alanschu

Maaaaaaaaaybe someone like John Carmack? I suppose Chris Roberts might, as he has done some movie work as well. I suspect not very many people, however, stretch beyond the gaming scene. I'd be curious to know which ones DO think their names stretch beyond gaming.

I think he more meant "to see if the issue affects AMD hardware"

That's the issue though, and it came to the forefront on the first day of the Kickstarter. For all of the people that lament modern RPGs and how they just don't make them like they used to, there was this idea that while a lot of people would love to see another Baldur's Gate style RPG, that what people wanted from them were the same thing. But that's a myth, and always has been. Planescape: Torment is probably my favourite GAME of all time, but fundamentally it's a very poor game combat wise. It's just exceptional in terms of its writing. Heck, it's probably my favourite STORY of all time. If we're to choose any IE game for them to most emulate, for myself it's definitely PST. Really, really early in the kickstarter campaign there was the myth that there was some level of consensus over what made an Infinity Engine game an "Infinity Engine" game. What I'm looking forward to the most? Nuanced, branching dialogue with loads of reaction. The game could probably get by without even having combat and I'd probably still enjoy it on some level. Though I do expect the combat to still be real time, with pause, and a large degree of tactical diversity. So far, I haven't seen anything that really runs contrary to that. A lot of the issues they have with IE combat mechanics are the exact same issues I have with them, so obviously to me I don't see those as being intrinsic to the Infinity Engine experience, and am a lot more open minded towards it. I think it's great that you are able to step back and realize (albeit after the fact) that what you want and what other people want for an "infinity engine game" are not going to fall into perfect alignment. For myself, the kicker was that Obsidian always delivers on the things I enjoyed about them since PST: fantastic writing and RPG experiences. So I think that this game will deliver on those elements. It's unfortunate that you feel you cannot respect them anymore, but if that's the way you feel then that's the way you feel.

I agree with your perspective, Amentep. He was hoping for an easy quote, didn't get it, so he decided to go fishing (no pun intended even though it's an amazing one >.>) for a quote in a different way. I guess his death threat is also a Futurama reference, so I'm a bit more willing to excuse the quote, although I'm not surprised that it got taken rather literally.

Unsurprisingly, some feedback in response to Phil Fish-Marcus Beer incident. http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea-of-****-the-internets-war-against-creatives http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/so-fez-ii/1100-4700/ CliffyB has is usual, goofy impressions as well haha: http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/56805389679/dynamite-fishing-an-open-letter-to-phil-fish

It's funny because I find myself liking Baldur's Gate despite the AD&D ruleset.

There is one where you are in with someone else. That you can only have one decker in the Matrix, however, tells me that it's more useful than otherwise (since I can have my superior decker in the Matrix). I played on default difficulty, whatever that is.

I disagree with the notion that Deckers are useless, after listening to my friend struggle through his Decker sequences with NPCs. Of course, I didn't make an exclusive Decker (the system screams for you to spread your points out, based on how level up skill point allocation works). It is unfortunate that there are less sequences in the Matrix that the Decker would be able to take advantage of, but the skill itself came in ridiculously useful throughout the game at various conversation/computer use points as well. I split my level ups between Decker/ESP and pistols and would describe my character as quite powerful.

Jagged Alliance 2 is a game where it's entirely possible to be an expert at everything, so I'm not sure if it's the best example. You don't need a medic focused character. It just makes the medic/doctor stuff go faster and be less wasteful. You don't need a guy with high repair, it just means you get more repairs done with a toolkit, in a shorter period of time. I'd argue you don't even need marksmen, because frankly it doesn't take that long to level those skills up given how much shooting you do in the game (especially in early game). Nevermind that you can actively train those skills as well.

Clarification: My explanation is for him leaving BioWare.

Yeah, I imagine it's been too short for any meaningful wiki to have been created. Thanks for the heads up Tale.

I'm at the point now where I'll need to see some level of confirmation. My interactions with Ferret (who is no longer at BioWare) did not lead me to believe there was any sort of jadedness towards Obsidian on his part. I would not expect this had he been fired. The impression I got from him was that BioWare had always been his "dream job" and he had persistently applied for a long time. I know he was disappointed to leave but cited doing so for family reasons (I think he's out east now).

I'd like to experiment some too. Where are people finding the tutorials?

That doesn't surprise me, as they'll likely do that for the DLCs.

I know you're excited about the game, but the first 20 pages of that thread predate the release.

Huh? There were 10 on-use abilities available to the warrior pool in BG2. Super late to this party, but as your link indicates, those abilities only existed at high levels (i.e. the Throne of Bhaal expansion).

I'm pretty sure that Ferret left Obsidian when offered a job at BioWare. I have heard all sorts of rumor/hearsay as to how it all went down, but I have never heard that he was fired.

