Magnum Opus

Being the sort to "do everything" in a game such as this, I didn't find it at all hard to keep my recruitables alive for the suicide mission. 'course, the flip side is that even after , I STILL felt the need to "do everything", so I futzed around a bit scanning planets, getting my robot all nice and loyal, and taking care of the few straggling missions that I hadn't yet taken care of. My specialists all survived and I got the "no one left behind" achievement, but the secondary players in the cast largely got themselves liquified. *sigh* Poor Kelly... and Chef (the cook, I forget his name)... and Gabby. Oh, and that non-interactable who only sits at that table on the crew deck and talks about his family. And the two in the mess hall who only ate ate ate for the whole bloody mission. Doctor Chakwas survived, though... the lush. S'pose I really ought to taken care of the crew, but I forgot that this is a series where timers actually do get a certain amount of use. Was still in DA:O mode for that one, where time simply stands still. I did end up with close to a million units of all the rare resources except eezo, though. That's a great ,minigame to play when you're really tired, but can't quite fall asleep at night. Just start scanning planets... is better than counting sheep.

People are saying Rogues are gimped in this game? .... All right. Am officially baffled. Shouldn't be, I know, because people say everything on the internet, but I am. True, according to the stats I'm generating in for the two builds my rogue is only getting 35% of the damage for the party, instead of the 50%+ that my mage was, but I'm having a FAR easier time playing my rogue than I ever did my mage. Much of that is probably due to an increased familiarity with the way the game works and what skills are the most effective in which situation, but still... Am also really enjoying the rogue class in DA:O, tho. Much more than I ever did in a DnD based game. I suspect most of the complaints stem from the fact that players are seeing differences, rather than actual deficiencies. But it's been a rare fight this second thief-game time through that's seen me finding the challenge level greater than my first mage-run. And that's with me playing the game at one higher difficulty level than before. Ah well. Am absolutely loving this game. Only thing I really give two hoots about is that there's more of it on the horizon. DA2, please. Will content myself with DLC & other expansions in the meantime, but I hope they're at least working on another like-minded offering.

Am also really enjoying the game so far. Have been at it for 10 hours and only just made it to Lothering so far (game tells me I'm around 4% completed) and I'm at level 6. Game also tells me that my mage is doing the lion's share of the killing at present.... to the tune of doing 85% of the party's damage, and killing 105 of the party's 180. S'pose I ought to start using my party members more, but even that's an improvement from where it was a level or so ago. Game seems a bit heavy on the cutscenes, but maybe that was more for the exposition in the beginning. The dialogue is excellent, for the most part. Voice acting the best I've encountered in a game to date. I like the characters, too. Banters between Morrigan and Dog (named "Mutton" this time around) are priceless. Ran out of inventory room before reaching Lothering. Boo. And I didn't even have anyone around to open those locked chests in the tower (or maybe I just don't know how to open them). The injuries... can't say I like them any better in this game than I did in Drakensang. They're still straddling that funny line: make the injuries too severe, and they'll prompt a reload. Make the injuries not severe enough, and the character's going down in battle means squat. Had my mage walking around with a cracked skull and a couple busted up limbs for quite a while before I noticed something was up. That suggests that injuries aren't really meaningful enough to impact the way I play the game, so... *shrugs* Hurl them into the fray and then mop up whatever's left of them if I survive, because they'll be fine no matter what eats them. Sacrificial lambs. Although... that might explain why my mage is the one who ends up with most of the kills.... All in all, I think I'm going to be playing this one for a long, long time. Excellent game, this.

FO3 GotY PC. Better than Oblivion, certainly. Characters aren't so butt-ugly and the voices are somewhat better, too. They nailed the post-apoc Fallout setting, IMO. Three-Dog's cool... I like listening to his take on my exploits in the background. VATS... love/hate relationship with that thing. I like targeting specific enemy-bits, but am beginning to dislike the up-close and personal slo-mo dismemberments. Interface is still a bit of a pain, though. Gonna have to poke around a little more and see if I can't find some options that actually make use of the keyboard. I also dislike the way they've set up the "e" and "a" keys when it comes to inventory and container storage. Can't tell you the number of times I've cleaned out a storage locked and ended up breaking my character's back because I tapped the "a" key when I was expect the "take all" window to pop up and it didn't. Just end up putting all that stuff back in storage again anyway... Overall, though, good game. Am almost done with Moira's Guide to the Wasteland, have rescued Reiley's Rangers, am at level 16 and haven't touched the DLC yet. no idea how much content is left. Still would have liked a turn-based game, though. Ah well.

