Tale

Seconded. Was trying to decide if I'd just push through with Warlock or get Fallen Enchantress. I'll probably grab FE this weekend.

No, but maybe. I voted no, but I wouldn't mind seeing it on a limited basis. Maybe a scripted sequence. I wouldn't appreciate it as a general rule simply because of low influence scores.

I don't know if you guys are following it, but there's a minor brouhaha going around concerning games journalism. Robert Florence, a writer for Eurogamer, wrote an article questioning journalistic practices, centrally concerning the GMAs. You can find that article here. In the process, he name dropped a couple of people as examples. That was yesterday. Today, Eurogamer edited the article to remove the specific mentions of names, that's the version you see up in the link. And Robert Florence left Eurogamer as well. Though he has shown no ill-will towards Eurogamer. His twitter account. John Walker, a writer for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, wrote what I thought was a very good piece on his blog that echoed some of the concerns of the Eurogamer piece. You can find that on his personal blog here. This was also yesterday. Today, he's also reacting to the editing of the article by Eurogamer. Here. The PA Report is chiming in.

Is it time again? Break dancing chihuahas on a trampoline, I swear the last one just ended. I'll be participating this year.

Other monolith games like Blood and Shogo are up, so... it's not so unlikely... And maybe we bring it up because we just want it NOLF was published by Sierra, which means Activision must own its IP. And that, of course, suggests NOLF will never show up on GOG. http://www.gog.com/e...arch=Activision FOX interactive might own some part of the rights, though.

Nothing. I forgot the water. This is the problem. And by "problem," I mean "fire hazard."

Trying to make tea without using water is just as bad an idea as it sounds.

This thread was first, but it sadly has much less activity and fewer poll respondents. Let's shift discussion over to here. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61928-low-content-density-vs-greater-density-of-content/

I'm currently on either Equal Rites, A Clash of Kings, Gauntlgrym, or Slaughterhouse-Five. I'm actually pretty fickle with books at the moment. Though Pratchett always holds my attention better than the rest.

You shouldn't trust it. Which is the point of science, so you don't have the trust the mind alone. Reasoning without process and verification was a very crappy way to learn.

Doesn't Unfinished Swan release today? Yay.

I'm waiting for Tropes vs. Manufactured Sapience

Aloth looks as tall as the rest of the group.

Yeah, that was quite annoying. After the first time, I never played Dead Money without a mod removing the collar explosion. I'm currently taking a short break from New Vegas (still on Dead Money) and playing Blackwell Deception. Another person that owns these games! How are they? Trying to figure out their priority in my queue.

You wot mate? Team Fortress 2 817.3 hrs on record Of course TF2 makes more money than Mass Effect 3. TF2 has been out for years longer. And the active multiplayer base is likely larger. Valve makes science knows how much money off key sales, which are, yes, a lottery system. They're probably the single largest source of income.

Because lottery systems generate more money than explicit sales. They create addiction behaviors even when people don't get what they want. They sell those booster packs instead using Bioware points, which are sold with real money.

It's been mentioned, but if you lose too many of the stock companions, just create your own at the adventurer's guild. They won't have the personality of the pre-written companions, but that would be a consequence of making your followers too unhappy. If the companions are all just happy and homogeneous they won't have much personality to begin with. There's a wide gulf between "just don't have them kill each other" and "happy and homogeneous." The consequence of followers being unhappy is that they should act differently from happy followers. Otherwise it turns into the sociopathic trying to please everyone playstyle that ends up dominating these games. Players spend more time trying to make everyone like them than actually characterizing themselves. The content can still react without being penalizing. Alpha Protocol did this well.

The reasonable thing to do is to ignore the thread if it bothers you so much. Other people do want to discuss it.

Different. Not worse or better, different. I say this as a guy that hates the ending to Mass Effect 3, so I think that would be pretty bad just in new ways. It still ignores the player's choices, one of the endings leaves absolutely no resolution, it brings in the question of "if mass effect and using dark energy is causing the heat death of the galaxy, why are the Reapers spreading around mass effect technology?" The ending of that is still the Reapers asking Shepard whether he wants to win or not instead of Shepard taking the reigns and just winning. But hey, it doesn't require godkid (to be fair, godkid isn't even required by the existant ending) or the Crucible.

I'm trying to play Divine Divinity, too. The thing is that I hate Diablo so I don't know how long I can put up with it to get to the "more." Just remembered that I have Mysteries of Westgate installed and should be playing that to round out my Neverwinter Nights 2 binge.

I don't want the 90s back. I want to take a different path off the 90s than was taken. The popular form of RPGs after the 90s followed a path through Neverwinter Nights to KOTOR and I think much of what we look at today can be traced to KOTOR. Cinematics, smaller parties, voice acting. That is no more the natural endpoint of all change than the idea that all hominid forms eventually become human. If we look at the legacy of advanture games, we see the birth of survival horror and the path to Resident Evil 6. But we also the birth of action adventure games in the vein of Devil May Cry. (I've never been clear on the earlier Soul Reaver/Tomb Raider branch and where that split off) But we also see cinematic narrative games like Walking Dead and Quantic Dream's works. We see alternate paths such as Telltale's 3D adventures, retro titles like the Wadjet series, and even alternate branchings of survival horror in the Penumbra and Amnesia series. The fact that Amnesia isn't a retread of Alone in the Dark 1 doesn't mean it's at risk of being Resident Evil 6. You even see the warning signs back in Penumbra where you can kill the dogs, but they steppedback in sequels because they weren't aiming for the same path Resident Evil took. Games can still change without assuming the worst.

might i ask about what you're writing? One is a story about a Halfing Paladin, followed by a critical re-examination of the previous story suggesting that it is actually a popular myth combining several stories and exaggerations. Another is a story about an otherwise insignificant military officer with a backstabbing addiction. Or maybe he just hates both the people he was hired to spy on and the people he was hired to spy for. Today I'm thinking I'll write about fantasy thieves. I'm thinking a thief with a conscience. In which he steals from a little old lady, feels really bad about it, returns it, and begs to be jailed.

I don't have any hard answers for you. But you can try to contact Obsidian for answers at info@obsidian.net. I've heard that it's kind of swamped at the moment and may take some time for response. Paypal will continue to be open for a little while, but I don't know how much longer.

Means to an end? An adventuring party isn't a birthday party. They join up to do something, not just hang out. As long as the greater objective overrides the objections, they deal with it.

There seems to have been a misunderstanding.