The circumstances regarding Phil Fish certainly resonate with this thread. Although I do agree that there's a level of extremism that Fish's response has that a bit extra baffling. While I think Beer's tirade was uncalled for, I'm surprised by Fish's response. I like making games, and if I get annoyed with commentary on the internet, I'm certainly much more inclined to ignore said commentary and continue doing what I enjoy doing. I assume Fish enjoyed doing what he did, so that he just rage quit is certainly unexpected. Although if a guy IS getting fed up, and struggles to keep himself distant (for whatever reason), I suppose it's in his best interests to do so. Still, is the idea of "he should just ignore it" really the ideal solution? I don't know the full story (I can only assume that Fish needed more than JUST this account to explode the way he did). Fish did post a clarification that he feels it's in his best interests to leave the game industry because he doesn't want to deal with the abuse anymore. If this type of action CAN cause developers to feel they have had enough, are there things that we (as gamers) can do to help mitigate the excessive vitriol? I'm not really a fan of fatalistic "there's nothing that can be done" approaches, and would be seriously disheartened if that actually turned out to be the case. I've already noticed a lot of places just don't allow commenting in general (and there's actually research being done now to discern how comments can affect a reader's interpretation of the article). Gaming did seem to survive relatively well long before the ease of providing feedback, so I'm not sure if it will do much to hurt the industry. I know some here feels it compromises discussion, as well as feedback, but I am not sure. For those that would comment on an article to provide feedback to the author, wouldn't emailing be sufficient? Or is the audience more important? The idea of not only providing feedback, but hopefully convincing others that see your point to agree with, and support you on it. I think this punishment is too mild. Full on permanent ban since anyone saying that to another human being likely doesn't feel he's actually interacting with a human being, and frankly needs a reality check that while it sucks that he can't get out of Arl Howe's guard uniform, it's still just a video game.

Who here is saying that people don't listen to gaming journalists? What I am saying is that, if you support a gaming journalist that decides to NOT cover a popular game due to some petty, personal grievance, then that gaming journalist is doing you, his customer, a disservice. I'm also referring to this idea that people like Blow and Fish owe their success to the gaming journalists for promoting their games. It glosses over the idea that the gaming press promotes those games because the gaming press feels that that is what their customers want. I will not deny that the exposure games like Braid and Fez get help their success. I will say, however, that a lot of the exposure that those games get is a result of their quality. Unless we're supposing that someone like Beer decides to promote games he feels are subpar because of personal motivations. At which point, you shouldn't check out the gaming journalists because they aren't actually providing you with what you want. Yes, there will be situations where excellent games fall under the radar. That's an issue with ignorance (not used as a pejorative here) towards the product that the gaming press (and fans) will have, though. If there are indie games out there that blow Braid and Fez out of the water, and the gaming press knows about it, then the gaming press is epically failing you by not reporting more on those games, and less on the poorer games. TL;DR The gaming press promoted the crap out of games like Braid and Fez, because the gaming press felt it was in their best interests to promote those games over other games. It's as simple as that. The principle reason for the gaming press to feel this way towards indie games, in my opinion, is because those games are seen as impactful. In other words, Blow and Fish are the ones responsible for the gaming media feeling that their games should be promoted, by providing the gaming media something to promote.

What's your steam ID?

Alex Jones is a personality as well. Doesn't mean I think he's a positive contribution to anything. Much like how Beer tells Fish that he "can't have it both ways," I say the same about Beer. Going and crying about it when a source isn't giving you the sound byte that you'd like, and then threatening to blacklist said source as a consequence (while taking credit for said source's success) is quite an Alex Jones type thing to do. Beer is a personality, but at some point he needs to step out of said personality. I am wondering if a part of the problem is that he's so used to be "AnnoyedGamer" that he takes on the persona more than he should.

FTL is a game where random can screw you over, true. It's advantage is that the game takes so little time to actually play that it's easy to pick back up, and often the bad things that happen are depicted in a rather humorous way (IMO anyways).

I understand this, but with journalism (gaming or otherwise) coming under more scrutiny, I'd expect a bit more effort to not come across as ostensibly pouty. I think it's a bit more telling in that "game journalists" are a bit more clearly "just some regular guy that happened to get picked up to talk about games." His grievances become difficult to filter away from your average youtube commenter, which is not something I would consider a positive trait.

I actually completed at least one campaign for Shogun 2 and each of its DLCs, which is pretty uncharacteristic for me in Total War games. Rise of the Samurai was even a "full" campaign (conquer the entirety of Japan). Although I find I play strategy games less for their "completion." I have never "finished" a game of Crusader Kings II, but that's because the game doesn't really have an endpoint aside from "the calendar stops at this date."

Yeah I'm stupidly jacked up for Rome as well. So much so that it'll probably be the first game in a looong time that I'll be disappointed with on release! (simply due to high excitement/expectations haha)