Currently playing Fallout 3 GotY. Soon-to-be-playing: Risen. Found the thing in a local Future Shop this Tuesday when I went in there looking for something else entirely, so I picked it up.

Anyone (anyone in Canada, more specifically) seen an actual boxed copy of this game in a store somewhere? Anyone know if there's supposed to be one?

Has this one been released in NA yet? Looked in the various stores today and didn't see a copy of it anywhere.

This thread's kinda made me realize that there are actually a few interesting games on the way. I don't know that I'd say I'm "looking forward" to many of them -- best way I know to ruin something is waste a month or five anticipating it -- but currently on the list: - Dragon Age (been looking for a party-based fantasy game for ages. Drakensang was all right, but a little clunky somehow) - Alpha Protocol - Divinity 2 (did I hear something about Divine Divinity being re-released? Wouldn't mind that one, either) - The Witcher 2 - Eschalon Book 2 - Diablo 3 - Mass Effect 2 And in the Maaaaybe category: - Risen - Fallout 3 (GotY. Have been waiting for that one specifically, since I'm not all that big on shooter-style game play to begin with. But if that one works out well enough for me, the Fallout: New Vegas will probably appear on that top list as well). For me, that's an obscene number of games. I blame it on the relatively new hardware I got last year.

I got my Tactics the other day when I saw the "Fallout Trilogy" sitting in Best Buy. I did a bit of poking around on NMA and didn't see a fix for the random encounters. I know there's one out for Fallout 2, but I'm not sure if there's one for Tactics. Odd thing is that I didn't have any such troubles until I completed the missions from the first bunker (there were three of them) and was told the BoS would be heading south and that I should join them there. Naturally, I decided to head north at this point, and that's where I've run into the ridiculous amount of encounters. Going off to the various missions was fine for me, though.

I think I lucked out with that game, personally, since even the original didn't break my spine with bugs. They were there, of course, but I didn't have quite so many troubles as others did. The EE was just so much better all around, though. 'course, I'm still on the fence: with a niche title, I never know how long it's going to be in the stores. In TW's case, I bought the original game on the suspicion that it wouldn't be around when I actually wanted it, and the EE because the patch was so bloody large. I don't mind either purchase, though. I ended up liking the game enough that it was like a "making of" process. If I had to guess, I suspect my fears that TW2 will end up on a limited-time run will outweigh my confidence that they'll repackage the game at a later date once all the bug fixes come in. Ah well.

Three games on the go ATM: Fallout Tactics -- a nice familiar dose of old Fallout game play, but new. Exploring on the world map is prohibitive right now.. sooo many random encounters with dogs and komodo dragons and radscorpions. Maybe I'm just heading in the wrong direction. Sure hope so, anyway. Daemonica -- a rather morbid adventure game set in medieval England. Civ IV (The Complete Edition)-- has been a couple decades since I tried playing any sort of strategy/world-building game, and figured this one was as good as any. My empires tend to fall apart whenever I attack my neighbours. Damn, I need a good RPG.

I liked the game. Sex-cards were questionable (nice artwork, downright goofy in terms of "collectibles") but for the most part ignorable (didn't appreciate all the surprise secks, though. It was a language lesson, I swear it was!). Still, at least I didn't have to wade through any interminable and grossly over-melodramatic "romances" to get to it, so I suppose that was a good thing. Story was solid for the most part, except for the lull with the Investigation in Vizima quest, or what ever they called it. Motivation dropped down the crapper for that part, but I won't bother detailing why. Suffice it to say, I'm actually happy that there's another such game in the works. Will definitely be keeping an eye on this one. When it gets a little closer, anyway.... although, given the amount of patching the first game required, might want to hold off on any release-day purchases. Is a good policy to begin with, but in this case it might just be required.

Most poignant emotional moment in games that I can recall was *almost embarrassed to admit it* in Ultima IX: Ascension, of all places. The farewell scene between Raven and the Avatar, just before he heads off ship on the Isle of the Avatar to confront the big red muppet. Am not a proponent of romances in games but if I can consider any of them "well done", that one would be it. It was a parallel thread to the main story line, so it got as much air time as it possibly could have, and I rather liked Raven's character as well. Voice acting was quite well done with her as well. I suppose it seems like a more extended romance than it really was, because I found the rest of the game quite repetitive, but it was still the best romantic subplot I've encountered (Bioware's included). Sayin' byebye at that point was quite the wrench.... though I suppose that was due, in no small part, to the knowledge that I was also going to be bidding Britannia farewell, too. Bye to the girlfriend, bye to the world that had been the source of so many good games for so long. Good moment, that one.

