Tigranes

Really? I saw one the other day, thought it was a Microsoft Promotion.

Allow me to enter chaos and throw more stuff into the discussion.

Kindly write me a story of life with a flowchart of all possible outcomes. I will return in seven billion light years when your work would have become exponentially more difficult.

Was that a hint about Project X? Huh? Huh?

Bioware could never do anything with BG after they split with Interplay, could they? Heck, they've spent the last three years or so on their forums responding negatively to about ten million "BG3!" threads. (and some by the same person.)

*claps* i guess you directly answered without reading the thread.

Ah, I see. So that was nowhere as restrictive as I had thought. Thanks for the clarification.

Ah, really? The first part is big news to me. How then did The Black Hound link itself to the BG license - or did it even need to? I was under the strong impression you couldn't just throw a Kara-Tur game and call it BG. As for the cameos, I was simply guessing myself, to signify the lack of relation between TBH and the previous BG games.

*watches Chris Avellone write down notes*

all you need to do is let players reconfigure all hotkeys, resize all interface windows, and move them around as you like, sticking them when they get close (like winamp sticking to top of your screen). morrowind was on the right step.

It didn't, it was almost completely a new game with completely new characters. They got around the loophole of having a BG name by - just like Dark Alliance - having a setting around the city. There might have been direct, indirect or even no relation at all with the Bhaalspawn saga, and there may have been cameos of various levels from the chracters of that saga, but the story itself was almost completely, if not completely, new.

*if* the agreement with vivendi was moot and interplay gave the jefferson works to atari, they could just release it named "Monkey Rabbit Waha Boo".

Feargus stated a while ago that 17 out of the 20 at Obsidian were ex-BIS. This info will be slightly outdated, but nevertheless helpful.

Holding the BG license means, like the IWD license, Interplay may produce D&D games, but only under their licensed names. They could release BG3: The Black Hound, for example, but not "The Black Hound: A Dungeons and Dragons Game". However, Interplay gave up the right to PC BG titles in a deal, therefore suspending Jefferson. They retain the console one. Therefore, to make a BG3, Obsidian needs only a deal with Atari, not Interplay.

As I understand it, Interplay had a deal with Atari and lost the PC BG rights. Therefore Atari has it. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite certain Bioware was never close to getting it and isn't now.

Seems to me that lots of games are RTS with RPG elements, but no true RPG game has incorporates Strategy; by that I mean BG2's strongholds. They had great potential, but they degenerated into 2-3 macguffin quest generators. Imagine if you took control of the De'Arnise Keep, organised its defences, negotiated with the Roenals and fought a siege. Probably too much effort for a sidequest, but if such action was integral to the storyline, perhaps in one place (Saradush had potential that was butchered)..

Lionheart was not made by BIS, but yes, you are correct about it. I will concede IWD and IWD2 are not PS:Ts in terms of nich

My god, another shadowpaladin vs. random people showdown. It's like watching the attack on Zion or something.

Feargus had commented that while he would have liked to hire some of the BISers when the division was near-killed in december, he already had 20 people on his project and could not afford to hire any more when they are not necessary. Interestingly, now they *are* hiring.. but I dont'see them hiring more than five or six people even with the seeming plethora of open positions. Obsidian doesn't have the funding to, unless a publisher should back them for a new project.

Yes. He's very wise.

New Zealand.

