Sven_

Strongholds to me admittedly are like romances. Initially, both were introduced to individually games to add a few more depth to the experience. Ever since it seems they're features off a list to tick off, regardless of the overall vision / core of the game. Maybe me though. [Admittedly, I've never been all that hugely a fan of either, sometimes due to a matter of implementation. Romances in video games are oft pretty bland/bad in general -- when they basically boil down to unlocking the R-rated final encounter of the bed-side kind, I'd take Grim Fandango's style over boobies any day.] That said, if there's a stronghold, it ideally is something deep and rewarding, and be something inherent to the core vision to the game, rather than a feature stretch goal afterthought. It may even push a bit of the envelope of what you have typically seen in your average RPG stronghold before. Personally I think the historical RPG Josh Sawyer is envisioning at some point could be tailor-made around the entire concept of running a stronghold, in particular in medieval times. I didn't spend much time on the stronghold stuff in PoE at all (release version), and in Tyranny it didn't particularly engage me. I'm tempted to try it though if I get to replay before PoE 2 is due. To me this seems always running the risk of spreading development time / budget thin. Coincidentally I'm also playing NWN2 at the moment, where in the second chapter of the main campaign or getting a stronghold. But here too the general game / plot pushes into a completely different direction, and thus so far I hardly spend any time on it. Plus, NWN2 seems fairly content-heavy even without it too. What would be great if there was a narrative and a mechanical reason to at all run a stronghold, rather than it just granting typical RPG bonus (special loot and items, gold, a place to rest for free of charge). Imagine The Army Of Bad Guys threatening to invade the lands unfortified and unprotected. Mostly you're running that stronghold when actually you're doing something else completely -- like taking the battle to the Bad Guys, rather than the other way round. BG2 as the origin of the stronghold feature* (same as romances) naturally stretches the reasoning right in its first appearance. Your half-sis is in danger, your main task is basically finding means to getting to her, and then Bioware offers you that optional distraction of cleaning and running your own house first. Thinking about it, it might have actually been a rather thinly veiled personality test from the Doctors. That's where the additional "immersion" may come from: Rather than adding another few layers on top of that same core -- rethinking that core until it becomes the bumbling, bouncing, pouding heart of the thing. * wait, didn't you win your own Castle in Might And Magic 7 already?

As this thread was opened in the PoE thread, I personally think PoE is overall fine in that regard -- it was never meant to be "that kind of game" as outlined by Josh on the last page. There's one touch I even pretty much liked in particular early on. Which is that there's an actual "road" connecting Gilded Vale to Raedric's fortress, which also goes all the way straight to Caed Nua. If you want to, you can stay on the road, not face much danger, and walk straight into the coart yard. Only then I think for games as the scale of Pillar's that's a pretty neat touch -- it adds some "conistency" to the game world that Baldur's Gate 2 for instance lacked completely, where locations would pop up on your map the moment you heard of them, and a mouse click would transfer you to the destination. PoE2 is going to be a few more open and exploration based anyway, what with the ship. Really curious what they did to this. Naturally, what allowed Bioware back then to likely fairly quickly build these maps is that assets are obviously cloned all over, like trees, etc. In the original 640x480 pixels release and not much overview, that is only much apparent in the map screen granting an overview. I'd think in the current EE on contemporary resolutions, that would show a whole lot more. Pillars was never made like that, every map is hand-crafted and fairly unique -- and the game's build on a comparably moderate budget. I still think it's an interesting topic. I might also throw in the SChwarze Auge (Realms Of Arkania) trilogy of the 1990s. In particular the first two parts. Those were first and foremost "travelling" adventures too, where getting from A to B was a core part of the appeal. They even did something I've never seen since, which is including ressource and schedule management of resting camps. Setting up guard shifts when resting in the wilderness, giving somebody the task to hunt. This is also rarely to be seen in contemporary games, let alone approached in any game, as the main aim seems to railroad players through quests, make them connecting the dots between the two next plot progression points. In my opinion this is at it worst when it's blatantly obvious you're simply following the designer's bread crumbs. However the better games still maintain that illusion that this is really your own adventure chosen. It's definitely something though I'd love to see tackled again by another game.

I hope this won't considered to be thread necro, but there is some real good discussion here. Basically, I'm a bit casually playing BG too at the moment here and there. What I'm actually playing at the moment is NWN2, which I missed when it first came around. But a few nostalgie articles and that "D&D buzz" made me also install the game that back then almost cost me my final exams and have another look after a few years... Baldur's Gate. Original release, non EE. I love this quote. I think it was acknowledged that Baldur's Gate was developed by a team that -- for a large part -- had never developed a game of this scope before, or at least were rather inexperienced. If you contrast BG's exploration with any other major RPG, even of its time -- or if compare it to NWN2, the difference hits you like a Critical Hit. For the record, I loved the exploring the vast, oft empty spaces in BG1 in 1999. To a large degree, I still do now. Apparently I was in a minority, as BG2 took a different route altogether, and from then on for Bioware there wasn't a way back either way. BG made me realize what's gone missing since. Basically, "modern" games in particular are designed like a theme park or Awesome Obstacle Course™, where two packs of loot, enemies or quests to tackle are just around every corner. You generally won't visit a single area that isn't jam packed with stuff, and you can be assured that whatever place you're going to visit, it will contain either a critical path quest advancement, or a major side quest of sorts. Baldur's Gate 1 is one of the few RPGs where travelling feels like travelling. I had completely forgotten how there can be minutes where you won't meet anyone -- and then, all of a sudden, there's blood in the grass, you'll hear a few screams, and a pack of Gnolls comes charging in. Coupled with the low level D&D, where one hit may be fatal, at its best, that's just fantastic. Arguably this was only ever possible though due to that inexperienced staff back then. It's not likely much done on purpose. However, it challenges so many RPG and gaming paradigms. Reward the player at every opportunity. Give him tons of stuff to do. Never waste resources on areas that aren't going to contain anything either way. Etc. etc. It has its flipsides, naturally. Large chunks of the areas are really empty, and the quests are mostly cooky cutter. However, I wish somebody would take a closer look at the wilderness of the Sword Coast as presented in BG and once again run with it, for a change. At its best, this isn't so much your Awesome Obstacle Course or Theme Park: Sword Coast, but a world to explore. The still pretty decent ambient FX help to establish this, naturally, as do the night/day cycles and weather effects.

