Tigranes

Never played Ultima Underworld or other games of the type, watched a few vids and LPs but I probably wouldn't be interested if the Codex weren't drooling all over. I'd have preferred turn-based as the whole 'waltz-y dodging' stuff seems silly, but most importantly, it's a no-frills party-combat dungeon crawl, which is fantastic, but is there enough variety in abilities, tactics and enemies? Still waiting for the next CK2 update so got nothing, but maybe AOD demo will update soon..

I can't see that meeting pre-release expectations from EA/Bioware, given it came out at the beginning of March.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s81zu/rpg_fireside_chat_with_brian_fargo_and_chris/?sort=old I'm sure someone posted already, but live Q&A chat on reddit with Fargo and Avellone. Currently ongoing.

He's working on whatever Obsidian is doing. Which currently means South Park or unannounced project being pitched to publishers.

Looks like a mix of cool beans and boring annoying killcam interruptions / "JUUUMP" animations. *shrug*

Then you shouldn't trust the vast majority of Asians... oh, I see.

I actually haven't played a lot of JRPGs. FF7 & 8 were my first RPGs and I loved them; I recently replayed 9 and it was quite fun, as well. 5 & 6 are good, too. They aren't too strong combat-side, though, and it was probably only because I was so young and poor that I was happy to spend hours grinding. I thought FF10 and 12 were quite terrible, and now that they're pushing the whole skimpy chick deal even more, meh. What I've seen/tried of Persona, Chrono Trigger, etc didn't impress me. I do think Shining Force 2 is excellent in that it actually has good, tactical, fun JRPG combat - obviously FF Tactics is another.

Really wanted to buy SC2 when it first came out, but now I'm glad I didn't. I enjoyed the few multiplayer games I got to play at my friends' places, but it seems pretty much the same old starcraft. That said, I never was that crazy about SC1... if D3 is the same old D2 it will be awesome. I'm much more concerned about all the mechanics surgery they've been doing, like automated allocation of stat upgrades.

I actually like, or want to like, FPSes. I liked the original Unreal Tournament and I spent many an hour playing Halo multiplayer with my friends, even though I didn't think the mechanics were particularly brilliant. I was pretty bored by HL2, though, and Call of Duty / Battlefield especially. I just think efforts to make FPSes 'cinematic' or 'cool' are even more annoying than in other games because they're 'integrated' into the action, and I also keep wanting for more variety of things to do and use than 2 guns + grenades. What I'd really like is a proper fantasy first-person action game - TES' actual combat mechanics are terrible, the Witcher is rather different, Dark Messiah gets closer.

Ah, they're upscaling. Should have thought of that, really. Much appreciated. Was the BG pathfinding that bad? I thought the NWNs and other games were worse. But can't hurt to improve it, it did have its quirks.

Marketing has finally fused Legolas and American Action Heroes. And judging by that helmet, Football, too.

It is pretty stupid, annoying and worrisome. Of course, I would never play Diablo single player...

I don't know if any actual details on zoom are available, or its just the conjecture based on the ~3 photos that were released a while ago. If the latter, it seems that you can pretty much play a higher resolution with higher resolution UI, but 'zoomed in' so sprites and the world is still large, without the pixelation. I'm not sure how that last part works, since that would imply every single art asset in the game was redrawn with extra pixels, no? If the pixelation remains the same, then the only thing zoom achieves would be that you can change screen resolution without exiting the game. Anyway, I don't think stuff is too small when I play superbig resolutions, I enjoy seeing such a large part of the map, but I can see how some people will like it.

Avellone's basic point is about providing coherent, systemic bases for meaning and narrativisation, which is certainly not limited to just random mob spawns or such. That actually becomes a guiding principle in how you write the 'narrativ-y' bits in the first place, how you write the factions, dialogue.

I'd love to, but I'll be in NZ with only my laptop, so I'll have to see if it will work.

Yeah. As I say, I'm not writing the whole thing off. I'm just not that excited about it until they give me some details about what they can do and want to do. I mean, hey, if they do a good job and we get more iE-style games, hallelujah! I'd like nothing better.

Oh, the stuff I listed isn't "do all these things and BGEE is worthwhile", its just examples of the kind of things they could deliver that mods don't. But yeah, I suspect the payoff for that particular point is not worth it. A better example might be if they can do something 'better calls for help' mods do, but better - I mean, Bio themselves put in that one dude that calls for help in Saradush, but that was it, really. And one great thing they could do is open up all the thigns previously hardcoded in the BGs to modders, which might do a lot to revitalise that scene (which is finally dying out after 10 years).

