Starwars

Interview http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Inter...tail&id=333

Wasn't clear in my post, but I was mainly referring to the visual presentation of the characters. I think it's a bit hard to compare something like PS:T to Bloodlines though, since they are kinda on different sides of the spectrum. I myself prefer PS:Ts direction, with it being based mostly on words with its great use of descriptive text and so on, and leaving the visual spectrum more limited. But Bloodlines is great in the other direction, where the writing overall may not as elaborate, but instead relies more on the visuals (and voiceacting). And of course, there is a huge difference in setting as well, which obviously affects the writing a lot. The Masquerade, while quite fantastical, is still a lot more steeped in realism than something like Torment which is sort of "all out". Like I said, I generally prefer "graphics-lite" games that rely much on words, since that tends to vibe with me for whatever reason. But if we're gonna have fancy technology involved, then I really want that tech poured into the characters. Bloodlines did that wonderfully I think, and having seen some of the screens of AP, I really hope it will follow suit.

As far as Mitsoda goes... I'm replaying Bloodlines at the moment, and one incredible strength of this game is the characters. Really a colorful bunch, and for once it came full-circle with writing, great face animations and extraordinary voiceacting. I hope AP will be like Bloodlines in that way, because the characters are really extremely good. Jeanette/Therese, Jack, Maximillian Strauss, Alistair Grout (though we only hear him, what a magnificent voiceacting performance, absolutely dead-on), Lacroix... It's great stuff. I hadn't played Bloodlines in a while, so I thought Mass Effect would be the new "king" here so to speak. But after playing Bloodlines again, I'm blown away by the work done with the characters.

Still playing Bloodlines, but broke down before the Nosferatu sewers (well, actually the mansion you go to before that) and made another character (Malkavian, weee). That particular part of the game is really the breaking point for me, more than once have I stopped playing at that moment. In fact, I think I've only mustered the inspiration to go there there once, which was the one time when I finished the game. It's so... sad. The game's got such great character and great quests at the start. It's such a slap in the face to have to sit through the sucktastic combat which gets heavier and heavier as it goes on. But man, everytime I play the game it still feels so fresh. I'm not into the whole goth/Vampire thing (though I did enjoy the PnP when I played it), but it's really fresh to be playing it in a RPG. Vampire the Masquerade actually works quite well in cRPG form. Still, I doubt I'll make it past the whole Nosferatu in the sewers deal again anytime soon.

I can't think of a particular moment in the NWN2 OC where I felt the encounters were particularly inspiring to tell the truth. Maybe some of the Shadow Reaver fights and the dragon fights. I did like the general feel of the Crossroad Keep battle though, where it felt like the "endurance test against bazillions of weak enemies" felt somewhat empowering. MotB was better. It's still not what I'd call good, but the fact that it's mostly lacking that "hordes of samey enemies" and has quite a few unique encounters really does a lot to ease the tedium. There were also a few times where I fully admit to getting the snot kicked out of me, which was a surprisingly fun feeling. I'm not into D&D though, which might explain my suckage. So, even if AP is very combat-heavy, I really hope that encounters will at least feel unique in themselves and not 'let's shoot 150000 respawning russian terrorists'.

Repplaying Vampire: Bloodlines. A mixture of awesome (most earlier parts of the game) and suck (most later parts of the game). Really enjoyed sneaking around the hospital and all that. The NPCs in this game are really colorful. Both due to great writing and great face animations (still the best I've seen for RPGs). About to go into the Ocean Hotel which was quite awesome the first time playing the game, but kinda sucky when replaying it (since it's very non-interactive).

Well, is there XP for killing people in AP? I don't know, I haven't been following it that much. If there isn't, then that obviously changes things. But I don't like it when games ignore the stealth path (and actually often other paths as well) when compared to the "kill everything that moves" approach. The other stuff you mention is what I want as well. Recognition for how you complete your objectives. I of course don't meant that stealth should be superior so to speak, but if I sneak through something then I want the game to recognize it. In XP as well IF killing everything would grant XP.

I guess I'd just like to see the game promoting the use of stealth basically. In to many games it feels like it's *just* a way to bypass the enemies, with no reward on its own. If I sneak through without alerting guards or whatever, then I want to be rewarded for that. Both XP wise and sort of storywise (the game acknowledging it). My simple wish for stealth in AP.

