Tigranes

I heard the combat is fun, but the story is absolute crap. Sounds right, I went "oh dear gods" the moment I heard about the whole matrix business. It's stupid. I was so hopeful that we FINALLY had a story about the medieval europe/middle east. FINALLY. Then they turn it into another below-par sci fi toodly doo.

I like this Kools guy. That doesn't mean much, unfortunately. On topic: We sort of underestimate the pervasive power of the "12-16 culture". What we see on screen and think is for the 12-16s, is often consumed, and actually enjoyed/desired/supported by broader demographics; at the least, 12-16 culture is actually 8-28 by now. And that perhaps is the problem - we clamour that we want RPGs that geared to the 12-16 demographic, but when that demographic is actually much larger than 'snotty teenager', then market forces are going to make your hopes pretty distant. There are a lot of twenty and thirtysomethings who would much rather play Oblivion than Torment, and appreciate 'darker/bleaker fantasy', whether that be Calimshan or the Witcher, for 'coolness/badass factor' more than moral ambiguity and challenge. Not saying that's particularly immature or of a 'lower' cultural quality; if we all read Milton and waxed rhetoric about every game we played it wouldn't be such a peachy thing either. Just saying that as long the huge majority of gamers look for and appreciate the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of 'dark' fantasy, that is what we will get focus on - the gory finishing moves, the sex cards, the expletives, the flaying of skin and violation of human certainties not really for a meaning but for its aesthetic qualities. Ironically, as I write this, the TV screen on the icafe is showing some random rappers jumping around in a basketball stadium with a man in a green bird suit, wearing enough bling bling to blind an old man.

Speaking of dead horses, right Kaft?

Of course guerilla warfare isn't new - that's not what I am contending. And I have no problem with the presence of guerilla warfare in a fantasy game, either. What I am saying is that what lots of games seem to do these days, Witcher being one of them, is take the very specific and recent imageries of guerilla warfare and carbon copy them onto the gameworld, which naturally doesn't work well. It's not just guerilla warfare, it's the way they dress, the suicide 'bombings', the crazed fanatical ramblings, the vocabulary and inflections, the hint of 'religious' fanaticism. By the way, that's Volourn you're talking to. He'll just hit the ball right back at you, dead centre.

I don't know, I assumed the point of Witcher was that you can't pick up everything you see. Doesn't bother me too much. I still love the game but I haven't bothered with Chapter 5, mainly because the type of area it's on ( ) makes me lag so much, it's unplayable. My processor's not even on minimum reqs, so you know.

There's no problem with shaking it up. The question is how it's done. I don't have a problem with most of the comments made in that preview, but the Elves as terrorists/freedom fighters bit is really not very appealing. All it's going to do is bring in current events stuff and merge it with uncomfortable Legolas heroism, and I'm really not happy with even the Witcher handling the issue of guerilla fighting. It's too much of a blatant commentary on 90's Earth. Edit: But then, it seems the 'journalist' took a hint from sports journalism and decided to make up a 'preview' with incorrect information. Ah well.

Well, I have no interest in Krookie anymore. When's the first issue Kaft?

I learned to touch type on the forums. That's when I was 11. Yeah, I don't keep the same accounts.

Gorgon is right.

What players did you try and what errors did you get? You might want to try VLC Player, KMP or Zoom Player for a quick solution to playing troublesome files.

Advertising is not permissible in these premises. kthxbai. Feel free to PM me or another moderator if you have genuine concerns regarding Lasik and this is not, in fact, an advertisement.

Or maybe the fighter misses the roll and the goblin smacks you dead immediately after. Or the goblin has already gotten one normal hit on you, and now it's a crit. I can think of many 'dead in two/three hits' scenarios for D&D. edit: I'm not really arguing against your POV though Sand - to be honest I think its just up to the DM. The DM can roll out nerfed goblins or fudged dice rolls early game, or, if 4th Ed becomes too easy, the DM can set some house rules and step it up a bit. Otherwise we would never be able to satisfy both you and the total casual beginner who doesn't want to spend his first session rolling up five new characters.

Krookie is twelve!!

Anybody seen the film version of The Kite Runner? I've been reading the book on and off at the local bookshop (heh, broke) and I like how it is so far, so I'm going to check out the film on Wednesday. I'm thoroughly skeptical of adaptations, of course, but we shall see.

