Jack the Ripper

Incredibles and Toy Story sequels? Very yes.

So? Do you think they're doing this for the good of the video games or to placate conservatives or anyone else who's being prudish about women in bathing suits? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I didn't read through the entire thread as it's late and I'm tired, but you should note that when it comes to censorship, it's typically liberal democrats that take the charge, not conservatives. That "Parental Advisory" sticker on your CD: Tipper Gore. Violent game bans: Illinois, Michigan, Maryland. Biggest pushers for media censorship: Joseph Lieberman. The MPAA: Feminists. ESRB: Heavily endorsed by democrats. And not that I think they're banning booth babes to appeal to prudes, even the story you're mentioning is happening in a heavily liberal city in California, although the violent game ban was deemed unconstitutional in California by a conservative judge. And this story already happened in another heavily liberal city, Las Vegas. Seriously, censoring music, movies and video games, and blaming them for violence and depravity in society, is a liberal gimmick used to tell hardcore family people that the democratic party is the party of morality.

Sweet. I no longer have to change channels after The Parkers to watch Elimidate.

The Dresden Dolls - Missed Me

The difference is that the United States wasn't attacked or threatened by a sovereign nation like Chirac is warning against (Iran), it was attacked by a terrorist organization being fostered by a government that came to power by force, and financed by militant extremists all over the world. A nuclear weapon wouldn't have solved anything in terms of vengeance for the terrorist attacks on the United States. There's no reason to punish innocent civilians for the sins of only a few people, and instead the United States invaded Afghanistan, and today, the people of that nation are happy we did. Many people around the world, however, were not convinced that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. They would rather that the world continued as it had with Hussein in power, for the only objections otherwise are that the United States is stealing Iraqi oil, which is not true, or that the United States is creating a puppet government in the middle east, which is also not true. Smart. :cool:

Actually, I remember it being all over the blogs, Fox, CNN. I would agree that it was touched only briefly by the main stream media, but I think that's because a lot of the people of the world, excluding pacifists, agree with Chirac's sentiment. If a major attack occurs, sponsored and carried out by a foreign government, killing thousands of civilians, or if there is significant evidence that it will happen in the imminent future, pre-emption would most certainly be necessary. To most people, no matter their politics or nationality, that is a given. During the Cold War, in fact, it was widely known that eastern and western Europe were holding guns to eachothers heads, just as the United States and the Soviet Union were doing so to eachother. Thus his comment was not surprising, and not controversial. If anything, it was nostalgic. Now what made the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies controversial was the press coverage. Despite the fact that the reasons for the Iraq war mirror the reasons given for Chirac's warning, which I suspect was aimed at Iran, the press told us that the Iraq war was waged so that the United States could control Iraq's oil fields and oppress and indoctrinate innocent Muslims. Meanwhile, if Chirac threatens to nuke Iran, there's really no way that the press can spin the threat in ways that villify him as a corporate puppet or blood thirsty crusader. Now, according to the press and his countrymen, Chirac is simply a patriot.

Pretentious or not, I'm just impressed that anyone checks a site called quantumbiocommunications.com consistently enough to notice something like this.

Why do you have such a tremendous sense of loyalty to the d20 system?

You said that you could continue, so please do. I've been reading these forums for a few days and don't plan to stop checking them, so whenever you get around to it, I'll reply in full. Just to start off with one of my major points, this is a sequel to a Star Wars game, and a game of the year, and will likely be available on a next generation console like the 360. Production values will of course be expected to increase, and in all areas of the game. For example, I certainly don't think that the public at large would be satisfied with the quality of the current models, having seen what games like Oblivion are capable of rendering, so I don't think pleading for a smoother combat system and better animations is out of the question.

You could meet Barenziah and Prince Helseth, the triumverate Gods of Vardenfall, Azura, Hiscene, and many, many other significant characters. There were an abundance of characters that would tell you nothing more than a few hints and rumors, but many of them had more than that on their mind. If you paid attention to the game's storyline or the various faction quests, you'd know that there were very often major conversational options that changed the nature of your character and his alliances to choose between. As a matter of fact, repeatedly mashing on the skills to improve their perception of you always results in failure. The game is set up so that if you fail a certain number of times at charm, intimidate or taunt, each progressive attempt will also fail until the character brushes you off completely as an annoyance. So I don't know where you got that, or why you haven't mentioned the number of topics you can chat about with almost any character in the game, and how they often have different opinions depending on their job, race and faction alliance.

I don't think you're reading my posts very well. Alanschu, please continue.

Isn't Morrowind repetitive as well, as you just wander around attacking stuff? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you give the impression that you have never played Morrowind, and are making a broad generalization about its content to bolster your argument. Either that, or I think you didn't give it much attention. You certainly could decline the dancing part, and I often did, but the sword fights very often were compulsory. Morrowind actually has a very deep conversation tree, and many of the characters you meet during the main quest and the expansions have rich histories that are discussed in detail in much of the literature offered in game. Everything on this page can be read in game, and many of the characters discussed in the books can be engaged in conversation by the main PC.