I'd say it's pretty hard to define just what a RPG is. There are certainly traits which can be recognized, but many of these can also carry over into games that I don't feel are RPGs. I definetely feel Mass Effect is a RPG. But I also feel it's, well... I guess a bit shallow when it comes to the RPG elements? How you evolve your character (class-wise) doesn't make much that much difference I thought, it's still fight fight fight. There are definetely choices in dialogues, but again, they are not particularly amazing I think. I think the biggest thing that I consider a flaw in Mass Effect is also how I consider many other recent RPGs. The player is simply held back to much. It never feels like I'm driving the game along, instead it feels like I'm sort of shovelled between cutscenes and story exposition. A part of that is the heavy cinematics, which look nice, but it also tends to emphazise the point that I'm watching a movie even though I can participate as well. Bioware has always been about storytelling, but I must admit I it's become way to much. To much of the story and narrative "choking" the player. I miss games like Arcanum or Fallout where it really felt like the player mattered. There are happy compromises though. Mask of the Betrayer I thought was good in providing a good and fairly heavy story, but it still felt like it was playerdriven you know? Same for PS:T, even with its massive story. This is a bit of siderant though. Something I do hope AP can get compared with is the face animations in Vampire: Bloodlines. I started a replay of that today, and man, the characters there really feel personal. The face animations are superb and really full of personality. Best I've seen so far in a RPG. I actually thought of Vampire when I saw those recent screenshots of characters in AP. Hopefully they'll be really well animated.

I liked Silent Hill, but I admit it was mostly since I felt they nailed the visuals. The story, writing and acting are... well... Let's say they leave something to be desired. I thought Sean Bean was great in his role though, he'd be great as a lead in a Silent Hill movie. He's just charismatic. Dead or Alive was so terrible that I couldn't even watch it for the lulz (which I could with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat). Super Mario was a rather surreal experience to watch. I think I'd mostly like for them to stay away from making gamemovies.

This sums up my thoughts on the matter. At least in my previous experience with action-RPGs, I always feel they pull off in two different directions. The actiony twitch based gameplay, or the stats-heavy RPG gameplay. With the popularity of many action-RPGs, I guess that many people feel it's the best of both world, but personally I always get the feeling that I get the worst of both worlds instead. Or, even if the combat works well, I don't get the fulfilment that either a great FPS can bring, or a slowerpaced RPG can bring. This is the case with Mass Effect for me... I feel the combat flows nicely, the controls are quite nice (on PC at least, never tried the Xbox360 version) etc, even so I feel it oh-so... unfulfilling. But it's also due to stuff like perspectives and realtime/turnbased. I normally vastly prefer purely statbased stuff, but in games that feature an "actiony" perspective and gameplay (TES, Vampire:Bloodlines etc), it also serves to annoy me to no end. And that's that split which I mentioned before... If it becomes completely twitch based, then I feel the RPG is lacking. If it goes completely statbased then I feel annoyed at how I can't hit despite that I'm aiming well. Maybe there is some golden balance there and maybe Alpha Protocol will hit, but it hasn't happened for me as of yet. So yeah, I think action-RPGs just aren't for me I suppose.

Mostly the whole action-RPG bit which has never worked for me in the past (though I've still been able to enjoy such games on other merits). There are also some other things that I don't like. I love the way that we only get one chance for a dialogue, and no repeating. But I don't think I'll like the realtime part of it, nor the stance stuff. And I for one would've loved if it had a more realistic tone to it, and none of the "superpowers" so to speak. I'm glad that we're seeing a fresh setting for RPGs though. Don't think it'll be a bad game, just that some of the design decisions are not my cup of tea.

I agree that it's nice to see that previewers can provide criticism, but at the time it just pisses me off since they're more than happy to look past flaws in other games that are made by the gaming industry big companies like Bioware and Bethesda. The sad truth right now seems to be that many mags/sites are more than happy to lend their support to the bigger companies, and the more obscure and small a company gets (not to imply that Obsidian is small, but it's not a superforce like the biggest companies around), the more they can kick them around. A sad state of affairs. Like I've said before, I don't think this will be a game for me (though I'm quite sure I will enjoy it more than something like Mass Effect), but I really hope for Obsidians sake that this lukewarm feel of many previews doesn't continue. Obsidian already has a bit of a wonky reputation, producing buggy and incomplete games that ride on Biowares successes. Now, I prefer Obsidians games by far, but it would be a real shame if this reputation continues.

Think it's mostly a reaction to the wave of slobbering previews that makes these feel kind of fresh (even if they go to far the other way perhaps). I don't mind if people like this game, I'm sure there are plenty of things to like about it and it obviously hit home with some people. However, I don't believe for 1 second that these people can't find anything to provide criticism on. While I don't think I'll like the game. The previews in the past (before we saw any gameplay) that did have a level-headed feel, and pointed out some flaws and didn't drool all over VATS or whatever actually served to get me much more excited about the game whereas I would usually just dismiss the all-glowing ones. But what that french preview seems to point out are feelings that I personally feel will echo mine about the game.

