meomao

Almost finished Batman: Arkham City. Asylum was way better. The sandbox killed the flow of the narrative and the whole story is too convoluted and fragmented. Too many antagonists mixed together. Still, it's a fun game with plenty of cool things to do and I only payed it 9 € on Steam. Next game: I want to replay Ultima IV .

You're welcome: now shut up and take my money . KS is turning my wildest gaming dreams true. A TRUE BG/PS:T spiritual successor developed by Obsidian? Sometimes miracle can happen.

I'm playing mostly melee and while very abstracted I like that style of gameplay because it's an interesting form of problem solving (honest: I'm grinding for XP ). But I agree: great atmosphere. Great freedom. An interesting plot. And the dialogue wheel beats anything Bioware has done so far. More importantly, I'm actually surprised by the fidelity to the original DX. I mean, they really got what's great about the original and improve what could be possibly improved.

DX:HR. Damn good game. I'm actually sorry I've bought it on a Steam Sale for 5

I like very much the premise of TSO. I'm really intrigued by the setting and I could give it a try. Is it a good game for a person who have never played an MMO like me and who would mostly play solo? You know, I'm the kind of gamer who is interested mostly in the story and not so much on builds, loot, raids and PVP.

I spent more for games I've never have time to play on Steam sales. Or for games I've played that were a buggy mess or poor.

It depends but if you're a completionist, I guess 35-40 hours are a reasonable guess.

That's great news. Thanks Drowsy. I would have bought the game no matter what but being able to avoid installing another client after Steam and that pile of **** called Origins is a big plus for me.

AFAIK, there is no more a NWN site (just a small description in the "Legacy Games" section). Btw, the links I've posted are Atari's press release, not mine.

I suggest that NWN2 had sold 1+ million copies (wich is fair for a PC exclusive: same as the glorified TW2). The links above talked about the sales of the franchise before MoTB and SoZ (it was Atari's announcement of Mask of the Betrayer). And I suggest that NWN1 sales after 2004 are not that relevant considering that it's a game of 2002. Having said that, maybe I'm wrong: so if you can find me some piece of info about sales that contradicts my links above I will admit being wrong without any problem.

http://www.warcry.co...ights-2-Expands Read the article. It's an official announcement by Atari (2007). 3 millions counting NWN2 and all the expansions to NWN1 but not MoTB and SOZ. http://www.gamevorte...ights-2-pc.html Read this one: another official announcement by Atari (2004). 2 millions for NWN1 + expansions. Btw, it's not a contest . You don't have to troll me. I loved both games for different reasons. I would be glad to see a NWN3 with a good toolset.

No, infact they developed TOR MMO. Because they aren't lies. The whole NWN franchise sold 3+ million copies: NWN2, MOTB and SOZ included. Btw, the 1,5 million copies number was reported by some Bioware devs in the forums. But they dropped the entire idea of end user content. Why if it was such a success? Sadly, it wasn't.

I agree that ME3 ending is cheap garbage. Most of the final sequence beginning with the Cerberus base mission is quite bad compared to the rest of the game. I'm really at a loss explaining how they could have dropped the ball so bad. Not only a crap, nonsensical and rushed ending. Even a plagiarism of the original Deus Ex. The only reasonable explanation I've been able to formulate is that ME3 have sufferend the "design by metrics" trend of last Bioware games. Only a few minority of gamers experience the end of a game. There are stats that talk of a meager 10/20% finishing rate. Bioware published the metrics for ME2 and the result was that only 50% of the people who have begun the game have finished it (and that take even multiple playthroughs in to account). So, maybe, when it was time to decide what kind of resource they should put in each part of the game, they decided to invest a lot more in the sequences that happens in the early-mid game and the ending pulled the shortest straw in term of time, attention and resources. If you think about it, it's just smoke and mirrors. Most science-fiction endings (especially the twist/exposition variant) suck badly and do not make a lot of sense. The illusion of sense and value is more important than the reality of it in most cases. Having said that, imho the whole hysteria concerning the "retake ME" movement is even worst than the ending. The ending could be really bad, but the Tuchanka and Rannoch sequences are truly brilliant and worth my time and money alone.

It's funny because The Heores is my favourite one. Probably that explains our respective positions on setting and charachterization: just a matter of tastes in the end . Btw, Abercrombie is a gamer and post games impression in his blog from time to time. It was interesting to read what he had to say about ME3 ending.

Well, I agree, but we must admit that at the end the chore idea behind NWN was the multyplayer: good or bad, it was all about user content and in that sense it was a good game imho and one of the few risks Bioware has ever taken. The game wasn't developed to be played as a SP game and the community that grew up around NWN was brilliant. Then only a minority of players experienced the MP part. I don't remember the figures but it was something like 20%. Considering that NWN+expansions have sold more or less 1,5 milion copies we're not talking of a lot of people and it would be hard to call it a a success. If it was a success, we would have seen a sequel from Bioware and not Obsidian. Those numbers were given by Bioware's devs themselves during the development of DA:O and DA2 as a justification for the lack of effort on the DA tool-kit. NWN was not a good SP game. Bioware exploited it with expansion and such (that were way better than the OC) just because there was a large majority of NWN player-base who could not care more about the MP and who just wanted another BG, imho.