Finally decided to give NWN2 a whirl -- is there any acknowledged issue/workaround when trying to play this Kotor style? As in: Moving the character directly via WASD keys in the character cam. Unlike Bioware's original or any of the Kotor games, the controlled character would regularly, and apparently randomly turn 90 degrees left or right upon stopping (releasing the forward movement key). Game looks promising, however this annoys me hugely as it's something so fundamental to the base experience. There is a fan wiki with some acknowledged camera issues. http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Camera However only when googling for the issue elsewhere I found posts that may be connected to this. https://www.gog.com/forum/neverwinter_nights_series/nwn2_180_degree_turning_bug https://steamcommunity.com/app/2760/discussions/0/828925216533531351/ Cheers and happy holidays!

This was always going to prove a controversial decision, not only because the fairly even polls, but naturally because the original Torment didn't have TB combat [and TB combat isn't that popular anymore with RPGs to begin with last time I checked]. And I'm glad there seems some balanced analysis on this on here, as for me it's hard to find elsewhere currently. Some of that backlash actually upvoted on review sites seems massively spinning it. And those spins include theories how the game were turned TB because it would make it easier to market on consoles (eagerly awaiting Bethesda's surely plans to turn Fallout 5 all TB after inXile has now cracked the massively crowds). Or how the poll would have been twisted or anything like that. There is a reason why barely any RPG developer does turn-based these days too, and from a design perspective, it is sadly not the right one. Shame that the combat in Torment didn't meet what they were aiming for, but as the pitch outlining advantages both for real-time and TB can still be googled, there seemed some thought by somebody put into this, which had little to do with focus, but the overall systems they were going for. Typically TB is just not an option anymore up-front. Go to Tim Cain, he'd love to do a TB game. For me it's hard to gauge currently what is down to crowdfunding backlash, and what is actually down to judging the game. As I haven't closely followed the process, naturally some of that may be down to the way stuff was or indeed wasn't communicated too. I see that part critical on both ends too. Developers rely on promises to get their pitch through, but they can easily promise a tad much, which isn't a phenomenon kick-started by crowdfunding [rumor has it Kings Quest VIII was initially pitched as the final pipe-dream to beat Doom, Ultima Online, The Elder Scrolls Daggerfall and Monkey Island 3 all at once and at each of their respective games -- until reality and management stepped in, and speaking of which, dose anybody remember King's Quest VIII?] . And on the players' ends, crowdfunded games are oft the first ever times where they may be somewhat more closely exposed to the development process of a game.

Why can't we have both? And why can't dungeon crawlers learn a trick or two from story-driven RPGs and vice versa? I will buy both Torment and PoE2. I think the original Icewind Dale is a tad underrated in that. It was a simple D&D story that kept you going from dungeon to dungeon, but they all where atmospheric, and even sported slightly story twists on their own, i.e. Yxunomei lair and the relevation of its cultist nature, turning the entire area from initially curiously quiet to hostile in an instant. For a supposedly straight forward dungeon crawl, there was a lot of BIS/Obsidian trademark role-playing in there. Down to the dialogue options which let you approach conversation in particular ways depending on what alignment you pictured your party to be, and there were areas that turned hostile simply because of a class picked, or the opportunity presented to talk with Evil Skeletons about politics. A truly straight-forward dungeon crawl is Eye Of The Beholder or the more recent Grimrock, and I think Icewind Dale despite its focus on combat and crawling, still sported all the trademark stuff you had come to expect from its studio. It was a dungeon crawl, alright, but one given that trademark BIS touch. I think it was me who brought up the prospect of a dungeon crawler. This wasn't about suggesting a dungeon crawl in particular, though titles such as Temple Of Elemental Evil or the Icewind Dale (2nd one in particular) could be done in the shortest amount of time back then, reportedly, which seems this would be another viable title in there, no more. In general it was more supposed to do with a tighter focus if developing on a budget (i.e. not Bioware or Bethesda). If you go back to the classics, which arguably often hadn't the constraints that are currently in place, they all had massively flaws. Torment was all about character interaction and world building, whilst the combat from Curst Prison onwards still makes you tear your hair out. Fallout was all about world reactivity, whilst the combat was fairly simplistic actually. This would carry over to follow-up studios as well. Arcanum was Fallout all over, however with an arguably much more lacklustre combat system and a narrative that could have been argued to lack focus. And this wasn't only a BIS specialty. RPGs are quite complex games in general. Some titles where entirelly geared towards recreating RPG systems (Temple Of Elemental Evil), and really succeeded in that -- there's several people who argue this to still have the best turn-based combat system in an RPG, well until Original Sin took over more recently. It's certainly the most D&D-faithful. It took Bioware a sizable budget and crew, and established brand name and engine to do their BG2, arguably the most "polished" of its then kind, to roll all the combat encounters, character development, world building and even dungeons into one. Arguably it excelled at neither of those: Torment had the better and certainly more mature storytelling, Icewind Dale had the better puzzles, dungeons and generally encounters -- and compared to the exploration of the original Baldur's Gate, the sequel was tons more linear in nature, more aking to a Japanese role-playing game of its era. But the total sum of it made it all come together. Those team sizes and budgets can be a luxury as of now. I tend to think that PoE, which I really liked, felt a tad stretched in places too, maybe that's where the term "Stretch Goal" originated from, after all, kidding. Take the amount of trash mobs being placed over a lot of maps and optionally dungeons. I also think the second part of PoE, the second town announced later on, felt far less developed than the first, in particular the quests, and the big story revelation felt a bit phoned-in just seconds before the final encounter. Combined with my Tyranny experience, to me this suggests a tight focus can only be of benefit. Speaking of which, whilst the Stronghold stuff seems to be treated as a "must have" ever since BG2 (similar to romances, which Bioware pretty much tag as "feature" nowadays), I think Tyranny could have gone without those too. That may be me though. I'm not tied to a specific type of RPG, personally, so naturally I look forward to whatever's next. But there seems ample evidence that doing a BG2 on a fraction of the budget and team sizes may not be the most ideal of ideas, and initially PoE was sort of announced as the next BG2, Torment, etc. all rolled into one. edit: That said, a more recent thought which occured to me is that developing /reworking character systems for each release individually seems adorable but a bit of a luxury too. In terms of complexity, that's almost akin to starting a new P&P system from scratch, only for it to be utilized by a single adventure module ever. PoE2 is announced, but who's to say Tyranny gets another run yet? Whatever it is they'll do, I just hope they can keep this viable for some time to come really.

