DemonKing

Opus hit it on the nail - I use this as my sig on the Lucasforums which I pinched from another poster. I think it sums up the feelings of most long-term SW fans pretty well: "At this stage I believe I now understand the truth, which is that Lucas has gone over to the dark side. He is a Darth Billionaire ruling an empire, and is no longer leading a rebellion. He was once a semi-independent force, overshadowed by a dark and powerful business, but still managed to beat the odds and on his own terms, but now he sits on a throne with lightning in his hands and a franchise in his clenched fist."

I have to go with Palpatine/The Emperor...I can't forgive Darth Vader for being a whining brat as a youngster who turns on his master at the end not to take his rightful place as the primal Dark Lord of the Sith but only to save his own whining brat.

I don't understand people that want to kill everyone they meet in a CRPG. No one would last long in real life if they slaughtered everyone they meet and while yes there are psychos and serial killers IRL there tends to be some subtlety to their madness. My idea of an evil character is not someone who slaughters everyone he meets but someone that callously manipulates and uses others for his own ends. I think the kind of guy that could dupe a paladin into killing a troublesome innocent for him is far more evil than someone who just kills everyone he meets. I have no problems at all if the designers build into a game suitable punishments for characters on a rampage, although picking a guy's pocket and having an entire city turn against you is a bit rich too.

My suggestion for mini-games is dump 'em completely, as they just get in the way of the core gameplay, IMO. If I wanted to play a lame turret shooter, racing or card game I'm sure I could find something appropriate in the bargain bin at EB. Of the three only Pazaak was barely tolerable - the swoop racing and turret shooting was atrocious. I mean are X-Box gamers so lame that they need poorly implemented twitch games to break up their RPG experiences? I'm no console gamer but I'm pretty sure most people that played the first game on X-Box could have done without them and I *know* virtually everyone that played the game on PC hated them. So do us a favour and please scrap 'em.

Are you talking about the original IWD or IWD II? With a few exceptions (such as the underdark areas), I must say I preferred the background art in the original.

In that case then let me be the first to say "YES"!!!! Now please kindly develop a nice isometric CRPG so I can once again enjoy your prodigeous talents re: background art.

Thanks Brian - where are these guys now? At Obsidian or elsewhere?

Which Obsidian artists worked on the original IWD? In particular I'm interested in who did the background art, as IWD had the best backgrounds of any IE game IMO. Also the water effects in IWD were amazing, but saddly not replicated in any IE game since then.

I only ask because the BIS/Obsidian team has not produced a new published game engine since FO in 1997...and that doesn't seem to be changing with KOTOR 2. Is Obsidian interested in developing their own CRPG engine or is the strategy basically to adapt existing ones for the immediate future?

No mention of Bioware on the press release, which I find interesting...as presumably they'll be providing support for the engine in use.

Hmmm...I think producing a game in this day and age without sound may be a little bit bold for a first product from a new company. No doubt the publisher will handle it.

D&D is frequently used in computer games because it already has an audience (PNP gamers) to appeal to - the same way that LucasArts makes a lot of Star Wars games - because they know there is already an existing fanbase who will likely buy the product. Now using a licence has advantages and disadvantages, but in theory at least it will usually guarentee you a certain number of sales based on brand recognition alone. There were only 3 D&D CRPG products released last year and two of those were expansion packs, so I would hardly say the market is flooded with them at the moment. I would certainly like to see more.

I guess it could be interesting but I went off Bradley a bit after he turned Wizardry into a bizarre mix of fantasy and sci-fi, even though both Wizardry 7 & 8 were good games. Did anyone play an old Interplay game called "Die By the Sword"? Now that was a fun game combat-wise, even though it took me until the end-game before I felt fully proficient in it. I might dig it out along with Thief I & II when I go back to the parental unit's house in a couple of weeks time.

LOL - one of my German friends brought me a copy of the Jabberwocky the other day and asked me to translate it for her. She was not very understanding when I tried to explain that that wasn't really possible...

