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You lost me.

You always, always start off fighting rats, as in all great RPGs. the first game had a fairly intuitive and balanced first few levels. Start off with a pistol, graduate to SMG, to shotty, to rifle, etc. etc. Fallout 2 only really worked if you killed the right guys at the beginning, and most players not familiar with the sometimes nonexistent law of Fallout will assume that killing people and taking their stuff always results in negative consequences. So it didn't work as well as far as progressive combat balance went. My first time through F2, I made it to Vault City with nothing other than what I had left Arroyo with. What they had planned to implement in Van Buren, that I've shied away from to better help myself, was a Road Warrior-esque scarcity of actual guns and ammo. Early on I had planned on making most of the beginning part of the game crossbow-only, but... never did work for me. But in my PnP experience, it hasn't been particularly better or worse than other PnP games as far as the quality of the combat goes. Sequences, rolling to hit, rolling damage, subtracting resistances (something I need to work on), etc. I'm eager to try this SIMPLE combat, since Josh seems to think it vastly improves on the somewhat byzantine AP system. There are a few things I'm confuzzled over, but I'll figure them out in due time. Aside from the rival salvs / slavers / vault question, I'm also dreading that this next little excursion will mimick the last FedEx excursion we had, which is to say, I'm dreading that it will suck. But that's normal. Even the best designed CRPG scenarios can fall flat on the tabletop, and as long as I don't trip myself up, I could very well make the flimsiest few paragraphs into a riveting nightlong adventure. But you can't really do that when the game is planned out (albeit kind of loosely) in the way VB is.

O RLY. Well, that puts a damper on my whole other thing in the PnP forum about Lolth's death. But really, the whole "she's back bigger and badder than evar" thing seems like something they'd do. If it works for Bane, surely it works for Lolth. Hell, maybe I'll have to start reading these things. Tried to get into the Salvatore Drizzt books... Are these of better or worse quality?

It's already in my sig, but there's a nifty little site devoted to hilarious analogies and metaphors from high school essays. "The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work." -Malcolm Fleschner, Arlington "He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. -Susan Reese, Arlington" -Brian Broadus, Charlottesville Also, I often go to the Joe's Cafe quote database when I need a quick internets humor fix. The site also has a fake song/band name database (they're practically identical) that intermittently will produce titles of middling to outstanding quality. I highly recommend it. "I used to be the self-proclaimed "King of Sodomy." Then I got a dictionary." -- Yobaval "When I asked my doctor why it hurt when I urinate, he pointed out that my **** was on fire. I guess that's why he's the doctor." -- Kevin Bonnay "Whenever I'm driving through the desert, and I see a roadrunner, I run it over and say, "That's for the coyote!" I don't really like the coyote, but it's a good excuse to run over things." -- Craig Stacey Also, anything by TEH MASTAR. "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." - Jack Handey

I remember the few awful RL Stein choose-your-own-adventure Goosebumps. Remember Goosebumps? Remember RL Stein? He was the JK Rowling of the 90's! Somebody had the bright idea of making him the narrator of the (also awful) Goosebumps TV series, but if you've ever seen or heard the guy, he's a Ben Stein-esque melancholic. Not fun. That's the extent of my experience with the choose-your-own-adventure genre.

Ooh, I hate that! Syberia was like that - it didn't have the words 'to be continued', but it did stop right in the middle of the adventure. Shan't be buying that, then. Until part three comes out, at least. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You know what you'd love, is Shenmue.

DENVER LOOSES. On top of that, our cornerback got killed in a driveby. Happy new year Broncos!

AJ and Githgrrl have unchangable armor appearance. You can dress them up in breastplates or mail and they'll look like they're wearing nuttin'. That doesn't necessarily bother me as much as the fact that they nobody wears their helmets, except for the PC.

I've got no problem with his enjoyment of Oblivion, obviously he enjoys it, that's not what I take issue with. The list isn't "The Games that Scott Tobias most enjoyed in '06", it was "The Best Games of '06", which to me aren't the same things, although some would make the Klosterman-esque argument that all such things are, being subjective POV kinds of things. But he is a professional reviewer, and he isn't posting it in the blog section, but the "games" section. The AV Club hasn't ever really been a CHUD style, prominently editorial site. When they make a statement of quality, it's done so objectively. When they give Children of Men an A, they're not saying "reviewer X thinks Children of Men is an A movie", they're saying "It is the case that Children of Men is an A quality movie". With this, he's not saying "Oblivion is the best game I've played this year" he's saying "Oblivion is the best game of the year", and the official stance of the site itself is split up between these 2 reviewers (I've no doubt that if they were to make a gestalt list, Oblivion would be on top). But that's all really beside the point. The point was that Scott Tobias gave a glowing review, which he could have done and I would be fine with, if he actually had good reasons. But he doesn't. His breathless mention of "personal relations" and RPG Strategy (?) casts doubt on his review, simply because I've yet to see any of these things that are apparently significant and awe-inspiring from the game, let alone hear them described by anyone other than Mr. Tobias. Thus, I disparage the quality of his article, and his choice of Oblivion as "Best of the Year". *edit - It was "RPG Strategy" instead of "RPG Tactics". As for Tobias being "retarded", nonsense. I said the list he made (with its references to "avid gamers") was lightweight and easily dismissable. Furthermore, I said he might just be "ignorant", which is far from "retarded".

Yeah yeah. I just took some lorazepam. I don't even know if that's spelled right, but **** if I care! They say what you're doing when the ball drops determines what you'll be doing for the rest of the year. That's why people try their damnedest to have so much relations tonight. Me, I'm sitting at a cold desk, typing up **** on a message board. Looks like what they say is true. LEVEL 5 BY THE END OF THE NEW YEAR OR I EAT MY HAT.

