Tigranes

To be fair, if you graduate high school English, they *tell* you to write like that.

Yep, you can hardly compare MW's art style to Oblivion's. Anyway, Oblivion is a good example of what I'm talking about. As WoD says, being similar to LOTR isn't bad by itself at all, but you walk around in Oblivion and you seriously get a feeling of "omg its like walking around in a generic derivative of that cool movie". Now, Oblivion was pretty, and since I *like* the art style of the LOTR movies it didn't put me off too much, but then that's because I wasn't expecting any good lore or plausible world building. It's sort of what I'm hoping for with DA and it just disappoints me that so far, they're putting out an art style that seems no more unique or clearly defined than that.

Old Sierra adventure games were hilarious, and awesome to boot. Grim Fandango is cool as well. They just had style. Yet to try Psychonauts.

Yes. That identity was not necessarily unique, but it was a strong visual identity which rendered the Forgotten Realms in a very specific way (this was helped by the engine). When I am saying DA looks LOTRish I'm not actually comparing the scales on the orcs' shoulderpads or anything. Hell, LOTR had a strong visual identity. You could say it was generic but places like Minas Tirith, Hobbiton and the Dark Tower had a strong imprint. From what we've seen so far (and yeah, it might seem different when playing full ver), DA is a muddle.

I think in a few years, we will all agree with Volourn.

Warning: Spoiler!

Ironically, BG's art style, while being high fantasy, had an identity; DA's doesn't. There's nothing wrong with looking like LOTR on its own.

Maybe it's always looked like LOTR. After all, they're still banging on about dark. It's a disappointment but it's a secondary concern.

Yeah, an over the counter version that will require Steam, though. I think.

If Obs could kill party members in NWN2, sure they can do it in Aliens. When I first heard about you being Shepard before ME came out, I was actually quite excited at the possibilities behind your character being a real army captain; you could really make a different and unique RPG by building the gameplay around that concept. You don't buy crap from shops, you requisition standard equipment - but you need to pull some strings for the best stuff, or even look in the black market. Your funds come from wars and battles rather than individual adventuring, so you can requisition costly research projects in the science team. On missions you decide what platoons do and how it all unfolds. It's not impossible - games like Final Fantasy have demonstrated such set pieces already where you tell people what to do, and depending on a variety of factors, the situation unfolds. I still hope they'll go for something like that in ME2/3, but it's not too likely.

Anything known about that BHG rpg?

...only on steam, so I was finally forced to download that crap. I wasn't disappointed, it lags everywhere and takes 30 minutes to START downloading the demo. Then I clicked on the name while downloading and it tried to run the demo that was still downloading so I turned it off but it froze so I had to kill it then I ran it again and nwo it's "updating" and I don't know if that's downloading or screwing up so I'm trying to delete it all and start again but it's frozen again and I had yoghurt for breakfast. Guh. Impressions? I'm sure I read somewhere some of us already had it.

It works really well when you name your guys Jesus.

Give it a rest. That does tend to happen if you use normal time, just because everybody freaking runs at you like horses on heat. I ended up playing mostly normal-time near the end, though, just because VATS got so boring.

Jesus O'Brien, Volo is correct all over the place! ME *is* more mainstream than KOTOR, but gaming as a whole had moved in that direction in the intervening years anyway. There were differences, but not significant or relevant enough for anybody to expect it to sell a lot more than 3 million, if we aer working with those numbers.

Do we know this for certain Volo? Just curious, it'd be interesting to keep in the brain.

Man, you've been with us forever DR. It sucks. Hope you'll be back further down the line... give us a sequel!

It would also be a lot less profitable.

Blank likes a mat who takes charge.

I was in your situation last year alanschu, while playing football in a rec team.. a few people who got a bit too enthusiastic and started yelling at people, several people just putting up with it silently. I sort of got by without speaking up about it, just firing back sharply enough if they directed it at me. In the end people enjoyed it quite a bit less than they might have, and several people are now looking for fresh pastures. Doesn't do anyone good. When I was younger I used to think that it was best to keep quiet about these things. I think I was understanding it in terms of my own personality. Essentially they are 'little things' in life, and I don't want relationships or work to get bogged down because people can't get past them, and I didn't want to be someone who gets worked up by 'small' things like people being late. So I used to think it's best for me if I just deal with it. Which is bollocks, really, because the issue isn't just about yourself, it's about the relationship you've established with other people. I realised that some people that I spent a lot of time with didn't realise they were transgressing even after several years, just because I never said a thing about it. Just things like failing to be punctual, or taking liberties of my willingness to help with certain things, or whatever. Silly things, really. And the bad thing is that if you continue to put up with it, knowingly or not it builds up inside you, and just gets you pissed at them. These days I let myself say what I think a lot more, just making sure I stick to the point and don't get all purply and angry. Sometimes they respond to the point you make, sometimes they misunderstand and/or deny, or get angry/hurt, whatever. Can't be helped, really. I realised that when I was frustrated about something the presence of others who were also frustrated but silently put up with it actually ended up making all of us just suffer in silence. So I'd rather not be one of those people. What the hell is up with these therapy threads? YOU WONT GET ME TO CRY

The axe-swinging animation is really.... weird. Is that how you swing big axes? :/ I think Bioware have taken a deliberate PR policy in the kind of language they use for Dragon Age. i.e. more epic, more awesome, more dark.

It should be a lot more green, as well, but I think they simply wanted to make it look Fallout. I think they should have simply done FO3 at the same time as FO1, just on the east coast. (But then they couldn't have had the BOS and Mutants over there. Considering how retarded the writing for them was, no big loss...)

(a), Detective Flapjack will not be put off by the voice of his ex.

Australia and New Zealand have 3-year bachelors in many disciplines, especially in the humanities; then there is a 1-year honours course that is sort of a half-Masters, taught in a postgraduate environment and at a higher level than the 4th year of the bachelor in most North American / European universities. In some degrees, such as Architecture or Fashion Design, the 'honours' year is integrated and mandatory. I think the question with you Archie is whether you can do a Masters then go on to a PhD or you can do a PhD straight away. AFAIK that depends on whether you can get the special dispensation through an excellent honours, but it may be different with your particular degree/uni.

There are options for font size increases, but they are hardly needed IMO. I'm experiencing a few errors (like minimal flickeryness in the fog of war when I move the screen around) but it is wonderful. Things look really good, and at this resolution the character animations, like your zombie disguise in the Mortuary, are nice to look at. For the last couple of years I've been playing Torment windowed, and it's I think detracted from the playing experience, by making me so distracted. I started with a 15INT/17WIS player and am going through very slowly and trying to roleplay a bit - after all these playthroughs it's the first time I've dismantled the big skeletons in the Mortuary lobby, for instance. Enoch, I always just used Annah to sneak past everything. If I absolutely had to fight (or were discovered) I'd try and lure all the guards on a level to one place, then use some high level AOE magics from TNO. It's actually quite fun/challenging that way.