Tigranes

I loved Caesar III, when I was a kid I couldn't quite get into Sim City for some reason and it was the first sim/management game I ever played. I think I played it to death, but I'm still tempted to pick it up...

Great news, Civilisation has been a good franchise that reasonably improved (or, at least, changed) the game each step and still has potential to be a whole lot greater. Each iteration, it's the lack of complexity on the 'ruler' front (i.e. feeling that you're a Sim City manager rather than a real ruler of a civilisation, due to any lack of history keeping, milestones or whatnot) and the terrible combat balance that gets me, but I hope the latter at least is finally worked out here. Hexagons are a great move, though the terrain map makes it look as if the scale of the maps remains the same - pity, all the harder to do interesting real world maps.

I'd like Bentham. Jeremy Bentham. "You'll never find me, Thorton!" "You are being watched. Every second."

Starforce is a great example, when everyone started talking about how moronic it was it was eventually mostly phased out.

theslug;didn'tread

I agree with Purkake here, they're trying to do some great things about C&C and multiple-branching storylines in games, and bringing that with a very very high level of polish and presentation - that can't be a bad thing. The story itself seems very Hollywood, though. Your typical drama. I'd rather they delve into different types of narratives instead of trying to prove you can play a movie...

Yeah, I'm not saying all games should have those types of choices. I'm simply saying they're actually sensible things to invest resources into and for players to ask for - asking for the ability to forego the reason to play the main course isn't.

Hm. Yeah, I did skim the whole thing, sorry if I misunderstood. I think they're about the same though, it just depends on how you see it. Maybe it is easier to understand the Imoen motivation because it's the kind of motivation we could all quite easily imagine (i.e. your sister gone missing). But not many people these days might be in the situation of saving something or doing something important on a wider level. Still, I think with a little projection it's just as plausible. Think about it. As most/all of the origins, you really have no other option but to join the Grey Wardens "for now". All you know is that it's an elite corps, probably quite well resourced, and it's a lot better than joining any regular army. You don't know about these strings attached and have no reason to suspect. In most origin cases (I'd argue all, except dwarf commoner that I have yet to try), it's the most sensible option. Even ify ou don't like it (and you can say you don't like it throughout), most people not chaotic neutral would understand it's the best place to start off with. And even if a lot of characters might have reasonably been expected to try and ditch the GW once the time was right, the whole Ostagar mess changes the situation. You're now hunted - sure it's not that well shown in DA (assassins hunting you is notoriously hard to do right for some reason), but just like there's little sense ignoring Sarevok in BG1, there's little sense ignoring Loghain in DA. Especially if you'd really, you know, like to actually live a proper life instead of having the entire country be run over by darkspawn. I don't think it's any harder to identify with or any less plausible.

I never understood this obsession with ignoring the main plot if you want. To me it's a pointless 'feature' that actually doesn't add any gameplay - it's a spawn of the discourse of freeform gameplay, not the actual logic of freeform gameplay. Think about it. If you don't want to chase down Irenicus, and if you don't want to rescue Imoen, why are you playing BG2? If you don't want to fight the Blight or go after Loghain, why are you playing Dragon Age? I don't get it. It's like turning up to a F1 driving range and saying you don't want to race, you just want to get in your car and play house. Make no mistake. It's cool that in BG2 you can dump Imoen's ass as soon as you 'rescue' her (if it was made in 2009 you might have been forced with her, Shandra-style). It's cool that you don't have to take Yoshimo and fall for his trap, there are other ways the story pans out. It's cool that in DA you have 'multiple solutions' to the final kill-the-dragon problem. But is it really that important that you have the option of saying 'screw that, I'm not going to chase down my killer OR rescue my childhood friend OR get revenge and just ignore these important things happening in my life'? Why? In Oblivion what changes if you 'choose' not to, uh, deal with this incredibly important thing that will result in the end of the world (and your life too) forever? Nothing changes. You just have one less questline. Why not put in the effort towards multiple solutions and accounting for multiple motivations (as is reasonable) within the assumption that you have to rescue the world? Arcanum allowed you to defy your own prophecy and join the bad guys. Fallout, too, allowed you to join the Master or defeat him. Isn't it much more important, logical and fun to be able to make reasonably realistic choices of your own within the general narrative, instead of just being able to say 'screw it all'?