I checked, and it looks like she sees you off at the boat, but doesn't actually have a 'proper' sail into the sunset ending. My bad. I definitely have gotten the Brayko-Championchik option several times, though. I think you needed to have pissed Surkov off a fair bit in the initial discussions, at least to Dislike, then spare Brayko at his mansion, telling him that you will have need of him; then use the Brayko option when speaking to Surkov. And of course, there's a basic intel requirement throughout Moscow to get that far with Brayko in his conversation anyway, telling him exactly how Surkov screwed him over.

Okay, would you now give a suggestion or is that going to remain some faint expectation that the game inevitably fails to meet? The way I see it, we could bitch all day long about how these evil money sucking developers are trying to trick us all into buying a decade old game again or we could draw up a list of stuff we want to see done and fixed, make sure they get it - and see what they do with it. It costs nothing, I'll even do the leg work of writing up and sending the email on behalf of the "jaded fans loitering at Obsidian forums" - all you have to do is supply the grief. Why is it so unreasonable to ask for 'one concrete improvement that seems substantial'? Now I haven't stalked down every piece of info out there, but I've read most of the major bits of news, and they have yet to give me any details that make me think this project is really worth doing. Thus I remain ambivalent. What do we have so far? (1) Horrible beamdog 'service', (2) TOB sourcecode and higher resolutions, which mods already do, (3) some more graphical and technical improvements apparently, that I haven't seen any details of, (4) porting, which *is* nice but I don't really need, (5) ostensibly a new NPC and 'new content' that doesn't seem to be their first priority. What would make me interested? (1) What exactly is the new codebase allowing them to do that we can't already get? (2) Are they adding any new areas or quests, which are often the weakest area of the BG modscene? (3) Are they restoring / rejigging any old content according to the original '98 design? (4) Will there be any improvements to the AI scripts and encounter design to build on one of BG's biggest fun points, the combat set pieces? (5) Perhaps the most practical yet useful, will they be adding any new monsters? New spells and items are nice, but a thousand mods already do that. (6) Any plans to rejig load times and area cells, e.g. by merging all of BG into one map, or is that impossible? (7) Please, no new flashy cutscenes, tutorials, death animations or whatever. I suppose you'll have to have achievements. Boo, you are going around attacking people for being 'jaded and negative', except, they need to give us something to be excited about before you can levy those charges. They have had a lot of time and media attention and the messages they've chosen to push with that attention have been rather humdrum. There's a reason I'm much more excited about the various Kickstarter pitches that I've already given my money to. EDIT: I imagine it's a little different if you haven't played BG in ages, or if you don't know about / use the mods out there. Fair enough, though I really think people are missing out if they enjoy BG but don't look at the mod scene (just don't go to the new NPC/romances stuff).

I still love BG, I just feel I get everything I need from excellent mods that is the result of years of fans working hard on the engine and accumulating knowledge. The original team, most of which were just starting in the industry at that time, coming back after not touching it for so long, with the marketing focus on tablet porting and other things as opposed to actual new content - of course there's reasons for skepticism. I mean, OK, maybe, contrary to the utterly uninteresting early screenshots, they will deliver some graphical and technical upgrades mods cannot, but I think BG looks pretty good as it is. I'll be more enthusiastic when I hear about at least one concrete improvement that seems substantial.

My debut with JA2 is on hold since it looks like I'll need a good few hours to get into how it all works, and right now I only have tiny snippets. Hopefully soon.

Yeah, I think GMs did too much work up front fleshing out a lot of different things. I think we should keep it simple until it gets off the ground. Wals, I don't see you getting 3 GMs from here alone..

AP had a very polarised reception, whereas NV sold in huge numbers, seemed to be received positively by a greater proportion of buyers/pirates, and had critical acclaim. I personally prefer AP, but them's the facts.

There is nothing about BG3 at the moment except the Enhanced Edition guys who 'want to' do it in the future. The Black Hound is dead and there is pretty much zero chance it will ever come round, unless Sawyer actually finishes the mod version. We close threads at a certain length because after that they start doing funky things. I'm sure it could be fixed, but it's not a big deal at the moment.

That's the only option he has, apparently.