Tigranes

Ok

Alright, so my understanding of your comments are confirmed. Much better position to discuss now. I take it that you are fine with having 'bossy, whiny or prudish women' (yeah, because there's no woman that's not bossy, whiny or prudish.) in other games, but just not Gothic? As I said, there is nothing wrong with having a premade character in a game, but if your argument is that RPGs in general benefit from not having women, because they are all bossy, whiny or prudish, I could say all men in RPGs are macho-gruff, try-to-be-007-cool, or I-Save-the-World-paladinish. Also a lot of them aren't really pleasing to look at. We should all play games consisting of asexual skeletons speaking Arabic.

Rather necropostish, but just found a massive, relatively unknown cache of fan screenshots of MTW2 in a convention: http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=4626.0 -> Landbridges are in places such as Gibraltar. -> The 'zoom' of the campaign map is the same as RTW; so the 'size' of all countries in relation to movement points will be the same. -> In general all campaign map graphics remain the same in concept, just revamped. -> The religion system seems to be a revamped version of the BI one. -> Custom battle unit selection is the same as RTW. -> You can capture Prisoners again! See here -> Family members have: Command, Loyalty, Chivalry, Piety Shown here

Crap, my post died due to an unfortuitous back-click. Short point is I have nothing against premade characters, and premade characters mean that it is not an arbitrary exclusion of women (or heh, black people), so there's no problem there in Gothic. The whole issue, of course, had begun with the Oblivion character pic, so I had naturally assumed that your comments regarding preferring male characters and not women running around fighting in a fantasy setting were taken on board and discussed. If you wish to renege upon that particular implication, then we can all leave happy. (you = morgoth)

This is insanely amusing. A fantasy setting is a fantasy setting. The proportion of warrior-females have always been higher both in myth, and myth-inspired classic Tolkien fantasy, than in reality. This is the basis for 'unusuality', not medieval history, which is not a single point of inspiration and backdrop for Gothic or Oblivion or anything. If you don't like seeing women in these games, just say so and stop trying to pretend that you are fronting some sort of fantasy standard. At the same time, others have the right to prefer games which allow female characters, or a better representation of women. But then, if sense ruled the world this thread wouldn't be here. also: You know, this should go in the Daily show. "I don't want anything given to me that I have not earned and affected, but sure, give me a pre-made character and appearance instead of ones I choose!"

You missed the point, Dhruin. We now know that most of the things from that Gothic promotion material would either apply minimally to Oblivion, or do so inconsequentially. But before its release Oblivion could make similar claims and did make similar claims. We won't know just how relevant, significant, realistic and widespread 'choices' are in Gothic until it comes out, reading that kind of stuff is like reading "highly acclaimed" now. edit: also, Dean Howard appears to be present at the video presentation. A very impressed Dean Howard.

Was just at local EB, and they had a little poster sheet saying pre-order NWN2 to get the pre-release Toolset. So at least you get some form of toolset, and really, what's the chance that it ISNT the nwn2 toolset?

You can, apparently. I just got to an End and it said "restart, restore saved game or quit?" Got to try it more later, it's very intriguing.

Of course, all that could be said about Oblivion, and we saw how 'gimmicky' many of its choices ended up being - despite some very good things it did. We will see. If there is a genuine attempt I doubt we will be disappointed.

Two things on the last interface shot; the bloom is still horrible (although it looks like sunset time, which would make it worse than it is usually) and the icons are really silly and don't fit in. Other than that, I have no problems with both the UI and the graphics beneath, looks pretty good. But yes, I think we're all looking forward to G3 regardless.

Totally irrelevant comment, Kaftan's claims that Gothic 3 is NOT a 'pure table top RPG' was the point at work here. Not their level of success. As I recall Kaftan never blasted Gothic for not being a 'pure rpg', he just said it wasn't. Anyway, Gothic being a game striving for actiony combat and choice-involved game (in concept), you'd think atmospheric graphics would help, too. Don't mean purty, mean atmospheric. If the stupid bloom was toned down (the inventor needs to be shot) then I think Gothic 3 looks fine enough in that aspect, although animations are always the make or break factor. As I said before, it's things like out of place ugly fonts (the tooltip), unnatural bloom and unusual lack of crispness that hurts the screenies more than the fact that they were taken on a low-end comp or something.

Oh, come on. We have enough Splinter Cells in the world already.

" Looks pretty much like Oblivion, complete with the horrible facial bloom, but I've seen better screenshots for G3 and I've only seen about 5. Horrible blocky font for the creature tooltips, by the way, I hope that's only a placeholder. Out of place font really gets me for atmosphere, like the Arials in NWN.

There wasn't in RTW and it was a long time before modders found out how to change it (which they did, after about a year). As usual there had been numerous aspects of the game which were unexpectedly hardcoded. I am doubtful if this will change in the next TW.

Byzantine Empire 4tw. I hated fighting Muslim troops (just because they have so many horse archers) and the Golden Horde had the same problem of Chase: The Extended Version, but still. So the New World is just an extra province available after researching/building particular ships at a certain time?

Yes. Although you will sorely miss the massive trade income you get from Greece.. still, Scipii rarely manage to advance far as a computer, so you should be able to take Spain as well.

I love roleplaying leaders. Actually, if you want any sort of historical simulation going on in your mind, RTW's 2-turn system really kills it; RTW's movement rates and the level of detail on the campaign map means that each turn is rather like a month than a year. Yet increasing movement rates means it's too easy to "go around" things, as it's not simultaneous turns (and can't be, probably, due to CPU constraints), and decreasing the level of terrain / land detail would cheapen the new map system. That, and things like raising armies and buildings would take a lot longer in the number of turns, so that the focus of campaign gameplay would become tactical movements, and I don't think they want TW to have too much of that. A pity, but should still be good.

If you really want to play three kingdoms, just get KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They did start to go into a bit of a tangent with the 7th iteration (starting off as a lieutenant or sommat, not a ruler), but even ten years ago it was an excellent, excellent game. I would argue that its early iterations (2,3,4,5) had as much, if not more, tactical and strategical depth as Total War games. Availability shouldn't be too much of a problem for ye American/Canadians with internet delivery.

Yes. Fighting was often over by the time I got inside the town anyway. One thing that would really be excellent is to designate rebels to proper 'factions'. Each 'faction' of rebels that appear will have a specific reason for rebelling; for example, if a city rebels it can rebel in concert with some other cities, then they will be a faction that wants liberation, though some may be more amenable to limited rights and re-annexation; disinherited heirs could rally a couple of family members and cities to themselves and start a rebellion, though this could be easily dissipated once the leader himself was killed; etc, etc.

Dear lord, that's a great looking city. At the same time, it's a pathfinding HELL if that AI doesn't improve. We've still got the narrow streets, tiny tower gates and 'section''d walls.

That sounds fantabulous. (w00t)

Rome: Total War was designed to have Roman supremacy from the start, so MTW2 will definitely not have that. I too am glad to see Rome gone. I mean they've always had and will have tendencies to focus more on the West, especially because information is more 'ready' (not more plentiful) on those areas. So far the colours have been good, afaik, and perhaps the cashies from Rome and the Sega backing will act positively and we will not have fluorescent warriors anymore. Still, things like that and morale values are easily modded even by those such as myself; I think the real factors in how much better this iteration is going to be is in core gameplay decisions such as those regarding cities, siege/field battle ratios, AI, etc. What's the latest on guilds anyway?

Actually, I thought it was easier to get a big decisive field battle going in MTW; certainly you didn't have to chase down individual stacks all over the place, since there was only a certain number of places you could go to. AI invasions would also take the form of stacks coming into your province, so youc ould choose to fight a battle or be sieged. When I am sieged I hate attacking the besiegers because it takes 10 minutes just to get everyone out the door with the stupid pathfinding, and its not like the AI takes that opportunity to attack you anyway. Precisely. I actually liked medieval sieges better, because there was a lot more room to fight inside the castle as well (in the courtyards); RTW is like trying to control 500 men with 1995 pathfinding. Agreed. I was thinking more in terms of smaller villages or walled military forts; and the fortunes of the cities, trade routes and empires will dictate the prosperity of that city (as well as neighbouring resources). You could found a city in a strategic position to guard military, or direct trade away from a rival city; if an empire collapsed, that empire's capital may decline and lose population, etc, etc. But TW has always been a battle-centric game, and the campaign map really often devolves into where and when to fight your next battle. I suppose I'm looking forward to MTW2 for that, and EU3 for the other part of strategy... once again.

Since I loved MTW more than RTW, I'm quibblin'. Still, the biggest problems with TW have always been AI, both battlefield and campaign (nevermind the stupid diplomacy that doesn't work, inability to found new cities/real forts on the campaign map (I think this was addressed?) and siegecentric mentality). If these are fixed then we have a truly wonderful game on our hands; if not, then sure I'll buy it and play it, but the novelty won't last long. ...that and there won't be much novelty with a Radeon 9600.

Now you know its name, go look it up. It'll do you good.