You don't know that, though. I think this is blown out of proportion: every story-based game requires you to have some form of motivation or assumption going on, and DA did a good enough job at explaining why you end up joining the wardens at the start, and why you decide to go for it. If you just went your willy way after Ostagar it wouldn't be much of a story, and you could say that for every book and film out there.

This is the biggest thing they should have and could have done to improve the middle-game and make the story a lot stronger, actually. If we're talking set-pieces the game between Ostagar and Landsmeet is, basically, BG2's chapter 2 - go hit Side Quest Hub #1 to #4 and get stuff done. The problem is that only one of these hubs are actually affected by the Blight (Redcliffe) and apart from a couple of random areas with darkspawn you don't really see it encroaching. Well, you do. The coffee stain on the world map. Perhaps it was simply cut from the game sometime early on due to scope, but the conference with Arl Eamon and the strategic maneuvres towards the Big Battle should really have been a progressive thing. i.e. It would have been a lot more interesting if an "Arl Eamon" figure could be rescued/recruited in Lothering, and in your little camp begins a base of operations for spywork and real military preparations. You ask for updates and donate the resources to this lieutenant of yours, not the silly 'envoys' that make little sense. Your dwarf and elf and knight friends aren't just used in the final 15 minutes of the game, you take them along when you go to destroy that bridge or hold back darkspwan from that little village while they evacuate (fits the whole LOTR-cinema thing DA has going). I don't know. I guess they had to choose to do *something* and decided they wanted to show the player a lot of the world and have a variety of quests. But I don't see how that couldn't have been done with the Blight actually happening on your doorstep.

Firkraag is rather often FOD'd, though. I was always enamoured with getting through a Disintegrate or Flesh to Stone for aesthetic reasons, but I think at least one of them isn't feasible mathematically.

Consoles are nearing their Elderly Years, that's why.

Volourn will never grow up, he's like the Black Peter Pan, here to tell you that it might be great to always be a child, but everybody around is gonna hate it. The RTO feedback seems to confirm what these DLCs are about - more combat. I guess more power to those who want more of it. I'm just glad the DLCs aren't anything I want, because I won't be tempted to deal with the buggy DLC downloader thing.

Survival Guide Fallout: New Vegas is now officially real, and we can expect more info/hype over the coming months. This is how things are gonna work (no bartering skill check) As the license/franchise owner, Bethesda will host the Official FO:NV forums, similarly to how it worked with KOTOR2 and NWN2. They foot the bill, they get a share of the attention. It

More artificial discourses that will once again have power to sway arguments and gaming preferences when they never should. We'll see if it's the imagined manifest destiny of the "simple" that defines Fable 3, or its determination to open new possibilities... Wait, hold on, I could just put my money on Heavy Rain.

From someone who rates BG2 as the most fun RPG ever and replayed it over a dozen times, it's the best and closest thing to BG2 since the advent of 3D. So worth getting. It's definitely more cinematic, and such, but it's not much easier than BG2 I think. If you skip past some of the more inane dialogue you shouldn't mind too much.

Oh, I see. In that case it's really an argument about nothing... Numbers' original point was simply that you generally want games to be more replayable. Since it's even more of a given that you want your game to be fun first, urh.

I played Fable. I thought it was irreedemable rubbish. The story was generic and boring, the combat was simple, boring and far too easy, everything looked like a bloomified parody of a CRPG. Fable 2 seemed to promise nothing new that wasn't more dives into the well of trivial and super-easy gimmicks, so I never bothered. This looks interesting, however: The other stuff about super-minimal GUI and morphing weapons are the usual Molyneux gimmicks, and the Touch command could either be great or simply linear, but I like the sound of playing King. Real C&C? Could it be? Graphics look slightly more visible this time, too.

Tolkien spent 3 pages talking about the colour of the leaves in Elven forests. Jordan spent 300 pages talking about Elayne being pregnant, and the other 500 pages of that particular book were about Rand being lost, some other characters being similarly indisposed and some even more minor characters doing things that won't be explained for another 2 books.

It'd be the closest thing to Arcanum 2, where do I donate my kidneys

Woah, that's the thought. Is this going to be the Onyx debut?

There are games that are really fun but nowhere as fun the second time round. I thought you were arguing against this?