Magnum Opus

Well, having just picked up a new computer (nothing spectacular, but good enough), I found myself looking around for something to play on it, and while being able to max out some older games like ToEE and BG2 is nice, I wanted something a little more current, so I settled on... 1. The Witcher EE. All's I can say is 'wow' for this one. There are a few too many gotcha moments, I found, and a seemingly-innocent dialogue remark leading to a romp in the hay caught me off guard a few too many times for comfort, and the combat was a little actiony for my taste (found myself fixated on that little sword icon more than I'd have liked, rather than watching all those spiffy moves), but on the whole... wow. A sequel for this one is a must-have for me. Even a different offering by the same developer is something to keep an eye on. Impressive work for a company I'd never heard of before. Going to replay this one a few times, for sure. And... 2. NWN 2 +MotB +SoZ. Uh huuh. I caved. Despite NWN1 not impressing me much -- disappointing, even -- I caved. Just installed it all today and I'm just about to leave the starting village in the OC, so I can't say yet how well I'll end up liking it, but it seems to have more going for it in the areas I'm looking for than NWN1 did. There's hope. One bug found so far in that the first group of people in the combat challenge of the fair in the tutorial didn't attack when they appeared -- we all just stood around picking our noses since I couldn't figure out how to initiate combat myself -- but that problem vanished when I quit, restarted the game, and tried it again. Also have Fallout 3 and Oblivion+expansions on the list, but those titles don't seem to be in any of the the well-picked-over stores at the moment, so they'll have to wait. The above two games will be enough to keep me going for a while, though, so I'm not too fussed.

In no particular order 1. Baldur's Gate: TotSC 2. Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal (but only because of the wild mage kit. Favourite. Class. Ever. The actual story line was... mediocre) 3. Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire (the AGDI remake is gettin' close to release apparently, too) 4. Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness. 5. Fallout 6. Planescape: Torment 7. Icewind Dale + Heart of Winter + Trials of the Luremaster 8. Pool of Radiance: Ruins of -- just kidding. The original one... or any of the other FR Gold Box games, take your pick. Didn't like the Dragonlance ones much. 9. Morrowind 10. Ultima 7 + FoV.

Not entirely sure whether I like class-based or class-less systems more. TES/SPECIAL has its advantages, but without some fairly sophisticated game-play/weapon-use vs spell casting checks it would be hard(er) to get any sort of in-game recognition about just what type of character you're supposed to be, and that's one of the things that I like in games, the idjit masses of NPCs going "ZOMG! MAGIK USER! RUN FOR TEH HILLZ!" 3rd Ed DnD (NWN) gave me enough versatility with the classes and skills and feats that I didn't feel restricted with the class system the way I did in BG2, so that was really good... although it didn't give me much in the way of class-based feedback, either. Bit of an opportunity lost, perhaps, but with the sheer number of classes available, including something for everyone there would have been a real b*tch. This one's probably a toss-up for me. Within class-based systems, though, I generally find kits pointless, with the most appealing aspect really being the special name on the character sheet. Not just any old Paladin, an Undead Hunter!. Beyond that, the differences are generally reflected only in combat, and even that to a limited extent. Not really worth it, IMO. Nice to have, perhaps, but not something I'd miss if it wasn't there, as I generally play closer to the archetypes anyway. Vanilla ranger over Archer, vanilla Wizard over Conjurer, etc. This is something that I have relatively high hopes for WRT Dragon Age. They've covered the basic styles of game play with their Warrior/Rogue/Wizard selection, and I'm happy with that, and (hopefully) the lack of other classes will mean a little more in the way of feedback regarding the type of character that I'm playing. That'd be a nice change from the usual "million customization options that don't impact the game" model.

"Fans of Oblivion will find the game's dialogue system immediately familiar", is the only reference to dialogue that the Fallout 3 preview article in today's local paper has. Says nothing about the quality of the writing, but still... take from that what you will, I suppose. Haven't been following the game closely for a long while now, but this is the first definitive (if vague) word I've heard on it, anyway.

