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This is a coarse and inaccurate claim (I am shocked to hear such from you. Shocked!). Bioware's influence systems to date have been binary and self-contained. Which is to say, the only things that affected the relationships between characters were conversations specifically about those relationships, and in the context of those conversations you "passed" or "failed", and the outcomes were binary. There was not a middle ground that I encountered (the "let's just stay friends" and "**** you I hate you" dialogues brought about the same resolutions in terms of the relationship) and there was no "score" that you had with a character. You were either on with them or you were off. Contrast that with Obsidian's system in KOTORII. The opportunities for influencing relationships were abundant and never relegated to lovetalks, and often increasing influence with one party member meant losing it with another. The influence score was not binary - at some points you could gain or lose varying degrees of influence. The influence point system then allowed a rough approximation of "trust" between the PC and the NPCs, that in most cases had to be built up over long periods of careful consideration, whereas in Bioware games blind trust is usually a requirement for CNPCdom, and is gained and lost usually in short order. What resulted from all of this was, by necessity, a game that had to be replayed several times over to unlock the secrets of all the NPCs and to see them swayed towards both ends of the force. NWN2 was somewhat less succesful in this. Bioware doesn't really try.

The Iowa state constitution is relatively difficult to change, as I understand it. There has to be a majority vote in the state congress for two consecutive terms, which seems unlikely at this point. Even if the court's decision gets circumnavigated at the first available opportunity, that's a few years off. A few years is enough time for people on the fence to get used to gay marriage and realize that it's not a big deal. that sort of model feels a lot more solid than the quicksilver model of California. By definition I think constitutions ought to be at least a little bit more immutable than other sorts of legal codes. The LDS shouldn't be able to blitz in a gay panic, and a terrorist attack shouldn't open the possibility of curtailing basic rights (but then, as the entirety of the Bush Administration showed, you don't have to strike down the bill of rights to get around it). Gay marriage and gay rights in general are and continue to be an ethical non-issue. Conflicts regarding them tend to be beyond the scope of reason.

No Aliens. Dun dun dunnnnnn

People sure are wistful with this ****. And we don't know how Josh is involved, he's involved with all projects one way or another.

You know I already put all this information in the the appropriate thread. It's on up there.

lollerskates

It is real. It's airing on Comedy Central.

Playable demo out RIGHT NOW

NEW GAME REVEALED

Cool. I do believe all those functions were confirmed to have been in use with Onyx. Perhaps someone would like to dig up that thread from the Alien forum?

Are you using Onyx for it?

They could theoretically keep things under wraps until licensing or some other sort of obligation has to be fulfilled.

DA != BG3. Atari has indicated as much.

So I was wondering, how "real world" is this going to get, anyway? Obviously it's going to take place in a world recognizably alike our own. But I'm wondering if the similarities will end with the locales. It seems to me as though a lot of game developers, when creating a real world contemporary setting, often see fit to neglect the sort of proper world-building that you should see in any other game setting. Imagine playing MotB and being expected to already be readily familiar with the spiritual aspects of the Rashemi culture, or what the Red Wizards are all about. That sort of laziness is often seen in "real world" games. Terrorists are terrorists because... they're terrorists. And they come from the Middle East. Since we're familiar with the concept of a terrorist by virtue of living in the world we do, the developers don't have to do any work. Which isn't to say adversaries have to be oh so layered and complex to be believable, but so many games will not even address context. The best way to tackle this sort of thing easily would be to include some sort of historical context, but I'm unsure of how Obsidz will pull this off. Thing is, and here's the important part, "real world games" are loathe to actually take place in the real world, that is, the reality that exists. They all dwell within mockeries of reality. And in this they fail in their potential, utterly. Think of America in these games, for example, specifically the way the executive branch is portrayed. None of them have sitting or past presidents in office. What's more, none of them have any sort of context in the larger scope of history. What happens in the game is never tied back to any decision by a past administration that actually existed. In order to make the game uncontroversial the developers will either create an "alternate reality", or set the game sufficiently far in the future (probably around 2020) that several fictional administrations will have played out between the present and the game timeline. A civil war in Africa, for example, can be said to have started in 2014, and raged on until the present game date of 2020. On the one hand, this allows developers a great amount of leeway with regard to how they want to frame the setting, but on the other hand, it makes the game more fantasy than reality, in that nothing in the game really relates to our world. All aspects outside of the physical spaces are entirely theoretical. And even in a game that takes place on Planet Earth you'll get a lot of countries (usually unstable third world dictatorships) that are entirely fabricated for the game. That never sat well with me. Why not use a real place? The fake places are usually obvious stand-ins anyway. This is all just a long-winded way of asking, how much are we going to see of current events, or history, in AP? And I don't just mean, as an example brought up by a dev, a locale which explores the broader problems of neoconservatism in a more general sense. Do we have any settings or events in the game that tie directly into the events of the real world? Obvious things would be the various Bush wars or 9/11 or the PATRIOT act, but you could go into things like the Middle East and America's funding of regional insurgents in the 80's, or IMF policies in the 90's, or the decision to go into Bosnia or the decision to stay out of Rwanda. These are all valid contexts.

