Tigranes

One day I will run into Shryke's cold, dead, alcoholic corpse on a Wellington road And I will search it for loot.

Ah yes, one of the funnier parts of my brief visit to the US. That, and those airport security guards who fondle you then look at you like your skin is made of Terrorism . Anyway, I read the OP then jumped to this page. Am I too late to catch the Real Debate Train? I'm Asian so whichever side wins, I lose

There is a Lovecraftian RPG in the works, called Cyclopean, at the Iron Tower Studios (mainly known for Age of Decadence). Never liked the setting myself, but it sounded like they were pretty faithful to it.

FO3/SOZ now and Empire: Total War / DA / AP / Aliens in 2009? Should tide me by pretty well. Maybe one of those games will finally be a game I can replay again and again. Surely the age of classics can come again.

There's a lot of potential, and lot of actually 'good' RP going on out there, whether that be in games like NWN or proper MMOs (the standards of 'good' being subjective). Certainly there's a passion for it. It's just a matter of finding the right group... and prevent random idiots and PK'ers from ruining it.

It's always a pity to me when modders say this - I can understand, but if modders can't incorporate the little snippets of ideas people have (esp. people who won't be modding themselves), then who will? I'm sure they won't mind. Anyway... I haven't checked on the hak scene in a couple of years or so, so there might be something out there by now. Before that, though, uneven geometry in interiors was virtually impossible. I agree - let me elaborate. I actually mentioned that because in discussing uneven geometry and collapsed floors, I thought there was great potential for a tower that actually felt like a tower and different levels were integrated, not your usual D&D tower where each level is completely different and separate (nobody ever comes to check out the commotion above, you have a "lava level" then an "ice level", etc). So, by golem v. golem action... we have two examples; 1) You enter a level, and its full of dormant golems. You know if you open the doors to the next level, they will attack. You fiddle with their programming (threaten/kill the mage in his lab?) and make some of them fight each other, then you move on to next level. Always fun, but nothing new. 2) But what about a situation where your fiddling with golems is 'global'? i.e. Golems are used as sentries adn bodyguards all over the tower, but your fiddling in one room affects many golems in every level of the tower. You might go up onto the next floor to find that the enemies who were waiting for you are now fighting their own golem (Good!), or that some of the golems destroyed some stuff and now cause even more headaches for you (Bad!). In other words, if there is a level of integrity within the tower, then actions on one level can have effects on many others, in many different ways, and they can be good or bad. I'd be far more pleased to find that my golem-fiddling on level 3 has alerted the guards to my presence in level 8, than golem-fiddling on level 3 opening a locked door in level 3. Anyway, that was just a simple example, and an excuse for a rant.

Is it just me or does it sound a lot like the Ice Island on the TOTSC? Not that that's bad, but that's how I always understood that place. With the exception that you never really discovered hwo people get sucked in there. Would be hard to do in NWN, by the way. NWN likes its flat flat floors. It sounds like an interesting dungeon romp (and a fun one if IWD2-esque tactical encounters are properly designed, as opposed to NWN walkovers). There are possibilities for some interesting twists in the story (finding out the story behind the tower), but also, since it's a wacky magic tower, lots of weird things to interact with (not just "find magic key X to go to Y" but, say, tamper with the magic field in the tower, make some of its golems turn on others, etc). but I' msure you have your own ideas.

I'm not going to comment on the banner picture and the lhs picture, since I'm pretty sure we won't see them at launch. Right? The main area looks alright, gonna be interesting to see what the game is like.

Unusually enough for Obsid games / CRPGs, here I'm in the position of not really being able to empathise because I can't tell the difference. You could tell me every non-energy/non-gauss weapon in FO2 exists in teh real world exactly the same way, and I'd believe that. Don't know a thing about guns. Which means: For a minute I was thinking "isn't that realistic"? Because so many games do that. :/ This whole argument is at a massive impasse we can never really get past, though. The devs are doing what they're doing because they think the current setup is the most fun for AP's situations, and we won't know until we get a lot more info to make our own call on that. I have to say, though, I struggle to think of any situation where, say, you can dual-wield but not single-wield SMGs. What, do they sell SMGs by the pair at wall-mart, connected with little chains?

Sometimes, I approve mkreku's posts, and it feels really weird. Even weirder if I'm doing it at work!

Whenever the loading screens annoy me (especially when the bar re-sets!), I just think of Gothic 3. Happy place.

Tonight's session: A giant boss?! What the hell was that?!

Your mom is - *ahem* Back on course...

Just check the Top 10 downloaded mods in a month and voila. All spoilers below are not spoilers for anyone who's ever read a single preview or watched a vid, but I'll mark thema nyway. I've been way too busy to play as much as I'd like, since I like nice long stretches for these kind of games, but I think I'm nearing the ten-hour mark. I still haven't even run into Dogmeat, but I did go around pretty weird. Still haven't done the , and still confusedly Metro'ing around trying to get to . Not even level 5 either, thanks to the NMA compendium mod slowing things down (too much, in my opinion - I'm all for making things harder, but it breaks the balance with skill levels so that you can't do anything). I'll probably post a comprehensive look-back after I finish the game, in relation to all the hoopla before release. Oh, all that pre-release fuss about ? Wasn't as bad as I feared, but they really blew the opportunity to make it good with . Like, they actually came halfway to providing a plausible scenario and reasoning, as well as a moral dilemma, but the dialogue was so vague, unpolished, rough, incompetent - in fact, a lot of Bethesda's dialogue reads like they had to write a 50-word version of a 300-word script in fifteen seconds while short on sleep. Real pity, because develop it better and they had a very novel and special situation in their hands. Specifically,

Cool idea, but with FO3's interface and AI? Hrm... Watch dozens of enemise and allies run into each other and the environment while blurting out random radiant AI soundbites, and shooting each other. The actual DLC is a great idea. The whole 'simulator' business and bringing weapons back with you to the real world is pretty silly, but it was the most practical solution, so I don't mind too much (though personally, I'd probably drop those weapons after the simulation). I think they can do some exciting things with these 'past' scenarios. Would also be good if a future DLC just added a single location, very well fleshed out and full of quests. Story-wise? We'll see in the execution.

I still don't understand that decision. Not too big a deal for me, but why would you ever *force* dual-wield?

Moving on...

They would both be great if time actually passed, and the interface didn't take up the whole screen. Right now you can rob someone dry if they only leave the room for a single second!

GW was instanced, not properly persistent, like Diablo 2 / 3 and NWN 1 / 2.

So, uh, how is it any different from the Gothics? Or is it not meant to be?

Hrm... see, I never really understood how that game worked. I'm still disappointed beth didn't implement Thief's lockpicking mechanism. I guess people would have yelled at them, but still. Even worse, I believe time doesn't pass while you pick locks. That kills all the tension!

What? Why did I lose so much then?

Killian ate Sand.

Dice poker in Witcher is one of the best minigames I've played for a while. Nothing special, but it's fun, it's optional, and it hits the right balance of challenge. Same could be said, in fact, for FFVIII's card game (unless you wanted to collect 'em all, Pika).

Of course it sounds bad if you put it like that.