Currently playing the Quest for Glory series. Still got a certain charm to it that I simply haven't seen in any other series. Was also struck by the similarities in that series to the modern story-driven cRPG. The only thing it's missing is the obligatory "branching story path". The details and scope have, naturally, been surpassed in every aspect, but the basic framework is right there. Eerie.

Re: BG: BG1 was a bit worse, but BG2 had bags of holding. Score. Couldn't take everything that dropped, but certainly all of the interesting stuff, provided one kept one's buying-selling frequency at around once per stronghold-sized quest. The leftover stuff usually wasn't valuable enough for me to worry about. Diablo 1 at least allowed me to drop my stuff on the ground, though, without it vanishing after a certain amount of time. I filled Tristram to the brim that way once... literally paved the place with gold. D2... tried that once, but then after a while noticed that someone was wandering off with my stuff. Was sorely tempted to just let Diablo n' Bros. have their way with the townsfolk after that. Steal my stuff, will ya? Consign them all to hell! I like the way you dealt with the WoW issue, too. I'm always looking for little tricks like that whenever a game doesn't provide enough secure storage space. In-game item management is always preferable, but if they're being unreasonable about it I have no qualms about finding (or writing) my own third-party inventory utility to take care of things. Wouldn't use it online, but then... I don't play online, so no issues there.

*nods* I considered that while I was playing. It's obvious that the game was simply designed for more than one person, even single player player mode, and with that in mind I can see two of those issues just sort of... evaporating. Sadly, I have no friends to play with, so my impressions were formed on a purely offline, one-player-only experience, and by that measure there's too much about D2 that I find irritating for me to get all that excited about D3. Interested? Certainly. Glad they're continuing the series? Absolutely. But not too much more than that. Will probably end up being a last resort kind of purchase for me, like D2 was. I'm sure I'll end up liking it in that capacity, too. Provided they don't fup it uk somehow, naturally. Series have been fupped uk before, after all. Kind of ironic, then, that BG actually did give people enough space to set up a hoard of items, and even carry around pretty much everything they ever wanted. For me, though, it doesn't matter what kind of game it is; I'm a terrible klepto when it comes to any game that has items for me to pick up, and if those items look even vaguely interesting/unique/useful, they're MINE! :D. And it was worse because I never knew what I should hang on to, either. Ghost armour? Is that the best there is, or what? Only three sockets... should I hold out for four? I've aaaalllmost got the runes for a Word, but just one more chipped skull and I can cube up a perfect one... Sooo many neat things about that loot system but I could only store the barest fraction of what I wanted to. Didn't know about the endless storage and item sharing mod, though... thanks for the heads-up . Will have to track that one down. *has only a vague idea of what a Super-Diablo could be, but is intrigued*

Bought D2 a while back -- last year or so -- and found it relatively interesting, although with certain annoying tendencies. 1. The respawning thing. Yeah, permadeath is one thing, but in the absence of a halfway decent save-load mechanism I find permadeath more irritating than anything else. I make a clear distinction between in-game death and reloading a game, but respawning and the lack of a useful save feature... bleh. 2. The waypoint thing. Bloody hell, I found that annoying. Not being the sort who likes leaving enemies alive and well behind me, this was particularly frustrating, and dictated to a much larger extent than I like how long I played the game. A quick little session of monster slaying, a la D1, was pointless in D2, since unless you reached the next waypoint, whatever progress you'd made would be lost anyway. I died far more frequently in that game, simply because I was pushing for that next waypoint beyond the length of time I'd actually wanted to be playing the game, and that was especially frustrating. Fighting the monsters is one thing, but fighting the software design is something else again. 3. The inventory thing. For a game whose central features included killing things and gathering loot to the exclusion of anything else, you'd think they'd have given me more room to store things than that weeny little chest in whichever hub I happened to be working at the time. That lack of space made those really neat ideas of set armour and socketed items pretty much useless to me... ... or at least, it would have been useless if not for a neat little trainer that I used to save any and all interesting items. As soon as I saw how limited my storage space really was -- about 10 minutes after firing up my very first character -- I started poking around online for something to fix the problem. Cardinal sin, that, not providing enough storage space in a game where loot is such a huge part of the overall experience. But despite all of those continual annoyances, I still played the game a fair bit; long enough to take a pair of Necromancers through Hell, a Sorceress and a Barbarian through Nightmare, and the remaining classes (save the Amazon) about half way through Normal. Long enough to save up a couple sets of equipment, and a couple more partial sets. I'd have to say I'm relatively interested in seeing a Diablo 3, albeit more for the lore than the actual game play. Where the heck are they going to take that story? I just hope they're not going to go all Prequel with it.

