Tigranes

Just hit chapter 4, and it's not quite as bad as I first thought. The entirety of Chapter 3 is a linear dungeon crawl that screams of cut content (quests are basically 'get 3 pieces of X to open door Y', and all 3 pieces are in 3 adjacent rooms with enemies), but the combat remains challenging and fun, letting you play around with your basically fully developed powerhouse character. I think I'm going to go on a big romp round the island before finishing off, just to see everything. It's a real pity that PB didn't have the funding to carry the quality of Chapter 1 on, though (and I think they lacked an artsy-guy type in the crew who'd come up with brilliant, wacky storylines, even though the writing is decent and consistent all round). It would have been much more interesting

Yep. I figured I couldn't dodge, so I might as well shield it up. I'm in Chapter 3 now, around level 19, and with something like 60-70% defence for physical damage, around 25% for magical. The best shield I've found so far is that of ... looks cool, too. Chapter 3's pretty boring and slow at the moment with all the lizardmen around, I guess after ~20 hours I'm hitting the grind parts. We'll see...

I think it's the most accessible and least punshing of all PB games, while still retaining the spirit of it. Great optimisation also means loading after death (which will happen) is only a 5-second hassle (and saves are basically instant). You don't really feel lost, either.

A market, just like desire, needs to be cultivated; if not, it can wither and die.

Awesome, thanks. I should have tried that... Actually...

Oh, is it restricted to those who side with the Don? Incentive for a replay I guess. I wish ranged weapons were any good in the game so I could go for a sneaky guerilla type, but the lack of a proper crosshair makes third-person shooting an exercise in frustration. Which upgraded armour? Out of the worker's clothes, officer's clothes, novice's robe and mage's robe the last has been the best for me. I also found a leather helmet in my explorations.

Nightshape - why do you feel that 'burning' the old fans is a deliberate step that is necessary to reboot the IP for general appeal? 'Burning' the old fans is not a necessary step or a goal in itself. With Bethesda there was a lot more involved - i.e. their team was not suited to resuscitating the old Fallout exactly anyway, it had been years and years since the original Fallout, etc - but in any case, if Bethesda could have made the same game and brought the Fallout fans on board they would have (as evidenced by the lot more conciliatory (or patronising, depending on how one looks at it) gestures they initially made towards the fans after the 2004 bid). So I don't think 'burning' is necessary here. Equally, for every case of FO3 where an old IP was resurrected in a way that fits with the contemporary trends in video gaming and significantly altered with a clear purpose of reaching a wider general audience across multiple platforms, there are also cases where we are getting critically acclaimed and (reasonably) commercially successful games that find a niche and dig it, and/or stay consistent as possible to the original IP - prime example being Paradox. Middle ground, I guess, is Bioware to an extent. The point is I think you are too narrow-sighted, and using the later history of the whole FO3 business (i.e. the last 2 years of production when there was very clearly a massive gap between, say, Beth and NMA / etc) to view the whole issue. I don't think you're wrong, just a little too hasty in concluding a general logic. It would be interesting to see the whole mechanics of styles and conventions getting 'left behind' - desire for such things is cultivated by the market, and as such it makes no sense to dismiss any critical investigation of the process of game fashion as 'progress' / 'moving on'. There are reasons things get 'left behind', and that means they don't necessarily have to be 'left behind'...

I'm in Chapter 2 now with my new playthrough, having gone Bandit Camp -> Harbour Town -> Monastery (Volcano Keep). Then of course the Inquisitor gives me a quest that takes me back to the Bandit Camp - apparently I can go back! Awesome. That might mean that I can rectify my error and actually learn Open Locks Level 3, because I'm really hurtin' on that one. A comment about the difficulty: the combat remains punishing in the way Gothic 3 was (just without idiotic stunlocks, etc), but the economy not so much. Maybe because I did every quest I could and searched every nook and cranny, but I ended up with something like 5000 gold at the end of Chapter 1 - most of which I then proceeded to spend on runes and blank scrolls for later. At Level 15 I also was able to max out Alchemy, Prospecting and Smithing, so I'm lugging around lots of ore and lots of potions. (The thing about me being crap with twitch fighting though, is that even when I have 50 health potions I do end up actually depleting that supply.) I've explored around two thirds of the map already, I think, and its fantastic. I think the world coudl have been a *little* bigger, but generally its a good size - not overwhelming but big and full of interesting things. I'm also having a great time with things like telekinesis, nautilus and levitations coming into play now. I'm probably going to go for a Sword / Fireball combo, though I'm finding a serious lack of good swords after I decided to go Monastery/Mage route.

