Humanoid

It's interesting to me that the furore over the ending is taking attention away from issues that I personally care more about. Case in point - until reading that Gamebanshee review linked here yesterday, I didn't know that the dialogue railroading was so bad such that there are five minute stretches between dialogue choices. That to me personally seems a bigger deal since it affects how I play as opposed to the wrap-up.

Also to ensure they're not longer than FO3's main quest, can't have that.

What it feels like to me is that it's a branched development from the end of WoW's first expansion - i.e. the shared functionality between the two is almost a perfect match between the two. Since then there have been the crappy legacy design things that WoW has dropped but TOR has maintained, while obviously adding its own features to that almost-common base. Now since I'm a relentlessly negative person, I'll itemise some quibbles: - A *lot* of group quests compared to WoW - I understand the intent of trying to get people to play together while levelling up but history shows this hasn't worked in the long run. Past the first month or so there's not enough population density to be able to find players with the same goal. I've also encountered "elite" enemies on supposedly solo missions which are a brick wall. - The skill tree (WoW's talents) is very boring - most of the selections are uninspired simple "+x% to skill Y damage" things. Notably WoW is dropping the concept altogether shortly, no more trees. - Peculiarly, enemies seem to spawn in stationary groups of three or four exclusively. There are no single-pulls, patrols or anything like that which makes the world feel much more static. - Somewhat an unfair criticism, but I flat out don't like the Star Wars universe. Lightsabres, pewpew sounding blasters, the range of pointless alien species - none interest me and some particularly irritate me. The lightsabre sound is one of my pet hates. - Alien voice acting forcing me to read the subtitles. Problem is even more exaggerated by the awkward pauses when the aliens end up very stop-start in their speech because they're waiting a pre-determined amount of time that the subtitles are meant to be up for (you can skip of course but it just doesn't flow and I like to sit back). What I like: - The "Loot All" function. A godsend. - Surprisingly I like the voice acting of my character, I feared this when I first heard they would be fully voiced. (For the record most character voicework in WoW is a cringe-inducing atrocity) - A thing that I not so much like, but believe is good design, is the companion system allowing players to experience support roles while levelling up - as opposed to essentially having to learn abilities you've totally ignored while levelling but find out later are crucial at max level. - Inventory space concerns are somewhat lesser than WoW - mainly being able to autosell junk items and that quest items are stored separately. - Characters have reasonable body proportions, mostly - though the really fat ones look unnatural.

Decided to take up the trial too. From the experience of a WoW vet it's essentially the same mechanics aside from companions but that's been mentioned over and over anyway. The pleasant surprise is that I actually do get a few RP options even if the consequences are largely trivial. Yes yes, Dark/Light side binary options, plenty have been said about them too, but it just goes to remind me that no matter how much I take shots at Bioware writing, it's still an ocean ahead of Blizzard - WoW's choices being more linear than Super Mario Bros (warp tunnels!). I don't think I'll continue with it though, but largely I'll say it's not due to the game's faults, but due to general burnout with MMOs. I remember with WoW it took about six months from first playing to being ready for the end-game - a matter of levelling, gearing, and back then, building a good reputation on the server as a competent player (rogue type characters being common as muck). Then in the expansion a constant struggle to assemble and keep together a team of about 30 people playing across all timezones. It's not something I think I ever want to repeat, so I think I'm done.

Alchemy - please god let it be alchemy and potion drinking.

I was thinking of how the re-done Director's Cut of Broken Sword 1 (with new content added and new UI grafted on) revived Revolution and how they now have a proper sequel, and also a brand new IP, in development as a direct result. But where the comparison doesn't fit is that this is only initially being done on the same platform as the original - and that it's not the original developer backing it. ...and I've lost my train of thought. But at any rate, I've never played BG1 past Candlekeep so will follow developments.