Saw it. Wasn't a video designed to omg blow you away with the cool features!1!, which was nice. They just showed some general moving around, and some of the combat. It looks solid enough. The combat is hard to judge since it's hard to see all the thingies on the lowres video, but the top-down stuff looked quite nice. Graphics looks nice, but not to the point where it looks like you'll need a NASA computer to run it which is something I consider important these days. Solid but unimpressive I'd say. But again, I think that's due to how they presented the video. It was fairly limited footage, and I really like to hear more about the game. I think it can possibly be a great game. You can still watch it on Livewire, you can rewind the video to whatever time you want to watch. They didn't start it on time I think, so the times are not really accurate though.

So there are a now two stick figure masters at Obsidian...

Swashbuckler confirmed in a tiny blurb here: http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/E3-200...i/Item9321.aspx Domguide of Kelemvor was confirmed before I think. EDIT: Whoops, missed it in funrocs post.

I know, I've tweaked the encounter rate myself in the past. But the latest version of the Project don't seem to have changed the encounter rate to silly levels, not sure if Killap modified that. Or maybe the new version just don't modify the worldmap file. Either way, the rate of the encounters if fine by me now. It's the content of many of the combat encounters that bother me.

Fallout 2 with the restoration project. Playing Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 back to back, I must say that I feel the quality gap is larger than ever. I feel Fallout 1 is a lot tighter overall, and has many moments that are just pure brilliance and which can affect me in great ways to this day. Fallout 2 is a lot more "bumpy" and a lot more annoying in many ways. Fallout 1 had one place where I felt the combat was mistreated and that was Adytum (with that huge battle, takes forever). Fallout 2 has plenty of random encounters with a lot of foes, which really brings out the bad things about the combat system. Never thought about this before actually. The whole continuity is also quite shafted in some places. Still, it's no doubt a good game and a very nice RPG.

Combat screens don't look all that exciting I think. The character faces look awesome though, lots of personality.

I most definetely have never praised it in Alpha Protocol, in fact, I'm likely to dislike the combat in Alpha Protocol as well (the statement in one of the interviews that Fallout 3 and Mass Effect is the new wave of RPGs and AP is inspired by the likes of them kinda tore down a lot of hope I might have for the game). Fact is though that VATS has been hyped in pretty much every preview out there, many people describing it as pseudo turnbased combat and a "nod to RPG fans" or whatever. And it's somewhat of an alternate way of fighting instead of FPS (though as I understand we can't use VATS all the time because of action points). When in Alpha Protocol it seems to be "just" a super power. But yeah, I'm not excited it by its inclusion there either. And I didn't mean that STALKER feels visceral, I was only referring to CoD4 with that comment. But STALKER instead has intelligent enemies which run and take cover, try to flank you etc. Granted, the demo was fast since Todd ran right in to blow everything up, but the enemies didn't take cover and in some instances tried to run up straight to his face.

Just saw the other gameplay demo... Same feelings as before. VATS looks strangely non-satisfying (limbs seems to pop loose in rather strange and all-together to easy ways), and FPS gameplay looks pretty lackluster when compared to a game like STALKER, or to Call of Duty 4 in terms of how visceral it feels. Environments look great, but overall this is a big meh. And yeah... Teddybears.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36202.html Full trailer. I think they nailed the live-action movie at the start, actually very funny and with a real glint in the eye. I thought the cartoons kinda sucked though, but overall the mood there is fantastic. Combat still looks iffy to me though (which is basically what the rest of the trailer consists of). Perhaps I'm dumb, or a cranky old fart, but I fail to see what's impressive here. I'll take something like STALKERs (if we're talking first person games) combat over this, based on how combat seemed to play out in this trailer and the Todd demonstration. Like I said before, I actually didn't think I'd be underwhelmed since my expectations were rather low, but I'm really wondering what it is that is causing people to go crazy in these trailers/demos so far.

I had low expectations, but I thought that was extremely underwhelming in every way except the environments (which look nice). Combat looks like ass, and if that's how VATS looks like... Well, it certainly wasn't as amusing as the previews claimed. I looked downright unresponsive, and generally non-satisfying. I don't know what else to say, it looks like a travesty I think. It doesn't even look fun as a FPS type of game.

http://au.media.pc.ign.com/media/682/682217/imgs_1.html Screens.