Magister Lajciak

Yes, I would imagine cover means no line of sight. Good points on the desirability of a 'stealth indicator'.

Hmm, the release of the game is really close now, so they must know the specs by now. It is just likely they forgot to update their website. Well, I hope I can run it on my system, if not I will have to wait to buy the game until I get a new one.

What Star Wars games did you think you played? There are numerous games trying to pose as Star Wars games.

One more thing: Should I start a new thread on the possible desktop issue? It is related and I am not yet entirely convinced that I am willing to settle for a desktop, but still, building a desktop is rather different from buying a notebook.

Thinking about this further, I am willing to moderate my requirements on Blu-ray. I do archive stuff, but it can be done on DVDs (though I then need more of them) and Blu-ray movies might take a while longer to become widespread. Other than that, the requirements for the desktop or the laptop are what I described in the initial post, though a desktop that I could build myself would have to offer much, much better price/performance ratio for me to be willing to sacrifice the convenience of a notebook. Also, I forgot to mention that both the laptop and the desktop would absolutely have to have LAN and Wireless LAN capability. This is more or less a given for laptops, but it is not obvious when building a desktop.

Same here! Of course, I am still trying to nourish the (probably false) hope that the next KOTOR will be a single-player KOTOR 3.

As for DnD, pathfinder is an option certanly, while the 4E is... horrible We agree on that certainly. Perhaps in CRPG format 4E might not be as bad as in the PnP format, but I would still prefer that 4E not be used. 3.5E is no longer supported by WotC, so that leaves Pathfinder as the main possibility for my CRPG D&D-style fix other than NWN2 expansions. I am not aware of any other D&D game in production either, though I hope they do make more expansions for NWN2 even after SoZ. There are some pretty strong rumors of Baldur's Gate 3 being in production by an unannounced developer (it was explicitly stated that the developer is not BioWare and I doubt it would be Obsidian, as they are not a huge studio and have their hands full with so many other games), but despite being seemingly credible it is not certain - they are still only rumors. Of course any BG3 game would not continue the BG series storyline and would be just a D&D game using the name, though it could have some references to the Bhaalspawn saga. It would also unfortunately likely be in 4E, unless it was in production already long before 4E was made public.

One thing I like about shadows being used for stealth is that it's easy to tell whether you are in the shadows or not. This is less clear with a cover-based system, though a cover-based system is more realistic.

My system: Pentium M 760 (2GHz) 2GB RAM Radeon X700 with 128MB VRAM 100 GB HDD Will I be able to run Fallout 3?

I think it will be mega-profitable - perhaps even WoW style profitable.

It is certainly possible. There are many people in the world who have never played a Star Wars game before.

Thinking about this more, I am starting to even consider building my own desktop machine. The price would surely be much cheaper despite much better gaming capabilities. Well, the fact that I move relatively frequently is a damper, but perhaps I could manage it somehow. The loss of occassional mobility when not moving, but merely when I want to take my computer with me somewhere would be annoying, of course, but still... the prices are supposedly substantially better for desktop PCs. I have never built a computer on my own from its component parts before, but from what I hear it is not that hard. There might even be some online guides to help me along if I decide to go that route. However, I do not know of any reputable websites where I could order the components cheaply and wouldn't know what components to get anyway. Does anybody have any suggestions in this regard?

Thanks Strix - that was pretty useful.

Deus Ex 1 was a pretty good game. I tried it but I did not own a copy of my own, but some of my acquaintances did, and money was relatively tight at the time, so unfortunately I only got to play it partially and never got round to buying the game. I have not played Deus Ex 2 at all, so I cannot comment on that one. Based on Deus Ex 1, though, I might well buy Deus Ex 3.

Does anybody know what the minimum and recommended system requirements for Fallout 3 are going to be? I cannot find them anywhere on the net and the official FAQ has not been updated with the system requirements - it still claims that they will release them closer to the release date.

Thanks for posting the link!

Lol, I laughed pretty hard when I read this.

I don't think they would have received hate mail had they implemented DDRM, but they would have lost some customers. In any case, yes, I agree they are smart and I am thankful for how they dealt with this issue.

