alanschu

No it's not. If the game is supposed to be coming the Christmas, then I can plan for it. If it gets delayed, oh well...then I consider what games may or may not be coming out around its next release date. Definitely don't make a big deal about it though, or get too excited.

That is what we're doing.

December 25th is a horrible day for sales. Now December 24, 23, 22, 21.... (and even 26) are good!

You are rationalizing your arguments simply because you have your beef with the game. It's like saying you'll vote for a politician because at least they admit to being a scumbag. Character generation did affect the way you progressed through the game, albiet not a whole lot....KOTOR did have a heavy focus on combat. But to claim you like FF better because they are "honest" is a poor defense. Either you like something, or you don't. The reason why you complain about it is because you do not like the way the game was implemented, and clearly you are a Star Wars aficianado, so anything in Star Wars that seems to deviate or anything (which you claim KOTOR does) becomes bad. Hades' complaints just give you another avenue to complain. As for it "sucking" to play a developers character down two storylines.....welcome to the statusquo (well not quite...since most games only offer one storyline). Sure, KOTOR didn't have to force you to be a Jedi, but Bioware stated from the get go that your character was going to become a Jedi. Bioware didn't pretend that you could play the game entirely as a class other than a Jedi. Anyone that thought otherwise is a fool (which is probably why they are ticked...no one likes being played a fool). As for how many times you finish a game: it's anecdotal and irrelevant. I am currently playing through it for the fourth time. I've also played through Half-Life about five times, FF7 at least twice (maybe 3 times). I'm also currently on my second go round with FF6. I just recently finished Call of Duty for the third time. So you only played KOTOR once. Big whoop. If you didn't like it, then wait for reviews for KOTOR II, and then make your decision.

Therein lies the problem. Who says that what you like and dislike in a CRPG are the rules that game developers should follow.

Not even Fallout allows anywhere close to "all plausible actions." They'd still be programming the game if they wanted to cater to every possibility. It's not "shoddy" work, since they stated the scope of the game was to play a Jedi.

Would they have? The whole game I got the impression that the Sith fleet was getting larger and larger at an accelerated rate, and that all in all the Republic was struggling in the war.

I would have appreciated more endings for Fallout 2 as well. Fallout's ending was probably pretty unavoidable.

Which is probably a limitation of the RPG rules, in an attempt to balance the game. They have to make other classes viable otherwise no one would want to play as anything but a Jedi. If you were to put KOTOR into the context of the movies instead, I contend that not even the ultimate Scoundrel Mr. Solo could have done it. But then again with the Star Wars RPG you can do whatever you want. I don't know who GM'd your Death Star run, but I would never have allowed your "instant" reverse. Considering if it was truly instant the G-Forces would have been infinite, not even your precious droid would have survived it, let alone the ship. You say your ship was a wreck afterwards, but it was still good enough to shoot down to wingmen, and chase down Vader's prototype TIE and crash into it. It just sounds like you wanted to go Top Gun on them.

You hold CRPGs to some benign standard that should never be strictly adhered to. Ultima VII is also one of my favourite games of all time, but there was no way you were getting out of being the Avatar. Interesting too...considering that games like Ultima are what created the term "CRPG." Sure you can argue that the earlier games had a bit more freedom (I only briefly played the first one), the earliest Ultima I had really played was Ultima IV, and considering it was the quest for the avatar. You have played one game that allows you to do what you want, but to hold other games to the same design principles is foolish. Furthermore, to claim that such "open-endedness" is a requirement for CRPGs shows narrowmindedness.

Korriban's level would likely have to been changed. I also would wager that a Scoundrel character would not have been able to complete the game. As for once the game being created the character being yours, the only games I can think of that actually do that are the Fallout games (but even still there are things that I would have liked to have done but cannot since we can only do what the developers program into the game), and I still contend that KOTOR still lets you build the character in your own way (although with not nearly the depth or variations as Fallout). But hey....look at the sales of Fallout versus KOTOR. People like you say that it's "pathetic" that people need to be spoon fed (which is arrogant), while at the same time it is easier to build a story around a character that isn't as free....and a lot of people love games with great storylines (which is why according to everyone but you PS:T is one of the greatest RPGs of all time). As for being upset about Knights of the Old Republic forcing you to be a Jedi....didn't you look into the game at all during the months prior to its release that let you know that the character would become a Jedi? To reiterate: freedom of development can be nice....but it is not the necessity that you make it out to be.

