Llyranor

Er, yeah, beta is available for Fileplanet subscribers. Apparently everyone will have access in 3 days.

Maybe you are, but I'm not.

Why are you dorks dissing BG3? As one Atari representative said: "you'll be able to see the fear in the orc's eye as you throw a fireball at him." Best game ever material right there, folks.

PST is easily top on that list by far. IWD was a very enjoyable dungeon romp. Some very cool battles. BG1/2 series isn't on the list. It sucks.

Or the 4 million people who bought Enter The Matrix ^_^ <3 <3 mainstream industry

Hopefully. Obs > Bio

What an industry it would be if good games would actually get the attention they deserve, without having to resort to lame marketing tactics. On the bright side, "Despite some of the worst review scores for a mainstream game released in 2005, VUGames sent out a press release announcing that 50 Cent: Bulletproof has now sold over 1 million units in the US."

Meh, the budget going into that crap should be put into making a less idiotic industry. Morons.

or will u r00fles

Hades is right. Screw KOTOR3, we want Knights of the New Republic.

"The persuasion minigame is very different from what was shown at E3. It plays much more like a game now. Similar to the one we showed, the game still uses a circular interface divided into four quadrants for the different persuasion types. The art is completely different and fully animated now. Each of the four quadrants will fill with wedges of different sizes. The size of the wedge reflects the scale of the potential effect of your choosing an action. Choosing a large wedge has a great effect; choosing a small wedge has a small effect. As you highlight in turn the Admire, Boast, Joke, and Coerce quadrants, the person 's face shows his reaction to each of the actions. For each of the four actions, he will Love one, Like one, Dislike one, and Hate one. Don't take too long, because the person 's disposition is steadily falling. The person 's disposition goes up when you select a Loved or Liked action and goes down when you select a Disliked or Hated action." ROFLASFJKYASHFSKJFHASMGHASKGJSHAGAKSGASKGASAKSGHASKGHASKHGAUYCASICHASCASCHASKHCA KCHASJCASKBCASKFCBHSKFHASKFHASFAS

http://www.nwn2wiki.org/Warlock

Forcing a non-combat state is kind of lame. Shouldn't avoidance of physical conflicts be its own goal? Just because you're an adventurer doesn't mean you shouldn't minimize your chances of dying. Fighting should only occur when absolutely necessary, and the gaming mindset has really disrupted that.

I love the language police in Quebec <3 <3

Don't assume you know how far people would go to please Magical Volo

The other problem with Minsc quest is that it's pretty inconsistent with the rest of the world. World consistency is very important.

That was just bad design, pure and simple. It has nothing to with the timer feature in and of itself. POR2 doesn't make TB games bad.

A brand new PrC, eh?

