Tigranes

Guyven is bugged. You must find him in 3 locations, then offer him your 'hearth', after which he shows up in the Keep kitchen. I did it all and no deal. He has a nice 'find' for you if he does show up, though. Other than that, Gorth covered everything, I think.

My second playthrough saw a better Keep as well... some bugs with upgrading meant I couldn't get maximum weapons and armour last time, and so forth. Didn't see too much of a difference... but using diff. characters meant I got Bishop's prompt this time ( ), I had the Construct this time, etc. However, I didn't stop to watch the ending and see how it changed - I had forgotten about the possibility of a different ending, but was rather concerned with alt-F4'ing out of the horrible narration. Really, it was an instinctive reaction!

Meh. I've come to accept the fact that X800XT over 9600Pro will do little more than give me real normal mapping. I've played games on 10-15fps for so long, it doesn't really bother me too much anymore.

Way to leave a cliffhanger, ros. Will we be told the story behind this or is it hush hush?

Oh, indubitably. It was more of a cheap shot to supplement my comment about the writing. It looks like they've expanded the event to include a bazillion categories, which is all fine, but none of the pages are really worth the read. It's nice to see Dreamfall and Okami get some thumbs up, though.

What's with all the cheap hip hop Hollywood hoopla? It's funny how the writing is still shat, but now at least everythign is hyperlinked!!! Kudos to NWN2. edit: they had Oblivion's Martin Septim as a candidate for best character. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Hooo, boy. *wipes tear from eye*

I thought both poll options actually meant "Hi, I'm Eddo."

Not that the guy doesn't deserve it, but it's pretty sad that our reaction is to try and think of the vilest things to do to the guy. I can't get past the fact that about two seconds of reflex anger destroyed this life. When I get past that, I'm pretty sure Jack Thompson will be ready to brief us on the child-killing instincts video games breed in us, 'cuz of, y'know, Satan and stuff.

When did he say that? rofl tofl? Frankly I skimmed most of your post because we seem to have gone back to where we were 5-6 posts ago. Josh didn't condemn romances in all RPGs, past present and future, he just said he didn't like what romances there were in recent CRPGs because of such tendencies. He was calling the shots as he saw them at the moment, not making some sort of all-encompassing prophetic statement about romances. So I think this is just a non-issue, and you have just misunderstood. I mean, going with Josh's line of thinking, if he ever decides to implement romances he's going to try and make them more fleshed out, more complex, without the silly "U WIN ROMANCE" style endings as he sees them, etc. Isn't that exactly what you are asking? Plus implicit comments about responsibility to the community and so forth?

And there are games that do cater to those particular desires. It would be simplistic to suggest that all games should pander to this particular subset's desires.

Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Ctrl+S Alt+F4 Right-click Rename "Open when Mass Effect is released and quote"

You're saying you would choose the intimidation line even if you didn't like the particular brand of intimidation used? Maybe I was going to intimidate someone, but would have chosen not to, if I had known that [intimidate] was going to lead to Shepard saying "Your GP or your HP". By the way, I'm not sure how much importance you believe I am giving the subject - I see it as neither trivial nor gamebreaking, so far. So it's not "OMG THIS IS WHY ME SUCKS". And I certainly agree that this is an issue that is closely related to just how pre-set Shepard's personality is going to be. I get the impression that it is going to be a little more restrictive (and hopefully, therefore stronger and better defined) than your traditional hero, but I'm pretty sure that Bioware will continue to opt to provide "good[er]" and "bad[er]" options.

Little tags such as [Angry], [sympathetic] or [innocent] fit complex pieces of dialogue about as well as you would try fitting Radiohead into a music genre. It can be done ("alternative rock" or something, whatever), but in the end it is a gross simplification and obfuscation. Furthermore, remember that the whole point of ME is to make you spend less time on picking dialogue options; in the end you would be guiding the general flow of the conversation and not controlling the conversation itself. The pace will be more cinematic but any golden quotes that are emitted will not be from the player, but rather from yet another NPC. It is not necessary 'worse' - but it makes it more like a movie (I don't see why that's necessary when movies do it better). I'm absolutely convinced that in most cases, if they do up the tempo as much as they promise to, PC dialogues will end up becoming much shorter and much simpler / direct (which also fits your general's pre-made personality).