I tend to agree. Once I see some sort of anamoly that indicates CGI, it tends to take away from the movie IMO.

It's still an admission that you are only looking at it from what you extrapolate. However, unless you are some sort of authority in the field of special effects then it boils down to being purely subjective as to what is good or not. It also still comes off as arrogant. Furthermore, you started going on earlier about how the special effects are incorporated to make them look good, when from the beginning EnderWiggen stated that he appreciated the ground breaking visuals. Whether or not they were grossly overused was initially never part of the discussion.

You should probably rephrase that to "It's too bad I have to play as a Jedi" since the rest of us understand that the game is designed around the PC being a Jedi. Since we're here following the game, I think it is clear that we don't think it is too bad to have to play as a Jedi. You're in the minority Hades......not everyone thinks that a game has to give complete freedom of character development in order to be good (in fact I'd wager that very few feel that it is quite the necessity you make it out to be).

KOTOR should count since the only console it is on is the X-Box, and since it became like the best selling X-Box game I think it would be silly to ignore it.

But we wouldn't all want to be just a bunch of brains....have to work those twitch reflexes too in order to be a complete person

ROFL. Ivan...you rock. Always look forward to your posts

I think he was much better in Return of the Jedi though.

I suspect this is what they mean by your actions affecting your party members. You tell Juhani to slaughter that guy, and she better damn well get some DS points as far as I'm concerned And convincing Mission should have as well. I half expected it since they had their own spectrum of light/dark, but it wasn't fully realized.

Then that limits what you can truly take from life. Looking at the same situation from different points of view is the only way you can truly understand something. And only trusting your own extrapolations is rather arrogant. No one is the one authority on anything. Closing your mind to any outside opinion is elitist, and is the root cause for such wonderful things like prejudice. Please note, I'm not saying you are prejudiced against anyone or anything....but merely stating that people that only trust their own interpretations tend to be the ones that instigate prejudiced belief (and then passing it on to the gullible masses). Additionally, it basically nullifies your entire argument, as you basically admit to not caring what anyone else thinks about the topic....but if you didn't care, then why start the discussion?

CGI is probably one of the most time consuming and most expensive forms of special effects. Blowing up a car is quite a bit cheaper than doing one with CGI.

How is a "metagamer" worse than a powergamer? It seems like a logical way for you to at least attempt to play the game you want to play with it, given the obvious limitations of the KOTOR game that you enjoy pointing out over and over. And I know that it is not possible to talk your way out of violence at all, but as I said there wasn't even an option. Computer games cannot be as open ended as a pen and paper game. With my mad charming skills, my character wanted to try. Even if that meant trying unsuccessfully. As for "complete" control over your character. Looking at it from the "developing your character" stance, the only difference is that you essentially get the title of Jedi. I will give you that with respect to "forcing" some stuff upon you. But aside from saying "Hey you're a Jedi now," you could still choose how to develop your character in terms of skills and feats and attribute points, as well as LS vs DS. Was it implemented as well as Fallout....hell no. BTW, Fallout 1 and 2 are my two favourite RPGs of all-time, and easily two of the most enjoyable games I have ever played, much more so than KOTOR....so it's not that I have a thing against Fallout.

There's a similar type game coming out called The Fall that seems kind of interesting. Although I think it might be a bit more like Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel than the first two games...but here's hoping otherwise.

Sounds like a page out of Jedi Knight. I would imagine it would be stuff like bonus to defense at expense of attack type stance, or a more aggressive stance that gives you a bonus to damage/attack at the expense of defense or something. Keep up the good work on keeping us up to date Craftsman

But you're still playing a developer's character in Fallout, even if the means of the game are different. You could generally do things the bad way, or the good way. Now you could do the bad things through violence, manipulation, or perhaps persuasion....and the same goes for the good things. It was similar in KOTOR. They only difference is that you can say that one character is good at one weapon type...whereas a different character specializes in a different skill (which you could still do to a different extent with feats in KOTOR). And I still ran into similar problems with Fallout. Why were there times I couldn't talk my way through stuff, even though I had 10 charisma, 10 luck, and excellent speech skills? I should have been able to convince the evil dude in Junktown to just leave town, but I couldn't even try. As for metagaming, why don't you do it? It just sounds like a convenient excuse to still complain even though you don't have play the game like a Jedi.