alanschu

Did that werewolf just say he's a follower of Wurm?

Good luck doing that.

You've made that point very clear. But this thread is not about the death penalty. I agree with Eldar's assessment.

I think you can too.

Outdated doesn't mean useless.

Actually, it's not. I asked Hades for examples, but he opted not to. As for the word count, I think it's actually lines of text in the game. There's market research done by suits that indicate that people don't like to read text in video games.

Unfortunately Bloodlines did not survive my reformat, so I can't check what weapons you would actually have available to you, though according to Spider, it sounds like the Flamethrower wouldn't have been too effective. Furthermore, a big problem with something like this is that it poses a very obvious advantage to players that use guns, since I doubt a brujah is going to really be able to punch it to death. When you start making various characters have a significant disadvantage to other builds, then that's when you start getting into poor design.

I don't know if I agree with the analogy, since you'll still get the full line of dialogue spoken (and you could probably turn on subtitles too if you wanted to specifically read the line). I'm not sure how the wealth of interpretation disappears, since you could still make interpretations of what was said. Games don't really have multiple options that still represent the exact same intent, so you'll still get the options you didn't think of with the current system. I'm not familiar with the development of Mass Effect, so it's hard to say what the advantages/disadvantages of it could be from a programing perspective. One advantage is that it would allow for them to circumvent arbitrary word count limitations imposed by publishers (which unfortunately do exist). Like I've said, I'll wait until how it works before I ultimately pass judgement on it. Right now, I'm indifferent.

I am pretty sure that most people, upon recognizing the futility of their current actions, are going to look for alternative solutions. Though to be honest, "most" people wouldn't do much in a combat situation. "Most" people would probably cower in fear. "Most" people wouldn't last long enough to even have a straight fight, let alone think about a puzzle. The thing is, in a video game, do you really play a character that is like "most" people, or are you perhaps a bit more cognizant of your actions when your character is understress. You say you play the game through the eyes of your character. So when your vampire saw Nines (who already saved your ass on more than one occassion, and is immensely respected by friend and foe alike) shaking in his boots because of the prospect of a possible werewolf being in the area, you figured you'd do what "most" people would do, and shoot at the creature that Nines just said was futile to go up against? In fact, I'd think that "most" people would probably run into the observatory out of fear itself. Fight or Flight. Those that fight would get killed, so you might as well go with flight.

I know. I see my post after it gets posted to the board. You just saw it before I could submit the change.

And I think you're just splitting hairs because different = bad. Though one could probably argue that no "PC" in a video game RPG is ever "your character."

You must have failed reading comprehension in school. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Then please, spell it out in detail, since we couldn't comprehend it. In direct response to my statement: So what exactly did you mean by real combat situations? And furthermore, how would they apply when fighting fantasy creatures?

I'm at a loss. Isn't that exactly what misinterpreting means? To interpret something in a different way than intended? In any case, I'm guessing that Bioware is thinking (and I don't disagree) that most people pick their lines of dialogue based on the intent, rather than the specific words. As for it's roleplaying elements, I find the roleplaying element in dialogue comes from how NPCs react to you based on what's been said. Few (if any) dialogue options ever reflect what I would actually want my character to say, so my pick is already stymied. As a result, there are many times my choice is determined by the intent of the dialogue line. If I feel that being nice to the person will yield more information out of them, In fact, I thought that this type of dialogue worked quite well in Fahrenheit, since your options in conversation where summarized by a key word. The lines were particularly well written, and there was never a time when I'd think "Pffft, if I had known that THAT is what he was going to say, then I'd never have picked that option."

Define "speeding through the game." My first playthrough of Fallout still had me check every grid to see if there was something of interest there (with the exception of The Glow, since I hated dealing with the radiation). On a final note, the first playthrough of most of my games, I tend to see things through the eyes of my character. Which usually results in me responding to an urgent situation with, well, urgency. Rather than using the messed up RPG mechanic of placing an extreme emergency upon the character, yet still allowing him to take his time, dawdle around doing side quests and wandering around town. Who cares if there's a giant Orc army outside preparing to attack, because the game waits for me! I mean, my Vault was only running critically low on water, but hey, I have no problems running off and doing some random radscorpion killing. Even though you have already told me where the next Vault (and most obvious lead to finding a new water chip) is. I mean, I have 150 days, which is plenty of time (despite the fact that I literally have no idea about anything of the outside world, and am merely hoping Vault 15 has one). And hey, when they didn't, I knew I still had mountains of time. No real urgency, still 80 days to go. I'm sure there's one around here somewhere, since it is, after all, a video game.

Hahaha. I didn't know that.