Epic fantasy is just a synonim of high fantasy. Sub-genres do not mean a lot at the end but they are usefull label to sort things out. I agree. I think that in the topic it was just used to describe in short the kind of videogames/fiction stories about the big bad who is going to destroy/conquer the world and the tale of the chosen one who is going to kill the big bad using the occasional mcguffin (like every Bioware game with the exception of DA2). Fortunately a story can be epic in scope and avoid that kind of cliches or at least play with them. Problem is: anytime Bioware tries to do something different from that cliche, even a small deviation, they screw up big time (while being heavily criticized by the sunshine brigade who represents the majority of his fanbase and just wants big bads, chosen one, mc guffin and happy endings).

I guess it means epic fantasy, wich is an estabilished sub-genre of fantasy with its rules and tropes.

Like it or not, there would not be any modern or contemporary fantasy if not for Tolkien. In my opinion the story of Middle Earth (wich is the true story of LoTR) is very good and the intentional lack of psychological struggle is an interesting style that adds gravitas to the storytelling. Not that every fantasy author should replicate that approach but Tolkien does not work with "traditional" charachters in the literary sense but archetypes and ideas. Any element of their development is part of the bigger picture. That's extreme off course but the lesson I was speaking before, remains (do your homework and write a setting that's like a living human being). About ASoIaF: it's funny because my position is inspired by interview and essays of the Big Man himself. GRRM has stated many times that Westeros is the main characther of his narrative. Don't you think that it's a proof of my position? There's not even point to write a fantasy story if you do not start with the world-building. I'm not saying that you can have a good fantasy with bad charachters and a good setting: there's plenty of those like WoT. I'm saying that you cannot have interesting charachters in an epic fantasy if the setting is not considered and developed as a charachter in itself, first and foremost. Without the framework how can you develop the traits of each charachter? You cannot develop a charachter in a vacuum.

I don't agree. My point is that in the fantasy genre the setting is a charachter and should be treated as such. If you do not want the setting to be considered a member of the cast, why write in a medium like traditional epic fantasy after all? It's not economic and it's really a silly dress for a literary fiction. It causes all kinds of unnecessary problems that could be avoided in a realistic setting. Just look at the better example of epic fantasy: LotR, ASoIaF, Jonathan Strange & Dottor Norrel, The Chronicles of Amber etc. etc. etc.. In all those cases, the setting is the main charachter. That helps the process of proper charachterization in the fantasy context: those books have great charachters because the setting is the main actor in the cast. I believe that you cannot have great charachters in an epic fantasy if the setting is just an afterthought. That's the only lesson of Tolkien that you cannot avoid. Mind, my opinion is just based on the fantasy books I've read so there could be books out there that proove me wrong off course.

I'm talking about Bioware's tried cliches about the "chosen one". And yes, there were many elements in the story that felt fresh from standard fantasy games, especially during act. 2 (I'm thinking about the whole story of the Mage Qunari and the confrontation with the Arishok).

I understand your point. But... we should admit that a D&Dish setting is not the best place to set-up a personal tragedy tied with political insights on the nature of control. It just causes a sense of... disconnect between what you see in the gameplay and what you experience in the story. You cannot give me pirate ninjas kicking flasks during combat and then mature reflections on the nature of religion tolerance in the following dialogue and expect me to take it seriously. I appreciated the effort of the writers in DA2 to offer us something new from tried cliches (even if failing completely to give us something interactive): I simply think that high fantasy is a very silly dress for the story they wanted to told in DA2 and that sword and sorcery does not mix well with personal tales. High fantasy works best with epic stories. The main protagonist of every good fantasy story is the setting. The better bet is to mix the personal with the epic just like BG or MoTB did imho.

Baldur's Gate, Arcanuum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Temple of Elemental Evil, Ultima series.

You must have never played Lone Wolf. Most famous "choose your own adventure" book and it has combat encounters, levels, items, skills, HP and all that jazz too . We all cheated the encounters but that's beside the point . Btw, I believe that there would be a good market for an adventure/rpg hybrid game with dialogue options and branching storylines and where combat is a failure state like Amnesia The Dark Descent. It would just not be the right game for DA since a classical fantasy setting would be terrible for such gameplay. Traditional high fantasy/sword and sorcery needs lot of combat and an epic storyline to work out.

Yep, I know... I should have not trust the hype. But I like the premise so much I decided to give it a try.

I've purchased I Am Alive for my PS3. I was intrigued by the general concept of survival in post-apocalypse America but unfortunately the game does not live up to the premise. It's really poor imho and it hasn't anything to do with The road by Cormac McCarthy (I guess that all the reviewers who have hinted at that book have never read it).