What a nonsensical and unprofessional way to converse.

Just saw, what's it, the Ashes video, that everyone seemed to be up in arms about? Is that the one where they're going over a snowy cliff? It's a cutscene in a Bioware narrative, it's meant to provide some fun Hollywood action, gloriously entertaining in its polished cliche. Which I think it did just fine. Most facial animations (or rather, the expressions themselves were crap), especially the Imoen-chick when she gets the bow, but still. And I have no idea why anybody's trying to infer gameplay elements from an obvious CGI cutscene, it surely has to plumb the very deepest of pointless arguments when you say 'enemies die too fast in a cutscene' or something. Though maybe people are referring to another movie? I can't keep track of them all now.

The most delightful moment for me was when a quest told me to find someone in a cave (swamp) - I instead came across about 8 moths and had to run like hell. Stuck, I decided to explore other places a bit and left the swamp... later ascending a little hill, going into a cave, twist and turns, I came across what was seemingly a dead end with a gold vein. But I kept hearing faint buzzing, so I looked up to see an opening, and climbing up, found myself face to face with those same moths! I was only about level 5, so I had to use a narrow cave corridor to my benefit, where the moths couldn't surround me, and chug most of my health potions. Afterwards I found the body of the man I was meant to find for the quest, then came out the other end back into the swamp - fantastic. Just about finished swamp and harbour town, going to go Order again for the mage stuff and see what happens in the Monastery. It's interesting how difficult it is to pick between the two sides though, I think without the allure of magic I would have been stuck for ages (says something about player morality). The Order seems a bit too heavy-handed, more than they need to be, which shows a callous lack of concern for the island's people; but then, on the face of the threat of the ruins, the Order has a much better chance of dealing with it IMO than Don Esteban.

Hey, hey. I didn't mind, I don't know what's got people so worked up. Anyway, yes, the Codex convinced me I missed a huge amount fo content, so I went and started the game again. Then of course I got hooked again and finished everything in the bandit camp over ~6 hours - everything I missed. Everything in Risen seems made of gold right now... Counterattacks are quite easy to do against human enemies, I never tried against animal ones, but I'd assume it's only possible with 'humanoid' animals (ones with arms).

Oh, no, I just didnt understand your comment. On the technology side I only know enough to understand what most of the in-game graphics options mean... it was more of a comment on how I liked the fact that the whole place looks quite convincingly like a tropical island with a 17th-century Spanish colony. The bloom is horrible, the character models are quite poor and such, but just playing as an ignoramus on such matters it was more of a comment on how things just 'look' rather than their production quality. Would be interested to know what Risen is so poor at, though, always good to learn.

In the BG series, your character's death meant permadeath because you were a Bhaalspawn, and your Bhaal essences would take flight from the mortal shell on the point of death, much like Sarevok's did in the end of BG1. It made perfect sense story-wise, and added an additional element of challenge, so I was fine with it. Excellent, so it's not a Shandra situation (oh God). Anyway, I have no problem if DA introduces a clear and significant penalty for having party members knocked unconscious during a battle. You do lose that sense of having the thief early in the dungeon and trying to clear the rest of it without him, but there are good enough counter-arguments about loading-fetish or pointless trips back to the temple.

Huh? Just amazon.com = only around 70NZD incl. shipping, from memory. Anyway, guys, did I screw up? I've just realised that I've never even had a chance to check out the Don's camp in the swamps. I read about mages = Order only so I went straight to Harbour Town from the start, did basically all the quests there, sided with the Order and finished the questline ( ) before coming back out again. I assume I can't go to the camp anymore. Is there a lot of content (quests, items, fights) I miss by not having gone to the camp? Or are you only allowed into the camp if you side with the Don, like the monastery, anyway?

Okay, just got the recommendation for the Monastery, meaning the Order path and nearly Chapter 2. That was a lot of gaming. Game was very fun, the world was well crafted and the two sides are difficult to pick from (I only picked the Order to try the mage - which I think is a little silly). Nothing spectacular, but certainly solid and Chapter 1 was very satisfying. I'm around level 7-8 now, and the money flow's now picked up onto the 'mid-game' phase where most things are in abundance. I got trained in a little bit of everything and already went on some night heists of city merchants.