*sigh* You people are gonna force me to buy this game, aren't you? I promised myself that I was "done with NWN" after I felt I'd squeezed my money's worth out of that NWN1 OC, and NWN2 didn't do too much to change that opinion. MotB, on the other hand, looks like a game not to be missed by all accounts (or rather, all accounts that I trust), then MoW, and now this... Dang you, Obsidian. Now all you've got to do is stack 'em all up into one gargantumungous compilation. Bloody heck...

:embarrassed cough: That google search should have read: +"Neverwinter Nights portraits for Baldur's Gate" *sigh* Sorry 'bout that. Not that it makes much difference now, I suppose. Me, I'd use that handy NWN file viewer, rip the portraits I want, and convert the silly things by hand in Paint or something, but that's just my modem talking.

Quotes certainly help when you're looking for something specific and the order matters like that; searches for the entire string instead of just individual elements. I like those portraits, though. Not as pastelly as the ToB ones, but more "artsy" than the photorealistic ones of BG proper. Bg2 ones weren't bad... like the red wizard portrait, though. That one's been imported into pretty much every game I've played since that called for a mage-type character, albeit with a few modifications (black robes instead of red, blue flames coming from the gem on the headband, etc.) Spiffy.

Try googling: "Neverwinter Nights portraits for Baldur's Gate". The first site that came up for me had a reasonably good collection, although I noticed that they didn't include the expansion portraits. Or the joinable NPC portraits (Boddyknock, Sharwyn, et. al.). Or the main NPC portraits. Either the old ones or the new ones. Still, is a place to start.

Heh... maybe it's just be me and my lack of experience with Next-Gen titles (which it completely nonexistant), or maybe it's that these are still shots of a live action experience, but the first thing I thought when looking at those Assassin's Creed pictures was "Is that man supposed to be glowing like that?" The second was "Clones!" *sigh* All that hardware, all those nice-looking graphics, and that's what I come up with? Still, I suppose it's promising that my immediate reaction related more to the scene being shown, instead of the things like pixel/polygon count. If those shots and my reaction to them are a reliable indicator, the graphics of today's games are firmly in the "uncanny valley" stage of development for me. They do look good, though.

Honestly, dude... you've bought the software; the cycle is already complete. Of course you shouldn't install it! You should never install any software that you buy. Talk about defeating the purpose of the purchase . . . If you install what you buy, then you won't be tempted to buy it again the next time you're in the game store and think 'I need a new game, but what haven't I played already?' If you actually install it, it's just one more hook on your memory that might interfere with those redundant purchases. Granted, it's not as big or as pointy a hook as if you actually played the game, but still... if you're ever going to purchase this thing more than once, you really just need to destoy all evidence of this latest purchase and purge your memory. Combat piracy! Don't install or use what you buy, but buy buy buy! Do not install the game. Do not play it. Do not even think about your purchase. Yooouuu didn't see aaanything . . .