The "more and more and more" kind of links to what I was hinting at in my personal post. Recently found this interview with PoE's Eric Fenstermaker who has left Obsidian. But whilst it isn't rocket science to imagine that there's always times and budget constraints, those bits where he went into some details of development here were interesting regardless. It also involves your Raedric quest, which I agree with too. More Raedrics, less of the "more generic" questlines. Raedric questline: I think it's madness that sheer volume of content is seen as a yard stick of quality, and this isn't only for open world games, but it's creeping into other games as well. You can do a lot of stuff in your typical Elder Scrolls open world game, but really, the most of it is generic cardboard-cutout filler [and I like TES!] New Vegas struck that balance in terms of open world design pretty neatly, with lots hand-crafted quests. But with games of the scope we're talking about here, a tighter focus sounds of benefit all around, whatever that focus of that current game is. Be it exploration, be it combat, be it choices (Tyranny), maybe there is also an RPG that has that entire fortress/stronghold job Tyranny spend additional ressources too on as its main course rather than a side-distraction. Say one that puts you into the shoes of a faction ruler who competes for the crown of the lands without doing the typically RPG errant quests for others. This may make for a fairly unique RPG as is too, and secondly it would avoid trying the impossible: to do a contemporary BG2 with all its impossible amounts of stuff crammed into it on tighter budgets. Obsidian too have a history of looking to hire writers, which makes more intricate personal quests rather than world conquering epics become viable too. Just because a game has a tighter scope beneath all-conquering fantasy epic doesn't mean it needs to be less interesting. Actually it may become even more interesting, as everybody appears to do their fantasy epic anyhow, no matter the size of the team and budgets. Fairly small German-based Piranha Bytes (Gothic and Risen series) too are already going on record of promoting how their new 3d action RPG Elex would actually be bigger and badder and meaner than Gothic 3, x times the size of all of it, which by general consensus was their most troubled project to date. Wonder how that will pan out. As for Obsidian, I hope they can keep this financially viable for some time to come. The first Fallout, for all its shining quality, is by "modern" standards a fairly "short" game too, by the way and can be easily completed in far less than 20 hours. A lot of that is quality 20 hours though, due to the reactivity and quests rather than trash mobs stretching play-time and fetch quests adding filler. Hear, hear. http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10231

There seems to be a lot of thoughts provided going into very specific areas, such as game mechanics. I'm not at all completely through Tyranny yet, but whilst this is no way a mocking of POE (which I enjoyed pretty much), there's two things that any Obsidian game from here one could take off this thereafter. With one it's going to be difficult, as PoE is an established brand/franchise as it is. But the other, perhaps not so much. - Being SPECIAL/ized and not wearing thin A tightly focus on one area in particular and completely running with it (in particular if developing on a tighter budget) It must be hard to do a Lord Of The Rings style epic if you aren't backed by the funding to do so, and Kickstarter-style stretch goals can wear that some thin (be it additionally companions, quests, multi-level dungeons, Strongholds, etc.). Tyranny seems to have acknowledged going with a more focused concept from the start, which was all about player decision making without any "fake" choices (which PoE had too), and those choices impacting on the world around you. It naturally has the benefit on being developed on already established engine, but that sticks out the most to me. It's kind of the Icewind Dale route of doing things, reportedly games that had the shortest development cycles back then too. Rather than having a huge scope and running danger of spreading thin, this was supposed to be a dungeon crawl experience from the start. As a result, it still has the best combat and encounter design of any of those games -- and some of the best dungeons, including all the puzzles, traps and beasties you'd expect there to be. Which may be another option for a future game, by the way. - Going off the beaten paths Fresh core narrative / world ideas that none of the bigger budget peers actually dares to sport PoE in comparison to Tyranny is much more like your standard BG-style epic fantasy adventure. It was pitched naturally as such, and it would be uncalled for to criticize the game as being mainly derivative. Still the main question answered by PoE was the one both fans and developers had been asking themselves for well over a decade: What would a game in the style of the Infinity Engine games look like if it were made today? Tyranny goes off-beat, certainly in concept it is to PoE what Planescape:Torment was to Baldur's Gate. For a start, the bad guys have won, you're not the hero to save the day necessarily. Plus rather than slaughtering thousands in the pursuit of loot, experience points and level-ups, you're being faced with consequences of your cruel actions, should you take them. I actually wish they did more with the time limit in the first act here, as that hinted to derail from the RPG cliche of ever filling quest logs and all the time in the world granted to "grind" those quests off the list. But in practice, the pressure rarely felt on as you had all the time in the world to complete your initial task. Pillars is what it is, but there is ways to stay fresh within the constraints of established stuff too. I mean, you guys did it with Kotor 2 already, taking one of the biggest franchises there has ever been and turning this some on its head, or rather the depiction of its dark/er sides and morality. Thanks for making this.

Nike "becoming" involved now as well. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/27/meet-the-unscrupulous-executives-who-conspired-with-fifa-officials-to-funnel-150-million-in-bribes/ That's what you get with doing business with crooks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Teixeira But then it's common wisdom that their rival Adidas had bought people early on. I'd recommend reading this book to anyone if it were available in English, which it apparently isn't. The title sounds sort of tabloid sensationalist, but it's written by a respected journalist writing for some of Germany's most respected papers, such as Süddeutsche Zeitung. The problem with sports journalism is in parts that it's partly self-corrupting even if not meaning to do any harm, but Kistner's not one of those as far as Germany is concerned, not even concerning Germany's most proteced and gushed over sports that is football. The likelyhood that there was ever a host nation of a major sporting event that didn't have to do any under the table favours in the last decades is like ultra slim. An English-speaking equal would be Andrew Jennings, I guess, who has also written various books now, and who claims to have been the whistleblower of information that caused the most recent arrests on his Twitter. Also, the link he posted to this "paper" is hilarious. http://www.newfifanow.org/uploads/9/8/8/1/9881717/iht_english_final_online_v2_%281%29.pdf

It's not merely Fifa. It's international sports in general. The people still governing those bodies have close ties or where installed by a German, Horst Dassler, the son of the founder of Adidas. He's argued to be the "founding father of modern sports corruption". Former Fifa head honcho Havelange, Blatter, IOC's Samaranch ... all really close pals of his he supported. http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbymcmahon/2012/07/15/a-quarter-century-after-his-death-web-woven-by-dassler-still-ensnares-soccer/ The question isn't whether there is corruption of a fundamental kind. The question is how deep it runs exactly.