Mmm, I was going to reply, but I'd like you to expand on your thoughts before I do, please.

Well, I described the KotOR combat as this: Attack. Return to battle ready animation, wait. Attack. Return to battle ready animation, wait. Critical hit. Return to battle ready animation, wait. Flurry. Return to battle animation, wait. Etc. Each time the action pauses, it's only for maybe a fraction of the second. But that disruption of the pace of the fight is really distracting and takes the sense of urgency and intrigue away from the combat. Yuen Wu Ping would gnaw his own arm off before he choreographed a fight like that. Now this is what I would like to see: Attack. Attack. Critical hit. Flurry. Etc. How? Simply fill in the space between moves with interesting and very varied filler animation. Sabers continuing to smash into eachother, one opponent taking steps back while the other repositions, a saber lock, a couple of pithy lines of dialogue being quickly traded. Or aiming or reloading or taking cover animations for blaster users. Things like that. And if two opponents are both being controlled by AI, then there's no reason to compensate for our human slowness, and the filler animation wouldn't be necessary. All that they would need would be a lot of transitional animations, like how you can go from one martial art style to any other style smoothly in Jade Empire, only now the KotOR characters would be going from one type of an attack to a type of defense to a totally different style of attack, constantly keeping the action going.

Why does it sound that way?

It's fairly simple. I want a combat system that visually looks exciting and more dramatic. There are two things, aside from the polygons and all that, that really take me out of the story and reminds me that KotOR is just a videogame. One, the poor animation in general being peppered throughout the game. Like the super conservative dance animation or the horror animation, which is what I do when I'm trying not to throw up after too much Irish coffee. And while the lip synch is pretty good, the conversation animation is pretty bad. Flailing arms around too slowly and deliberately, greeting people like Sultans, rocking shoulders back and forth. They don't move like real actors. They don't stand up and sit down in chairs or lean against walls, or use their environment at all for that matter. There's maybe twelve animations in the game for what was it? Ten thousand lines of dialogue? Two, the combat animation, which looks more like waltzing than a choreographed fight. I want to see constant, exciting, suspenseful action. I don't want to take control of the fight away from the player so he can no longer command the action, but I do want doing that to be optional. If you never touch the controls in KotOR or TSL, your characters very likely will die when they fight higher level characters. If the AI was improved to the point where your party members all fight as if they were controlled by humans, then the player having to command the action is no longer necessary. That way, players that are more interested in the story than manipulating the d20 system don't have to deal with monotonous combat, and will have something interesting to watch on screen. A dramatic camera system as I have described previously would also help to keep things interesting, so players don't have to simply observe from the limited angles offered by the Matrix cam, but can watch fights from interesting angles picked by professional cinematographers, or at least picked by the people who made the animations. Watch a fight in a movie. There are very few fights that only use one camera. It's constantly moving from image to image, cutting away from one angle and going to another. The Odessa steps scene in Battleship Potempkin would be a good example of camera techniques I'd like to see used.

S'okay. I've never sat down and done the math for any table top RPGs, I don't know the formulas or why people are so militant about preserving them. They're hidden in KotOR and takes some menu hunting to find them, so I have no opinion on changing them, and wouldn't presume to say that they should be changed. In fact, if I have anything to say about them, it's that I like how the random outcome of the formulas effects what animation is displayed. For example, the formula that tells whether or not a character is successfully hit defining whether or not that character should visually react to it, or should use a ducking away animation instead. I think that sort of thing could be applied deeper to define in what way a character attacks, and in what way a character defends themself from an attack. I don't care whether the D20 system is preserved or not, I just want the animations to be more robust to reflect the system's outcomes in more diverse ways. And in ways that don't put me to sleep, or make me say to myself, "Dammit! Not another spider thing/kath hound/sand people/low level sith fight! This. Game. Is. Never. Going. To. End!"

Or because they didn't want a button masher like the Jedi Knight series. You repeated me. They already have games like that. The Jedi Knight series, and that Episode III game. No, those games do not mimic the choreographed feeling of the Star Wars films. The closest game that does that is KotOR, and the first two games did it poorly. Why don't you get a different game then, because that is what you are asking for. Buy a different game than what? KotOR3, a game that no one knows anything about, even regarding its existence? If you have express knowledge about what the KotOR3 combat system is definitely going to be, please share it. Otherwise, this is the KotOR 3 Idea and Suggestion thread. I presented my idea and suggestion, which was that the current combat system be made less boring. Not all RPGs use dice, and I don't understand how people can be such hardcore fans of a deeply structured system of algebra formulas. That said, please point out where I suggested that KotOR3 change from the current D20 system, or stop trying to be snide. I asked for better combat animations, a better camera system and better AI. Why do you object to that?

