alanschu

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.

Nice. Though my designs run at greater than 100% efficiency (yes, by putting energy in, I end up getting more energy out! So once it starts, it will perpetually create energy. Conservation of Energy has been broken!).

Go go absolutism! Referring to the idea of taking an absolute definition of something, rather than the governmental scheme made popular by Louis XIV.

Winner! I hate the fact that so many times in games there's little to no real consequences for my actions.

No, they're just their own sect of society lobbying for change. The annoying part for them is how often they cite quotations from tobacco executives from the 70s, and even the 60s.

So did I.

It obviously wasn't, especially considering you don't even need to kill the thing.

Then you played through the game rather slowly. Exceptionally slowly. Especially given that I can beat the game in a single sitting without metagaming.

Based on what though? One of the best RPGs ever was Fallout, and it is by no means a long game. I think a large part of what made games longer back in the day was the fact that we weren't as good at playing them. We'd get stuck on things and it'd take us a while of wandering aimlessly to figure out WTF we had to do next. Games like Baldur's Gate are an exception, not the norm.

But that's not what those "thetruth" commercials tell me!!!

Me too. I'd be very surprised if the Oil companies were not investing any money into alternative fuel sources, lest they all go out of business when Oil does run out.

I remember the good old days when FPUs didn't just come on processors

I think he's talking about KOTOR. I guess they could have cancelled it's distribution altogether on the PC if it totally bombed on the XBOX. Unless of course they thought they could at least recoup the distribution costs, which would result in at least a reduction of losses accrued over the project. EDIT: I was rather surprised to hear it wasn't Microsoft publishing the PC version of Jade Empire though.