Optionally, yes, probably ditto for a no auto mapping mode (for a real oldschool 1980s experience). Rich Cobbett did an interview with Fargo a couple days ago which suggested he had also seen some presentation himself. It also suggested that technologically this will be comparably advanced. Grimrock and stuff completely went with that retro vibe and ran with it, which was cool also. But whilst this appears aimed to be a dungeon crawler truly, it appears it's one that doesn't necessarily ignore later Might&Magics (or Underworld, or Arx Fatalis) for that matter. Combat will be phase based, though, and there's of course a party involved. RPS: And as long as it plays fair. The bad dungeon crawlers were always the ‘walk down the corridors, suddenly fall down a pit’ type, versus the ones where you see the details and see the designers have made a place rather than just a maze. Fargo: And the ones where the players can blame themselves are even better – they pushed on, knew they shouldn’t, paid the consequence. We’re bringing all those elements back. But what we’re also trying to do is something much more ambitious than what’s been done before. [You’ll need to wait until the start of June to see it in action unfortunately, since inXile still finishing up their presentation for the Kickstarter, but it’s a fully 3D world of both indoor and outdoor locations that looks like a 3DMark demo. The closest touchstones are Legend of Grimrock 2 and Might and Magic X, and it makes both of them look as retro as the games they’re building on.] http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/05/18/bards-tale-4/ Trying to top what's been done before sounds like a lofty goal. But then again, what were the last big first person dungeon crawlers prior to Grimrock and M&M Legacy? Wizards & Warriors and Arx Fatalis, like a decade ago? And beating the copy/paste linear tunnels in titles such as TES should be doable, ditto their overly simple puzzle design.

To put those numbers into perspective, one-off phenomenons and Blizzard blockbusters aside, I think some of the following numbers are fairly telling of what you can expect from a game released on PC these days initially. Total War Rome 2 1.13 million copies as of March 31, 2014 (game released September 2013) Football Manager 2015 (PC/Mac/Linux release, excluding FM Handheld) 810K as of March 31, 2015 (game released November 2014), according to Steamspy, the number of owners is roughly 950k by now (there was a sale in between) Alien Isolation sold about 2.1 million copies across all platforms as of March 31, 2015, reportedly 400k - 500k on PC In particular the above two are amongst the biggest PC franchises that exist. So anything in between 300k and 400k within two months ain't that shabby for a game released exclusively on PC, and one that isn't part of an established franchise. I think those are the numbers projects like these should be realistically targeting, actually -- even compared to some of the above, there are smaller teams working on them, Pillars is no exclusion, with no big publisher backing and marketing and often comparably "low tech" . I don't mean the latter purely in terms of visual glitz which a comparably big production such as Total War sports. A game such as Foot Man doesn't look much visually, but the AI and match sim (90 minutes in full, which makes Fifa look like Nintendo World Cup or Mega Man Soccer, kinda), has never had seen any serious rival even when the series had rivals. Anything significantly higher appears a tad unrealistic. In particular the recent revival of oldschool RPGs has lead to competition in numbers and quality -- whilst a series such as Football Manager is pretty much the only serious option around for bedroom Klinsmann/Guardiola wannabes by now.

I think it's been done. Saving Private Ryan, opening vs. the rest of the movie. However in here it was a deliberate decision of a skilled film maker to film this particular sequence in such a way, to engage the viewer in the same chaos the protagonists are facing. This is a generalization, but more oftenly it appears a sloppy way to cover up that the action, if actually being focused by the cam, wouldn't provide anything worth dropping your jaw over. Cover ups may include: - bad stuntwork, bad effects - popular / character actors being hired for physical roles despite not being ideal for the job (obviously Schwarzenegger's never been much of an actor, but he could tore off your arm with ease -- and for this one, Theron has a background as a dancer and a pretty big statue she could bring to the table too) - lack of superior action story boarding skills and choreography There was an article about the tendency to hire people in general who have no experience in doing action too, not thought about this much. http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/Why-most-modern-action-films-are-terrible I think in doses chaos is just fine. However it is more oftenly used as an excuse for a lack of any drama/tension, and arguably goes against a very fundamental and primary rule of visual storytelling, one of classic movies anyways (which is why it's probably so easy to get wrong if trying to be diverted from). If porn movies were shot in such a way, barely hinting at who's taking on whom and tiptoeing around the "action" -- aren't action movies at their purest porn of a different kind in some way -- they'd be practically exctinct. In any case, it's hugely great to see a movie that tries to take your breath away with what's actually shown on screen, and succeeding at that, rather than with what's barely hinted at. What is undeniably gigantic is that it doesn't feel outdated to anyone at all.

You'll probably enjoy this quote directly from Miller. The noise has become the norm, and it isn't recognized as such, but for film makers has become a distinct style slapped onto everything. Upon giving it a thought, I agree and that's another thing that made me instinctively draw the connection to the actual classics, apart from the no-nonsense take on things. You probably know this essay as well, I figure? https://vimeo.com/28016047 In an ideal world, this would be a highly influential film -- it's made like the classics, but doesn't feel outdated an iota, in fact, it makes contemporary action cinema feel real odd (which the media picks up on too -- lost count on the articles that argue Furious 7 to feel real old hat and slow in comparison, and that's a franchise all about fast speed and faster cars and not much else to begin with). However it requires a certain kind of personnel and schooling likely, and there's no doubt that Miller and John Seale grew up with classic cinema rather than video games or music videos. It appears they're the last dinosaurs on that block, though. :-/

Don't know about movies, but looking through this list it doesn't look that there's a whole lot of r-rated movies that rake in 50M+ domestically upon their opening week, i.e. do significantly better openings. Seems about onpar with last year's 22 Jump Street, which actually used to be a pretty mainstream franchise. If WB expected this to become some uber killer at the box office, big if, it's their fault. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/mpaarating.htm?yr=2015&rating=R&view=releasedate&sort=gross&order=DESC&p=.htm Not even Terminator 3 hit that, and the Terminator franchise has sadly been milked beyond its once thrilling premise into the realms of the absurd to this day (assuming this is taking inflation into account). I've personally done my deed and went a third time into the thing. This time taking my father too who could appreciate it as he grew up in the age of classic cinema, i.e. classic western movies and stuff. I think it'll do just fine, in particular as I have the impression that some still are misguided, as me initially, that this might be another case of Hollywood squeezing old assets, banking on nostalgia and remaking stuff ad infinitum (with better technique, but less actual competence and personel). As said, I liked the Max movies, but I didn't exactly follow the entire production for this one. Even so, if this was the last we seen of Max on a big screen, at least it went out with a bang (until somebody runs out of scripts in 2030ish anyway and wants a movie that banks in on the success of that Fallout 6 game). Not many series you could say that about anymore...