Perhaps it's just a result of writing something and not implementing it in a timely manner, but all of a sudden I'm having second thoughts about that which I've set up. The whole vault / CODE thing does seem to be rather contrived, and the whole thing seems to be coming out rather Resident Evil survival horror-y (MCA mentioned a vault in his timeline that was made crazy with psychotropic drugs, which I was considering making the Denver Vault, and while I'll have to stretch to make it even halfway plausible, I think I can do it), and while that kind of gameplay has worked incredibly in the past with other games I've played, especially when put in contrast to FedEx and "save the prominent NPC" plots, I don't know how I could make it work with other, less intense parts of the game. I mean, is it really wise to depart radically from the tone and mechanics of a game, even just for a short while? Can I make this part of the game an intense room-by-room combatfest and expect my players to bite just at hard at the "save NCR from infighting and discredit the evil caravan house at the town hall meeting" bit? There's a less "wtf?"-intensive part of the locale that is included more or less wholly in the design docs. It involved a rival (evil) group of salvagers who were living in another part of abandoned Denver, who had infiltrated the first ("good") salvager group that the PCs are currently working for. The PCs would root out the traitors, prevent them from "opening a Pandora's Box", and save the good salvs. I was planning on somehow implementing those parts of the story later on, perhaps when the PCs return to the city later for different reasons. What I could do instead of the whole Vault deal is implement those plots immediately. The problem is, I'll have to write out that part of the game more (I have less time now) since the design docs make clear who the bad salvs are and their intentions, but it doesn't provide much of a narrative as far as how they get discovered, or dealt with. It's a labour of love, figuring all this crap out I've stuck with it this long, I've got to keep at it.

Moving back to topic... Scott Tobias, one of the prominent writers for the Onion's AV Club, ranked TES4 as the best game of the year. Here's what he had to say about it.

Wait, the "RPG-like FO" thread isn't locked? Why would we want another thread about it? Moreover, when we use the word "contiginuating", do we mean that we are continuing, or using the verb form of "contiguous", or both? Does "contiguous" even have a verb form? I don't think it does. Can we really touch something and continue it at the same time? Hmm. Food for thought. I don't think these challenging questions can be answered in any one thread. So I would urge the mods not to see it as ultimately redundant and move to lock it, right now. This is just the thread for my New Year.

Wait, really?

Nerds. *edit - And that guy's shirt totally spells "repellant" wrong. ZOMG ALIEN IS A LOST CAUSE.

Worked better within the story, though. The assumption that Anakin would restore order to the force was part of the Jedi's hubris. Apparently nobody was smart enough to recognize that the Sith were just as much a part of the Force as the Jedi, and there were more Jedi than Sith. Or maybe nobody really knew the definition of the word "balance". Considering George Lucas' pop mystical aspirations and his terribly written characters, that just might have been the case. Seems to me that in a way, Anakin did bring balance to the Force, seeing how Luke sprang from his loins and all. But in another, more accurate way, he didn't. Unless I've got it wrong. I'm not a big SW scholar as it is. Anyway, there aren't any coincidences in SW, thus implying a predetermination of roles and thus, everybody is their own special Chosen One. What are we arguing about again?

Screw the brothel, where's the bathhouse? This is a slash, isn't it? Where's Hagrid? A.

High School CRPG. Seriously though, aside from TES and NWN1/2, I have a hard time coming up with the-world-hangs-in-the-balance games. Maybe I haven't played enough older CRPGs. Turned out in Fallout that the Master's world-domination plan was hopelessly flawed, and would have failed regardless of PC interference (Only would have been a "world" scenario had there conclusively been no life beyond Cali). F2, with its slipstream wind-of-death and whatnot, probably counts more towards the saving-world scenario. And BG wasn't necessarily a "world-saving" kind of deal. Sure, things would've been bad had Sarevok become a God and Amn and BG gone to war (or had Irenicus gotten his soul back / become a Seldarine, whatever) but it wasn't a cataclysm thing. Things wouldn't have been over.

I try to think of NWN2 more as a pop fly. Kotor is a foul tip that could have very well been a line drive. But really, I think it really depends on what kind of pitch it was in our analogy. This Alien game could be a screwball, or a curve, or something. We haven't really determined that yet.

For a second there I thought Meta was suggesting something nasty and very wrong. Another resolution I have is to get this Van Buren-esque PnP game I have going finished. I've never actually finished a PnP campaign before (rarely do we even finish adventures) but this is something I really want to get done. If we do, my friend is going to DM a more speculative F4.

Yes, let's go with Link B

I thought the whole point of the Wiimote was that it made the character "mimick" your movements. If you flick your wrist to initiate a generic slice or shake the nunchuk to do a whirlwind attack, it's a gimmick. You swing hard, swing soft, it all comes out the same. Meta's got the right idea about it. After awhile it becomes just like pressing a button and using a D-pad. the only "innovative" property Zelda has with regard to use of the controller in comparison to things like most of the games on Wii Sports is the bow system, and even then, most of the awesomeness comes from the fact that a light-gun dynamic has been integrated seamlessly into a non-light-gun game. I'm curious, as people have been practically fapping about possible light-saber / sword battle games using the Wii controller. But how would that work? What happens if you parry? The wiimote can't simulate recoil, only the swinging motion. I can't see that coming out as anything less than sloppy.

Congratulations, you totally called Meta's sinister corporate game. Clearly, you possess a unique intellect.

Can you name one that doesn't? I can't. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If a game sucks or not is a pretty subjective perspective. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Au contraire. ET 2600 is objectively terrible.

Interesting.