Tigranes

Feargus has been talking about this for years, and I'm glad he hasn't done it. Not because I don't like open world games, but because practically, it could have become an Obsidian Killer, not Skyrim Killer. First of all, a first person, open world game is going to look and feel a lot more amateur on a Kickstarter budget than something like Project: Eternity. This is because of the difference in perspective, the kinds of middleware involved, and of course, the fact that the audience for these kinds of games, plucked from Skyrim's ten million, is much more likely to care about visual fidelity and polish. (Remember all the complaints about how FNV looked crap?) Second, these kinds of games require a lot of man hours. Bethesda put all their staff and money into TES games, and then still take a lot of shortcuts to circumvent this - such as procedurally generated landscapes. They can become huge money sinks, and even if Obsidian were to raise beyond the P:E budget (not really guaranteed given the honeymoon period with KS as a platform for gamers is over), that's a pittance. Third, I love Obsidian but time after time it has been proven that their challenge is to take their core strengths and intersect it with different genres and design sensibilities: i.e. satisfying action gamers with Alpha Protocol. Everyone knows P:E will be good because it is the very best of Obsidian, and something few can do better than Obsidian. They did well with FNV but that was a game made with existing assets, engines, scripts, etc. This will throw additional kinks into what is already a challenging and risky project. If Obsidian does go for an open world game, it should be one of their AAA projects with a big publisher. They are going to be most amenable to that kind of project; they are going to be able to adequately fund such a project. Kickstarter should be used by Obsidian to build a portfolio of games that big publishers don't cater to and games that really speak to Obsidian's core strengths and passions. Such as P:E. I can see spinoffs such as a tactical squad combat oriented Eternity or an action / co-op oriented Eternity, but hopefully cooler heads prevail at Obsidian on Eternity: Skyrim.

No disappointments yet, but I think my expectations were pretty realistic. I suppose Shadowrun Returns could have done a little better but the Berlin campaign (free for backers) is yet to come.

What is this, so few people with the beta? It's not the second coming, but it is a nice old school RPG. Combat is what you'd expect from a turn-based party RPG with guns. Basically Fallout with a party, minus aimed shots. I do think it could use more tactical options, but that may change once I find demolitions and other things to play around with. It is reasonably, but not too, difficult on Hard, though difficulty may or may not be properly implemented yet. The story and setting is OK, basically not as wacky crazy as Wasteland 1 but not exactly a Fallout clone, either. Haven't seen enough of the main plot, but writing just seems alright - certainly not Obsidian quality. There's some concern about the lack of choices & consequences and multiple solutions, but I haven't seen all the hubs to the end yet, and they promise that's what they're adding in the coming months. Graphics is OK - the indoors look very nice, the outdoors look a little more budget, but that was never a huge focus. The UI however is terrible and they promise to work on it, but it really does need an overhaul. It just sucks in many different ways. Overall I expected this to be a pretty good rather than super awesome game, I expect more of P:E and Torment, and it is proving true. Definitely don't regret backing at $75, glad it's being made and hope they can improve on it.

The Watch is a weird place. EVERY time I go there to look at something, there's just no content. A new RPG! Let's go! There's a thread with about 5 posts and a bugle. It's like they're hiding from me.

So. ****ing. Glad. I backed this.

France will draw 0-0 and 1-1 with Honduras and I-forget-what, and then lose 2-0 against Switzerland. England will crash out of the group, doesn't matter who you put in that group. They'd be my favourite option to pair up against any team I like. I hope the Dutch do well but I don't see the problem of Robben and van Persie unable to play with each other ever being resolved, which means you're always playing with 10 men relying on a one-trick pony.

I meant Bendner! Oh right, forgot about that. Indeed, he will be the White Drogba. The Greatest Striker In The World does it again.

It shouldn't overlap with dialogue choices for obvious reasons. Space would make sense. (I thought space worked in IE games, too?)

