Starwars

The problem I have with most MMORPGs is that it's just to much about the fighting, which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what I want from a game where the point is that you play with other players. I want the interesting interactions where people do backstab each other, form alliances and break them, gang up on one another and generally manipulate things. A carefully built game where the players are really important to what happens in the gameworld and where they can interact with each other in a meaningful way. At the same time, I understand that people do get upset, because there is the possibility of losing what you've worked hard for and most likely spent a lot of time acquiring. The most interesting online experiences I've seen are probably A Tale in the Desert and certain NWN PWs. There was also one adult MMORPG that I remember reading about, which seemed to have all kinds of neat features. Like an actual crime system where if a crime was comitted, it could be investigated by other players ingame, taken to court (which was run by players as well) where the player doing the crime could be punished. I have no idea how this actually worked in practice, but stuff like that is much closer to what I want from an online game rather than "ok, let's go do raids on sunday 7PM" or whatever. Another rather disturbing aspect of that game was that your character could actually get raped (and rape others). My first thought at this was of course that the players playing were sex maniacs, horny teenagers and so on that ran around accosting each other. But when I read what people actually said about the game, it turned out that it was an extremely rare crime (like murder), and that it was viewed very very negatively "in-game" and that a player would likely run into a lot of trouble were he to do it. People seemed to really "stay in character" as much as possible. While I still find it hard to wrap my head around the idea, what I really *do* (which again, sounds really wrong when saying it) like about it is the idea that people could really affect others characters in huge ways. Of course, once a game turns "mainstream", it is likely to attract all kinds of idiots which would likely ruin a lot of the experience.

I don't think Icewind Dale is a very valid comparison. OK, both games have party creation and lots of combat... But beyond that? Icewind Dale is a 'dungeon crawler' but I really don't view SoZ like that (because it doesn't have the deep and involved dungeons). It feels more like a mix between Darklands, HoMM/Kings Bounty and even Pirates!, with the D&D flavour of course. While I agree with most people that it definetely could've had a big dungeon or two, I'm really happy that I don't have to delve into hourlong dungeons in this one. I think it fits well with the open design. The exploration in its sort of simplest form is the main draw for me in terms of the overall game design, just like in Pirates! I find it addictive. Also, I was going through some of the Infinity Engine games a month or so back and I have an extremely hard time getting into Icewind Dale (still haven't tried IWD2 though) but I love SoZ, go figure.

I'm still not sure which STALKER game I like more. I liked the faction warfare stuff in Clear Sky but I also think it negatively impacted that mystical quality known as 'atmosphere'. People (or GSC at least) always say that Clear Sky is closer to the original vision of STALKER, but that's definetely not true for what I personally felt the game would be during all those previews before STALKER was released. But yeah, much of the actual gameplay in Clear Sky is definetely improved which is quite awesome. But I also wish it didn't feel so... crowded. Ah well, the STALKER franchise has definetely produced two games that are quite unlike anything else.

I just finished up A Vampyre Story. Most complaints I have within the game would be very minor nitpicks all in all, I really enjoyed it all in all. I will say though that I bought this game without having any idea at all that it would be an episodic release. Thus, it turned out to be a bit short and have a rather abrupt ending which was a bit disappointing. Having a label saying "Chapter 1" or something on the title would've done much to alter expectations. But, I had a blast and I actually can't wait until Chapter 2 gets released. Fun puzzles, generally fun writing (though it does go up and down a bit in quality) and gorgeous graphics. Not sure what I'll be playing next. EDIT: Actually, I think I'll be playing some Grim Fandango.

I haven't tried this yet (the good computer is waiting for a new vidcard fan) but I must say it's a bit depressing reading some of these comments. I always regarded the original FEAR to be a sort of "hardcore" FPS (or maybe I just sucked more when it was released, who knows), meaning that it could actually be a real challenge when bumping up the difficulty. STALKER fell into this category as well. With the removal of leaning and addition of stuff like glowing enemies in slow-mo, I feel like shouting out things like "dumbed down for consoles", but I shall patiently wait until I can try the demo myself.

After finishing my replay of Monkey Island 3, which I greatly enjoyed, I decided to try out another adventure game, A Vampyre Story. I've been planning on getting for quite some time, so I decided to finally do just that. I haven't got very far yet but I like it so far. Love how it looks overall. The main characters take a bit of getting used to but I'm warming up to them already.

