Starwars

Looks like it will be yet another OEI game with very varying reception, hehe. Wonder why the Germans are so early with their reviews though? It's still like 4 weeks or something until release.

Probably not good for critical and mainstream reception, nope. But I must say, I for one actually like the way aiming works in the game and have no problem with how the weapon skills affect accuracy and such.

Thanks very much for that, interesting interview!

One of the scandinavian game journalists on the Deus Ex HR forums made some off hand comment about a preivew of DS3 and how it seemed okay but had the typical bad Obsidian camera angles... Yeah, I know. Don't think that has anything to do with the engine itself though particularly much. And while that comment might've worried me, the lengthy gameplay walkthroughs we've seen look absolutely fine to me camera-wise.

I think there are clear advantages to Onyx though we have not gotten our hands on it ourselves yet. The main two things have been mentioned by OEI. 1) It's an engine built from the ground up to support all the RPG stuff like the dialogue trees, perks, skills and all that stuff. I guess that saves a lot of time rather than figuring out how to insert that into something that may not be built for RPGs from the get-go. 2) If a designer needs technical support, it's a lot more effective to go down the corridor to the tech dudes rather than getting help from (as an example) Bethesda when it comes to the Fallout 3 version of Gamebryo or whatever. But yeah, will be fun to see how Onyx does in DS3.

The temps vid cards run often don't have that much to do with how good the game actually looks technically speaking, at least in my experience. There have been several games that have run very hot on my vid cards despite looking a lot worse than newer, more demanding games. Guess a lot of it has to do with the engine and how it handles things.

That sounds like your graphics card may be starting to take some damage.

I'm only in Chapter 1 so far but I'm not really crazy about it so far. I prefer it to the first game (which is not saying a lot for me though) but I think it suffers from similar problems. The good stuff in the game is really rather good. The atmosphere shines once again and puts most other games to complete shame. The writing and voiceacting also work much better than in the first game. But I feel that once again, the combat is... not good. I can appreciate certain parts of it, especially something that was true of Risen as well which is that combat is deadly. Geralt can really get slaughtered if you're not careful. Plus, the game does provide you with fun tools in traps, throwing daggers and so forth. But I can't shake the fact that the controls feel so damn clunky. Whether it's just moving Geralt around, anticipating just when an animation ends in combat so you can start up a new action, looting stuff. The funky QTEs, unnecessary ladders which take several seconds to climb only to lead to a completely useless and empty location, really crappy stealth sections. The fact that I have to meditate to down a potion, or that I can seemingly only craft one potion at a time, crappy inventory. The fact that the whole meditate action just takes longer than it should. For a title that's developed for PC I'm finding the controls and overall playability to... well, suck really. Again, I've only really just started to dig into the story and I think the whole "who can you trust, who will you choose to support?" will be the real meat of the game. CD Projekt does that exceptionally well, and while there is some silliness, the whole "mature" schtick works really well in the Witcher 2. Despite how extreme it can be sometimes, it never feels like the game is pointing at itself going "look at me, I'm so mature!". It feels like everything is there for a reason, to build up the gameworld. So yeah, mixed feelings so far really. I suspect that it will end up occupying a similar spot as the first game in my mind. I'll stick with it for the first playthrough because of the excellent atmosphere and intriguing characters but will probably have a really hard time replaying the game because of how much I dislike a lot of the other stuff.

Great that they're releasing a demo though I've got it pre-ordered anyways. Wonder how much it'll show off.

Actually didn't have any problems with Honest Hearts crashing at all though Dead Money crashed quite a bit for me. Think the buggiest thing that happened was when some enemies sorta got stuck in deep water and I couldn't kill them off properly. Seems to be something strange with deep water and combat in these games. Doesn't seem to work.

Just finished it and I am pretty happy with it though it didn't leave me with the same feeling of "damn... that's just awesome" feeling that the Dead Money ending did. Though they obviously try for very different things. Think the real star here is Zion itself. Really had fun exploring it, thought it was very well done. The ending slides were also satisfying and it pains me to no end that "journalists" still don't seem to give a crap about the agency of the player. Pisses me off that so little about it is mentioned generally speaking. On the other hand, while I liked the NPCs, I think both Joshua and Daniel could've used a bit more "oomph". I really like the direction they took with Joshua, sorta pushing him away from the old Hanged Man concepts a lot, but I still really find it hard to connect Joshua in Honest Hearts with the stories of the Burned Man from the Legion and Hanlon in New Vegas. I guess it's partially due to that Honest Hearts is still its "own thing" and Joshua has moved on, but the fanboy in me really wanted more connections and war-stories from the Legion days. It feels built up quite a bit in the main game and it just felt like there could've been more of a resolution to Joshua's character as it relates to the main campaign so to speak. Also, I enjoyed that they highlighted some different guns in the DLC as well. Coming up against enemies with Brush Guns and Anti-materiel rifles can hurt a lot. The Yao-Gui's were one of my fav additions that Fallout 3 did enemy wise and glad to see them back here, feels like it makes sense. I wonder if the enemies in the DLC are scaled at all?