Zang! Who is that, prowling along the tarmac! It is DemonKing, hands clutching a vorpal blade! And with a cruel cry, his voice cometh: "I'm going to pulverize you until time and space have no meaning!!" Dang - I guess it sounds a little better than "Snicker-Snack!", which would make more sense for a guy with a vorpal blade...

Sounds like a win-win situation to me... Obsidian get the benefit of using an established engine, setting and role-playing system, with a massive built in fan-base, which will almost guarentee them a big hit with their first title. Bioware can concentrate on creating new engines, technologies and IPs. If KOTOR 2 is disappointing, then its Obsidian's fault. If it's a mega-seller it will still have Bioware stamped over every box and title screen.

My biggest problems with KOTOR (PC version) were as follows: (1) The game looked and played like a console port. Mini-games, no free-look, small levels, no drag and drop inventory etc Obviously as a PC gamer I had to accept a dumbed-down version of the game because it also had to work on the limitations of an X-Box. Great. (2) Annoying NPCs. Ever since Jahira in the original BG Bio. has a habit of producing some extremely annoying NPCs (albeit some half-decent ones as well). First run through I played a female protagonist and Carth's whining just put me off...he had no chance of getting into my space undies, let me tell you. I just wish they would leave romances out of it - it doesn't do anything for me to know I've "got my pixels on" with some annoying character in a computer game - just leave it out ok? It always seems forced and contrived. (3) Combat pretty much sucked. Most were ridiculously easy and when I did encounter the rare battle that was difficult and wanted to retreat it was nearly impossible, seeing as there was no convenient way to select all PCs and move them in one direction. (4) Jedi were ultra-powerful. In the end game I think I had Jolee and HK47 with me and wished I'd left HK at home, because another Jedi would have been much more useful. I should be able to succeed with any party selection, IMHO - but the NPCs/combat just wasn't properly balanced. Don't get me wrong -it was a very good game, but there were some problems as well.

While I agree that the beauty of IWD was the rich NPCs, with their motivations and backstories, I would hardly call the PC's actions "incidental". The intervention of the PCs is necessary to achieve the end result - and they do have to make moral choices along the way (for example - do I kill Maraketh or let him live even though he's clearly no good for Ginafae, do I kill the mad Paladin in TOL or leave him to his misery etc). Of course there is no clear single "protagonist" in a party-based game, but I think to suggest that Icewind Dale should have been sub-titled "Baelephet" is a bit far- fetched (although playing him would have made an interesting game!).

Ok, we have project Delaware - does that mean that there is more than one title in development at Obsidian? Otherwise you might as well just call Delaware "Obsidian's project". On a side note, not sure if I like this "semi-announcement" of title code names after the Jefferson/VB debacles at BIS. Too many false hopes.

The problem with the question is that development costs vary so much that for a game to be a success *for the publisher* depends on how much they outlayed in the first place. For example, the original IWD was a profitable success because its development cost/production time were fairly minimal - it didn't need to sell more than a few hundred thousand copies to be considered profitable/successful. Now if you look at (extreme example) DNF - it has been in development 7 years, they've licenced 2 different engines for it, its probably been abandoned, redesigned, and reimagined by different staffers at various times at some considerable costs etc. Basically all this means the entire population of China and India combined will probably have to buy a copy for it to be considered profitable/a success -*if* it ever gets released.

I noticed looking through this topic that the old cries of "Will we have rideable mounts?", "My avatar needs a cloak" and "Will there be dual-wielding?" have now been replaced with requests for brothels and small children (that must not be invulnerable!) Who says that the gaming public is going downhill...

Yeah - I agree. Now Hasbro owns the licence we might as well pay Barbie dress-ups because that's about as controversial as D&D games can be these days.

Interesting that there don't seem to be any D&D games on the list. Now I know there is D&D On-line and some Snowblind console title ("Forgotten Realms"?), but from the glut of generally decent PC D&D RPG titles of the last few years this is pretty disappointing.