Screw the real world, screw immersion. Let's focus on gameplay and on the GAMEworld's internal logic. How is gameplay enhanced because you get access to everything, despite contrary logic? Is this the justification Bethesda is using to allow the player to join ALL factions with no drawbacks, and people are agreeing with them? This isn't about immersion, it's about actual consequence. What good is your decision-making if it's ultimately inconsequential? Just because one game allows it, now every game has to be like that, and anyone trying something different gets no appreciation? Why are we favoring a gaming convention just for its own sake? A house is burning. A cat is inside. As you try to get inside, a boy approaches you. "Hi, wanna fetch me some shoes for $$$?" Before you can answer, an old blind lady drags you by the ear. "You, my grandson is missing, can you find him?" You notice the boy looks like the old lady, and you notice the old lady is wearing shoes. You also notice a house is burning. You can: 1) Punch the old lady and steal her shoes. 2) Punch the boy unconscious and drag him to his grandma. 3) Jump into the burning and save the cat or die trying. Let's see the options. If I punch one or the other or both, then decide to go to the library and read some books, then burn the library to erase all evidence, should I still have time to save the cat? Is it wrong to want the gameworld to have its own function, to exist other than to serving the player's every whim? Time as the gameworld knows it halts when the player isn't looking? And it's okay to go on a picnic when assassins are hunting you? Because time is a real world notion, suddenly it has no more bearing on the gameworld? What about the plausibility of the gameworld? What happened to consequence? Let's take a 'real life' scenario. You're a medical student on overnight call during your internal medicine rotation. You're the first responder to three medical floors. Your only official backup is the ICU resident, who's covering the ICU - so he's pretty busy and you need to maximize efficiency when bothering him. Here's a conflict of interest. You want to: 1) Get as much sleep as possible. 2) Provide the best medical care possible for your patients. 3) Piss off the ICU resident as little as possible. 4) Grab dinner before the cafeteria shuts down soon. Starts off as a quiet evening. Some nurses are bugging you to check up some medical orders that aren't legible. You have the time, so you can tend to those immediately, but you also need to remember to get dinner. The cafeteria IS going to close, and it's your responsibility to remember that detail. Imagine this in a gameworld, time isn't going to stop just to please the player. So, there you are, dealing with some of the nurses' issues. 6:30, you better go get food, because the caf closes at 7. Pager goes off. "Hi, elderly man, retrosternal chest pain. Have a nice day." You run to the floor, ask the nurses to prepare to draw some bloods and get the ECG, and grab the nitro at the nurses' desk. As you prepare to enter the patient's room, boom, pager goes off. You need to make a decision on the spot. Whether you answer it now or tend to the man's needs first, there WILL be consequences. Being able to do both at your leisure is NOT an option. Running off to the cafeteria is not a recommended option, but you can still do it, because the player can do whatever s/he wants!!! Let's say you quickly go assess the man and do a brief history/physical. His vitals seem ok, he doesn't look that much in distress, just really worried he's having a heart attack. We'll do the blood tests anyway, and do the ECG. Maybe a few more tests, maybe a trial of nitro. While the nurse is doing all these, you go answer the pager. Looks like someone fell and doesn't remember what happened. Head trauma status unknown. There you go, you go see over there. You past by and check on the nurse, and see how the man's doing. "I think I'm feeling better now." You look at the ECG. Looking good. "Page me if something comes up, it'll be my pleasure," you smile widely. You go assess the fall. Quick history, quick neuro exam. Patient with dementia doesn't remember what happened. Nothing seems broken. The neighboring patient just heard the fall, curtains were blocking the view. Seems relatively ok. You might do a more in-detail exam, just in case. Whoops, pager time. "Hi LOL some resident forgot to sign these meds, I can't give them to the patient ROFL" "What's the order?" "post-surgical pain meds" "Hmm, that sounds important, I'll tell the resident." Whoops! Forgot to tell the resident about the potential heart attack. Uh-oh. You page the resident, and look at the clock. 6:55. Hmm, you could run down and get dinner, but you have to wait for the resident to call you back. What do you do? Run off, pretent nothing happened, then page the resident again in 5 min? Or just wait? This scenario wouldn't be the same if you were just being handed sidequests after sidequests without having to do any prioritization, because you know that doing anything in any order would lead to the same thing. 'Doing things at your leisure' isn't really an option when you're being hunted by assassins. This doesn't have anything to do with 'real life', it has to do with the gameworld's narrative, and its internal logic. This isn't an argument for realism, it's one for logical gameplay and narrative flow. Just because some people like Hades have no reflexes and that anything related to real time wouldn't work because they'd explode doesn't mean the actual concept of time can't be applied in the gameworld - whether 'real time' or not. 'lol lol be realistic cuz improving and innovating gaming design costs money ROFLSAFASJFHSJAGAS' is no excuse. Full voice-acting doesn't cost anything, of course. Yay for mainstream commercialism. "Despite some of the worst review scores for a mainstream game released in 2005, VUGames sent out a press release announcing that 50 Cent: Bulletproof has now sold over 1 million units in the US." <3 <3 industry

Well, if all quests have 'all the time in the world' to complete, it kind of breaks their plausibility. 'Will you save my cat?' 'Okay. Wait, see you in 3 months, SUCKER!' Having a quest fail because you had to prioritize other issues (and thus have appropriate consequences occur 'My cat died, you dastard!!!' 'Awesome, I was just hungry now'). This is all part of making choices, having to make decisions about what's more important and thus giving them priority. Being able to do everything is more akin to being able to joining every faction in Oblivion (I wanna do EVERYTHING!!! ROFLTUNASANDWICH!!!!), then it becomes an issue of the player wanting to have everything completely available instead of the stuff being available making sense in the game world. Heck, if you just have a tendency to leave the game running while you go potty breaking, then don't have the game timer run off of real-time. Have it so that each action you perform in-game (exploring a new area, performing a mission, resting) consists of a certain amount of time in-game, rather than clock it minute-by-minute. The race against the clock becomes much more about your PC vs prioritization, rather than the player vs real-time. PC vs player.

Don't be discouraged by CrashGirl, she'd rather read a book if she wanted a story IIRC, aren't you working on unique items for NWN2? Didn't you make those for IWD as well? I remember them being very nice. I always like unique items with nice, long descriptions. Makes the game lore more interesting. Would you be able to divulge what specifically your role is re: NWN2?

http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=388682 :D And more dead cats! http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=388686

IWD2 had some nice dialogue. http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=388691 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=388693 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=387319 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=431008 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=410788 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=402460 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=388694 http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/images/ph...x.asp?id=391741

You have a fan in me, JE! *huggles* Would you feel proud about Jefferson and Van Buren if they came to fruition, if there were no external obstacles?

Forgotten Realms 6, I guess - another codename for Jefferson/Black Hound/BG3