The reason I see them as separate is actually to do with multiplayer. I don't do multiplayer much, but I used to play SSX and BGDA MP in an old flat. I would not describe that as being an 'immersive' experience- there was a lot of out of game stuff going on (trash talking etc) and there was never any real feeling that you weren't actively engaged in playing a game. But it was equally if not more fun and the pacing components and the ability to do complex combinations (in SSX) without thinking about them was still there entirely. On the other hand, if I played SP I would get immersed in the more normal sense- lose track of time etc. I'm not really arguing, just clarifying why I think that way. I simply don't know enough psychology and the necessary technicalities to actually argue. Yeah, my post got away from me a bit there - the way we're talking about it certainly should be separate, since you can be 'in the flow' without being immersed, as you say. I think some of my most intense moments in that sense come from RTS multiplayer. And when I played in environments when I couldn't really get in the zone - new mouse, for example - there was a noticeable difference in the experience.

Csiksentmihalyi's answer - and mine, too - would be that what we call immersion depends a great deal on pacing as well, so that pacing is a smaller component of immersion/flow. What seems surprising from my experience is how there are many elements which, on paper, would do a great deal to break the flow (i.e. when I kept dying in the fight after Myrkul conversation in MOTB and kept having to redo the chat), but you're able to sort of suspend your annoyance for quite significant periods of time in order to try and maintain 'immersion'. It's like when you dash to the toilet while watching an engaging movie, and you try to pay as little attention to the disruption as possible.

It's wonderful to be an Arsenal fan, until March when we will throw it all away, of course. But hey, live in the present!

Csikszentmihalyi is a well known guy. Just about every other game study, academic and nonacademic, mentions flow. The archetypical formulation basically said that flow occurs when there is the right balance between, say, anxiety and relaxation, a sense of control and a sense of being out of it. It explains, for instance, how one plays the piano; you're not consciously in control of every single note you play if you play a difficult Chopin piece, but you're not out of control, either, etc, etc. It's basically the Goldilocks Theory of psychology. The easiest way to apply it with regard to games is difficulty; but yes, other cases can include having the right number of threads to follow up in an open world RPG (too many quests, too few quests...), which I think in fact Morrowind early-game does not do a great job of, which makes people feel lost, whereas Skyrim has several tight-knit chains to kick you off. It can also be applied to feedback, i.e. how much the player should know about what is happening.

The metagaming aspect is true to an extent (i.e. never spend all your SP), but not entirely, because when you fail at something this leads to other outcomes. You can also metagame until you beat strategy game missions without losing a single unit, but... Combat is the most fun part of the game, actually. Yes, you are meant to focus on one weapon & one defense stat, and also pump some of the combat attributes, or you will just get splattered all over the place. The idea being you can't be a smooth talking lock picking spear wielding dodging alchemist. An example of a character that can beat the majority of enemies out there would be an Assassin with 5 STR / 9 DEX / 5 CON + starting with something like 3 Dagger and 3 Dodge. Still leaves sufficient points to pass various Sneak and other checks in the game. I do think Block remains underpowered and high dex characters have an easier time, and that the game requires you to die a few times to figure out which challenges are too hard for you right now and which you should do first. But after some acclimatising I'm having a blast. I think I've tried about a dozen characters, 4 of them have finished the whole demo, about 4 were 5-minute experiments to play around with skills, about 4 I found I had sunk points in suboptimal ways. I still got fun out of those characters (who could for example win some of the battles). If you do want to give it a go I can give tips based on what you're trying to do.

Unlike Obsidian, inXile has not really had continuity in their personnel throughout its entire history except for, of course, Brian Fargo. After all, Obsidian has by and large been able to keep the same scale and direction of games throughout, and when it had to fire people it would try and re-hire them; it also remained pretty large throughout. inXile went through fat and lean periods, e.g. laying off most of its company after Hunted, and in the case of W2 and Torment, has hired people specifically for these projects through funds granted by Kickstarter. In other words, inXile's track record in terms of games doesn't matter quite as much as Brian Fargo's ability to put this team together and see it through. In this case it's actually correct to decide to have / not have faith based on his track record. And everything I hear suggests if anything he's a great manager. Torment was Kickstarted at pre-production stage and had a deliberately lengthy pre-production in order to focus more on writing, and to ensure a smooth transition where staff working on W2 could work on Torment - and to ensure there's a gap between the two games releasing. So it's still early stages, by design. That said, I still don't think the poll was a good idea, they should have just gotten opinions then made their own decision.

Good decision. Your old versions will be less buggy and it's easy to install a widescreen mod. Today, I've been sitting here for 3 hours wondering what to cook.

