll understand why people like me hate SWTOR.

    • Like 3
  17. My issue with romances, at least as they are presented in BioWare games, is that they are ultimately based on what your character says, not what your character does. In a game like Mass Effect, romances essentially come down to this:

     

    NPC: You can talk to me five times!

     

    NPC: Say the right thing four times, and I'll love you forever!

     

    Consider the Tali/Shepard ( :x )* romance from ME2. I can play Shepard as a pure Renegade, which means he acts in a manner that is downright sociopathic. But if I say the right things to her in dialogue, she falls in love with me, even if my character has committed cold-blooded murder right in front of her. At least in Baldur's Gate II, if I started committing random acts of murder or performing evil actions, it will end romances with certain party members.

     

    And on that note, I found that the BG2 romances allowed me to further define my character somewhat. A Bhaalspawn who engages in a romance with Aerie or Jaheira, for instance, is probably going to quite different in personality and goals from a Bhaalspawn who pursues Viconia. Contrast this with later BioWare games, where it doesn't matter who your character is just, just hit the "flirt" option on the dialogue wheel and away you go! It's shallow and pandering.

     

    So if PE is to feature a romance arc, it ought to follow the BG2 model, or the KotOR2 model, where attraction is merely hinted at or implied. But all things considered, given that the developers have a finite amount of time to work on the game, I'd rather they focus on something more important than romance.

     

    *recovering Talimancer here

    • Like 2
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