Heh... those old gold box games were great fun. I've recently taken to installing older games, more for the fun of trying to make them work on a modern operating system and modern hardware than for the games themselves, and discovered that my fingers still know the keystrokes necessary to make it all the way through Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown. Ruins of Myth Drannor really is a piece of work. Last I heard, it was actually Norton Antivirus that messed things up with that game and certain operating systems (can't verify this, since I never use Norton), but that whole issue was supposedly fixed with one of the patches that came out (yes there are patches: if you've got the game, find them). The game is large, though... lots of exploration (that you may or may not feel is worthwhile), fighting with creatures that all look and behave eerily similar to one another... the number of creatures in the game, technically, is a lot larger than the 4 or 5 basic animations that the game uses would suggest, but when you've literally got 8 or 10 creatures using 1 animation... yikes. Still, if you can get over the annoying-as-hell invisible rope that prevents scouting, and the deadly-slow combat, and the lack of character classes (no wizard) and races (no gnomes... no loss either, this), and the neutering of the 3rd edition rules (can't choose feats or skills), and joinable NPCs that start out seemingly full of promise but then go absolutely nowhere as characters, and dice rolls that are more loaded than anything you'll find in Atlantic City, you'll eventually get to what's easily the best implementation of Myth Drannor in any Forgotten Realms game to date. It really takes until one gets to the City Heights before you really notice the character of the city, but there are quite a few features of interest scattered about once you get there. Oh, and the loot in this game is ridiculous, too. Still, it does have a couple redeeming qualities.... if you're patient enough to slog your way through to see them. A couple of interesting characters, a relatively good story line, and a pretty good atmosphere (for a 1500 year old ruin, that is). As a game, it's really kinda wretched, though. When the fighting starts, and there's a lot of it, bring a book with you. And it's the only DnD game I've played where there are lyrics to a song. That's right, it's not just an orchestral score: someone bloody well sings a few times during the course of this game. I was shocked when I first heard it: wish other games had sort of picked up on that feature. I also liked the "DM" feature, sort of explaining those things about the game or the setting that don't come across all that well visually/aurally. Gives the whole thing a more "storied" quality, IMO. RoMD is probably the game that I associate most with "What should have been". It just should have been so much better than it ended up being, and you can see flashes of that as you go through. Oh, interesting point of note about the gold box Pool of Radiance/Curse of the Azure Bonds: the item tables between those two games are largely compatible . If, when importing your Pool characters into Curse, you copy the .itm file associated with your pool character and rename it as a .swg file, you'll get all that character's stuff in Curse as well. There are differences, mind: a PoR Ring of Fire Resistance will still be labeled as a Ring of Fire Resistance in Curse, but it will behave like a Ring of Wizardry. And I don't think that imported Gauntlets of Ogre Power work either, although in that case it doesn't matter since a bug in the character file importation procedure will keep the imported character's strength at 18/00 in Curse anyway... but those are the exception rather than the rule, if I recall correctly. And some items, like your +2 Flame Tongue and Fine Composite Long Bow, and spiffy Silver Plate Mail, can't be had in Curse any other way. Ahhh the exploits to be had in those games... almost as good as the game itself, finding all of those. :D I haven't tried to tackle that Beholder Corps in ages, though.... hmmmm...

I always stop by the local EB Games, but only because it's more convenient (is in the mall I usually go to). When they don't have what I want -- sadly, an increasingly common occurrence -- I'll pop into the Best Buy. If they don't have what I want, only then will I go hunting online for it, Arcanum being the current example. Passed over that one when I saw it in the stores, and have been looking for it ever since. Only place I've seen it is on Amazon.com... but not Amazon.ca. Buggers.

Huh. I don't own a console, but I looked at KotOR back when it was being developed. I checked out Jade Empire, too, because parts of that sounded interesting as well. Mass Effect looks cool, but again, no XBox, so I'm not particularly fussed with it just yet, and I'd rather not be spoiled if it turns out I do buy. But Sonic... I've just got nuthin' at all for Sonic. Some BioGames I've liked, others have disappointed, some have made me almost consider buying a console, some have had me wishing that they'd run with a different aspect of "story-driven" than main plot line and joinable NPCs, but there's always been something about the games they've made that has piqued my interest, whatever the reason happened to be or whether I've bought them or not. Sonic, though... not even a glimmer of interest, and that's a new one for me, at least as regards a Bioware title. I wish them well with it but for me personally, this title's already forgotten.