I like to think it's because the VA hasn't been fully mastered and processed. Honestly the snippets of dialogue we've heard from Mike have not blown me away.

One of the devs (don't remember who) stated that Onyx would be Obsidz' engine for all future projects except potential AP sequels. Unless the publisher has specific demands as to the engine, I would guess Onyx is what will be used..

I see your CSI and raise you an Untraceable (about halfway down the page, can't find the unimbedded clip)

Here's another question aboot upgradeable weapons - do all weapons of the same type (say, a pistol from one dealer and another pistol from a different one) allow the same modifications? I mean, say we have a .50 Desert Eagle, not much of a spy gun. I assume we couldn't put silencers on it, whereas with a baretta it's no big deal. Also, are there modifications that disallow other modifications? I ask because the inventory screens we saw only included one modification of each type. I'm thinking specifically about Blood Money, where you could get an extended slide for your silverballers, permitting the addition of a scope while sacrificing the possibility of a silencer.

At the very least we can be assured that the Sega troubles will not have put Obsidian to pasture. I wonder how long we'll wait before the project is revealed. AP was unveiled, what, 2 years into development? And Aliens was probably announced fairly early.

Search for "Paul Fish" on LinkedIn turned up someone with that name as a Junior Artist for Obsidz. Don't really know what to make of the comments. The guy he's twitter-conversing with is Sean Dunny, prop artist (I'm assuming that title has a different meaning than it's meaning w/r/t filmmaking. Obsidz doesn't really need sets) Eventually you get wise to the tools that funcroc utilizes but you never quite learn how to use them as skillfully as he does. By now I'm 100% convinced that he's in the industry.

What? Another one? nepotism

Really, making a character and then giving him "color" by associating him with an internet meme or an inescapable 80's hit would be a terrible waste. Go for the minor classics.

It's probably best to go for something that isn't obvious or excessively in-jokey (Rick Astley is obvious and in-jokey). And the less ubiquitous a song is the harder and more expensive it will be to snag rights for (good luck getting Michael Jackson rights, Sega) It will depend on the context. If he's a "boss" in that you fight him, is the music going to be playing during fights? With something like Bioshock's opera battle music can add a lot to a fight, but if you've got an enemy "obsessed with the 80's" he's going to be camp as ****, and blaring new wave while you shotgun thugs is just going to feel ridiculous. But that can be good. I would definitely consider Tom Tom Club and Peter Gabriel. Tom Tom Club would be comparitively easy to get, I would think. Also, "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" by Hall & Oates, which was my favorite song when I was 2. Basically y'all should let me do the soundtrack.

Oh I forgot about that bull****.

There are only four choices - Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love Aha - Take on Me Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer