Chairchucker

Not really, no. (The hint as to the reason it is not that strange is in the '2' part of the name of BG2.) Also, I remember hearing it suggested that the most powerful character type one could make was a Kensai-Mage. Kensai's lack of armour was offset by having stoneskin and mage armour permanently cast, and then you just pick exclusively spells that make your character better at chopping people in pieces, or stripping enemy mages of their defenses. Something like that.

Game systems can have any number of explanations, or none at all. Perhaps because one can't see the heart. Perhaps because it is more firmly embedded in the chest than a hand is attached to an arm. Perhaps for some nebulous reason involving the person's body more strongly resisting attacks against more vital organs. Perhaps because 'game balance'. Also I'm really not sure what your second sentence has to do with this particular conversation arc given that the example had rather specific limitations.

Indeed, why ever cast magic missile when power word: kill is more effective? The mysteries of spells and their relative power.

Didn't say anything about swinging. I am not a swinger.

I could be wrong but it seems like you think he made that spell up when in fact I'm pretty sure he ripped it straight from DnD. In answer to all of your 'why not' questions, I believe that many of them are also spells in DnD. So the answer to 'why not' is 'that's not what this particular spell does, but there are others which do something more like what you're suggesting.'

Yeah I dunno none of them seem all that plasmaish. Plasmaesque? Whatevs. Maybe less was known about plasma by the Greeks or whoever it was. Also I basically slept through Chemistry so... yeah.

I always kind of interpreted the traditional 'elements' as being more 'states of matter'. So you have solid (earth), liquid (water), gaseous (air and kind of fire) and love (Milla Jovovich.) Or something along those lines.

When I play as a wizard, if an enemy gets near me, rather than hitting him with my mace, I prefer to hit him with my fighter.

I'm currently doing a 'pacifist' run on Deus Ex: human Revolution. It 'works' because you can still knock people unconscious, because it is a highly stealth based game, and because they are all, well, people. Alpha Protocol has much the same kind of situation: you can walk around knocking people unconscious, because by yourself you can hide around corners and stuff. Encouraging not killing people is good when everything you encounter except bosses is basically a grunt. In fantasy games, it is unlikely that it will be quite as easy to knock zombies unconscious. It is also unlikely that anyone will be particularly bothered about how many rats you have slaughtered.

F'real, it owned and I hope the remake gets made.

I dunno if that's the best term for it; in the Infinity Engine games, there was a screen you could get to somewhere for each character in your party which basically had a list of how much damage they'd done ever, what percentage of the party's total damage, what percentage of the party's total kills, how many kills, favourite weapon, favourite spell (favourite based on regularity of usage) what the most powerful foe they'd vanquished was... I liked it. It was cool. I would like something like this to be implemented in Project Eternity. OK cool that's all I got carry on.

The Paramour achievement in every Mass Effect game. A bunch of different achievements in Alpha Protocol.

I am 'not opposed' to romances being included, but when there's an achievement attached to it that irks me slightly. The main problems I have with romances as presented in ME3 (what the hell, everyone else is using Bioware examples, and that's the only game in recent memory that I've played that had them) was that: a. There were too many individual people who were capable of falling in love with - or wanting to sleep with - Shep, regardless of Shep's behaviour; and b. The romance ended, for all intents and purposes, with Shep sleeping with the other person. It was basically a minigame to have sex. No options to 'take it slow', it was basically 'if you are romantically interested in this character, signify this by initiating coitus.'

Same problem. Bridge blown, cursor freezes, everything stops.

Having one's name on a title screen as being the person who presents the game is not necessarily an indicator of one's current popularity, especially when the game in question is over a decade old and one's only game that could even loosely be called an RPG in the last decade is the Xbox version of A Bard's Tale. I haven't played NV yet (It's on my to do list. Eventually.) but I'm not certain why 'the developers of Alpha Protocol' would be considered a bad thing. That was a thoroughly good game, with absolutely unparalleled levels of cause and effect to decisions made. The only downsides are the bugs, and since (as Mr Fargo kindly pointed out) QA is a publisher side of the fence dealio, that's not really on Obsidian.

Is there a statute of limitation for how long a video game can be out before you're not allowed to claim people only still like it because they're young and don't know any better? Because if there isn't I think we should maybe declare a decade to be long enough. Also maybe there should be a statute of limitations on how pretentious one can be and still call other people hipsters. So I don't come across as passive aggressive I'll instead be... what, assertive aggressive? A jerk? Let's go with that one... and say that you, Wulf, speak a whole lot of complete rubbish and try to mask it with bluster and confidence.

This was all said by 'Wulf' (the stuff that I'm replying to) but the quotes stuffed up and this is me trying to fix them. Nope didn't work, guess it hates me messing around with the quotes. Hmmm well I guess we all have different opinions on what games were really that great anyway, so actually people are asking for sequels to games that (in their head) were really that great? Not sure how constructive that bit is but whatever. And asking for a sequel to a game, while unimaginative, is also pretty convenient shorthand for "The kind of work you did here? This was good. I would like to play another thing that has similar experiences." For example, Planescape Torment is wordy as all heck and has weird people or whatever, people want to see that, I dunno. This next bit confuses me. I don't think anyone was advocating a difficult UI. Most isometric games I've played have been relatively easy to control. Well these are good ideals I guess but 'do something new' is fairly nebulous. Some systems work pretty well, and having had them once, people are often gonna want them again rather than some nebulous "New revolutionary thing that is totally gonna blow your mind I promise you, or my name's not Peter Molyneux!" (OK perhaps a little cynical, but I am often fairly skeptical of alleged 'paradigm shifts'.) Then again, games like Baldurs Gate and Planescape: Torment are even more beloved than Bloodlines, so perhaps the isometry (Is that a word? Probably not, I've decided to use it anyway) is not the reason for Redemption's relative obscurity as you seem to think. I don't really know what you're talking about here. Is this about how a lot of the mechanics in RPGs are based on stat numbers? Like, percentage change to do x amount of damage, that kind of stuff? If so that kind of stuff's actually pretty important in an RPG. Being able to reduce the value of items and stats to a numerical figure is easier than a bunch of nebulous 'excellent/good/bad' or whatever values. I mean you probably meant something else entirely but to be honest I'm not certain. It gets a bit weird from here on because you do all this ridiculous gushing and talking about paradigm shifts and how they're not hard... but you're also still calling other people hipsters? Odd, but OK... I guess my response to this bit is in my rewrite of your bit. Telepathy, gotcha. Been done. Worked OK I guess, by which I mean it was exactly like normal speech except they'd punctuate it with asterisks or something and mess with the syntax. Actually I'm not sure most publishers would be all that keen on PS:T, it was a 'cult classic' rather than a 'box office smash', and those are not exactly what every publisher dreams of. Agreed on the licensing thing, although I'm not sure why option 'b' has to be 'something unusual'. I've played 'something unusual' a number of times, it rarely ends well. My impression of the original suggestion was that we, the potential backers, would be giving them an idea of things we like, not trying to design their game for them. Smooth. Play the 'get some time up' card. Also, mildly amused at the "Not played years of RPGs" and then referencing a game that came out over a decade ago. If paradigm shifts were 'not hard' they'd probably occur a little more frequently and a little more successfully. And reading Avellone's original post, it actually seems like number crunching, sequels and 'ancient game', as you so dismissively put it, are exactly what this is 'all about'. The problem with your above ideas (apart from being a pretentious load of tripe) is that in general, we play characters for whom a world will NOT be alien. Trying to play a game in a world where everything should be totally normal to your character, when actually everything is completely bizarre to the player, is an artificial barrier to roleplaying that runs counter to its ideals. Familiarish settings are good because they help facilitate roleplaying. EDIT: Well this quote thing is now my archnemesis.

Difficult to tell people in a Western roleplaying game the way their character must believe; makes more sense for a genre that doesn't make such a big deal about players having 'choices' about how their character acts as RPGs do. (Even if choices do tend to take the form of kick puppy or save orphanage.) Would work for an adventure game perhaps. Same with the gay protagonist really. Wouldn't be a big deal if just the only available romance options happened to be homosexual because the NPCs that happen to be keen on you are only the homosexual ones, but if you go from that to "By the way, your character is definitely attracted to these characters" you'll have responses along the lines of "Um excuse me I think you'll find I'm roleplaying this character, and the way I roleplay she's definitely a heterosexual girl who just doesn't have time for a relationship, OMG stop taking away my choices. MY CHOICES!" Oh and also the Muslim protagonist would probably limit the setting somewhat.

Things I would prefer: Real time with pause or turn based combat. Joinable party members. A colour palette with more than shades of grey; I enjoyed FO3 but got bored of looking at wasteland. Am also a little burned out on evil empires against which I have to rage. Please do something else. Several choices of different types of protagonist. (Gender and different kinds of races or whatever.) Happy with almost any setting but my preference is for NOT High Fantasy and NOT Grimdark anything.

Perhaps it depends on your character build. I put absolutely no points into any weapon skill, and I have found cover essential.

I've got the 360 version, and I'm waiting for a patch... Checkpoints issue is just really annoying me and I'm not keen on going back to the game while I still get disappearing enemies and disappearing floating icon thingies. (Dunno what you call it, but sometimes the little golden picture above stuff you can interact with does not appear.)

On the subject of checkpoint issues: in one of the first set of missions, every time I reloaded from a checkpoint, a certain number of enemies would be missing. The mission was the bug the tower mission. In addition, there were one or two checkpoints which were just not in a very good position, especially since when it reloads a checkpoint it makes Mike stand up - it would have Mike start right next to an enemy.

Is there any difference at all between the PC and 360 versions? Thinking of taking back my 360 version and getting it for PC.

Just picked it up this arvo, happy early birthday present to me! Came home to an Xbox that chose today to red ring. Quite bitter right now.

Wait, what? Well that sucks, I was already preparing my character. Basically he was gonna be a skydiver who did really technical flips and stuff while in freefall. Also he could fix communications and engines and whatnot on airplanes. He was gonna be pretty rad, but you've basically ruined it now. I hope you're happy. >