Starwars

And while Alien is a known brand, I believe it's the first time (?) that Obsidian is developing an engine on their own. If I understand that right anyways. Also, it will be fun to see Josh & company can do with Alien in the scope of a RPG. My main hope for Obsidian in the future is that they will try to develop something more akin to Fallout or Arcanum, something that is very playerdriven, heavy on roleplay and not so heavy on narrative. Obsidians strength is obviously writing if you ask me, but that can still be applied. In fact, I believe Mask of the Betrayer was quite succesful in that regard (in regards of it being playerdriven), but I'd like it to see pushed even further. I'd like it if they go the way Bioware seems to go with Dragon Age (from what they've said anyways), a game that is more aimed at the hardcore RPG base. I'd be happy with a lower budget game, if it meant being a bit more "edgy". But yeah, we don't know much about their current projects as of yet, so...

I've been playing a bit of Winds of Change which takes place in the Warhammer universe. I'm not very familiar with Warhammer, but it was pretty easy to get into. Battles are freaking hard, but quite fun. The atmosphere is wonderful. Bad things are that it's very linear, and you rarely get any dialogue options (though there skill checks here and there with a lot of exp to be gained if you succeed). The author will make the sequel a lot more open and generally more ambitious. Still, I like it quite a bit.

So I normally like this guy, but that went beyond good. That was frackin hilarious, and pretty spot-on as well. Big lulz, and great job Yahtzee.

Peter Carlsson & de bl

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - Summertime

The Dark Waters mods are really the odd man out. I was also quite amazed at what Adam Miller did for the second part especially, and the fact that most of it actually works quite well without feeling clunky is an even bigger achievement. Still, the very "core" of the mod didn't really grip me. It was a fun trip, and really cool to see what could be done with the toolset, but the mod(s) never really grabbed me. I also think it's a bit to obvious in some places.. I mean, there's no denying that the ship system is ripped straight from Pirates for example. And I read he's working on a Guitar Hero-ish minigame called Lute Hero. I mean, it's really impressive, but they're to close to the original ideas. The world also has some clumsy echoes to our world, like the whole God business and black people with overdone Jamaican accents etc... But yeah, I definetely had fun playing them still. They're definetely different. Haven't played Pool of Radiance yet, should give that a go.

So, since NWN2 has been out for a while now and the library of mods have been growing slowly but surely (with the most promising ones still in production), I figure we could do with another of these threads. What mods do you like so far? Here are my picks. Harp & Crysanthemum: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2M...tail&id=206 This is just good all around. Somewhat limiting in roleplay, neutral and good only (though there are some rather nice dialogue options still) and a linear story are about the only things I can fault this mod for. But it doesn't matter much because it's pulled off really well. The writing is great, and the area design is drop-dead gorgeous. It feels heavily steeped in FR lore (I'm not that into it so I don't really know to tell the truth, heh), and feels balanced overall. Add some of the authors custom music to that, and you've got a really good mod. This is my favourite so far, highly recommended. The author also started working on a sequel. Asphyxia: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2M...tail&id=255 A pretty new mod which have gotten nice ratings. I can't judge this entire mod since I haven't finished it yet. I will say that I found the entire opening area very well done (felt rather Torment-ish), the atmosphere is really tense. Once you get out of this area, I felt the mod sort of lost focus (a bit to humorous here and there) though but it might only be me. I still plan to finish this one, the writing was extraordinary. Moonshadows, chapter 1: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2M...tail&id=185 This is done by NWN veteran modder Hugie. A bit lacking in roleplaying for my personal tastes, but it still kept me interested to the very end. It feels like a great classic D&D adventure, and starts off kinda light-hearted. The story really picked up near the end though, and to be honest I can't wait until chapter 2 is released. A really fun adventure. Dark Avenger, chapter 1: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2M...comment_page=11 A rather story-heavy module, and well-written except for the odd spelling error here and there. The story initially reminded me of Torment, in that you want to find out what happened to your character in your past life. You're sent back to take revenge on those who wronged you, but it's up to you to decide what your motivations are. Pretty nice feature in this mod is that you unlock bits of your past through "flashback dialogue options", where you can decide upon what kind of person you where when you were alive. I don't think it affects all that much, but it makes it easier to bond with your character, and some of the options are quite inventive. Conan Chronicles, part 1 http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2M...tail&id=176 This is the most recent mod I played through, and it was a lot of fun. I'm not really into Conan, but this mod pulled me right in. The atmosphere is excellent, and the gameplay feels rather inventive somehow. It doesn't feel like your standard RPG. A nice touch is the custom races. It's also one of few mods (possibly the only one in NWN2 thus far) where I felt it was worth it to play a Rogue, and actually try to avoid enemies every once in a while. There are more, but those'll do for now.

I believe that basically noone knows anything. Obsidian is working on implementing the DRM thing into a patch, but we don't know whether it will make it in 1.13 (which shouldn't be much longer I think) or a later one.

Personally I think San Andreas was more a case of "let's add a lot of stuff that sounds cool to the game" rather than trying to polish up and improve things from the previous games. As fun as these games are, there are room for a *lot* of improvements. Better (and less frustrating) missions, better controls, making the city more active and alive etc. That's what I'm hoping for in GTAIV (haven't played it yet). Don't get why they removed bicycles though, I though that was a good addition. I'm glad they removed the "stat" system though. Stuff like eating and whatnot, it's just a bore when it's done as simply as in San Andreas. There is no depth to it, and IMO no reason for it to be there. AFAIK there will be a system like in Mafia II, which is a bit of a disappointment for me.