Maybe that'll be one of the side quests in F3: find out who stole all of the missing top soil and get them to bring it back, so's people can plant gardens an' stuff, and so liven up an otherwise bleak landscape. That'd rawk.

The "DA-as-vapourware" movement -- almost certainly, as you mention, internet-say-anything in nature -- is just something that I've noticed a lot more of since EA bought Bioware. I've been lurking on the DA forums for a while, and since that acquisition, there's been a noticeable upswing in the number of people claiming such, both there and on other forums that I visit. But, I wasn't talking about throwing in the towel on a single game. Rather, the entire subset of so-called "AAA PC computer games". Had hoped that my allusion to "PC-only development" titles in the sentence previous to the one you quoted would have made that clear, those two sentences being in a paragraph all on their own. Guess not.

The DA-as-vapourware angle has irritated me for a couple reasons. 1. Bio's not known for defaulting on titles. 2. Bio has been known for long development cycles. 3. Bio has explained ad nauseum that this game was 1) announced early, 2) going to be a long time coming, 3) without a publisher (who typically takes care of the PR for a game anyway), 4) only one of several titles that they were working on. Me, I don't know enough about the corporate structure at Bioware/Elevation/Pandemic/EA to be able to come out and say that I know more about the development of games for those companies than the people working on them, nor am I prepared to come out and call all of the developers who've flat out said they're working on DA liars. Besides, it's not as if there's a lot to look forward to on the PC-exclusive front these days. I'm not going to fabricate another reason to throw in the towel simply because they're not releasing info about a game according to some schedule I've dreamed up for them but forgot to send to them. All of that said, though, I think I'll wait until I hear something more definitive than a fiscal projections statement that's more than a year from being realized, from a company that's only newly had anything to do with Bioware at all (albeit with a lot more authority to cancel projects ), before gettin' all excited 'n stuff about DA's imminent release. As Bio's so fond of saying: "It'll be done when it's done."

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks the screenies we've seen so far look entirely too 'sterile', even outside the bleakness of the colour palette.... although I'll admit that dessert can change perceptions dramatically. The environments do look nice, I'll admit, but to me they give the impression of "newly blown to hell" instead of fupped uk 200 years ago, and the lack of foliage is only part of it. Is a minor nitpick though, in the grand scheme of things. The game looks entirely too action-y for my tastes. This one's a bargain binner for me, if that.

Heh. I always get a chuckle out of articles that claim "fantasy has moved on since then". Bull. The same impulses that drove people to fantasy ten years ago are still out there today: the desire to escape into a simpler, more cleanly organized world. Real life is messy. Fantasy is not. Fantasy does have Evil Orcses and Good Elflings, and that's the enduring appeal of Fantasy. Dark and gritty fantasy might appeal to people as a novelty and it might become popular for a year or two -- particularly with the entire entertainment industry jumping on the bandwagon -- but I'm betting it'll all flame out in half a decade at most. If we're lucky, what'll be left is more diversity than before, with a few darker titles mixed in with the light and fluffy ones. That aside, DA is probably the only title I'm even remote interested in so far for this coming year. thanks for the link.