Being able to accomplish everything there is to do in a game - no collisions, no conflicts - isn't the hallmark of roleplaying no matter what Bethesda sandboxes try to drill into their playerbase. I would have no problem with Shep for example not being able to do certain quests if he or she didn't have any biotic ability for example. Or in other games, say for instance that Ulfric would never fully trust you if you weren't a Nord. I liked very much how in The Witcher 2, if you went with Vernon you'd miss a big character reveal and any chance of "saving" them. In that sense I think it may have been interesting in ME2 if there actually wasn't enough time to do all the loyalty missions (or perhaps not even enough time to do all the recruitment missions) - you'd end up having to choose the members for which doing their content made the most sense, and suffer the consequences in the suicide mission. Doing so would require more development on the main plot in all likelihood but still.

Yeah, there's really no reason whatsoever to have to justify a character mechanic reset with an in-story explanation - particularly when that very same explanation only just makes the issue worse - why do all the former companions also lose all they've learned while not being subjected to the same trauma? The problem only arises if the game mechanics are always interpreted such that a level 1 character is a weak kitten who can barely take out a bunny rabbit unassisted - but why does a character system need to do such a thing? You can set up a baseline anywhere - level one could just as easily mean "tough alliance trooper" as much as "motor-skill challenged weakling," or indeed "demigod of destruction." It's not like random civilian NPCs and the like need to be set up with the same character system, especially since they are not interactable in combat in any way shape or form. Sure a D&D type world might set up every NPC in it with the same unified character system, but that's hardly applicable here.

One random thing that bothers me is how some things have been left undefined not because of wanting to preserve a sense of mystery but because they couldn't be bothered expending the effort. Prime culprit here of course is the Turian female model for example. We're told in-game that there's no real separation in gender roles for Turians - they're about as prevalent as males, serve in their armed forces, etc - but we never see a single one in five years of the series. For Krogan and Salarian (which were finally shown, ironically) they had some sort of semi-plausible reasoning, but not in this case. The concept somewhat ties into the reaction to the ME3 because even with "It's a mystary" type endings, it usually shows in the writing whether the author has it all together in the background and just doesn't reveal it to you, or whether there really is no logical sense behind it all and the obfuscation is really just playing a Get out of Jail Free card. I remember Garriott talking about how for consistency it was better to define things only when the need arised - in the context of what The Guardian is in this instance I think - to avoid writing yourself into a corner. For the most part ME1 reasonably abides by this, but it began to feel cheap when the sequels continued dodging the issues even after they were presented to the player character.

Spent 10 minutes or so tooling around on ME2 trying to remember where I left off a year and a half ago. 5 minutes of that was trying to figure out why I couldn't save the game before remembering that stupid save limit. One thing I forgot and like is how it's playable in windowed mode after the persistent difficulties with Gamebryo and task switching. Anyway it seems I got farther in my second playthrough (the one I started after playing ME1 for the first time, so the first was junk in terms of my character development) so I guess I may be able to finish it in 5-10 hours (with a couple hours on top regaining my bearings), which I will probably elect to do ....sometime.

I think most of my neurons burned out. Nowadays I'm all for the interaction and damn the mechanics behind them. Maybe it was WoW and its endless character optimisation that broke the camel's back.

Averages out to 64.5 between user and professional scores though - which if game ratings were sensible (i.e. rated on a distribution of 0-10 instead of about 7-10), would mean above average - which isabout where it is based on textual feedback. Round up and you have a 3.5 star game, eminently playable.

I didn't even get the chance to learn anything about 4E. I assume it's like D&D Vista then? Were there even any electronic format games based on it? Though I have to say personally that I don't care all that much for the number crunching these days, preplanning levels, making a properly balanced party covering key abilties, that kind of thing. Would have been inconceivable for me to say a decade ago but yeah.

Gamebryo MMO.... *explodes* I kid, maybe it's when they finally leverage their newly acquired tech for a new, new engine for the first time in yonks, which would be good news for the core series fans too.

I imagine it's because VAT is by nature a consumption tax, so by definition it's applied to the end consumer. The producer I assume pays their national company tax which is a completely separate affair, hence place of production has no effect on the levying of VAT. The only exception I guess is where the cost of collecting VAT exceeds the potential revenue, which may occur with low-value imports. This is why there's generally a lower threshold import value under which no VAT is charged.