I gotta say, while I wish there were more people interactions ala Dead Money in the game, I'm *really* growing to like Zion. There are some new assets here and there that I think look a bit wonky but the overall feel of the place is really nice, quite different than any of the other games, yet still very fitting for Fallout. There have been some really awesome moments where I've been sneaking around at night, the rain falling, sniping at enemies from high up ledges. It feels rather survivalist in some ways but in a very different way than Dead Money felt. Resources are not scarce in Honest Hearts, but the environment just has a that great feel of wanting to toss off your fancy armors and go tribal instead, hehe.

I had the same problem, shooting the friendly tribal guy. It's too hard to see what's going on at a distance there and like someone said, you remain in "combat mode" since you just got attacked. What's worse, I figured that maybe that optional encounter at the start of killing the tribals was some sort of trigger. As in, if you choose not to kill the tribals, maybe they'd turn friendly to you or something and I was like "hey, neat, a choice so early on!". Yeah... That wasn't quite how it worked out, haha. So I explored Zion and didn't realize anything was wrong until I got the objective to leave Zion again, heh. Now, I actually love that you can shortcut everything that way and just play it straight like an exploration game but yeah, I think the tribal encounter with the friendly near the start is a bit clumsily set up. Also, fighting people with Brush Guns and Anti-Materiel rifles = ouchies. Anyways, restarted it and am now following the main quest "the proper way" so to speak.

Don't think Nathaniel is in charge of the technical doo-daas of the engine if I understand things correctly.

Man... they never stop talking. *Never*. Couldn't even bear to watch the entire thing. On the plus-side, it's pretty good to watch previews in other languages because you don't get spoiled too much. Also, I have pretty high hopes for the lore of the game. I think the stuff with Jeyne, the Legion and all that (showcased a bit in the intro) is pretty interesting.

Was looking at the Gametrailers review of the game and one thing that really seems to, well... take a lot of the point out of the game is that there seems to be no real "failure" or consequence to how well you do the investigations aside from the ratings on the cases. I really like the ideas of the interrogations and investigations in the game but if there's not a huge feeling of the game reacting to how you accomplish these things, how well you do, then I feel like a lot of it is sorta pointless.

The way it's described in the preview sounds pretty good to me. Taking a bit before you learn it is not a problem for me as long as it feels good, and everything feels readily available once you *do* get used to it.

One of few changes thus far that I really didn't like I'm afraid. While I agree that the books do hint at it, I think the whole "ladida, we're obviously gay characters" feel to the scene took it overboard. Never really read much of that into their personalities in the books and I don't particularly felt like it added much. The bit with Cersei and Robert was pretty interesting, don't think that was in the book? Sorta makes their relationship feel a bit different and more nuanced in some ways.

Descendant, I think. Dungeon Siege III takes place 150 years after Dungeon Siege after all. EDIT: Posted in another topic, I guess I can post it here too Italian videopreview of the game. Footage is from the PS3 version as if the button prompts and the fact that it's written there didn't make it obvious enough. Thanks for posting that. The game definitely looks best on PC but it still looks pretty nice and the framerate is smooth as hell which is good considering the type of game it is. Do they mention anything new or is it same old?

Gotta say that the game looks pretty sharp on PC, and yeah... That last screenshot is all kinds of hilarious, haha. Some way of sorting the shop's inventory, sorting by categories or whatever would definitely be welcome. That said, it'll kinda depend on how many items any given vendor will stock as well. I'm mainly glad that it's not just a list. Seeing the items spread out like that makes gets me in a shopping mood way more than the lists of something like New Vegas. Also, wasn't it confirmed in one of the walkthrough videos that Reinhart was the son of Merik (some guy from the older games)?

Huh, wonder what problems those can be. That long GiantBomb video put to ease what fears I had on the camera really. If it's limited to odd-jobb bugs like that one shown in the IGN video then it's not gonna be a problem for me at least. But yeah, a bit weird since I know there's been at least one preview in the past that praised the camera and how it never "got in the way" of playing the game. Ah well, guess we'll see.

I don't think I will have much trouble with the whole "personality of characters" deal personally. Saying that it's the opposite of Alpha Protocol's rather intricate relationships feels rather like a duh comment, even if one completely disregards pretty much everything that previous information has indicated, why would on expect this level of intricate dialogues/choices in a Dungeon Siege game? I mean, yes, Obsidian opted for 4 characters instead of the open character creation of the past games, but still. The lack of the whole choose your personality thing is also something that doesn't bother me a whole lot. Again, I think AP is pretty much the only game where I've found this approach satisfying. One reason is that I find the game very well-written (and so it's fun to explore the dialogue options) but the other is again that AP's dialogues are complex and bountiful. It feels like there is a genuine reaction to your personality style from other character, even going as far as to having special lines for when your Thorton changes back and forth between dialogue options. There is just no reason to expect this from a game like Dungeon Siege 3. Mass Effect sure as hell never gave me the feeling of having any ownership over Shepard despite the whole Paragon/Renegade stuff, so I guess I don't know what to make of that comparison. I sure find the DS3 characters more interesting than Shepard at least. As long as there are a few good choices to make, that's what will be important to me in terms of story/character interactions. It's an interesting legacy that Obsidian carries now though.

Chris Avellone posted on the Bethsoft forums regarding DLCs stripping your equipment away when you enter:

I think the music is from New Vegas. The sad, slow music is from the ending slides I think? "I have been baptized twice. Once in water, once in flames." Bad-ass.