Probably not the greatest thing ever. For a dumb movie though it sure as heck takes its characters pretty serious. For all the over-the-topness, in your standard action flick, nobody would have turned heads for five super models appearing, for instance. They'd just be typical Hollywood casting tropes, pretty faces to please a primarily male audience, for instance. Yet they firstly rather tie in well with the movie's plotline, and also really everyone reacts to them in often quite extraordinarily ways upon first meeting. That's something that hit me personally anyways whilst watching. As the previous entry in particular had some similar religious undertones, there's probably also a symbolic thing about their number, and their clothing, and the way they are framed when we (and Max) initially get to really see them. As an aside to casting cliches, if you get a boner out of Theron in this one, you're one heck of a weirdo. I mean they don't exactly put her pretty face behind a leather mask, but she's cast the way Weaver was in Aliens or Alien³, a strong character (which she nails), not Aeon Flux. Wanna say hello to the lady? I don't get the "dumb action" thing much. There's something as bloody stupid as typical Summer Blockbusters usually are, with frantic cuts being mistaken for action, CGI overload for a bang and flash backs and contrived exposition for storytelling. And then there's this, which is something on occasion so grand, the storyboards for the action sequences would likely fill books -- and personally I also think that there's a lot of stuff being told just by the set pieces and faces, with the only thing really missing is a more gripping emotional hook to Furiosa's motivations, one that is actually translated to the audience (when the movie opens, she's actually about to detour already and take "revenge" to what's happened). And the occasional flash backs of Max' memory not doing a particularly great job of depicting his conflict, in particular as this conflict is what firstly drives Max and leads to the movie's resolution. Those flashbacks alter the original movies too and make old fans a tad confused In a sense tough, the lack of any exposition bar setting the absolutely basics you need to know for the next two hours in the beginning couple o' minutes plays into the movies favor though. As WHEN the movie slows down, in relative terms, you're eager to hang on these characters lips and soak up anything that gets you a clearer picture of what the heck is actually going on. Interestingly, I read that Miller and his co-writer had fleshed out back stories for every character, from the main guys to the war boys to the Guitar Guy . It's not explicitly translated to screen or phoned in to the audience, but this in parts explains why the movie clicks rather than "just" being a series of interconnected car crashes without any coherency backing them up. Here's somebody who cares about the world he's about to wreak havoc in, as over the top as it may be. Dumb movies are the likes of xXx, Transformers, Fast And Furious. This is on an altogether different level though, leaning more towards the likes of the original Terminator, Escape From New York, Assault On Precinct 13, basically the good stuff, as unlikely you'll get to see that from big budget Blockbuster studio productions. At times it's so raw it's unreal, whilst still having all the obvious polish from a big budget production. It's not necessarily the movie that explicitly demands anyone to think about the meaning of life and the Secret Of Monkey Island and the universe or anything, it primarily wants to thrill you and knock you out of your socks. But in its own ways and inherent action movie form, it's not just explosions galore either. I don't think it will be quite as influential nor iconic as the above mentioned. For all the greatly inventive action scenes you've never seen before quite like it, the movie basically draws from all the things of previous Max movies, only amplifying them and then some. My opinion anyways.

This movie is rad. Seen it twice since Friday, and I don't often go to the cinema. I hadn't much followed any of the production or promotion, actually, even though I've always liked Max. Really all the PC bull is distracting from what's actually going on. Which is an action movie that actually delivers and has a sense for framing images and even pacing, which is an odd thing to say considering that it's 120 minutes on full-speed non-stop. Almost a pity that this isn't released as an alternate PG13 as well, as all those fluff directors couldn't excuse themselves that they were intentionally making movies for 14 year old boys -- those 14 year olds would demand better after watching this. It's interesting that it needed to a take 70 years old called babe to get out of family movie retirement, a cinematographer who was already enjoying life after Hollywood as well to do that. Hell of a ride -- and considering that there's so few talking, there's some emotional punches as well. As this too is partly a revenge story of kinds, it isn't as huge as it was in the original Max though. An equal to the infamous hunt pack mowing down Max' family is not to be found here. Prior to my second viewing, the trailer for the new Terminator reboot was screening. And considering that trailers are running their respective movies in crunch-time, picking most of the punches and editing them into one shortie, it looked hopelessly out of sync in comparison. Don't know where Miller and crew would go from here though if they'd do another one. Trying to amp the action even more seems kind of pointless, as is trying to squeeze even more car crashes into another movie. If they do another, hopefully it will be as surprising as this one.

Obsidian are a comparably big developer considering their independent status. Hugely doubtful that a big number of those worked on PoE though, that is all throughout, full-time, exclusively. It's not viable. It's not even doable given the budget. I don't get the "million or bust" remark though, which might be a language barrier interfering. inXile are doing projects of largely comparable scale to PoE and according to Fargo could keep doing this for years if they sell 100,000 - 200,000 games. They wouldn't mind selling a million. But they certainly don't need to hit it or go bust, nor would they consider anything less a failure or anything - and if they would, that would be a huge failure in management and perception. There's not overly many PC exclusive titles that sell those numbers, not even all the Total War titles hit that. There aren't all that overly many titles that sell a million copies full-stop, thinking about it. Certainly not those being released for a single platform. According to recent news, Alien:Isolation was considered a disappointment for Sega after selling reportedly 2.1 million copies across all the platforms it's been released on, which was at least 4 consoles and PC (though that doesn't mean the title didn't turn a profit either -- it's been one of their few, perhaps arguably the only "big" product in their last year's portfolio and despite all it's also been the one that shipped the most units). Naturally 1) independent companies such as inXile work very differently from the ground-up and 2) PoE never was considered Obsidian's current big project. It may have saved, or helped to save the company back in 2012, but considering there's 100+ people working there, it's fair to assume that other projects such as Armored Warfare utilizing fairly advanced tech saw more permanent man power and experience being allocated to them. The Stick Of Truth also shipped in 2014. Might be that the number of such projects will go down in the future though. 2013/4 in particular saw a very high number of "classic" CRPGs coming out, in particular compared to the ten years before in which there was barely anything available in comparison. A lot of those are attracting similar crowds. And whilst PoE was probably the most anticipated so far, it also came last, Torment not counting. It's already quite a different market compared to when say Baldur's Gate or Fallout were initially released (both after a period of much dry and nothing), and the D&D license carried significant weight back then. Also nobody really continues pursuing expansion packs for games which are considered flops.