Baseless speculation re: announcing Shep's potential demise: To prepare gamers for the notion that what they do in ME2, as they're playing, could very well lead to a "reload moment" if they don't play it carefully? Only that the reload-moment won't be so obvious as the main character exploding into chunks on the battlefield? Have to admit, I tend to play a little fast-and-loose with my characters in games sometimes, mostly because I know that, for all the talk about Choice And Consequence, there really aren't any choices that I can't recover immediately from with a simple reload. Consequences are either trivial in nature, or immediately obvious in effect... usually both. ME2 (at least from the PR) suggests that there'll be longer-term consequences that players might not be able to recover from so easily, particularly if the gamer in question doesn't maintain a robust save game regimen or if they don't feel like going back three chapters to do something differently. Because as far as OMG factors go, I don't know that I'd be all that thrilled with that one in particular. "OMG, I earned a suit of golden plate armour!" That one I could live with. "OMG, I killed my character!"... not so pleasant. Aside from that, though... *shrug* No idea. Unless it's just a pure marketing thing, to keep people talking and speculating about the games.

Point being, though, that dragons in DnD could be all sorts of things besides "just" dragons. Demon-dragons, demon-possesses-dragon, half-dragons, godling's dragon form, mage-as-dragon, undead dragon/dracolich... Just found it a sort of humourous comment a few pages back, someone suggesting (facetiously/sarcastically) that demonic possession of dragons wasn't a good idea because DnD didn't have it. From my perspective, there isn't much that DnD doesn't have. That doesn't concern me regarding what's in DA:O, though. Am more concerned with whatever's in the DA:O lore being done well than I am with any given element being there at all. Darkspawn parallel orcs? Setting is too "generic"? *shrugs* So what? When I get into the background of the darkspawn in terms of lore, and when I get into the differences between darkspawn from a tactical perspective, the notion that they're used in vaguely the same way as orcs in DnD is going to mean precisely squat. From what I can tell, I'm going to waste a lot of gaming hours simply poking into the nooks and crannies of that lore. And that's precisely what I'm hoping for. I get that people want to play something New and Fresh, but... half the time I wonder whether they're looking in the wrong place, concentrating on the generalities to such an extent. Everything looks the same when you're gazing down at it from a mountaintop.

Tyranthraxus. I can't be the only one here that remembers the literally demon-possessed bronze dragon at the end of that game.

If the armor is compatible with both games, does this mean we can expect a similar leveling structure between ME2 and DA:O? Similar effects? Or has the item been ported from one rule set to the other and some of the benefits... reworked? Questions questions.

Have never really looked at "strategy games" before, but have seen Civ IV Gold in the stores a lot recently, and I've been wondering whether or not I should give the game a looksee. List seems to suggest I should, at any rate.

Yup. Give people the world, and they'll come to expect the world... and cry foul when they don't get it (or don't get it fast enough, or it doesn't meet all of their expectations when they do get it, or... ). That's pretty much what I'm chalking it all up to. Am not a particular proponent of DLC, though. I liked ME enough to find it a worthwhile venture to play it a again to go through BDtS, but I'd really prefer something a little more substantial, too. Also factoring into it is that I've yet to find a need other than games that would require a broadband connection, so between my deliberate lack of bandwidth and the smaller amounts of content that DLC usually offer... would rather have full expansions. Besides, I like having physical media. I keep hoping that MoW will make it into stores for NWN2, but if it doesn't I suspect I'll just end up forgoing the experience. Is probably not going to happen, but am hoping that Dragon Age keeps the DLC to a minimum. Publishers and Devs really seem to be liking the online model. Pity.

I had that issue with the black textures. I looked on the forums after I installed the patch, and the Biowarians told me how to fix it. Turns out their biggest issue was resolved by deleting a few files from a folder. Bioware's post-release support is still pretty good, IMO. As good as it needs to be, at any rate. If there's another patch in the works, the need for it is evidently not all that pressing. I don't doubt that there are people screaming bloody murder, but... have checked out a couple of fora, and much of the gnashing-of-teeth seems to be regarding the DLC certain people seem to feel they're "owed". Typical internet wankery, in other words. 'course, I never had all that many issues with MEPC in the first place. Maybe I just got extremely lucky with it (though such a thing would be abnormally atypical; if a game's got a flaw in it somewhere, I'll usually end up having to scrape it off my shoe, somehow).

