alanschu

My friend watches movies on his second monitor while he plays. They do have their purposes

I was playing through the game again, and figured I'd make some videos as I played through it. I found the escape from the Society of Leopold after Bach sets off his bomb to be a more difficult situation time wise. I posted the videos simply to illustrate how asinine your claims were with respect to the difficulty. I still find the fact that you can't get inside without Celerity (though you can proceed through the game walking just as fast as I can when running all the time). I have a one dexterity Malkavian, and the only real "defense" I have against the thing is the artifact that gave me +1 Aggravated soak. Though you should have also had that as well, given you claim to be good at RPG games. To claim that that scene needed "FPS relfexes" makes me wonder how you were able to really play any game. It also lended some perspective to those that have never played the game before, who may have read your claims. Though stuff like this makes me hope a game like FO3 is first-person more and more.....as it was quite entertaining.

Yeah, neither is really 'inferior' to the other at this point, all depends on what model and what purpose blah blah blah. I think one of hubby's 'practical' reasons was about support/possible conflicts between hardware or something, just cause Intel's been around longer. I'd have to ask him...but he looks at things from a non-gamer's perspective. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think that that is part of the problem. It seems Intel is still doing a good job of perpetuating this "lack of support" and whatnot. It probably didn't hurt that Intel found ways for manufacturers that were adopting AMD solutions to suddenly be in short supply of Intel chips and chipsets shortly afterwards.

I'm in a bit of the same boat. Though my friend and I still have some preliminary stuff scheduled. We hope to get cracking as quickly as possible when the game finally comes out though. Now that I'm placed in my internship and don't have mountains of homework, I'll have a bit more time on my hands to continue preproduction.

I agree about the puzzles comment. As much as I enjoy a good adventure game, I really liked Fahrenheit because (well, aside from the ending and the required "mystical" elements to make the story work) it was fairly grounded in reality. And I love making snap moral choices. To be honest, the thing I liked most about the scene you described was that I was forced to make a quick decision. But it wasn't anything wierd like finding the spork, with the elastic band, that would let you spin the giant wheel, so you could open the door.

Though entertaining in a perverse, morbid sort of way.

I had a feeling you'd enjoy that. I lighthearted comment from me to Volo....what is the world coming to??

It does require lightning fast, FPS like reflexes though. I don't think anyone could have gotten past that scene without the precision of mouse control. Look how close it was!

Hehehe. I still remember when you passed the 1,600 post mark.....a single tear rolls down my cheek.

:alanschu:

How much experience did Obsidian have with making RPG games in the Space Opera setting of Star Wars? It magically came out of nowhere! Though I suspect people will bring up Wasteland. It's funny though, because AFAIK the Fallout 2 team was quite a bit different than the Fallout 1 team.

Maybe, but for those of use who live in the real world, those length of games are just no longer feasible. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I blame that on consoles. Short game action for short attention spanned gamers. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Of course the trials and tribulations of reality wouldn't have anything to do with it.

And who said that Fallout didn't appeal to the ES people? Tsk Tsk Llyr

Not sure how you'd make an entire tileset of acqueducts. Seems a bit overkill.

You've already made it perfectly clear that, even if the game has an excellent rules system, a fantastic setting, excellent graphical style, beautiful music, and AAA voice acting, you won't like it unless it is merely extensions of the original Fallout games. Thing is, you still aren't looking past the title. The second you see the name Fallout, you demand it to mirror its predecessors, and have already condemned the game because it won't (which is funny, because we still don't have any idea what the rules system is). It works out well for you though, as it's a win-win situation. If the game turns out like crap, you can come back here and go "see see" in some sort of justification of yourself being correct. But if it does turn out great, and you play it, and you enjoy it...then you win because you get an excellent game experience.

Speculation at best. Given Troika's track record, what makes you so certain that Troika could have lasted long enough to actually release the game? That's your failure. Poor Hades....can't even look past a title. That makes sense. I'm sure you didn't like KOTOR2 at all, for good reason....none of the original developers were involved! In fact, I think the majority of the developers of Fallout 1 weren't even around for Fallout 2. I agree with other sentiments....there is zero chance of making the Fallout fans happy. If it's not built with the Fallout engine, it will obviously suck.