I disagree. It is precisely through intertwining the story with the gameplay that Obsidian has pushed the boundary of RPGs in the Mask of the Betrayer, as story is such a vital feature of RPGs. The Spirit Meter mechanic in the Mask of the Betrayer is the perfect example of this - it was innovative, fitted well with the story and provided for very interesting gameplay options that fed back again to an engaging story in a loop. That definitely pushed the boundary of RPG gameplay and in a very positive way. If you exclude the Mask of the Betrayer, however, and concentrate solely on previous titles, than you may have a point, though I never felt particularly bothered by that. That said, I liked the innovation of the MotB so much, that I am somewhat apprehensive that Obsidian might back off further such experiments due to the negative reaction of some posters on the forums to the Spirit Meter mechanic. Yep though it seems the best way to enrich the experience is to break rules and introduce new things. Perhaps DnD 3.5 might be getting a little stale cRPG wise. Well, yes and no on the new things. I like the aura of familiarity with D&D 3.5E and am a fan of the system (I DM/play it in PnP too). It is nice to spice it up with new mechanics and the breaking of the rules here and there for story purposes, but I am not clamoring for something dramatically different in every way or a replacement of the ruleset (especially not if it meant its replacement with 4E...), though using a similar ruleset, such as the Pathfinder RPG (http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/p/paizoPublishingLLC/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG) would be fine. Hmm, I guess I am a conservative gamer who likes just enough differences in games to spice things up, but isn't looking for something completely and utterly different.

I disagree. It is precisely through intertwining the story with the gameplay that Obsidian has pushed the boundary of RPGs in the Mask of the Betrayer, as story is such a vital feature of RPGs. The Spirit Meter mechanic in the Mask of the Betrayer is the perfect example of this - it was innovative, fitted well with the story and provided for very interesting gameplay options that fed back again to an engaging story in a loop. That definitely pushed the boundary of RPG gameplay and in a very positive way. If you exclude the Mask of the Betrayer, however, and concentrate solely on previous titles, than you may have a point, though I never felt particularly bothered by that. That said, I liked the innovation of the MotB so much, that I am somewhat apprehensive that Obsidian might back off further such experiments due to the negative reaction of some posters on the forums to the Spirit Meter mechanic. While the whole spirit thing in MoB was cool and all... It didn't feel like something dramatically new, kinda reminded me of the day when food existed in CRPG's. It was an extreme modification of an old mechanic coupled with the story. Well, what I am trying to say is that interlacing this new mechanic with the story has been a clear innovation on Obsidian's part and a very positive one at that. Obsidian's strengths are story and dialogue and they have managed to find a new mechanic that plays into their strength. Oh, well, we are debating semantics - after all we both agree that we liked it and that it was something new, so the 'degree of newness' is not so important.

Well, the KOTOR MMO will probably siphon all KOTOR attention to itself, so the prospects of KOTOR 3 will diminish further... That said, I think a KOTOR MMO will be highly profitable for EA/BioWare. I think it has the potential to even rival WoW in the long term.

Does it get easier on characters with LA later on in the game?

Star Wars must have hooded robes and Jedi!

...childish notions such as dragons... I wouldn't utter those words on a forum moderated by one. *hides* I don't get the joke I am afraid - which mod is named after a dragon or has a dragon avatar? <---- It's a link... I see. Well... *Magister Lajciak trembles briefly, but quickly regains his composure enters sycophantic mode*... You see I knew that, but it is the dragons, the wise beings they are, who planted the idea that they imaginary beings only existing in the minds of children and want this myth to persist. After all, dragons want to keep their privacy from annoying humanoids and thus reveal their existence only to a select few and I couldn't have known that you were among them before your reaction.

Different versions of the same card are sent to companies, thus Dell is not likely to have the same supplier of "M"-cards as, for example, HP. At least that is my impression of how the system works. I hope you are right and you may well be. Still, I will be afraid to buy from them unless I can find this confirmed somewhere - it's still a substantial risk.