Aaron Contreras

I disagree. They feel - to a certain extent - like clones of Warcraft characters. That female paladin would plug right into WoW. I was actually pretty pleased with the art - zooming in on models makes 'em purty. The units lack personality - which both Warcraft and Dawn of War (WH 40k) have in spades. I don't recall any spoken acknowledgement of you giving them orders...hopefully that'll be in the retail version. This could be a contender to Dawn of War / Warcraft III if they gave it another six months and the dev team had enough drive and juice to make some hard choices and polish it up good. Generally not enough spells/abilities being used and I don't get a visceral reaction when I do use them. When my rogue hero uses his fan of knives skill I don't instant sense that I just did something really cool that did a lot of damage. Little things like this make a big difference in an RTS.

If anyone has a clue as to how to create a solid (ie. as good as PS2 controls) control profile for San Andreas with the Saitek 2500...lemme know. Keyboard + Mouse is working okay but I ain't able to rock my BMX like I wanna.

I'm not responsible for designing the system. I'll probably generate content for it. The Diplomacy system in Vanguard is not a replacement for traditional conversations. Meaningful dialogues with NPCs will happen at all levels of gameplay across all three spheres (adventuring, crafting/harvesting, diplomacy). Diplomacy does serve as an abstraction of communication - it simply isn't realistic to use prose dialogues as your core system given just how much Diplomacy content is planned. Maybe once we figure out how to clone Avellone....

The Diplomacy system is very exciting. We got some great designers working on it.

I think I read the same article. My experiences and conversations with people in the industry suggest: 1 - If an employer (game industry or not) can take advantage of you they will. 2 - The best way to make more money is to bounce to another company. Some companies just don't pay as much as others. I've never brought up wanting more money to an employer without already having a better offer at another gig - prepare for the worst and all that.

Sorry to hear you didn't get it, Oerwinde. Keep bangin' away and you'll get there. One tip - I'd reallyreallyreally watch posting private correspondance from a company on any sort of forum/blog. I'd even suggest editing that post. Companies really don't like that sort of thing and I'd hate to see your chances for a future gig get lessened over something so trivial.

Good luck, Oerwinde. I've heard good things about the potential to move up if you get recognized at EA QA. Mostly from people who worked the Los Angeles office...but from everything I've heard EA Vancouver is the place to be. ...and my experience with Vancouver triple-super-quadruple reconfirms this info.

I find the combat in JE to be extremely lacking. I went through the entire game using only four stances - my Martial (Thousand Cuts, not that your choice there really matters), Storm Dragon (Fast area paralyze of all human opponents), Spirit Thief (if I needed Chi) and Sword. On certain fights I *did* use the big Transformation style if I knew a Chi battery was immediately available. The major reasons I found combat in JE to be a failure: * Only five martial styles and three moves per style. You can attack, power attack and area attack. That is it! You don't learn additional moves. Powering up your martial style just increases your DPS. This conflicts directly with the genre and - just as important - isn't very fun. They really should have remapped the Focus button to something else and given us a Kick button along with some basic X, X, Y / X Y X / X Y X+Y combos. * Poor balance. Any human opponent can be permanently shocked/paralyzed with Storm Dragon or Paralyzing Palm. As soon as I got Storm Dragon every 'human' fight in the game lost all challenge regardless of difficulty level. You just spam the area attack - which 'shocks' everyone around you and then switch to martial style for a short combo, then area attack again ad nauseum. I never got hit in the last fight of the game. This had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with me abusing the broken ass game mechanics. JE has a lot going for it - decent Bioware quality writing, great setting and an obvious love of the genre. The combat and character development portions of the game detract from the good stuff.

They really have made the engine look damn good. The look of the environments is a huge improvement over KOTOR.

TNO is struggling with himself.

Ooh, cool. I'll check it out when I have time.

No easy solution to moving to 3D First-person while retaining ToHit rolls. If I click on a monster in DII and my character misses the perspective and scale of the combat help me rationalize missing. 'Missing' in a FPS is the player failing to aim correctly - no 'Firearms Skill' involved. If I shoot someone in the chest but miss due to failing an attack roll...I get pissed off and feel cheated by the game. Be great if they pull it off, though. Diablo II gameplay and Doom III visuals sure sound sexy.

Why troll so much? You just make the forums less valuable.

The Vanguard FAQ states that they are using a heavily modded version of the Unreal 2 engine for release and considering moving to Unreal 3 for expansion. Maybe things have changed since the FAQ was written, 'course.

I've heard the women mentioned in quite a few sources. I quite liked the gameplay feel of the dogs and morale units. The mod doesn't seem to fix the two types of units that bug me the most - phalanxes and chariots.