Go through your favourite PC dialogue options in any RPG, then try and reduce them down into ME-compatible [Feeling] snippets. Didn't think so.

Fair point, alan. ... I have nothing more to say, really. I mean, Herve, we'll talk when you have 3D chess on the site. Don't you know that 3D is the future?!

Act IV is completely different, a lot more things are on fire. Also you get to stick your sword in some megaboobs.

So you're saying Interplay continued to have good and accurate tastes in game development?

Oh, my... What are you doing with my carefully detailed diversion away from another Rift-Fight?

Wish you could say that about him, huh? "

Why do you think, Josh? Exploration 'for exploration's sake' is present in many games. If Obsidian in one of its future projects takes a direction which favours exploration, I think we're mostly agreed on what type of exploration it must be; then, what is the best medium to convey that sense? BG1's "world maps" (which are essentially the same as having one big world like Oblivion or Gothic)? BG2's "spot maps"? To that end, I think a relevant question is whether an engine and game style such as the IE/BIS ones or K2/NWN2 could handle a TES/Gothic-like world map style. So on one hand it's a question of can the gameplay prove conducive to such a world, and on the other can the engine produce such areas. Obviously, Aurora/Electron cannot. Tangents upon tangents, I know, but it brings me into another issue; I believe that BIS / Obsidian design methods, perhaps coming about from its pnp roots, or from designing games with little contained areas, are very self-contained about each encounter. You will enter a room, fight some orcs, then go onto fight some other orcs. NWN2 OC had some areas with open doors, and that was a step in a different direction; instead of cleaning out 'one room aftera nother' (and liberally resting in between), you really had a sense of storming, say, Fihelis' house; because enemies were coming at you everywhere and it was a big brawl and melee. I would love to see more of this type of 'interaction' in dungeons; if you are attacked they really DO sound the alarm (instead of pretending to); you can kill the messenger so that help does not arrive (you could do this in Saradush barracks, TOB); scouting and stealth would obviously become extremely important in this case, as opposed to the time-honoured IE/OE tactic of just barging in and throwing a fireball. It could really benefit the Alien RPG, come to think of it - that kind of enemy interaction, so that it's not you coming in on an unsuspecting enemy and delivering individual, self-contained deathblows, but *you* running from *them*, trying to turn off the alarm switches trying to dodge the incoming reinforcements. I think a successful implementation of the exploration concept does require, whether in small areas or a big 'persistent' one, a sort of world map where you can reach a castle in the plains by any route you choose; and that the design concept of designing 'by encounters' is made a littel more flexible and realistic.

Volo, precisely. NWN party members were never meant to be controlled, and despite efforts on Obsidian's part, NWN2 was not 'naturally' optimised for such a purpose. It was better than 'tacked on' or 'forced on', though.

Actually, when he said 'blindly optimistic' I thought he was saying we were too optimistic to hope that Interplay wouldn't release a MMO. "

Rather, both KOTORs were designed so that the primary option was to control one character while your companions ran on autopilot; the other, slghtly less supported option was to pause and control them all with autoqueues. The camera and so forth made it difficult to control everyone in real-time, which was my point. It was exactly the same as NWN1; it wasn't designed to control a large party like you did with IE, it was designed for pause-and-cumbersome-control or letting them autopilot.

You're right roshan. You do remember that I too see the forced companions in NWN2 as its biggest, yet unnecessary, flaw? I'm just saying it was the reason given, not that it was a good or valid reason. Perhaps. But it's a rather big leap to go from a generally consented analysis of a flaw in the game to, adding implicitly your own opinions and experiences with the game and your conclusions, put forward something like that. Ah well, no point pressing it, since if pressed we can always take the "MY OPINION" exit chute. ---------- It was, and it was also something many mods rectified. But despite this flaw, which can be attributed to the age of the game, BG2 consistently had an excellent NPC model. In many ways Obsid's two games were similar to these; in some they are better; in some, they are worse. But BG2 can still give them a good fight in this arena. It's a pity, too - full voiceovers can really be benefitial in this area, bringing the characters to life. BG2 had some amazing voiceovers (who wouldn't want a fully voiced Minsc, or Edwin, or Imoen, or Sarevok?), and they really do help define a character.