Tigranes

....previews that said third person view is crap? Notably, not even those previews that just regurgitate old press material explicitly say that 3pp is excellent. As I say, it's all provisional until we see it ourselves (which, knowing Bethesda, will probably be after release), but yeah.

I always considered Blizzard to be very, very good at what they seek to produce: an immaculately polished, addictive and enjoyable gameplay experience with great multiplayer possibilities, based around a small number of core features, supported by a aural and visual direction that is cohesive and complementary. And Diablo 3 looks to deliver just that, once again. I see no problem with Blizzard doing that. Its goals were never anything like, say, Fallout's or even Torment's, which were respectively to bring a tabletop P&P experience into the world (and get some snark going while they're at it) and to deliver an essentially different and alternative fantasy universe with lots of choices and consequences, and a strong story. And while Blizzard's games will never give me something I get from those games, because Blizzard's own goals are very good and they produce an excellent experience, why complain? 9 million Asians aren't idiots, y'know. Koreans don't play Starcraft 10 years down the line because they're blissfully unaware of all newer games.

That's already stupid enough, and how will they deal with the kid in the future?

Yep, Spain definitely deserve it and it was good to see them actually win for once, maybe the Dutch can do it next time (:crai:). It was a pretty odd game first half - Aragones fields Xavi, Iniesta AND Fabregas, but the midfield becomes such a quagmire Spain ends up booting the ball over it. Great work by Torres and a magnificent finish. Some people seem to blame Lehmann every time Germany concede, but he's been as solid as ever and can't be blamed I think. Germany had a nice spell around 50-60 minutes but otherwise never really looked like scoring, and their efforts in the last 10 minutes were quite disappointing. Spain has a very nice squad which worked well as a team today. Hats off to Ballack for stepping on everybody on the Spanish team except Casillas within 30 minutes, then managing to get Casillas booked. What a captain. Rather disappointed that Podolski and Fabregas could not contribute more, I thinkw e'd have seen more goals otherwise but neither side really played their 'normal' game.

Well, Diogo Ribeiro thus wins the championship - wow, nobody really expected Spain to win, did they? And that's how it turns out, at least I reached double digits. Thanks for playing everyone.

I remember the US schoolteacher who called in the FBI after seeing a kid wear a shirt or something. Just another example of what happens when you let a particular discourse overwhelm your entire brain. These teachers and schools are absolutely unable to stick their heads up outside the "WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN" paradigm. I wonder if the rejected kids actually went to the party.

Camera angles are not necessarily related to historical period of game development, despite common belief. Personally, I wouldn't mind not having isometric at all, actually, if the 3pp offered was actually playable. It was crap in Oblivion, and there are reports that it's crap in FO3 as well (but we'll have to see for ourselves). I don't remember anymore so I'm sure someone will correct me, but wasn't it similar with OB where they had that one video of the woman shooting arrows at the wall and stuff, and it turned out all prescripted and fake? I mean, I know that video was fake and it was like a centrepiece, but I forget if that was the only video around or what.

Spain [3] - [1] Germany

It does'nt let you go back, no, so you should do the Tales stuff.

I don't have my copy of D2 anymore, and I'm too busy for more games anyhow. But fond memories of my level 70-something Amazon built around that awesome unique bow - Buriza? Or was Buriza the crossbow? See, I was totally kicking butt with that bow, until I was stupidly persuaded to trade it for the crossbow. That's when I lost interest, I think. Otherwise, fire/cold/elec sorcs were my thing. Fondly remember static electricity, wall of fire and that flying ice orb.

No, cows are my mortal enemy. Get out of my forums.

You really think it's idiocy?

A book cover I photographed at the local library, because it was just made for the intarnetz.

It's certainly better than hearing 6 times "HELP! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME! IF YOU DONT HELP ME.. THEY'LL KILL ME!" Free coconut for whoever gets the reference.

I think it really does need to be a start-of-conv thing. In terms of realism switching every node *does* work, yes (i.e. Gimli intimidates the guy, before Gandalf speaks up with wise persuasion) - but in terms of gameplay it really is very munchkiny, as I say, unless this means that party members interject a lot more as well (i.e. it's a lot harder than before to bluff that you will agree to kill the dwarves with a dwarf in the party). If that's happening, all good: but I think with usermade NPCs in the mix as well that might not be the case, and there really has to be a provisional concern about dialogue just being a switch-switch game, until we know more.

I generally double the time estimates they give you - like what they say about mp3 players' battery life, you can't really take them by their word. I'm in New Zealand so when I get stuff from US/UK I just sit back and assume a month for anything. And sometimes, it really does take them that long.

Awesome. Double awesome. Looks pretty damn good actually.