I think, this is the worst case possible <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If that's the worst case possible, then things are looking up for the game.

Given that he's a Swede, they'd have to be a gift from Monsieur Forsberg.

I'm just curious, but how did you disable to auto-run? Or did you seriously walk around holding down the walk key? (Default shift?) In any case, I still can't see how you'd even be close to past Downtown, let alone beating the werewolf with level 5 Celerity (heh) so soon after removing the game and chastizing Troika about it. Though I guess it MIGHT be possible, given that your first attempt at the game didn't seem to be a very thorough one. I assumed you were actually doing sidequests though.

Which is but a testament on how bad 'roleplaying' computer RPGs have gotten considering Baldur's Gate is better then everything released this past few years. Make no mistake, the reason i choosed BG1 as the object of my argument is exactly that the game had many inherent flaws, yet, it succeeded in those elements which i consider pivotal of a great roleplaying experience. Truly, from your last reply you seem so stuck with game mechanics you have completely forgotten why those games need to be played to begin with. You ask me what difference is there between 'THAT' and an adventure game, or reading a (fiction) book, i say: there is none. They all serve a similar purpose. Their approach may be different, but they share the same goal. The issue here is that you cannot focus on how a particular medium goes about achieving this particular common goal and nothing else, because there is no value in that by itself. Seriously, what do you get out of those so called 'roleplaying options'? What does it mean to you to be able to be 'evil' or 'good' in itself? Torment is often slandered for lacking 'roleplaying options'. Please, feel free to explain to me the appeal of having options in itself, with no regard as to whether they are REALLY worth taking in the first place. I say Baldur's Gate offered a great level of freedom that i have yet to experience in an RPG since. The main quest literally doesn't start until you enter Baldur's Gate. Many people seem to be rather tired of the common 'save the world' plot scenario, and Baldur's Gate is often cited as one of the games that didn't follow this tired device. Why do you assume? Again, quit being so obsessed about game mechanics. The freshness i'm referring to applies to Bioware, not the game. The way Baldur's Gate is crafted is very natural and direct. Every other game they made since has a 'forced' quality to it, like they are trying too hard to please their fans whereas in BG1 they allowed themselves more personal freedom. Nonsense. Torment was such a successful attempt because the game was developed following the criteria of the developers themselves. The chemistry behind the group effort that produced this game is almost palpable. You see, in Torment options actually meant something, because whilst their number was relatively limited compared to 'some' games i could mention, each one of them offered as unique an experience as the developers were able to design. For comparison there was thousands of things you could do in Morrowind but none of them amount to jack. This is why i'm not at all impressed when you talk about 'roleplaying options'... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Morrowind is not a particularly good RP game either, given it's complete lack of substance and interaction. When I look at "roleplaying" though, I like to at least be given the illusion of making choices of some substance. As for the main plot of Baldur's Gate, I felt it was pretty clear that it got started once you were told to go and find Khalid and Jaheira. Maybe it was less obvious to you. Good luck entering Baldur's Gate prior to doing things such as clearing out the mines. I would have appreciated a bit more discussion with the party members, outside of "Gah, you still do not look for Dynaheir...DIE!" from Minsc (which was funny, because I actually had him go ape**** right when I got to the Gnoll Stronghold). I think the Good/Evil characters bitched and moaned when your reputation was not what they wanted. It was still a piss poor game if I wanted to play a murderous character. It's only fun avoiding the Flaming Fist guards that spawn on the maps with a low reputation for so long. I was never really able to play through Baldur's Gate in any different way. I felt that both Baldur's Gate 2, and Torment, did a much better job. While Torment did have a linear story (a very good one IMO), it still allowed you to play through that similar story in a slightly different way, particularly via dialogue. Baldur's Gate provided opportunities for me to play through aspects of the story in a variety of ways, and enjoy the story in that variety. It's why I've been able to playthrough it in its entirety many more times than the original Baldur's Gate. As for criticizing me for using the term "roleplaying options," the main reason why I did was because you were going on talking about how "RPGs are meant to be a roleplaying experience." So what exactly is a "roleplaying experience?" Given that it seems RPGs are meant to contain it, is it safe to assume that it's something at least relatively distinct to a game within the RPG genre?

