Humanoid

DLC to be released 27th March - free for Deluxe Edition owners - The Falcon and The Unicorn. The release will coincide with the introduction of MacOS support.

I barely remember BG2 having not played it since the original release, but there was sort of a tangential motivation at least in that you were pursuing revenge against that guy who kidnapped and tortured you. Some of DA:O's stories were the opposite in that it forcibly took you away from pursing said vengeance when you got conscripted. (Sure you actually might get revenge later, but that's more happenstance and doesn't actually motivate you to do the things you actually do)

I don't mind the origin stories as self-contained viginettes either, but where I differ is that I feel they sabotage the overall game in that they set the wrong overall mood for the core storyline - colours the whole thing under a veil of oppression. Being coerced into doing something may well be a valid storytelling option, but crushed my motivation to actually accomplish anything, and so I ended up quitting the game about halfway through. It's why I proposed trimming the fat at the start of the game - cutting out content sucks, sure, but I think it's a worthwhile sacrifice in this case as it actively detracts from the rest of the narrative. I've never played IWD, but in IWD2 You arrive in area as a band of mercenaries looking to do mercenary work, and do exactly that. You're not a bunch of peasants conscripted by the local lord, which is essentially what DA:O does. Now both are stories that could exist, and both probably result in the same fighting of waves and waves of goblins, but they are thematically opposite as can be, and colour the entire feel of the game from start to end. If the very beginning of DA:O had established that I am a Grey Warden, and had been for some time, and that Duncan was definitively my commanding officer, then I'd have been much more motivated to follow through on his goals.

This is why I feel the error was in creating the intro sequences for six different games then trying to dovetail them all into one continuity as soon as you're done with the tutorial. Granted I haven't played all six, but some do flow into the main story better than others. Point is, you don't have to get around the bottleneck if you don't create the bottleneck in the first place. It's never been about railroading or not-railroading in CRPGs. It's between good railroading and bad railroading. Good railroading is when the path matches well with what you wanted to do anyway, bad railroading is of the "why the hell did I just agree to do that?" variety. I get that Duncan is basically forcing you to go along on pain of death at the beginning (one of my most hated NPCs of all time, but if handled correctly you could make that into a 'good' character trait). But what irks me is that the game forces some variety of Stockholm syndrome on you, it's like being a slave who upon finding his slavemaster is dead, chooses to remain a slave anyway. The game even teases you about it, you can tell Alistair that Duncan was a bastard who deserved to die, but all you get is some meaningless relationship hit and have to go along with the dead bastard's plans anyway. Now I'm not suggesting my take on the game is universal, but what I am saying is that a large part of being a CRPG writer is in correctly anticipating how players will feel about a scenario and therefore building your railroad tracks in that direction. Say New Vegas for some reason had to be cut down to only have one endgame path for whatever reason - do you force the NCR path or the Legion path? I think the answer is pretty obvious there. Likewise, I have no problem that NV's initial setup is in trying to track down Benny for revenge, because I think it's a reasonable reaction for the majority (though as always, an 'out' is welcome). In Skyrim, I think I would be correct in saying most people loathe the character of Maven Black-Briar, but the only options presented are to either help her, or to not do the (thankfully optional) quest. I feel it would have been much better received had if only one solution was written, that it'd be to work against her. Writing resources permitting, write the reverse choice working for her.

Okay, so if I were to play just one Total War game, should it be Rome, Medieval 2, or Shogun 2*? My default purchase will include the former two regardless, but will stretch to the latter if it's really really superior to the others.

Another one of those gimmick sales, this time it's that you can pick a set of up to five random games for $2 each. Decided to get into the spirit of the thing and rolled the dice. Results: Avernum I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream When Blobs Attack Ittle Dew Aqua Kitty Eh, probably won't play any of those. I'll wait until there's a better sense of what the pool of eligible games are and decide whether to go again later in the week.

That was unusually fast even for Yahtzee.

I repeat myself, but DA:O would have been better as plain old Dragon Age, and the sole content change would be to delete all the origin stories and have you start as someone who's already a Grey Warden. I mean, no one complained about their Shepard being forced to be a space marine or whatever, because it was established as a a simple fact rather than being forced through clumsy railroading.

Nope, the games are all bundled into one key, that is, all the $1 games are one key and all the $6 games are one key and must be redeemed together to the same account.

Probably my chance to try a Total War game (in TBS-only mode) for the first time ever. Shame they're all Steam-only titles. Doubt the $15 Shogun 2 is worth stretching for though, unless someone here feels really strongly about it?