Yes, you're right - we are treading old ground, rn. I mean, that I can agree with 100%. Anyway, the screenie Zero posted is one of my favourites* - since rest of the time, they won't have those birthday hats and stuff. Then I think it will look very nice. Maybe a little too close to Fallout actually, because everything we've seen of the Vault suggests that, visually, is a very close replica of the original. We have heard in some journalist reports that the Vault itself is quite very different from the rest of the world in this aspect - from what I've seen so far I would agree with that. But we'll see (The Magnificent Proviso). *As long as we can turn bloom off.

*shrug* I'm perfectly willing to accept an argument that tells me why Aragones' decisions are actually astute, since I know I'm not the best armchair manager around. But what you say doesn't really persuade me - Domenech got France to the World Cup finals, but is he really a good manager, and was it really his tactical aptitude that took them that far? On the contrary, I think France got to the finals despite Domenech's decisions. Note that I'm not judging Aragones as a whole, since I know nothing about his off-the-field stuff, which can be just as important. But on-field, theres just no reason not to field Fabregas. If somebody knows why, feel free to tell me!

Fair enough. Really? I can understand how you might draw that conclusion, but I've been reading a lot of reactions about FO3, and I think as much as there is pointless naysaying, there is a lot more reasonable argument based on 'particular features that have been revealed'. Such as those stupid, stupid two guns (one of them was psychic remember?), the ghoul that fires radiation at people and heals with radiation, the nuclear exploding cars which even explode in a chain reaction, the selection of music, Dogmeat, the lot we have seen of VATS, the BOS backstory, etc. For the record, I don't think all of the stuff I mentioned is horrible. And definitely, we haven't seen much of some of the most important things, like dialogue. But I think there have been plenty of 'features' mentioned that people have talked about, and used them to form provisional assessments. Really? I still haven't bought Mass Effect. Won't, ever, until the DRM is fixed. I agree with you that most people will go out and buy the game anyway, but as I say, there's really no point lying down and making it even easier. I'll drop the child porn analogy, since it'll probably take me way too long to explain that properly.

In Morrowind, as Tale says, you could hardly specialise in everything. It was actually quite similar to Fallout in terms of how far you can spread yourself I think. By the end you were great in quite a few things (maybe a bit too many, sort of like Arcanum if you grind), but most of the time you didn't feel you could do anything. Really the only ridiculous thing about Morrowind was how everybody skipped to everywhere to increase their Acrobatics. With Oblivion you have it a little different, there's the unintuitive things Wals talked about, and there's also the fact that with things like Stealth and Bows you level up pretty darn quick. Together with "all-factions" approach, it really fits together quite weirdly - I mean of course you can be the stud of the assassins guild and the mages guild, look at yours stats! You *are* a master assassin and a master mage! To this date I've only played Oblivion once: I put 60 hours into that first playthrough. That was actually very enjoyable. I really liked trekking the forests, I liked sneaking around and using the bow system and the Brotherhood quests and stuff. I just turned off completely about caring about the story or any characters and godmode-cheated through the horrible Oblivion gates. It was a great romp that way. But when I tried to play it again (several times, all failures), I realised that I had really achieved everything I could, sucked that game dry, in that one go: all the factions, most of the skills, etc.

True, but at least you could see yourself saying such nuanced lines. That itself is a source of satisfaction. You're right. But do we really want such an instrumental approach to dialogue? I mean, why not just do Morrowind Encyclopaedias? That kind of 'fluff' you talk about, I think, helps imagination/immersion, can be enjoyable all on their own (rather like silly lines from movies that make it into pop culture), and so forth. The only reason I can see *not* to have them is... well... so you don'th ave to voice so many lines. Now we can see why voicing everything may not be the best thing in the world.

Woop. I'll fix that during the final update.

I played D2 a lot - for about a year after it first came out, I played +3 hours every day. I think I was 13. It was beautiful how well polished a game could be - in terms of general experience no game I have played before or since has even come close to how 'perfect' Diablo 2 was in that aspect, not even other Blizzard games. You could scarcely find a typo, or an out-of-place region, or a pointlessly frustrating area. Story was crap of course, but it had enough atmosphere, and consistency & depth of atmosphere, to carry you through, and even loot runs (Meph run, Diablo run, and that infamous first level in Act 5, the siege grounds - I must have gone over that hundreds of times) were exciting every time. Sure, I probably couldn't play it now, but for me D2 had more enjoyable grinding than in any game I've since tried (which is probagbly why I can't get into MMOs). I don't know. I'm interested and probably will follow a D3 just to see how the heck they propose to improve that kind of game. I mean, D2 is pretty impossible to improve, not because it's the best game ever, but because it's just something absolutely finished.

Conv system sounds very cool. Of course, that littles nippet brings up more things to think about: 1/ I wonder if you need to have any sort of consistency, or you can just keep switching guys in every reply to maximise your options? Then most parties can probably have access to nearly every conversation option in every dialogue. Maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing? I don't know. 2/ Wonder if it also works negatively or unexpectedly - i.e. might we perhaps see party members be more outspoken about what you should be saying, if they start talking for the party. But then, it's hard to do that if you don't have premade NPCs.