Cosmetic changes would be a good term for part of what I want, yes. In the sense that I'd like more fluid combat animations, wherein characters are almost always making contact by attacking or counterattacking, with strategic moves like, force push or flurry, incorporated into the combat in a more convincing way. The suspension of disbelief is very important to me, and I rolled my eyes when I saw my character have a lightsaber poking through his model six or seven times as he performed force lightning because he dropped his saber behind him. A better way to do this would be to continue having the characters fight, but the casting character uses his saber to block and parry in one hand while the other reaches out to the zap the opponent, or to have the sabers lock together for a moment in one of those moments where sparks are flying, and zap the other character to break the lock. Something akin to that. But I also want better AI and better camera angles, so if I want to sit back and watch the fight, waiting and hoping for a positive outcome, I can be left anxiously entertained as I spectate. I lost count how many times I had to press the attack button, lean back in my chair and sigh as I waited for yet another damn Sandpeople ambush to go down so I could move on another twenty steps and get attacked again because I forgot to put their clothes on. Fighting quickly stopped being fun or entertaining, and started being sort of a nuisance that held up the story, about two hours into KotOR.

A. That's exactly what I said I didn't want. I said that I thought there was too much clunky button button pushing already. B. Yes. But I also said that if people would prefer to have the twelve different huds taking up about 33% of the screen as it was in the previous games, that should be tolerated and allowed. But the boring, unrealistic pace that the combat system currently has should be fixed. I want smarter AI that will use the abilities we give our characters in ways that human players would, if human players could control the game as fast as a computer can. Yeah but in his scenario (unless I completely misunderstand him) he's saying that the fights should be more fluid, as in fight until one dies with NO control until one guy is dead. As it is, you can let your PC attack 2 times, then run away to either regroup or use a medpac. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Heh, no you can't. But you can let your PC attack 2 times, then run away while getting stabbed in the back by your enemies' sliding attack animation that looks like somebody lagging through a wall in Unreal Championship 2, and then use a medpack to regain a fraction of the health you lost while running away. It's a crap system and needs to be tweaked. I feel that Bioware didn't go with the Jedi Knight saber system because they wanted their fights to look less chaotic, and more like something you'd see in the movies. In KotOR and TSL, if you leave the characters alone to fight and don't manipulate them, they'll do okay. The fights will be kind of boring, they'll never use force powers like players do, and the rhythm of the fight makes it sometimes look ridiculous, like something out of a Naked Gun movie. The fights have none of what Bruce Lee called "emotional content." If you watch the Star Wars movies, the fights were constantly moving - slash, block, move, step, turn, thrust, parry, leap, force push, slash, block, slash, duck, kick, fall, etc. All of this while moving down tight metallic corridors while dodging various obstacles or while leaping from platform to platform suspended over a four story drop. And the moment we remember from KotOR combat was what? When our character sidekicked a giant spider in a peaceful open field of grass? When that one NPC fell on his knees and then went backwards, moaning, "Uh. Uhhhh."? My heart is not exactly racing. As I mentioned above, the KotOR fights go, slash. Wait. Slash. Wait. Flurry. Wait. Force heal. Wait. Critical strike. Wait. Force lightning wait. And that would be one of the more interesting fights. Improved AI and a more fluid rhythm to the fights would really make the game more interesting.

So you want what? Final fantasy style turn based?

Er, no. I won't buy a game that forces me to rush through it before my character turns into a senile, doddering geriatric. Didn't buy Fable for that very reason. If this is the direction RPG's go, then I'll obviously have more time for strategy games because I utterly hate the entire concept of Aging and Forced Retirement in my recreation. I have enough of that in real life. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I also agree. And then we have games like Pirates where one day = one second. Sail for seventeen years, and that's what? Pushing two hours? And all those horribly repetetive swordfights and dances, ugh. I think that game is terribly overrated. You should note, however, that in Fable getting old doesn't effect anything except the cosmetic appearance of your character. And the guy looks pretty cool when he gets old, kinda like how people Sean Connery to look back when he was a young man. And if you donate money to the good God, you can sometimes reverse aging's effects.

I don't like the combat system, I want something completely new. All of these algebraic formulas going on behind the scenes and all of the button pushing and HUD made the game feel really clunky and cluttered. In cinema, choreographed fights don't stop until a character is defeated. It's a constant, violent rhythm filled with intense, emotional moments of fear or anxiety or excitement that KotOR has completely failed to capture up until now. KotOR's combat was more like one person attacks. Wait. The other person attacks. Wait. The other attacks. Wait. One character uses a shield. Wait. The other uses a medkit. Wait. A character attacks. Wait. That's terrible, that feels awkward. The whole game might as well have been done on a table top. How about choosing abilities and fighting techniques at level up, and then, with a significant improvement in AI, the fights proceed with the players intervention being optional. A dramatic camera angle system triggered by what combat animations are happening in real time could be introduced, with the player's ability to pause combat and switch to the 360 degree Matrix cam from the first two games being optional.