I heard about Thief 4 a while ago, then saw it was available on Steam and watched the trailer. It looked okay, but then was flabbergasted when it wasn't Russell doing the voice. Upon research I read about a bunch of the other problems. Can't jump whenever? Wha? Yeah, jumping is a context-sensitive action now. "You're at a large chasm. Press Jump button now to jump over it." I imagine it's kind of like how the Mass Effect games for instance handled jumping. Most elements are directed like that, rope arrows for example are used when you have all but a big neon sign pointing to a surface saying "hey, shoot rope arrow at this!"

Was assuming free was a criterion here. Would be good if they were having one of their trial periods that they occasionally have, but nope, not on at the moment. I don't really have much, for someone dipping their toes into MMOs it's really down to trying EVE plus a 'conventional' WoW-model MMO. But since WoW's trial is very, very limited, you can substitute something like Rift or, dare I say, SWTOR. Hell, maybe Tera is an option in that I hear it's probably the closest to GW2 in terms of more action-oriented play. Actually, TESO's final beta period is this weekend, and it shouldn't be too hard to nab a key for that, it's probably the last chance to play it free for the next 6 months or so.

Futureproofing is almost always a false economy, maybe 20% more usable life for 200% of the cost. Just get a non-OEM copy of Windows 7 so the key doesn't get tied to your motherboard and upgrade that year early. Just made a tech purchase of my own, an X-rite i1Display Pro colorimeter. Since it's on the way from Amazon I figured I'd throw in a few more things to make the most of shipping costs, so I bought a couple CPU heatsinks, a Scythe Mugen 4 and a Scythe Big Shuriken 2 because they have no Australian distributor. Also a 7" serrated ceramic knife and a set of three scissors because why not.

Nah, launching at $15 before being forced to go F2P 6-12 months later is the norm. Even relatively modest MMOs still have the delusion that despite all the others failing, they'll be the special snowflake that breaks the trend - fellow upcoming MMO Wildstar is also charging $14.99/mo which seems supremely optimistic to me.

It's generally considered bad practice to link directly to downloads instead of to the download page. One of those established Internet etiquette things (I hate the term netiquette ), better to acknowledge the author of the software by linking to their homepage instead. This also ensures the other party can get the link to the current version of the software, instead of an archived version. It's not uncommon for forums and other communities to have blanket bans on hotlinks like that, and indeed some ban the use of URL shorteners completely (a stance I support totally). Sure both can be said to be safe more often than not, but it only takes one exception. I'd further point out that pointing out that it's a legitimate piece of software is not a meaningful method of protection since trojans by their very nature masquerade as legitimate software. I'm not accusing you of foul play, nor was the other poster necessarily, indeed I know that particular site is fine. It's just bad security practice.

Hell, Skyrim is a better Thief than Thiaf.

Okay but do you honesty think people wouldn't buy a major RPG just because there was mandatory but well written Romance? Are people that opposed to the idea of Romance which would only be a small part of the RPG experience anyway? In a word, yes. In more words, it doesn't matter how well a romance is written, it's impossible to make a character that appeals to everyone. A mandatory romance assumes everyone will react the same way to a given character, which is nothing but pure folly. I have quit games outright after being presented by an unpalatable forced decision or characterisation. With foreknowledge I would not have purchased the game at all, but it's hard to discover the nature of said events without spoiling the game. Foreknowledge that romances are mandatory, on the other hand, will be easy, and consign the game to the do-not-play list. P.S. Oh god, imagine ME2 had a forced Miranda romance. That's the worst example I can think of, of a case where the developers completely misanticipated the player reaction to their headline character.

As bold a move as copying all the other aspects of WoW, yes. It's totally going to work this time guys!

Yeah, and that supposed majority of people are people who would buy the game anyway. Conversely, the people firmly against it might end up not buying the game. Sure, that might not be a huge number, but then it only needs to be measured against the number of new customers who buy the game when they wouldn't have otherwise, a demographic which I think would be very very small indeed. So no, it's hard to see any possible circumstance in which that would be a good idea economically.

Isn't that how you make beef jerky?

AutoHotKey itself is a legitimate program, however, so just grab it from the official website and you're golden.

Actually I hear the new Garrett largely can't climb many walls anyway. Or even jump, except for a few select places.

That's like making a game based solely around ME2's planet scanning or Oblivion's persuasion minigame, is it not?

Counterpoint: generic elf lady they're using for marketing. While not in itself definitive evidence of anything, I feel it does kind of illustrate where the priorities were here - making a traditional generic MMO with pretty elves the likes of which you see by the dozen in "beautiful elves" type project on the Nexusmods site. Disclosure: In general I'm not a fan of the TES setting, but one aspect I do admire is their willingness to have these non-traditional (relatively), very alien elves compared to your stock fantasy setting.

In case you missed it, the developers did at least explain their decision. It might sound like a joke, but nope, it's the real way their thought processes operated (or didn't operate, as the case may be). http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-thief-dev-explains-why-it-ditched-original-garrett-voice-actor