I'm not particularly fond of so many games getting more "streamlined" either -- in particular as argued before it has led to outright lazy design that is then being forced onto everyone rather than offering an optional "helping hand" for those who want it (there's nothing wrong with that). As posted, all these huge worlds being advertised, and then reverse-engineered to the degree that you cannot possibly get lost in those (or explore and discover at your own pace). Rather than doing it the opposite way and not creating those huge worlds in the first place, and then even on "AAA" budget ever so often desperately trying to fill them with the most inane of fetch quests and busy work. In a similar sense, based on older gameplay videos that are much slower in pace, I wonder what Bioshock initially had looked like before Levine had chickened out and realized he had to sell real copies of this. A game such as Doom³ was never advertised as anything profoundly else but being loud and dumb -- and whilst the plasmids in Bioshock provided a fun diversion for a while given the somewhat limited possibilities of the environment, the core fast-paced gunplay that was far less prominent in its forebear System Shock (2) was far less responsive and pleasing than in id's intentional piece of Sci-Fi schlock. And compared to Doom³, which isn't exactly a game of diversity, the super small cast of enemies is hugely repetitive in retrospective. I'm not arguing Doom³ to have been a particular great game or anything, but it had delivered what it had aimed to deliver, being a loud and dumb shooter of kinds that doesn't shy away from calling it's main antagonist Betruger for cripe's sake, whilst for me Bioshock was one of the more underwhelming experiences considering its inherent make-up, DNA and cosmetics hinting at something far more engaging initially but then sizzling out to be quite a simple game of shoot-the-baddy (and being a worse one at that than Doom³ in terms of mechanics anyways). Never played any of the subsequent sequels, but from comments Infinite actually doubles that and then some, even reviving the classic static straight shooting galleries almost unheard of in any major production except maybe the Painkiller series. In a sense, it's probably the game of the classic Looking Glass lineage being made for people who don't actually like games of the Looking Glass kind, similar to how open world games are being created for people who can't actually cope with worlds being wide open -- or how Bioware are making some of their RPG series such as Mass Effect appeal to people who don't actually like RPGs -- before anyone jumps on me, the "classic" ones anyways -- but shooters instead. It's frustrating for anyone who buys into this expecting something else, only to find it doesn't quite deliver that for whatever reason. Of course that's the more cynical way to look at this. The more upbeat one is that of Obsidian's Tim Cain, who said in an interview a while ago: Some of the games we started out with likely were pretty light-hearted too, heck, even some of the classics such as Wasteland at their core have a super simple combat system that almost plays itself -- and I've the feeling that folks who initially started out with the Infinity Engine series of games may initially have picked one up thinking it to be similar to Diablo by looking at the pack shots or because they could get into them comparably easier because of their engine's roots being real-time strategy, some the most popular and accessible kind of game you could get on PCs during the mid to late 90s. For all the rules and spells, it was all left-click to select and left-click to move/attack/talk, which for RPGs was almost unheard of. It's just questioning the often blanket statements that "AAA games suck" -- or questioning the very connotation of that very term that appears to include such a wide range of games from Dishonored to Alien:Isolation to Call Of Duty. It's like a catch-phrase being picked up from somewhere and then used as a generalization for like everything one deems to be wrong with the video gaming market. By nature there's many more small productions that underwhelm as there are far more than that, there's Kickstarters that are never finished, get cut short during production or never actually make it through the funding stage, and the majority of indie games aren't worth writing a damn about. And closing off with another Tim Cain quote, it's probably neither the "AAA" nor the "garage" to rave and rant about, it is the middle ground that appears at stake, and this includes some of the projects Obsidian Entertainment are doing, hugely likely. Certainly something such as PoE, which is neither/nor. That's all, folks. (Source of Cain quotes: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8416)

Dismissing games or anything because of their inherent A class blockbuster budget, distribution and marketing is kind of stupid, though. Dunno about you guys, but I'm very excited about going to Mad Max tomorrow. And damn, from all the reviews it seems Miller's actually nailed it (even without Gibson)!