It would take a lot to turn it into turnbased I believe. With the recent script additions you can make an auto-pause system ala BG, where it pauses each round but everyone still take their turns at once. If you go into turnbased you'd have to figure out how to create a queue for people to act in, some way to visualize and calculate how far your current character can move in a turn. How to handle inventory, using potions etc etc. I wouldn't hold my breath.

I think I got to the Sword Coast around level 9 or so. By that time, I believe I (on my second playthrough) could take on whatever I could find in Sammarach, though some fights are quite challenging. But yep, you can still go back to Sammarach later on for a small fee. There is a small window in the main quest where the portal back doesn't work (I assume it's a bug) but if you just follow the questline for a tiny bit it should start working again. And yep, you get Timber from trading with cities, though you can find it on the OL map if you're lucky (can't recall the relevant skill you need). Also, small tip... Before you leave for the Sword Coast, you should take one unit of Salt (need to do a certain quest for that to show up as a Rare Resource Trade Good in a certain town) with you as you can use it for a quest on the Sword Coast. That'll save you time running back and getting it later.

Not really, other than customizing the options as much as you can to your liking (you can customize them in the Options menu). I mostly use Exploration Mode, where I control the camera with the mousewheel (click and hold to rotate camera). This works beautifully for me. Or use Strategy mode and place the camera in as much of a top-down view as you can. That plays pretty closely to the cRPGs of old, though I suspect camera collision can get annoyying if you do this (I'm not sure, I haven't tried it). I'm constantly changing views and spinning the camera around, I think it works great for that.

Since the main computer is currently messed up, I fired up Monkey Island 3 on my older one The best of the series if you ask me. Fun writing, great voiceacting and beautiful to look at. And Murray always makes me laugh.

I've done two complete playthroughs of SoZ and on both of them I ended up around 16-17 or so (with variations depending on ECL). This is with parties that I fleshed out to 6 members as soon as I had the possibility to do so. Mileage will vary depending on how many members you decide to bring along. I think the addition of the new death system is the greatest boon to NWN2 combat. Just having it there makes it feel like much more is at stake in battle. I don't like those Coins of Waukeen though, but I think I read somewhere that OEI was forced to add them or something. Kind of a shame since they feel a bit "cheap". I really like that they went with a completely non-scaled gameworld, since you can really go right into trouble right away. I agree with Rhomal about the voiceacting though. Now, for the most part I like the acting. But the sound quality seems to be lacking for some characters. Unfortunately this is true for both Volo and Sa'Sani (who are the biggest characters). MotB didn't have this problem, and so I wonder if the SoZ dialogues were recorded elsewhere. The big characters were actually voiced by OEI people. Volo was voiced by Alex Brandon, Sa'Sani by Fryda Wolff, Annie Carlson did a number of characters (including the tiefling in Samargol). Maybe these were recorded elsewhere? I don't know, but it's a MYSTARY to be sure.

Yep, and I also feel Warlocks come into their own a bit more with SoZ with their non-limited casting. If you try a Warlock, make sure to grab Hellfire Warlock though (think you can get it by level 9 Warlock). It adds a bit more (much needed) variety to the Warlock class. Summon Baatezu is fun and the Hellfire abilities can be useful. I never tried building a Swashbuckler myself (had the Swashbuckler cohort for a short while). Does it work well?

Just make sure your Overland Map leader is skilled enough and you won't have much trouble with random encounters. Not sure about faces. I know they included some new textures though, some of which look really great. They also added some new interior texture/tile swap things which look quite awesome. Overall I think they made SoZ look quite good because they pushed the lighting a bit more. Everything is a bit more vibrant and colorful.

I'm not a game developer myself, but I imagine there are very few (if any) designers in the industry who are *purely* sitting around writing. I'm guessing you would need at least some additional knowledge for multitasking.

There are some real fed-ex quests in Torment when you're going around the Hive. The thing is, since you've generally got a lot of quests going at once, I just end up doing quests whenever I go to the particular area. Like for the Moridor Box one, I don't strictly follow that questline until its finish, I try to make it as smooth as possible. Since there is a wealth of quests in the Hive, I don't think fed-ex quests are noticeable since there is constantly stuff you can be distracted with. I think Mebbeths little questline is probably my least favourite since there you actually have to go back and forth a number of times, but even that is not terrible. Plus, it's got some interesting ideas and it all ties in nicely when you become a mage. If I got to change Torment the way I wanted, well... I can say that I wouldn't remove any text. In fact, I would add more to some characters in the later areas. Fhjull and Trias are the most glaring examples I feel. Undoubtedly important characters, but they don't seem to stack up very well when compared to the earlier ones. They could've both used a lot more "meat" so to speak. The bits in Curst and Baator are like that. They feel much more barebone than Sigil, and of course the game goes combatheavy for a while there which feels extremely strange in the flow of the game. There's also some stuff that I would perhaps cut or change, but most of it is the really optional stuff. Getting mazed isn't very exciting, nor is the Nordom dungeon (though I love the idea of it). UnderSigil could've used something more other than combat as well. Still, my second favourite game behind Fallout 1. And it's a truly unique one.