Huh. Interesting question. Why the heck DO I prefer RPGs? I'd probably have to say "possibility". It's not really about "being someone else" or "being somewhere else" that appeals to me so much as it's the enabling of those possibilities. FPSs are good for getting the blood pumping and the heart racing, but that's not what I want from a game. I want to relax and sort of open up that side of my brain that I don't get to use all that much otherwise. It's actually pretty similar to a good brainstorming session for me, just coming up with ideas about what's happening, why it's happening, and what might happen because of those outcomes, only it's more directed and the topic of the brainstorming is always shifting. When I'm exploring a world, I'm imagining the things hiding over the ridge up ahead or lurking under the fog of war, in addition to whatever quests brought me out there in the first place: what if it's a dragon? What if it's a basilisk? What if it's a waterfall with a dead cat in it? Possibility. When I encounter a plot element, the revelation itself is good, but what I really like are all of the possibilities that such a revelation opens up. In combat, the "thrill of beating an opponent" is there, certainly, but there's also imagining what I'd do if I were the enemy in this situation, praying to high heaven that the computer isn't thinking the way I am, and then coming up with ideas on how to deal with whatever happens. Puzzles are a more focused form of the phenomenon: there's a limited set of possibilities, defined by the rules of the puzzle, and usually only one or two solutions. Even the bugs I encountered -- and RPGs are certainly the buggiest genre of game out there, even today -- opened up my imagination in that way: what could I do next time to avoid having to reboot? Was it that particular container that was buggy, or was it all of them in this area? What happened to the Windows page file this time? Sooner or later, I'd settle on a workable solution for whatever the problem was, in-game or not, and then... Victory! RPGs were the genre of games that offered the largest number of sets where I could open up my imagination: exploration was there to satisfy the Indiana Jones in me, dialogue with interesting NPCs was there to play to my Freudian side, the stories that I like the most are much more exploratory in nature as well: I like wondering who's sending those assassins after me far, far more than I like knowing my enemy right off the bat. Mystery, possibility, and the resultant imaginative process it sets off in my brain... RPGs offer the most outlets of any genre out there. And that applies to the numbers and rule systems as well. I love finding exploits in games... using them, not so much, since games are balanced well enough that using them invariably sucks all of the challenge out of them for me, but finding them is great fun. The pace of a cRPG is also slower, or at least more varied, which helps out with the relaxation as well as the imaginative sides of the experience for me: I want to relax and to imagine -- not necessarily imagine anything in particular, but just to think about things in a different way and to consider everything that could happen -- and if the game is spamming enemies at me in real-time actiony goodness, there's no time for that. Finally, there's the range of play experiences in CRPGs: I can fight it up if I want to and get a little bit of excitement going, or I can tone it down and go exploring just to see the sights. I suppose I also like the artistry involved: there's a certain... je ne sais quoi involved in setting up an entire world that's meant to stand up on its own, rather than simply having it be there for the sake of the player and the game alone. Not many games have achieved that for me, but for those that did... wow. So yep. In other words, it's entirely mental.

If I could care about the ultimate fate of a business -- a business who's product has been unappealing enough to me that I haven't even bought the last three or even four iterations -- I'm sure I'd be gnashing my teeth and pulling out my beard like everyone else, but... I can't. About the only thing I can work up any sort of emotion over (and that's only if I work really, really hard at it) is a vague, fleeting sense of anxiety for the future of the BioWorkers; EA doesn't have a very good reputation in that department. Might be better if they jumped ship now. *shrugs* Maybe Bioware will end up being disbanded. Maybe they'll end up making games I actually want to play again. Maybe, if they're forced to pump out title after title year after year, we'll get a more serialized sort of story line from them instead of the 1 game, 1 world saved shtick, which I can see as presenting certain advantages over their current model. Maybe not. Is all pretty much meaningless to me. Either the games are there or they aren't. Doesn't bode well for Bioware, given EA's history with such things, but... *shrugs* About the only real regret I have in this whole affair is clicking that blasted link up there. Dear lord...

I think my random number generator is broken. The last five wild surges I've had have resulted in a sex change. It got to the point where I stopped reloading, because I'd just end up changing again 30 minutes later. Heh. No doubt that the RNG is a little iffy in these games -- have had a lot more trouble with it under XP than I ever did under Win98 -- but if you've got the console active and have been playing around with the ctrl-[?] key combinations, I vaguely recall there being one that cycled through the wild surge effects. If you've inadvertently locked your surges into the sex change, that would explain things, although I'm betting on RNG strangeness. I've ended up getting a lot of sex changes, too. (and I will personally hunt down and whack with a pool noodle anyone who puts that line into their sig. )