lobotomy42

I'm deeply ambivalent about this. On the one hand, the origin stories were one of the things I liked about DA. On the other hand, the part *immediately after* the origin stories is one of the worst parts. It never occurred to me that there might be a casual connection between those two things. But you're right, it is partially an effect of being yanked out of the context you've just started establishing yourself in and then being dumped in a new context which has very little to do with the former. Combine that with the Wardens literally telling you "This is how we do things around here," the net effect is drawing attention to the linearity of the most linear part of the game. I'd like to think, though, that there are some better ways to hide this and keep the Origin stories.

What bothered me about Dragon Age 2 was the sense I had of being rail-roaded everywhere. I get that "exploration" is not real in any story-driven RPG, and certainly not in a Bioware RPG, and I'm fine with that. But in Dragon Age Origins managed to preserve the illusion of it. In Dragon Age 2, I was shepherded from one cutscene to next without really understanding why or deciding to, and often stumbling into unrelated plots (and their cutscenes) before I could blink. The effect was watching a lot of people talk about a lot of different things in a very jilted and confusing way, breaking all illusion. While my player character just seemed to agree with everything everyone said, regardless of how I felt about anything. This improved a bit before the end, and I eventually found the "Dragon Age" roots underneath the surface, but you have to really dig for them. I think this could have been alleviated by making the quick-travel map a little less convenient, or least optional. And maybe not having the cutscenes trigger QUITE so aggressively. I miss the "camp" from Origins. If nothing else, it signals a "Hey, I'm ready to talk to people about some stuff now" and therefore requires a small amount of player buy-in.

What, no Fire Emblem? Someone already mentioned the Tales games, which tend to be hit or miss. But personally I thought the characters in Tales of the Abyss were pretty distinct and manged to not be total JRPG stereotypes. They're not exactly "companions" since there is no PC avatar, but they are characters who interact with some (minor) input from the player. The companions in Mass Effect the First were not super-detailed, but good. (This was very much less the case with the later games in that series, though.) KotOR: Jolee Bindo was fantastic. As were Kreia, and the droids. And Visas Marr, and Atton Rand. Most of the rest were a bit forgettable. Dragon Age Origins had some great companions. I had strong reactions to just about every one of them, except Shale who for some reason was just slightly too ridiculous a concept for me. Oh, and that dwarf, he was awful. The expansion's characters...I don't even remember who they were, except for Justice and Anders, and only because they ended up in DA2. Dragon Age 2's characters were better in theory than in practice. I hated Sebastian at first, but I probably liked the most him by the end. Isabela was a bridge too far. Neverwinter had mostly terrible companions, they were better in NWN2, and *amazing* in MotB. Mask of the Betrayer is probably the gold standard for companion dialogue for me. Planescape, obviously, is excellent also, although I find that my memory of the companions has faded with time.

DAO = Glory? *laughs hysterically* Someone's allowed nostalgia glasses to tint the derp roads and the Tower, at the very least. Oh, that forest sucked too. And Awakening... still doesn't work? Glory, indeed. I think "glory" here needs to be interpreted relative to the rest of the series, not relative to other games.

Since there was also a DRM-free version released, this game would not be a good test of that theory.

More technical limitation than design choice. I think I heard they had problems implementing manual saves and not enough money to get around them. That really sucks That means if I'd get a less desirable outcome from one dialog option, or would like to check the other options out of curiosity, I'd have to replay a portion of the game to get back where I was. And I play around with dialogues A LOT. Looks like I have to pass this one.. really a shame, like dialog heavy rpg's rain from the sky. I actually think it's kind of good. It'll force me to role-play more, and actually commit to certain choices instead of reloading a few times to see where they go. (Which I am always tempted to do, no matter how hard I tell myself not to.)

The Walking Dead Lollipop Chainsaw Crimson Shroud What else came out this year? Diablo III Mass Effect 3 I can't think of much else.

This, a thousand times, this. Mass Effect 2 was lauded at the time for some good reasons, but everyone seemed to overlook the fact that the story in ME2 barely made sense in and of itself -- and makes almost no sense as part of a trilogy.

The Walking Dead. No question.

Sounds to me like the main studio is moving on to the "Next Big Thing" while the Montreal studio gets to takeover future ME iterations.

I would also encourage people to back this!

Have you guys seen this? It seems like a pretty cool idea for a space strategy-RPG, sort of like Space Rangers: They're a little sparse on details for the plot, other than to say that it will have one and make us say "That's awesome." :-/ But everything else looks pretty good, and I love those character profile images. Disclaimer: I have backed this project.

There isn't much connection between the OC and MotB. You can safely start a new game in MotB without missing much.

Not to sound like a broken record, but Planescape: Torment is definitely "the" cRPG to play if you only ever play one.

You know what I've never seen in an RPG? An income tax collector!

I increased my pledge!

This game isn't a D&D game, so hopefully we can kill the rest button once and for all. I thought Dragon Age's method of dealing with this was perfectly reasonable: when combat's over, everyone auto-heals. If you want to make it manual, rather than automated, I'm fine with non-combat healing potions, as long as they are *trvially easy* to find and use. I don't really see why that's any better than auto-heal, though.

The animation and music of this game look so, so good.

Ditto what's been said already: - George Ziets, and an area / questline designed by him - Documentary (Maybe not *quite* as extensive as the Double Fine series, but something smaller that's still an honest look at the process) - Italian/Russian translation

If they port to consoles - or more likely, tablets - after release, fine, the more the merrier. But they should do the PC version first without regard for other formats.

In general, I would like to see a huge amount of sidequests - huge in both number and in variety (dialogue, combat, stealth, magic, puzzle, combinations thereof!) And, if I may re-post myself from http://forums.obsidi...pg/page__st__60, I'd specifically love to see:

I don't have a direct answer to the question. It depends on how powerful the most powerful NPC is. I don't think the PC should become as powerful as a minor god, but I do believe in a sense of progression. If I've been playing for 20 hours and levelling, I do not want my character to die fighting a rat. On the other hand, I definitely, definitely do not want level scaling. If I wander into a dangerous area with creatures higher-level than me, I should expect to die pretty quickly, or get the hell out. At the moment, I don't particularly care about how the stats are structured - they are just a numeric abstraction of the fictional combat, so I'm not sure there is even a way to judge if a given number is "good" or "realistic" without knowing the whole combat system and what those numbers are supposed to represent.

28 Planescape: Torment NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer Dragon Age: Origins

More information about the game, especially depth of NPC conversation and companion options. George Ziets.

One of my favorite ideas first appeared (AFAIK) in Neverwinter Nights 2: the "other" party of heroes. In NWN2, once you got a keep, a band of adventurers would start appearing and asking for work. If you wanted to mess with them, you could send them out on made-up quests and watch them get all beat-up. In NWN2 it was largely a joke, but what if it weren't? Imagine showing up in a town and discovering that there were another group of heroes accomplishing similar things as you: "Hi there, I'm new in town! Have any work?" "Funny you should ask! Until yesterday, my basement was full of rats. But just yesterday, this lovely group of heroes showed up and cleared them out. Wasn't that nice of them?" This could become a game mechanic: grabbing and completing quests before the "other" group gets to them. Eventually you could deal the party by recruiting some of them, killing them, convincing them to go home, tricking them into taking lousy quests, or just letting them be and continue to watch them snatch up your quests. Perhaps you could even manipulate them into doing all the hard work and then you and your party could swoop in to claim the rewards and credit.