I agree. In fact, I certainly do not think that old school RPGs are awesome RPG games. And I was including Baldur's Gate (which is a game I really, really enjoyed) as not being all that particularly different from them. It was a linear plot, that had some sidequests, and a ton of monster killing with map exploration. I was saying that if Lyric felt that this was a fresh approach, then he must not have played earlier games because it seemed be all it took to be defined as an RPG game. The reason why I said Lyric should have at least mentioned Ultima, was because he was the one harkening about older RPGs being better. All other games, especially from a more roleplaying point of view, I felt were rather junk. He used Baldur's Gate as his example...I considered it a poorer one. But I do think that Baldur's Gate was a better game than most RPGs. I would consider newer RPG games to be better. Though I'll let this go because you had the impression that I felt older RPG games were better. I also agree that Baldur's Gate is an excellent game, but I felt it was similar to them in terms of the linear plot and all that other stuff mentioned. Just on a really, really large scale. This was not directed at me...but I was too lazy to delete it from the post...even though it would actually have been less work to delete it, rather than explaining it.

The moment we've likely not been waiting for. How to get past the big bad wolf with a 1 dexterity, non celerity wielding malkavian. People that still want to play this game may want to avoid this video, as it contains some top notch secrets for how to survive the werewolf, which you may want to figure out on your own. This is the correct way. It can be pretty tricky, as you can see, and I barely make it through. It is definitely the most challenging part of the game IMO. Correct_Way.wmv This is the video of the not so correct way. It's a bit too slow, and doing it will get you killed. Though to be honest, I was a lot closer to success then I thought I would get. Not_Correct_Way.wmv This is the absolute stupid thing to do. It might seem like a good idea to start, but nope...it's bad bad bad bad bad. I'll forgive one attempt at most, but you should definitely never, ever try it more than once. Dumbass_Way.wmv All kidding aside, I was able to successfully get through on my first attempt, only getting hit once. And I was serious that I survived as long as I did in both failures. My "mad FPS skills" accounted for me holding down W, turning with the mouse, and tapping E to open the door. I seriously considered doing the scene a variety of ways, including running backwards, and using the keyboard to turn. The only real reason I didn't was because the chat with Nines was taking too long.

Possible. Not confirming nor denying for the sake of my age. :ph34r: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How cliche.

And it consists of a handful of games...Baldur's Gate not being one of them. I'll stop throwing "PR" talk at you when you stop saying stupid, untrue stuff. What's the difference between that and an adventure game? Or reading a book? And how could I immerse myself in the world in a role I chose to play? How exactly could you play through the game ANY different than I? There certainly a plethora of options for each quest point Oh wait...there aren't. If you are using Baldur's Gate as a baseline for playing at your own pace, then literally every RPG is just as good. Pacing is moot in most RPGs, which let you (despite the fact that the hordes of bad guys are coming, or a meteor is coming, or whatever) wander aimlessly doing pointless little fun sidequests. You can play through KOTOR at your own pace as well. Freshness of it's approach? A world with a linear plot, sidequests, and tons of monster killing? I guess you didn't play RPGs before Baldur's Gate. You could have at least mentioned a game like Ultima, which actually granted the player the opportunity to do stuff other than quest (like bake bread if you wanted to!). Torment achieved it because you were actually able to play through the game in a relatively distinct way. In Baldur's Gate you could not. (Unless you consider doing sidequest X before sidequest Y as a "distinct" difference....but that wouldn't differentiate between the game and other games at all).

Vampire: Bloodlines Hades styles: Hades.wmv