Morgoth

1Up interviews Mr. Ken Levine!

Hmmm, could still be they've used the Debug version (=slower). Damn. Awesome game, but I hate low framerates. But I'm sure at least one of the big German magazines should get the GOLD master right now, and if the review shows up towards the end of September, we should know better.

Damn, and I still hope that video is from an older build...because I miss the ponytail from the TNH, and the framerate looks still pretty choppy.

GOLD, already??? I thought the presswork shouldn't need longer than 2 weeks to print the DVDs.... which would Piranha still give ~2 weeks more time for bugfixing. But whatever, I'm looking forward to it. I think I'll even get the CE. Btw, there's a new gameplay video (6 min) in English. Clicky Too bad the narrator just couldn't SHUT UP FOR ONE SINGLE SECOND so I could closely listen to the English voices.... But I think TNH in the English version is dubbed by the exactly same person as the German version.

I think that "plastic effect" what you're talking about is just a side effect of using lots of Normal Maps. That's not intentionally, there's just no other way around. The blood looks a bit shiny, I guess they used some specular value for the blood too. If they don't, it would look a bit too flat. Anyway, I like the art direction and the look of the zombies...very creepy. I don't even want to imagine what they'll yell at you by sight.

Two brand new screenshots! The first one is just terrific!

I don't care so much about the amount of words/content, more about the meaningfullness, that's more important to me. Sheldon Pascotti for example (Lead writer on Deus Ex) did a pretty good job. The characters in Deus Ex were natural (no Shakespeare drama lines or any other overused romantic elements), but just people how you'd roughly expect them to talk in the given situation/setting. I.e. Bums speak like Bums (no

I've no gripe with having full VO. I felt in love with JC Denton (no, not literally) in Deus Ex, Garret from Thief and many others. Then there're counter examples like System Shock 2 where pure actions form your charcter - that's you. No need to talk to zombies either, so it worked perfectly. It's a no-brainer that ME needs full VO in order to go for the cinematic Action RPG route. Why else would Bio invest so much effort into their new technology to portray digital actors just to let them stand there like dorks that nod occasionally? (Kotor style?)

I hope that they just not stick with pure verbal options, but also options which will involve physical actions like grabbing someone at the collar and shake the info out of him, or throw a glass away from the bar out of fury to demand silence or maybe just stroke lovingly the face of your opposite sex for romance's sake.... But then again, ME is a Star Wars clone, so I'm not really sure whether all these things will make sense to weird aliens either.

Well using the UE3 which now can render characters almost human like (yeah, I bet in a few years I say it looks like wood-puppets) it's a necessary step to improve workflow, tools and team-communications to keep all other components like AI, Body-language, animations etc. credible. The more details you show, the more skeptical and critical people are going to be about it, which increases the effort for the devs to create the content exponentially. But Bioware doesn't seem to struggle with that. I'm wondering if Obsidian is also so well prepared with PNJ/PG, since both use the UE3 as well.

Here's a guide plus all the software you need: Clicky I know I got it to work on my computer, unfortunately I also got stuck with the game just after 15 minutes. Blame grotesque leveldesign.

AGC: BioWare on 'Writing for Digital Actors' Interesting approach. Although I wouldn't want to see the picture when Bioware crew eventually steps into Gaiders office (fully armored for self-protection of course) to tell him the good ol' times of writing tearjerker-lines is over and now he has to adapt the new forms of how Bio does dialogs. Arma-Gaid-on I say.

600k+ units for the Xbox version worldwide is indeed shocking. I'd be shocked if the PC version wouldn't match that number in Europe alone.

That may be true in NA where every kid and grandma owns a console, but you forget about the European market, that is still more fond of PC games. I expect the sales for JEPC to outnumber the mere 600k in Europe alone.

2K games going to publish JE for PC There, just so you know.

No, I prefer that Obsidian seeks to envision it's own future course. We already have two Bio-hand-me-down games, that's enough. Edit: And for the record, I'd also wish that Obsidian drops the ball on D&D completely after NWN2.

Well, any publisher would be interested doing a partnership with Bioware. It's Bio after all that covers most (if not all now) development costs, and being a publisher/distributor of such a famous dev house does always let someone stand well in the lights. You can't expect that MS would speak bad (i.e. maybe says the truth about the mediocre sale numbers of JE) about Bio, and Bio itself wouldn't confess a financial failure, that wouldn't fit to Bio's "we're always optimistic" nature. Nonetheless, rumours say that 2Kgames is gonna be the publisher of JEPC, which means a possible JE2 wouldn't need to be X360 exclusive anymore, unless Bio was unfortunate enough to sign a deal with MS again before the big merger with Pandemic happened.

That's true. Technically, DA started in 2002, which gives DNF a five year lead! So if DNF gets released never, DA will be released in Never minus 5 years! Wow!

Does anybody know the current sale numbers of Jade Empire? Last time I checked, it was something over 600k units.... I think that's pretty low for a console game, and pretty bad for a Bioware game. Even Lego Star Wars from a nobody-company sold around 2 million units I think.

I think Piranha will have plans for mod-tools, sometime after the release. There won't be such a thing like an easy-to-use cunstruction-kit though, just the dev tools and plugins as they are.

Looks very promising so far. Geralt reminds me a little bit of Kain from Blood Omen 2 though. But spring 2007 is still a little far off to turn on my hypo-meter.

Gamespy Q&A with Ken Levine :cool:

I can understand you have a strong PnP background, but other devs shouldn't necessarily follow that path. As I said, different developer, different vision. There is no such a thing as having a strict rule how to make CRPGs.

Well, thats because youre a Jerry. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What?

No I'm not. I find it refreshing to play a game having no bossy, whiny or prudish woman sticking around. And no, I'm not misogynist either. I'm just too used to the style of Gothic right now, and I don't want a sudden change. Improvements in terms of gameplay, quests and all other content are welcome though, and I'm sure G3 will have plenty of them.