I liked FEAR as a FPS but I also found much of it underdeveloped. It got extremely repetetive after a while, and the scares were extremely predictable once you'd seen how the game works. But yeah, the action was generally good, and sometimes *really* good. Good on them for releasing a demo though, will definetely give it a try. Plus points to developers who make demos for their games.

My last playthrough was with the resolution/interface mods posted on the Codex (I ran it in 1280x1024) as well as the patches from Qwinn. Worked great.

I'm sure the Nameless One is celebrating right now, blowing out the candles on a cake somewhere in the middle of the Blood War. As well all know, cake can change the nature of a man.

That's awesome!

Tommy Emmanuel - Endless Road

The game is certainly more "stressful" if you take the all out evil route and devour anything. But it's also where I really think the Spirit Meter comes into its own I feel, because the connection between curse and gameplay is most definetely there. I played an evil Sorceror and it was a lot of fun. It's especially cool as an evil spellcaster because you have to be careful with spell management. The Spirit Gorging is actually quite empowering and really makes your character feel dangerous (aside from being an epic level character of course, heh). I thought the Good path of Supressing was made to easy, and I would've liked some specific penalties for a character who relies only on Supress. The character is denying the hunger through will (thus negating the need to use the Spirit Meter system to eat) which is cool, but I really felt there should've been some pay off there. There is no real thing in game which suggests that it's a massive act of willpower to Supress the hunger. For the player it's just clicking Supress and that's that. Some sort of consequence there would've been very appropiate I think. But yeah, making it harder to manage would've probably made the Bioware forums explode. MotB took a fair bit of punishment from both community and reviewing sites because of the Spirit Meter. Very unfortunate if you ask me. I applaud the effort to connect the story to the gameplay and found it made the curse plot point much weightier. I don't think it would've had much impact if the game just said "yeah, you're the victim of a terrible curse, but it doesn't actually affect anything aside from when you're in a cutscene".

I haven't looked closer at the texturing in OEIs campaigns for some reason. There was some that I thought stood out as poor in SoZ, that being the beach area near the start of the game. The area designer was going for sort of sandy rocks but it looks quite bad there. Kind of strange since I found most area design in MotB and SoZ really good. I agree with the spawning in of monsters. It happens in Ashenwood and also in the dreaded Orc caves in the NWN2 OC, where mobs just "fade in" right on top of you. Really not a good choice. Another problem is also, if you spawn in monsters in a room which the player is approaching for example, there is a slight "stutter" as the engine loads them in. This obviously ruins much of the element of surprise as the player will think "aha, the mod just spawned some mobs!" I haven't really played around with monster placement and so on, but is it not viable to have all monsters spawned upon entry of an area? Does it mean performance problems? Or am I missing something?

I'm all for drunken nonsense and NWN2, preferably at the same time. Still, I think it could be cool to just discuss RPGs in general if you can't talk about the upcoming games yet. Discussing design decisions taken on OEIs (as well as from companies where current OEI employess might have worked) past games, and talk about what you felt was good, what you would do differently today etc. There are quite a few cool people at OEI and I bet many RPG fans would be interested in their views on things. Or if a podcast doesn't work, maybe have an OEI blog or something.

No, there is an option to side with the older witch. I can't remember the particular dialogue path, but when the younger witch asks for your help, there is a dialogue in which you can definetely say "No, I won't help you". She will then ask you if you're sure about this decision, and if you are, she will get the Berserkers to attack. The older witch then talks to you, and you can convince her that this was not your doing (if you can't convince her, she attacks I think). If you convince her, she joins you in the fight with the Parasite. But yeah, I don't think you can go directly to the older witch and "tip her off" so to speak.

There is a modding team working on remaking Baldurs Gate 1 as a NWN2 mod. http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewt...5&forum=111