I wish I could just staple this to everybody's heads: (1) TB and RTwP are different systems from the ground up. It's not turn based just because you can pause. The kind of combat experience you get is different. (2) TB is not necessarily slower than RTwP. RTwP is not necessarily 'less tactical' than TB for a given game. (3) No, you can't have both, because the investment required is much higher than the sum of two systems, not less. Anyway, I'm glad the vote is close, they should choose whatever they want.

Thief already had goals y ou should achieve which were mission-specific and were tailored to help you play like a thief: steal stuff, don't knock anyone out, etc. What XP does is make you do all of those things - and/or other things like shoot people - not for the ultimate goal of playing like a thief but to earn new skills and develop your character. It actively detracts from what the game is trying to make you get into.

I miss Zor El Qod or whatever they were called. I find that I miss people's usernames more than I actually miss them. When I was 13 my usual haunt had a mild-mannered Australian called Head Cheese...

Alpha Protocol, seems like you can get Marburg to confront Parker about their past in the endgame; I've seen just about everything in that game but they just crammed so much reactivity in there, I'm going to have to replay the game to see it. I'm playing with the XP / AP modded so that you level up very slowly + higher damage by AI, and it's quite challenging. Almost too much; if you don't have Shadow Operative or higher level combat abilities and you've pissed off the marines it's virtually impossible to keep Surkov alive in the embassy mission ending.

DX stuff just means they will do the same thing that every media franchise has been doing for the last 20 years; release a bunch of related material across different platforms.

I'm here because I wasn't cool enough (actually, too young) to hang in the Black Isle forums, so if I joined right away in this one I could pretend to be hip and stuff. Also, I really used to like discussing games on here, though I think the demographic these days is a lot lighter on old school RPG dudes. Maybe with PE...

My current experience with the new Nexus 7: (1) I wanted a 10" but it was out of my budget. I'd recommend 10" as bigger screens are important to focus and do serious work; but this thing is useful in the sense that it even fits in some pockets and I can always have it on my hand when I walk around, etc. (2) Android system is just fine for just about everything except (a) music-related apps / functions and (b) word-processing, where there is a medley of equally meh third-party apps. I don't know if Apple does this any better, however. (3) Quest for Glory, Full Throttle, Fire Emblem, etc. on the tablet for flights, etc. Not bad at all.

I'm determined not to waste my money, and more importantly, my time on this one. Everything I'm hearing echoes the reservations that are natural for anyone who's been buying their games for a decade - they are just incapable of fixing the basic problems and tack on more crap each time (with the exception of Shogun 2). The difference is that this time even the 'new shiny stuff' isn't really that appealing. Provinces? Great, but we all knew that the campaign AI, which has never ever ever worked very well in any nonmodded 3D CA game, will make it all rather pointless. Naval battles? Yeah, huge ships, boarding, all that will work so well when the AI doesn't even know how to man a set of stone walls or go up and down some stairs. EB2, where are you...

Ultima VII is a great game and not too dated if you put in a couple hours into it. Sadly, the combat is utterly broken and you are best of pretending that it isn't there and it's just a weird DRM where you have to hold the left mouse button for a while every now and then. M&M is still on my to-do list...

Very much emjoyed it but second playthrough and its really getting old.t My melee swordsman kills everything by herself on VH, its a joke. The semblance of challenge on my first run was because I had a rigger-decker-mage with 3 body for most of the game. After plot AP upgrade in particular she can run up and doublecut anybody to death. For the Renraku run I only took a dwarf support mage, 2 out of 4 party slots. Haste PC to 5ap, kill 2 enemies a round with double cut or cleave. Took out everyone at renraku labs incl. Basilisks with full health using support mages heal ability. Will try Telestrian with mage and dodger for matrix then rest of game with only mage backup. You get far too much karma, enemies are far too stupid (hurr durr I will shoot you from far away THEN run up to you and end turn), there aren't enough enemies with interesting abilities (ghouls appear only once, not many or no adepts, no drone uaers, not much grenade types). Glad Berlin is free for KS (and preorder I think?) And hope they ramp up the shallow mechanics there. I think even some easily moddable settings like karma # and enemy levels plus some thoughtful encounter design will go a long way.