In terms of VO's, It's often not so much the length of the actual lines. Apart of eating its parts of the budget, it's that the recording process is a huge deal and dictates much of the quest and dialog design. It means everything needs be locked pretty early on, for a start. For most fully-voiced games these days it doesn't end with that. As the dialogue is then also presented in a cinematic way, i.e. there's also the lip-syncing and animation process for each response and course of action. It kind of boils down to this: Back in the glory days of text adventure, a single guy sitting in his garage could blow up the Earth and have the universe implode and collapse around it within a single line of text. All that he needed was a keyboard, a 'puter and a somewhat decent skill of communicating images via prose, as well as some BASIC programming skills. That requirement's quadrupled ever since, right with the arrival of graphics (let alone voice overs), and it's getting ever more expensive since. Even for big projects, that's a challenge. Sounds Mr. Obvious, but that's just the way it is. The important thing to recognize here is that no matter the representation and effort going in, it's the exact same bottom line. You can have an entire horde of 3D artists rendering the apocalypse and then some, hire a fully professional army of voice cast providing the screams of end, despair and terror, and pay a dedicated task force of cleaning staff to deal with the aftermath. In a movie, which is all about presentation and showing you things, that is all that it's about. In a game, in which the core is interaction, having means of player action result in a consequence (and if it's just the player firing rockets on alien vessels and them blowing up), it's the exact same thing and consequence for the player no matter how it is being presented. It's the world's end, Big ****ing Game Over either way. http://www.lar.net/2011/12/19/the-cost-of-dialogue/#more-100 http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/06/voice-acting-in-rpgs-may-be-more-trouble-than-its-worth/ http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/7588-Voice-vs-Choice Just seen a video review of the upcoming Witcher 3, and the guys talked much about the chains in choices and consequences, and the world reactivity, which actually reminded me of Wasteland 2 I've just finished. Witcher 3's a game that's fully-voiced, but if would be a first, and is naturally a huge amount of work to get that rival older games such as the Fallouts, Arcanum or the more recent Wasteland 2 in these regards. Without spoiling anything, Wasteland 2 has even minor characters popping up in different ways depending on how you treated them hours later, entire areas disappearing off the map, you can flip the main quest upside down by opposing your own guys of kinds (and get an ending to that) and even though like 99,9% of players would reload when the "companion" rangers you can bolster your initial squad with die, it recognizes such too right to the very end and reacts to it (I didn't reload in one such an instance). Apart of that, rather than all the personal bickering and preferences, it'd be good for anyone here to recognize that there are distinctive styles of games which can be all made viable. I'm not overly fond generally of games turning into interactive movie kind of experiences again often (seen that in the 1990s already). But surely something such as Kotor, obviously being anything less than superbly cinematic would be kind of missing the point -- and a South Park game without the original voice cast joking around, really? Similarily, words and text can express things in ways that no fully-voiced cutscene can ever hope to do -- and Pillars Of Eternity was clearly communicated to offer a more novelized style of prose and story telling. Part of that is budget reasons (VO=expensive), part of it is concious design reasons (telling a story a certain kind of way). And that likely won't change. Now, 'bout that combat...

Could not had said it better. And yet it had taken years to figure something out that appears to work, for more specialized RPGs anyways. Going by the Road To Eternity videos, it speaks volumes that some of their staff predicted they'd barely rake in 100,000 Dollars on the first day after their Kickstarter had launched, I think some significantly less. And that's the funny thing, as this kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy: If nobody is making the games, obviously they don't sell a single copy. Almost every major Kickstarter is off a studio that got burnt by more traditional models of development/funding. Larian opted to become fully independent prior to doing Divinity OS (and risked the entire studio by doing such) http://www.pcgamer.com/how-divinity-original-sin-almost-bankrupted-larian-studios/ Brian Fargo of inXile (Torment, Wasteland 2, the already announced Bard's Tale sequel) doesn't grow tired of telling the disheartening stories of even pitching games, let alone handling them getting made. http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/5/2/5613114/wasteland-2-fallout-brian-fargo http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/15/brian-fargo-on-inxiles-darkest-publisher-driven-days/ And had Obsidian actually considered pitching PoE to the fans directly had they nod been in severe trouble likewise? http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-11-before-pillars-of-eternity-obsidian-nearly-met-its-end For a studio such as Obsidian, doing entirelly Pillars-size projects hugely likely isn't viable, though. It may be independent, but it's too big for that. Meanwhile over at inXile, they've scaled back to 25-30 employes give or take, and given interviews they should be super pleased how Wasteland's 2 been performing for them. I don't know why it took so long for RPGs in particular to figure something out. In particular Europe has specialized publishers for almost everything -- from adventure games that are far more niche to strategy games to pretty much PC specific things, such as Paradox Interactive, who are doing greatly and who make games commercially viable that are in my opinion far more hardcore and niche than any old CRPG ever was. Naturally it took Double Fine to make crowd funding appear viable, but considering that you kind of wonder what publishers were being approached and what the projects that were turned down looked like, in particular in terms of scale and budget. "Back in the days", someone like Fargo was running one of the biggest PC publishers there had been; and the Infinity Engines games weren't that hugely niche either. Even Troika Games, the follow-up of the original Fallout team of kinds, were as ambitious to be the first in line to license Valve's then fresh Source Engine who nobody expect their own coders likely had much experience to develop in. If you've already climbed from apprenticeship to the top, it's likely tough to go back to more humble beginnings and do something comparably small. It's like Tim Schafer doing Broken Age after so many years of adventure gaming hiatus; at heart he may have loved them, but they weren't viable for the house he was running and the scale of the projects he had in mind. Well that and that a lot of those studios and their follow-ups who were responsible of the make-up of the classic CRPG kind of thing are based in locations that in terms of upkeep and living are fairly expensive. Games development on average is more expensive in the US anyways than in Europe, for instance, even Western Europe. But in California where studios such as Obsidian, inXile and Double Fine are from, by reports it's another step up on. Which is all contributing to things, as the more expensive a game becomes, the less likely it is to be made -- in particular for more specialized kind of games that aren't following the blockbuster model of copying like everything that's popular on the market at any point, i.e. the Ubisoft 3d real-time action open world kind of formula that is slowly creeping into everything or Bioware willing to sacrifice their expertise in tightly scripted interactive movies in an attempt to hit on their own Skyrim. There may have been a demand, but it took an entire decade after IWD 2 had shipped for somebody major to step up and put it to the test. This is not a criticism. But it's still a story of two sides: One of joy and one of wonder no less.