Things like Flash, Shockwave, Java and whatnot still seem to have a better chance of working in IE than Firefox. I run into this a lot because many Korean websites, thanks to their superfast broadband network, are overloaded with flashy moving things. (Example: A Popular Music Site)

It must be noted that the Witcher is a lot better than Bloodlines with bugs/stability issues, though.

You need Level of Spell You Want To Cast + 10 Wisdom to be able to cast the spell. Therefore, you will be fine once you have 19 wisdom.

How can you get paid to write with that grammar? Anyway, the traps stuff doesn't seem to really make it any easier, just less arbitrary. Well. that is, if they make the traps more lethal and give each a way to actually be circumvented. Instead of getting hit by 60 damage and not having any way to dodge it besides announcing "IM SEARCHING", now you have passive search and get more descriptors / solutions to trap avoidance, but if you do get hit, it should be a lot more lethal than it used to be.

Well, I'm going to have to wait for someone to summarise again.

Well, it looks like the debate has run its course. But I refuse to submit to pixies' whims! I shall close this thread with no witty remark. * *Actually, I was going to say class dismissed, but he said it already, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Ahhh, good ol' fashioned Sand.

Volo, if it helps, I wasn't comparing it to prev. BIO games: that opens a whole new can of worms. I just thought JE's writing was decidedly colourless and unmemorable. Got to mention though, that I liked the looks of Jade Empire. They had about five thousand times too much bloom, and took a bit too much from Supercolourful Disney World of China, but still. Heh, I can just imagine. Black Whirlwind and Henchpeck Hou + JE graphics + Disney storyline would fit in so well.

You know, I swear Kaftan is just enjoying a nice drink as he's having all of us on. If not, I'm not sure what else to say, since the likes of Spider have covered the points superbly and Kaftan has yet to respond. As in, respond to the points, and not just reply. If I can condense: 1. Kaftan, your definition of fantasy is entirely too narrow, and bases itself on (q.Spider:) a heavily overused D&D system designed and built with combat in mind, and rife with horribly crap writers trying to make a buck. As a result, you have taken outside your definition of fantasy lots of fantasy works that might well make you chagne your mind (e.g. PS:T is still fantasy. The Dark Materials trilogy by Pullman is as much fantasy as it is scifi or steampunk.) Fantasy doesn't have to have elves, or dwarves; it doesnt' even need to have magic going off everywhere, magic can be a lot more rare or limited in its usage (as opposed to 'it can do anything' Faerun.) Elves and Dwarves are simply a very popular portion of a lot of mainstream western high fantasy. The races in Fantasy can be as varied as those crazy aliens people keep making up for Sci-Fi. (I mean, Twi'leks? What?) 2. Kaftan, your assertion that Fantasy has the fewest sets of usable patterns out of all the genres is a little bit of a logical back-to-front, because what you are doing is looking at the results of mediocre, crap writers within a very narrow subset of Fantasy, and then pronouncing the general principles of Fantasy at large based upon this. That would be like me picking out some random horrible sci-fi stories from the local library, then pronouncing that Sci-Fi is way too limited or crap or whatnot. I agree that the bloated industry mainstream western high fantasy is, should be broken down quite a bit, and laid to rest for a while, and that the current environment isn't conducive to creative fantasy output. But that's a failing of the situation not the genre.

I agree much of the fantasy genre is way too formalised for its own good, and that is the cause of a lot of tedious crap we see. But that's not an inherent failure of the fantasy genre, it's just a fault with the way we have made fantasy. I don't see why we can't get more creative with fantasy (though it might not necessarily sit well with marketing departments). One of the clear ways to do this is to borrow from the history and mythology of different cultures, which is why there was so much potential for Jade Empire. Leaving aside any discussions about whether that game was any good or not, though, what JE did was take some aspects of East Asian mythologies then lay them on top of a High Fantasy core, which is why you don't see the game being particularly creative adn breaking outside the formalities of fantasy storytelling. But that's not to say it can't be done - do you see? TrueNeutral: Yes, but Kaftan seemed to like ME, so I talked about it.

Indeed Pop/Grom, I think JE2 would improve on JE; I hope it's in areas I personally found wanting. I will give JE2 a go once it comes out, probably by borrowing a 360 for a week or so. Got to do that with ME sometime, too. Spider: I've played Ninja Gaiden... I guess you could make that comparison. But there's a huge huge gulf inbetween them, sort of like between Pong and FIFA Soccer 2008. I hardly remember any interesting or good things about JE dialogue. The only parts that I found worth mentioning afterwards were a couple of Henpecked Hou's quips, and the European explorer you get to talk to.