On one hand, we've got an otherwise patient developer telling one poster to look elsewhere, and on the other we've got a developer aggressively issuing a broad-based challenge to anyone who disagrees with his POV, deliberately fanning the flamers, as it were. Am hoping you're not expecting me to draw an equal-incidents/equal-reaction type of parallel between the two, because I'm just not seeing it. Circumstance and degree play a pretty vital role when it comes to determining just how inappropriate those developers' comments were, IMO. (case in point, I'd agree that Dyack does come across as a wee bit of a whackjob, whereas Gaider hasn't)

But, if they do CHOOSE to respond, the response should have more value than "don't like it, don't buy it." which sounds like something a whining three year old would say. Hey, if the thread warrants the response of a three-year-old, then give it the response of a three-year-old, IMO. 'least then they might understand. It's not as if the devs never try to explain what they're doing first, after all. I have yet to see such a response from a developer come before they've made a serious effort to explain, but there does come a point when it's obvious that further explanation just isn't going to do anything. At that point you can either beat the horse even deader by fruitless and time consuming explanations which have probably already been given, you can ignore the matter entirely (which won't even let the whiner know that their issue is a dead one; developer might have just gone on vacation, or something), or you can cut through the crap with a blunt response that leaves no room for error and that lets people involved know you're done. Far as I'm concerned, that last option is one that needs to be explored a little more frequently. Diplomacy's all well and good, I suppose, but it has its limits.... particularly in the face of the type of fanaticism that seems to be going around on internet message boards. Sometimes, anger/exasperation really is the correct response, I think. Better to let people know where you stand than waste your time politely explaining everything to people who either aren't willing to listen or are incapable of understanding. And if they get their jollies from pushing buttons and ticking people off... *shrugs* That's their character defect. Let them enjoy it, as pathetic as it is, on those rare occasions when they get a rise out of someone. Not saying it's something they should make a habit of doing, but the odd such comment thrown out here and there isn't going to harm my perception of anyone.

Given the incredible volumes of crap they wade through each and every time they browse the forums, though... The amount of negativity surrounding any as-yet-unreleased project is staggering, IMO. Rarely do you ever hear people praising previous efforts or design decisions: the people who like what's being done have no reason to believe it'll change. Developers liked it enough to do it once, poster in question liked it too... what's the problem, right? No problem at all. Negativity, though... that comes out all over the place, and it's hard to hear that sort of **** about something that you've put the last 5 years of your working life into, coming from people who really have no bloody clue one way or the other. Frankly, I'm surprised DG simply hasn't told someone to flat out shove it where the sun don't shine by now. Am pretty sure I would have. Such "then don't buy it" comments might be all too common, but on the other hand... part of me feels they're not nearly common enough. Might be a weak response, but IMO it's also fully understandable. Instead of rolling my eyes, I tend to think "Man, you should've closed that browser window a hour ago and just ignored fan-buddy until whenever".

In my particular case, it's Harper's Fatigue. Have been harping on the increasingly wide fracture between gameplay (combat/puzzles/exploring) and story (dialogue) for years now.... albeit quietly and only intermittently at best. At this point, having been told so often that "it's just a game" and that "group death is a valid way of representing an individual; NPCs aren't people", I'm not looking at DA:O as anything other than a party-based game. Bio's not going to compromise their idea of what's fun for the sake of the story (I draw a distinction between plot and story, note: I don't consider Bio games story-driven so much as plot-driven; too many story elements have been compromised for me to consider the experience as a whole as "story". Bio's story == dialogue). If they can deliver on that front, I'll call the game a success. I've really missed party-based games (by which I mean me controlling the characters in the party). The story might lack a certain presentational quality, but... I'm not going to bother arguing the point any more. Bio knows what they're doing. And many people like it.

Is not just about dialogue, though that's certainly part of it. It's the amount of time those NPCs are "active" in my head. With player-controlled characters, that's going to be a greater amount of time than with AI-controlled characters by default. Maybe I'm just weird, but I have a much harder time remembering NWN's NPCs than ME's. 'course, once I realized how the AI operated in NWN I just didn't use any NPCs at all, so maybe that explains it. But I've got no real reference point when it comes to statements like "1/3rd of the dialogue is with party members", so I don't know whether to look on that as a positive thing or not. How much dialogue was devoted to NPCs in ME? in BG1/2? No clue. It sounds significant, though, so... ... hooray?