Well, you're also the guy who once claimed that you walk through all your games because of the role playing aspect.. Cut appr. 10-15 hours from those numbers and I'm sure you're much closer to the gamelength for a sane person. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> While at the same time was able to beat Bloodlines in roughly the same amount of time as me, a guy that just goes around on autorun. Just for curiosity sakes, I tried walking down some of the streets in Downtown LA in Bloodlines, and it took me over a minute to just get from one turn in the street to the other, and effectively pass no points of interest (except the Hallowbrook Hotel, which I couldn't go into yet).

Actually I hadn't even thought of them. The boss I was particualrly referncing was the final boss in the HL:Oppsing Force expansion. The rocket-silo weedmonster in HL was actually a well-done puzzly kind of thing. It was well-explained and made sense. I even managed to figure it out on my own! True story! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> While I remember enjoying Opposing Force, I don't remember much about it. I do remember finding the final boss to be a bit too "NES" like. The only thing missing was the "weak spots" to be flashing. Come to think of it though, both Half-Life and Opposing Forces did have consequences in it as well. There were quite a few situations where if you didn't keep a scientist/barney/marine with arc welder alive, the screen would fade to black giving an explanation why Gordon failed. Given the large amounts of autosaves the game did though, it never really set you back too much (a good thing).

When I encounter a puzzle in a game my first instinct is to chop its head off with my Katana. My therapist is working with me on that though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Depends on what you call a "puzzle" though. There are many times (and adventure games are the absolute worst for it) when puzzles make little to no sense. Resident Evil games were also horrible for it. I mean, I need to find a secret gem, that is inside a painting, to open up a door, all inside a police station? I myself would probably call the water pump quest, well, a quest. Given proper context though, puzzles can be interesting. Some minor puzzles in Half-Life 2 involved using physics (pick up the cinderblocks and put them on the edge of a board, so that it won't fall down when you run along it). There were also situations where you were outgunned by some guys on a bridge, but if you shot out the barrel at the bottom of the middle support beam, the bridge collapsed and the combine troops were all killed. I also didn't mind one of the actual invincible creatures in Half-Life, which was the three armed tentacle creature that could detect your sound. Setting the rocket ready to fire (which had other puzzles I didn't mind, such as manipulating the crates to not step on the electrified water) to kill it was pretty cool. The werewolf in Bloodlines is fine as well. It's obvious you're ill equipped to deal with the werewolf through dealing direct damage, so you take cover in the observatory (which Nines also suggested to you). You could play cat and mouse in the observatory, or, with some quick thinking, find a way to trap or kill it using the environment. The way I stumbled upon killing the werewolf was by accident (and not even on my first playthrough, where I just avoided it). I opened the observatory doors as an alternative exit for me to lose the werewolf with. And when I went running back in, I saw him peering through the crack, so I quickly tried closing it. As a result, it got crushed. Same goes with using the spotlights to disable the sheriff (and those weren't even necessary). Certainly more interesting than the fight against the Kuei-Jin, which was a "real combat situation" against a demon that just required me to whip out the killmatic and hold down the trigger until she died.

Since Half-Life was brought up as being a culprit that has the "invincible" enemies, they frequently did just that. The "big blue" bad guys that frequented the areas were typically killed by traps and whatnot. But it was still possible to kill them with your normal weapons. It just took a long time.

Gee, when did Bllodlines or Quake become turn based? You know, you guys simply do not get it because instead of seeing it through the eyes of your character you are seeing it through the eyes of the player. I am through with this argument. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The same time they involved "real combat situations." What are you talking about? Seeing it through the eyes of the player would have resulted in you not trying to attack the werewolf, based on Nines telling you it was futile. Or, if you did, you died. Instead you opted to metagame based on your previous experience with the rules.

Actually, "real combat situations" at one point did involve invulnerable targets. They were called castles and city walls. In response, they generals on the other side said "Hmmm, this is a puzzle!" And they built siege weapons.

I'm also pretty sure that real combat situations don't involve people moving one at a time, waiting for everyone else to stop moving and stand still while opponents shoot at them.

What the hell does "real combat situations" have to do with anything? It's a video game! I'm pretty sure that id Software had to make some suppositions with the Quake boss, since they hadn't ever fought a demon in a pit of lava that throws fireballs at you. I'm quite certain that "real combat situation" experiences wouldn't help much when fighting a fictional werewolf.

I've played many games where killing a creature that attacks me involves a puzzle. Heck, even a game like Quake required it for the end guy of the first act.

I think it's more people haven't experienced many games that made that have attempted to provide consequences for their actions, as well as a school of thought for game design to not put stuff into the game that many gamers will not see.