Okay, my copy arrived yesterday. Couldn't resist. Game looks quite good, I like the art direction, and runs really well - huge change from Gothic 3. I only played for about half an hour but there's a really good feel about this one. It doesn't feel like Gothic 3 where it takes a few hours to get into it. We'll see how it opens up once I get to Harbour Town.

No, because the game would have to be built around the death system.

I think it's the second best thing we can get, really. The BG system of 'two real deaths' (temporary / chunky) was great, but the fact that you had to pick up all the dead guy's loot and equipment afterwards was a chore - on the other hand, if 'dying' in the middle of a battle does have lasting consequences afterwards, that does present consequences, just not as significant. I'd' also be happy to see the 'aggro' zone become significantly larger than, say, NWN2, where the dead guys would pop back to life when you ran away far enough. I've only seen the first 5 mimutes of teh giant bomb video so far, and I'm not sure if I can stand the terminally retarded narrators, but the gameplay does look solid and fun, with good RTwP and a lot of options. Which alone makes me excited. I do think it's stupid if you can't turn those big glowing circles off (I even turned the green ones off in BG); on the other hand, in higher zoom it seems hard to make out the difference between various models due to the 'gritty' art direction, so they might turn out to be necessary a lot of the time.

There is a thread for discussion and criticism about the delay. Unless people like to wade through twelve different topics about the same thing, I think it's in everyone's interests to keep things organised. There is no problem with criticising Obsidian, Sega, or anything under the sun as long as the debate is open, everyone's opinions (including critical ones) are given minimum respect and the criticism is constructive and reasonable rather than flaming. In general people are keeping to that, which is why most critical posts are not edited or deleted at the moment. Patriot1, feel free to continue your argument in the linked thread - I am closing this to keep it all in the same place, not because what you are talking about violates forum policy. If you have any more concerns feel free to PM me.

The Codex is up in arms about how the game is awesome in Chapter 1, but then gets progressively more linear and more hack and slash until you're just sitting there fighting waves of monsters in the end. Luckily, Ch1 seems to take up something like 50% of the game time. Hmm.

Wait, so do we actually have an official confirmation now?

I've just purchased FIFA '10, after spending a few hours at work reading through pages and pages of comparisons between the soon-to-come PES 2010. I've been a PES man even with '08 and '09 (though they were both pretty poor), FIFA's always seemed so fast-paced and everything seemed to be over in one arcadey swoosh before I knew what was going on. I'm an offline, normal league player, or the enticement of better online and hugely improved master league for PES might have kept me, but what I really want is good dribbling / passing mechanics and smart, challenging AI, and apparently FIFA edges on that. ebgames in NZ still has a 7-day guarantee, though, so we'll see. Also bought a logitech PC controller that costs more than half the game itself, broke the last one after a couple fo years of abusive play. Now my gaming budget is going down the drain, Risen, Football Manager 2010 and Dragon Age will all have to compete for my money... unless my scholarships come through. Heh.

France should be very powerful and rich, yes. I think the issue is just how easily you can destroy France. 2 provinces would have been nice. Back on the EU3 wagon as I ponder the purchase or demo of Risen. Thought what the AAR guy in paradox forums did was interesting, playing Scotland, using the short distance to try and be the first to colonise North America. I'm trying to get the coastline and eventually make sure I own roughly all of US and Mexico in the end, but colonial maintenance and distance are killers and it's taking me something like 5-6 years per province. It's the 1470's now and Portugal's finally coming round... Meanwhile, the British Isles got pretty interesting after a few early wars; Connaght & Tyrone in Ireland, Wales / Northumberland / Cornwall all independent and eating into English territory. After a few more wars, they're now all my vassals sans Wales, and England's pretty much in a perpetual cycle of -3 stab and ridiculously large rebel armies.

Ah, right, did Australia ban Risen outright? I'm disappointed Bill Hastings still hasn't got around to fixing the stupid arrangement where NZ just obeys Australian censorship, but he explained to me a few years ago that they're unlikeyl to ever get the funding to hire people to properly censor everything. Bah.