I actually like having a few impossible skill checks in there. I think a goal these RPGs should try to strive for is making the player think about what he does. As it stands now, I suspect players will always reach for that skill check option, no matter how absurd it might actually be. Granted, it should never be so much that the dialogue skills feel useless. And the instances of impossible checks should really be well thought out and logical, so that it doesn't feel like the game is simply baiting the player only to say "haha".

I said don't just stand there, come in! (was that right?) Anyways, now playing Mask of the Betrayer yet again. This time with a Chaotic Evil Bard, heh. I really love this game, definetely high up on my favourite RPG list.

You can talk to companions by right-clicking on them and select "Talk with" or whatever. With the default setting it might take a few secs for the menu to show up. You can decrease the "response time" for right clicking in the Options menu as well. No idea about the console commands.

I like to switch to character mode every now and then, mainly to just get a closer look at things. I can't understand how people can use it exclusively to play the game though, there is just no way I could do that. I use the strategy mode, with the camera following the character who is currently selected. Then I use the mousewheel to spin around and zoom in/out, works great for me. Especially since they added the marquee selection.

Major, I believe MotB does patch everything up to 1.10 (the patch that was released with MotB), except bug fixes that are specific to the NWN2 campaign. So if one installs NWN2, MotB and then manually install the patches after 1.10 then I think you miss out on NWN2 campaign fixes. I think Obsidian updated the autopatcher sometime ago so that it checks if you're missing any files, so it may be worth running at least to make sure you're not missing anything. Arkan, I assume you mean the Spirit Shaman and the Favoured Soul? Those were added with the expansion. They're pretty nice. And make sure you fiddle around with the camera options (can be found in the options menu). There are lot of different settings that you can tweak for the two different camera modes (strategy and character, use the *key to switch between them). Using this, I got a camera scheme that works like a charm for me.

Welcome! I hope you can become a good "man of the people" while at the same time keeping the gaming magazines drooling.

Manually installing the patches is a pain, and as far as I know rather unnecessary. According to Rob McGinnis the fastest way to do it is installing the main game -> install MotB -> run autopatcher.

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms It's a nice song.

I usually switch genders (yep) each time I replay these games, mostly because I tend to play a certain type of character (non melee combat) since I think combat is not fun enough to focus on. So different genders tend to bring out a bit of replayability at least. But yeah, I thought playing a female in KOTOR2 was a bit sucky since you miss out on the Handmaiden and her connection to Atris. Disciple has some qualities, but is really rather bland and feels "tacked on" to the game, while the Handmaiden feels like a natural part of it. But it's also because I find the confrontations with Atris to be among the best parts of KOTOR2, and not having the Handmaiden along makes it a bit less interesting.

Peragus had a great atmosphere to it, but the actual pacing/gameplay of it sucked I think. It went on for way to long. I really appreciate what they were trying for here, but I think it could've been pulled off a lot better. As for favourite places, hm. I'm actually struggling to pick out an area that I actually enjoyed in KOTOR1. Korriban is the most interesting one I suppose. The main storyline and I suppose character interactions was always the draw in KOTOR for me, and the areas you travel through did very little to keep me entertained to be honest. In KOTOR2 I quite enjoyed most of the areas actually, except Peragus (partially), the Telos segments and Malachor V. I think I like Dantooine the most, it was pretty cool returning there and seeing what had happened.

Will this injury affect your performance in the Alien game?

I really wish George Ziets could've continued at Obsidian. From his effort in MotB, he seemed like a really good fit for the type of games Obsidian do. Ah well, best of luck to him and I hope we see him back at a single player RPG someday. In other news, Rob McGinnis is hinting and teasing the community about a NWN2 expansion over at the Bioware forums: http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewt...um=109&sp=0

It really is. The only time I dabbled in the endgame stuff was way back when the first NA people got high levels for the first time. It was pretty fun (and sad at the same time I suppose) to try and those lesser HNMs like Roc or whatever they were called for the first time. The last expansion pack I played was Treasures of Aht Urhgan which I thought was very good and added a very nice mix of different features and things to do, and I generally liked it a lot more than Chains of Promathia. How is the latest expansion pack?

It's not only that, but so much of the hype surrounding Crysis was built up around how the game looks. I'm not even sure about the actual system requirements for the game, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of people skipped on it because they know they couldn't max out the graphics, and I simply think the game loses its appeal to a lot of people right there. I'm sure it's a nice enough game, but I really don't think the majority of people would buy this thinking that it's some kind of amazingly innovative shooter. If I were interested in these types of games, then Crysis would quite frankly be pretty much the ultimate "piracy target". Because I wouldn't want to buy this game and risk getting subpar graphics or performance, it feels like the entire point (again, a lot of the hype was built around its looks) is the visuals even if the game itself may not be bad at all.

Cool, I started with the PC version and stuck with that. My main job was a 75 Beastmaster, mostly because it allowed me to solo well because of my pain-in-the-butt schedule back then. I was mostly into crafting and stuff like that though, I actually got to 100 Fishing (no botting!), that was before they updated the fishing system if I recall correctly. Nnd also nearly capped out Chocobo digging. Had 100 Cooking, and had the other crafts at 60 except for Goldsmithing. Not sure why I enjoyed that particular part of the game so much. Don't really miss the game as such, but I do admit I miss the world of Vana'Diel a lot. It's a very charming setting, with many beautiful places to see. The early days is still some of my finest gaming memories, exploring the different places and everything felt so "fresh". I think that's what drove me away from the game eventually, it felt to "stagnant" in lack of a better word, it was becoming to much of a routine for me I guess. /ramble off