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Escape From Butcher Bay was probably the second best Xbox game nobody played, behind Psychonauts. I'm hoping they can do Bourne more justice than Conspiracy did. (and when I'm referring to the movies, not the awful book series)

You can hear them before you see them the same way you can with any of the other special zombies, it's just less subtle. Also if a tank does not get hit for 30 seconds after it's been alerted to your presence it will die on its own. But in any case 2 guys with fully loaded auto shotties can usually make short of a tank.

Ridley Scott's last few pictures, particularly American Gangster, have had pacing problems. They're meticulous when they should be roaring.

Pretty sure Chris Avellone said that end-user engine tools are not something Obsidian had a good experience with, and that they wouldn't revisit the concept in future engines. So I wouldn't bet on there being modding tools. But modders typically find a way, always.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before games got the MST3K treatment. Most game cutscenes are pretty dumb. I'm not watching, though. I also really liked this review. I've ****in' hated the GoW / Unreal Tournament character models for as long as they've been out. They're ass-ugly. It's nice there are people out there who agree.

Sweet, new dev diary on the way.

I too am excited to get my hands on this "Alpah Protocol". I hope it will show as much promise as AP does.

Official Obsidz Twitter is up.

Ah, team arena, I missed you. It runs like butter, but when I left my match it crashed Firefox, heh. Beta indeed. How does one receive invites, anyway? Do they give them out at all? I know people who would probably be interested in this.

Warlocks can also be Chaotic Good. Also it's worth pointing out that there are no alignment shifts in SoZ (that I ran into, anyway). The way you set your character is the way he / she is going to be for the rest of the game. So you can make a party of several disparate alignments with no conflict, and you'll probably get a good cross section of alignment-specific dialogue.

Satiate was kind of broken if you just levelled, because it couldn't really take levels from you, it just reduced you to the beginning of your xp bar. Saved my ass a couple of times. In news, new stuff on the blog!

arrrrrrgh new guy

We need a replacement. I nominate this guy

Where's the money for QA testing going to come from? Income from those other games they've made?

From the sound of it, I don't think Atari is either. Sucks for the MoW guys.

The description of the beginning of the game is rather new. Also there are a few new pics that show Thorton with a different face than the default we've seen. Given the relative unsexiness of it (asian guy with thick glasses) I'm assuming it's the first disguise we'll have seen.

Because they made the game? If you think that buying a game means you "own" it you've never really paid much attention to your games. For just about every game you've ever installed on your computer, before you're allowed to install, you are required to acknowledge a ream of text as having been read and agreed to. That ream of text is your list of rights as a buyer of the game, of which there are relatively few, and that agreement is binding. Just because you ignore it does not mean it never happened, it just means you're dishonest. Game companies could very well prohibit secondhand sale if they had the means and the will, of which they have little. That does not mean you're within your rights to participate in it. If game companies were interested in selling you the license to their game, they'd be charging you much, much more.

Presumably, he worked on the Elder Scrolls MMO Bethsoft has stewing.

I think you know. Tell us.

As you can see from the Obsidz section of the forum, George Ziets has cast his shadow over SoCal once again. If his resume is any indication, he could be working on the far-flung fantasy RPG Obsidz has cooking, but he could very well be working on Aliens or AP. But wouldn't it be nice to have another Ziets-helmed xpac?

People who played the game prior to the first big patches for it will remember a time when using suppress tipped your character's law/chaos axis towards law by 2 points. If you played a warlock, say, or a barbarian, this was a significant consideration if you wanted to keep your craving low. But Obsidz patched that out after the waves of griping battered their hull, so to speak.

Apparently the spirit meter was much more of a hassle if you passed over eternal rest for spirit gorge or whatever it was, the one that allowed you to devour souls without a cooldown period but increased the severity of cravings. I imagine after awhile you'd be desperate to eat anything.

Definitely (a). The ending is basically - people: "well done, you beat the evil machine!", Shepard: "There's more, and they're still coming." (Shepard storms off to somewhere)

They addressed Mysteries of Westgate in the podcast, saying they've been holding onto it too long yadda yadda blah blah. It's not what they're talking about. They said that they'd have "a team" on it. They did not mention Obsidz. But I too wonder about their ability to make another expansion at present time. Maybe it is their "fantasy" project. If it comes out in over a year it should have the potential to be MotBesque.