Since there has been confusing about what you've been asking, I will state here that what I interpret your query to be, so correct me if you mean something different. I've read the posts that remain on the thread but don't want to sit here working out the subtle differences in how each person interprets non-linear. So, I'll discuss about how to construct a flexible and to an extent non-linear, as in effected by player choices, main story in a CRPG, in both creative/design terms and coding terms. Gromnir is very correct when he says there has to be a degree of linearity; otherwise you may as well try to write a game that simulates *all* of your player's life; code every single thing you might do/say, every coincidental incident, and every chain reaction anything you do/say may cause. Obviously this is impossible. Therefore things like the backdrop/setting, perhaps the nature of your character, and probably the beginning / ending options would be predetermined. Thus the major skeleton of the story - even if the available endings be radically polarised in the list of available options story-wise - must be set in stone. Of course, within this major structure, variations are possible. There are various ways these variations are coded and written in CRPGs. BGII: Shadows of Amn is a prime example of one style, which many have labelled an "illusion of freedom"; this is present to a greater degree in Final Fantasy games. In BG2, the main story is very set in stone; this is a thicker skeleton than is necessary, though this usually ameliorates the quality of the plot. In BG2, whatever you do, to proceed in the game you must eventually cast out for Spellhold; you cannot abandon Imoen no matter how evil or uncaring you wish to be. Whatever you do, you cannot prevent your intoxicated slumber and the subsequent robbery of your soul; you cannot prevent your passage into the Underdark, nor can you prevent your final act, the entry into Suldanessellar and the eventual combat against Jon Irenicus. A few choices - such as Sahuagin, which pretty much screams "optional dungeon" - are available to the player, but whatever the player does, BGII forces the player into its thick major skeleton of the game. However, BGII allows some degree of freedom, or at least the illusion of freedom, in minor matters. It has numerous sidequests, though this usually means the freedom is there in your choice of undertaking it, not how you undertake it (which would be present in Fallout, a game more nonlinear in nature). Final Fantasy games are even more linear in this particular scale; it gives you prefabricated dialogue options, for example, but 90% of the story happens the same way every single time no matter what you do. You may explore, but that is only for sidequests (which in themselves are also linear) or goodies like cards. In the plot itself, games like BG series and FF series usually dont let you touch it with a ten foot pole; exceptions would be the final deciison in BGII:ToB (which really doesnt effect the story, and you are given a rather crude "nonlinearity" - pick one of two endings, there on the spot.), and the light/dark decision in KotOR. In coding terms, I'll be briefer. As stated before by somebody, it all depends on the type of coding and engine that is used for the game; but crudely, the game simply logs player decisions that effect the game later on. (e.g. in BG2, each time you reject / step forward in a romance through dialogue options, a value is kept in your savegame, something like JaheiraRomance "3" if has been terminated, etc). This is usually the way to do it; you tag the "trigger" event, and then for each option the player has (ooh, nonlinear!) you have a different set of events unfolding, sometimes with more options; it ends up looking like a tree, and you weave through the numerous options to find one of many endings for that event. (Sometimes, you have options but they all end up in one spot; this would be BG's "illusion of nonlinearity".) You will notice that I'm in no way some literary expert, and I won't even try to divulge into stuff like that. This is simply an observation from a CRPG viewpoint - a nerd's ramble, if you will. Nevertheless, I believe it holds quite true in its context.

Precisely. The type of freedom that is truly great is a consistency of the world, its interactivity, and lack of restriction. This is usually related to, say, a morrowind-style "go anywhere you want" or fallouty "multiple quest choices". But there's so much more. Let's take Baldur's Gate for example, and see how it could have expanded its offer of freedom. (yes, it wasnt that nonlinear anyway. bear with me.) A great example is the D&D magic. If I have the power to disintegrate giant beasts and summon massive bears, why can't I collapse a staircase to prevent attacks? If I have 19 dexterity why can't I try to climb a wall or jump down from one level to the other? Why can't I use my bow to cut ropes from afar, but only as Method of Skewer Orc #16? So the point here becomes interactivity with the world and a sensible representation of the fictional game world. Some games have already done this to a point... Let's say a quest in a game lets you build a bridge out of wood. That's great, it's fun. But after that, nowhere else in the game can you build a bridge, or even gather wood. That is the problem - most innovative interactions with the world are limited to novelty shows in particular quests and spots. I want to be able to gather wood and construct palisades or bridges anywhere, and actually have a use for them. That is the proper implementation of interactivity. I had talked about the spells of BG; this is a case of a sensible implementation of the game world. Often, the game code divides everything into sections; for example, buildings are placed on top of terrain, they are two seperate things - floor tiles and paper buildings on top of them, in the case of a 2D game. This prevents the terrain and the constructions from being natural. The same is with sticking spells to a combat purpose, or limited non-combat ones such as Knock and Invisibility in BG. Fallout achieved this to an extent with the skills (Science, etc), and I will acknowledge that a much greater level of this than, say, Fallout or Ultimas would be unrealistic. Yet if Obsidian ignores this sort of advancement in the game world, the said world would turn out poor indeed - even if the story, rules, and whatnot are great.

Bioware's a RPG developer that's one of the giants of the genre, is only around 6-7 years old, and manages to stay afloat, hire people, fund multiple projects and resist draconian outside intervention during development for the most part. That in all means Bioware must garner at least decent sales in its games. BGs, NWN, KoTOR have been the big games from them, and while they are fairly mainstream, especially compared to, say, Looking Glass / BIS, they're not as far down that road as something like Diablo or Halo is. Bioware makes games that cater to a fairly wide audience, getting enough sales to sit in a comfortable financial position - where they can fund ambitious projects like NWN (which was very ambitious, even if you think it's crap). Bioware will continue to prosper and produce games for some time, which is great if you like their games... now, if you think Bioware games are total tripe compared to your favourites like, oh, say, Fallout and PS:T (and I myself do value the said games more), hoping for Bioware to go more niche than they are would be hoping for a BIS, something that probably wont happen. And if you hate their games saying something like "NWN has Diablo combat", "I want PS:T Story", then I'm unsure as to what company would carry on with a BIS-style game development. Obsidian surely isn't likely to go as nich