Llyranor

I point you to Chess. Chess is TB.

TB is irrelevant. Look at Civ4's sales. POR2 was #1 bestselling game for 2 weeks in a row, despite murdering the OS. It, of course, plummetted quickly afterwards for those reasons. Had it been a good game, the trend was looking good.

Squad-based FPSesque systems can work quite well, as Brothers in Arms demonstrated (which worked very well, if not for the repetition). Adding RPG elements to it certainly could end up quite interesting. I'd keep an eye on this one, if I actually had a 360. To expand on BiA. Basically, you had two fire teams at your disposition. One keyboard press switches btw which one is active. Point somewhere, click, order move. Point at the enemy, click, order fire/suppression. Click something else, order assault - fire teams charges. You could easily set up suppression/flanking maneuvers in a few clicks. Some commands were to take cover behind objects, rally up, fall back, etc.

Hmm, update. Surprisingly awesome demo. The combat was more enjoyable than pretty much any RTS out there at the moment. No mainstream drivel here. Thumbs x 2.

Fallout 3 just won't be Fallout without idiotic party members who shoot you in the back. In TES' defense, the one-liner NPCs in Fallout were just as freaking bloody pointless as the idiotic NPC-NPC crapathon in Oblivion, or - *gasp* - even Morrowind's encyclopedias. The difference, of course, is that Fallout didn't consist exclusively of one-liners. From that perspective, the keyword drivel could even be deemed tolerable as a replacement for conversation with unimportant NPCs. A keyword/rumors check could replace a random one-liner; it'd just be tackled in a different manner. This, of course, is no excuse to propagate this disease to the bulk of the storyline.

You can be the president of my fist *shake*

Okay, I've been progressing further into the story. I'm about to cross into Oblivion. For all intents and purposes, that means I haven't much more than last time, really, but the story at least seems to be picking up. There was some cool roleplaying potential when I arrived at the city I am now (Kvatch), but instead the devs opted to force a completely linear path onto the main storyline. A shame, really. That could have been great. I would say so far the story hasn't wowed me yet, but it's compelling enough to keep me playing. This is a good thing. I've tried a few misc quests here and there in the Imperial City and Chorrol. They really felt pointless - some Morrowind flashbacks there. I think I'll stick to the Dark Brotherhood one, and maybe some of the guilds (though we'll see if that actually works out at all, since I'm not playing a stealthy character). In any case, I've initiated the DB quest line after I finally successfully murdered the old beggar hag. The guards caught me, but I resisted arrested and escaped the city. Now, I'm supposed to go kill some old guy at some inn. That will come later. The best part of the game is how you can play around with the corpses after you strip off their clothes. Will you drag their feet around, or will you move that torso back and forth? Or will you bring those hands into compromising situations? Oh, the possibilities!

Fool. Tetris DS > all.

JE is reading this thread! Please dismiss the MMO rumors, Mr. Awesome!!!

So, a PC/PS3/360 title, eh? The haters will hate, but so long as they don't compromise storytelling, whatever consolization crap they pull can go screw a rock. I like SEGA. Creative Assembly is cool.

From the Oblivion thread

Okay, other than the Dark Brotherhood and the main storyline, what other quest lines do you recommend?

Alright, alright, I'll write a full report on the Dark Brotherhood crap once I tackle it. Tsk tsk, alanschu, don't bring that up again, or you will disappear.

metadigital, have you been sniffing glue again?

or should you say...... metadigital.

Yeah, I downloaded that one since I noticed it was being published by Paradox. Haven't installed it. Will play later.

The criticism seems to be mostly aimed at the NPC-NPC crapathon, though. There have been some praise for the main storyline. Guess we'll see.

Well, Bethesda pretty much confirmed their writing crappitude with Morrowind. Oblivion is just to determine whether that has gone up or down, and to what extent.

I uploaded a short clip featuring about 1 min of NPC-NPC dialogue. The beauty of it is that they're all talking at the same time. 3 megs. http://s42.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0E60IWL...R43LWKYZZ7UXNKN

Oh, Gromnie's definitely right. I haven't seen any actual attempt by the writers to genuinely be funny. One example of a conversation: As for the persuasion minigame, ROFLASKJKASGASGSAKJGHSAJGHSAJGASGSA

You saw that screenshot. You decide.

See those floating helmets? Those guards were ripping my ninja to shreds Alright, after messing around a bit in the Imperial City, I can easily say that Oblivion destroys Morrowind - if for the wrong reasons. Idiotic conversations + stupid voice-acting has a nice comedic value that Morrowind's pointless encyclopedias could never hope to match. The NPCs have their own 'personalities (for the completely wrong reasons, but that's irrelevant). I'm actually laughing at their stupidity instead of wanting to punch them into a wall (previous killing spree attempt excepted). This is a good thing... if, again, for the wrong reasons <_<

What kind of bloody freaking poll is this???

Nice. Why are your graphics so bad though compared to the trailer graphics? Have the settings turned down or were they being naughty with the trailiers? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My specs aren't particularly top-notch. I just have them set to autodetect. The framerate is good and loading hasn't been a problem, so I keep the settings as they are. I could try the game on my brother's brand new comp, but that means another installation, and I frankly can't be bothered. Lo and behold, I finally get the experience first-hand the infamous NPC-NPC crapathon. I couldn't actually hear what they were saying since they were all bloody talking at the same time. I got close enough to one of them for it to pop up in the subtitles. WHAT. THE. CRAP. Doing what any sensible person would do upon such emotional trauma, I drew my sword and went into a killing spree. My blade skills, of course, weren't actually high enough to even remotely damage anyone The choice, of course, was obvious. So, erm, yeah, I ran. Saw some water, so I jumped to freedom, trying to swim my way to safety.