Before this goes into a semantics argument (which I think is pointless), we can likely all agree that until more recently, had somebody asked for something closely connected to games made by Black Isle, Interplay, New World Computing, Sir-Tech, Bioware (of old) or Troika, say, you couldn't have pointed them to a heck of a lot of games, in particular new ones. And that despite all these companies either having folded years ago or their successors being committed to different things to various degrees. Computer and video role-playing games, in particular initially, had super strong connections to pen&paper rule sets, in particular of the D&D kind. It's crazy to think how popular Wizardry despite all the stats was in Japan too. I happen to enjoy complex character systems being translated fully into a video game, but I can also recognize and appreciate that there are other flavors and different spins -- in particular now that the market sees a much more diverse range of games again. Of the more recent Obsidian games I enjoyed both New Vegas and Eternity, despite the former obviously being a very different kind of thing. Despite me liking complex character systems, combat rules and more cerebral games all fully translated from the P&P origins, I quite like this Looking Glass piece of awesome, by the way: http://web.archive.org/web/19980224020118/http://www.lglass.com/p_info/dark/manifesto.html But this was coming from a developer re-known for thinking (brilliantly) out of any kind of box, whereas nowadays it's mostly commercial reasons why somebody would class complex p&p trappings to be a hindrance rather than a burst in creativity. It is pretty clearly admitted as such though mostly. Mostly. I think Bioware had been pretty open about where they were going, and if it wasn't them, it was Electronic Arts stepping in, like announcing that Skyrim would have changed everything (by which it was pretty clear that this was about setting sales records first and foremost). The one mistake was perhaps announcing that Dragon Age would be their return-to-roots PC exclusively series.The initial reportedly about 2 millions of BG on PC wasn't enough, Mass Effect wasn't enough either -- now they're aiming for Skyrim as well. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as that doesn't pave the way for like the entirety of the market (which had happened now for the better of the last decade). There's got to be quality games for everyone on any platform. What personally bothers me though is when I'm playing an otherwise brilliant game that on occasion borderlines on being destroyed by the design-by-marketing-committee, excessive focus group test kind of culture which on occasion influences far too much the overall design. A fairly recent example would be one mission of Dishonored in particular, which is a whodunnit of sorts, and which after a couple of minutes just phones in whodidit via an NPC appearing out of nowhere -- this NPC clearly wasn't part of the original design as it defeats the entire purpose of the mission. http://www.pcgamer.com/dishonored-clues-hints/ Also "modern" features such as the much talked about quest compass has lead to lazy quest, journal and world design being forced upon everyone, and they can outright contradict the exploration, in particular in open world games. Rather than taking these missions out, changing the design's core or making and communicating the game's world as something that players cannot possibly get lost in in the first place, this seems plenty weird. But then people on evidence have always been easily impressed by huge numbers -- and as such games are being made as huge as then some, and then reverse designed to cater to those who get lost on their way from bed to bathroom (which is has nothing to do with intelligence -- more experience or a lack of sense in direction, which can be pretty bad and is something you're born with or aren't). That plain doesn't make sense. I recently read a making of article about a then popular R-Type kind of game developed in the 1980s for Commodore 64, and the company doing that hired play testers by going to a local arcade and interviewing those making the top of the high score tables. It was experts giving feedback, exclusively. Different times and different audiences. Different budgets too though.

Managing a ranger's AC isn't THAT much work. Plus I found it immensely useful in my playthrough (it's fast and unlike regular party members is only caught against the fastest enemies in the game, hence great for scouting and luring enemies into traps, be it some you set up yourself or just luring a camp of bandits to meet&greet the group of trolls next to theirs). :D I wasn't aware how differently people played these games until I recently saw someone declaring PoE borderline unplayable for missing party AI and scripts. Some people apparently used them regularly, whilst others (like me) micromanaged every single character all the time. I came to the latter approach in two ways: I'm a bit of a control freak and wouldn't trust an AI to cast the correct spells and position itself correctly (though in retrospect, I'd gladly had accepeted an intelligent AI for casters that would auto-buff the party rather than going through the click fests required every single time -- BG2 was a bit over the top in that regards). But also because I've grown up on micro-management characters from early party RPGs. But there's also an influence that in retrospective is easily overlooked. The IE games have become as much of a synonym for the last Golden Age in strictly PC RPGs that you can easily forgot about their initial roots. I think it's easy to miss that connection nowadays, but there's a reason why compared to early Ultima and similar, top down games that are very fiddly to play today, the Infinity Engine games are quite easy to pick up. Sure, the interface takes too much screen space, and the path finding even outside of combat can be a pain in the ass, and depending on the screen resolution of unmodded games, you won't see further than two meters left and right. Plus inventory management is missing some auto sorting of stuff, though in fairness, it's nowhere near as convulted as in some "modern" games such as Skyrim, which out of the box are made with controllers in mind even on their PC ports, thus come with huge font sizes and have you slog through your inventory and abilities one item at a time. Anyway the IE started out as a prototype for a real-time strategy game (Battleground Infinity). Here's Feargus Urquhart talking about how it clicked for him and the marketing at Interplay when they saw that kind of combat mechanics and they knew they had this freshyl aquired D&D license in their portfolio (that's how Baldur's Gate was born): www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Q0E6bQ_i0 (it's from minute 12 onwards). RTS games are a lot about second to second micromanagement, I think anybody who has played Warcraft 3 can testify to that. It's much more intense in that regard, as in particular early-game losing but a minor unit or two in multi-player can lose you a game. Pulling units out of combat to heal them, casting spells on specific units, it's all done in real-time (without actually pause) and positioning is also important as well. As it's this intense, you need controls that are very refined, naturally. And the basics have always been here too, I think really the template for RTS controls are the most intuitive you got in terms of PC gaming for mouse and keyboards (right next to WASD+mouse for first person action games plus point&click for adventure games). Which likely is one of the reasons why during the mid to late 1990s every publisher had a Command&Conquer or Warcraft clone cooking. All you need to do is pointing on a character (or draw a box around a group of characters), which makes them selected. And by the time BG arrived, those systems were intelligent enough to recognize the action you wanted them to perform by simply left-clicking (like moving somewhere or if the mouse was hovered over an NPC talking to him or if it was an enemy attacking him). Unlike Dune 2, which is a pain in the ass to play nowadays, you don't need to select "attack", "move to", or anything to get them perform their tasks. Point your fingers on your character of choice, add another left-click -- it doesn't get any more intuitive with a mouse to this day. That's why the current Starcraft game and similar at their core play and control exactly like Warcraft 3 -- and Warcraft 3 came out in 2002, the year Icewind Dale 2 was released, the last of the IE games. On top of the core still being intuitive to control on PCs despite their age, I think the IE games at their combat core have always had a lot in common with these kind of games. It was build into their line-age from the way the game initially was set-up (see the video above). Yet I can see and sympathize with anyone who played these games differently; despite micro-managing units being a huge part of any of those games, and having auto-functions for that taking a lot of this away. It doesn't appear likely that such AI scripts will be included until the expansions though, if posts on this forum are to be believed.

Yup, it's set up a particular way to stir you up. It's not meant to have a fair shake on anything. It's meant to illustrate a point in an overly polemic way -- as somebody enjoying a wider range of games I don't merely get a mocking of like all new games out of it, personally, at all. The reason it resonates is that there's some truth behind. For some advantage in technology and presentation has also come with a price tag, and that tag isn't merely about higher hardware requirements or higher development costs. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/7588-Voice-vs-Choice Personally This is acknowledged by developers working on these games as well, and was also a topic of talk during the promotion of PoE.