Ironically I guess it means the Diablo 3 CE is *technically* cheaper in Sweden than the US since it's 90EUR -> 72VAT excl VAT = ~94USD. The US base price is $100USD. Fortunately for me the Australian government can't be bothered collecting VAT on anything under $1000 so I can pick and choose and get the best of both worlds. I just bought a Kenwood bench mixer from Germany for ~$320 delivered all up - the local price here is $700 with maybe $100 off at most during sales.

I'm not following. Is the 60EUR price VAT exclusive? As Actiblizzard have European offices I assumed the price was all inclusive: My take is this: US price: $60 + any applicable tax from potentially hundreds of different rates depending which county you live in EU price : 60EUR all inclusive. At in the worst case scenario of 15% VAT you are paying 52.17EUR to Blizzard which xe.com tells me is 68.11USD as I type this. In the best case scenario of 25% the cut Blizzard receives is 48EUR or 62.67USD. US = $60 + local sales tax EU = ~$63-$68 + VAT So yes, it's marginally more expensive in Europe, true, but not as massive as the headline figure would suggest - it's 5-13% more expensive.

Well it's less misleading than the other thread's title anyway.

It's fragmented because the US does not mandate listing tax-inclusive prices I believe. The base price is listed, and the originating state believe they should get a cut, and the destination state believes they should get a cut, that kind of thing. Here in Australia it's required by law to show the prices all-inclusive and I assumed it was the same in the EU. But as far as I know the rules for cross-country transactions in Europe are fairly well defined in terms of who collects the tax, where it goes and such. Whereas it feels like in the US it's sort of an all-in melee involving lawsuits and constitutional brawls, etc. But yeah, it's an outsider's uneducated observations rather than analysis of fact.

And somewhere in between bad modern and good modern is stuff like full voice acting, modelled character faces, fancier dismemberment and erm, animated love scenes instead of fade to black?

I feel weird defending regional pricing, but I imagine the EU price is VAT inclusive where the US one is not (because of the incredibly fragmented way states deal with sales tax)? Take off 20% VAT for example (I know it's not the same rate everywhere) and it's 50EUR which is ~65USD. Okay a little more but pricing it at 55EUR is technically selling it for less than the US release. I don't actually know if US people have to pay sales tax on top of their list price for digitally distributed items though - I've only got the various news reports about Amazon's battle with the states over tax collection. Of course my personal preference is always to purchase in the native currency. I pay no conversion fee so generally the credit card exchange rate is much better than the rate charged by the vendor-provided conversion, can be up to a 10% difference.

Whereas most other players would care more about "Lydia will now offer marriage option after player purchases Breezehome in Whiterun". And that's not the first time they've claimed companion sneaking is fixed. So the question is if it's fixed, or just "fixed."

But they're Canadians! Oh wait....

As much as I like to take pot shots at EA, yeah, it's silly to blame them for writing or sundry other creative issues. (Couldn't blame them when a programmer accidentally deleted the only complete copy of the entire source code of Strike Commander a few months into development when attempting to do a compile test....) But yeah, I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it - as a conclusion to a first series obstensibly written to set up an ongoing game world ends up removing one of the seemingly fundamental premises of that world. It's like if the first published Dungeons and Dragons adventure involved extermination of all dragons forever. And there's not a whole lot of space in which to create prequels from the human perspective given that it was established there was only one real conflict that occurred between first contact and the events of the first game.

The likes of BC3kAD and Daikatana are also unforgettable, as punchlines. ME3 will probably take up KoTOR2's mantle in terms of punchlines for the next few years. But eh, any jabs at it now just get lost in the tsunami, what am I going to do in my spare time now? Will pick it up in due time as I've gone ahead and totally spoiled myself of the start/early parts and there are no particular turn-offs there - unlike DA:O which I wish I didn't buy blind (or at all) because the establishing plot totally killed any drive to follow the narrative to any sort of conclusion. I can forgive a bad ending far easier than that.