Morgoth

I never said those games were bad.... in fact, I quite enjoyed Kotor and loved NOLF2.... but due to the lack of progression, formula-working concepts are getting old. As long as the journalism remains geeky and immature, developers/publishers not willing/able to look beyond the plate-edge (is that used in English btw?) and nobody's able/willing to concentrate resources on e.g. better AI instead of kewl FX features, this medium will remain inferior.

Many things take great talent and effort, but putting your best paintings, your best original looking 3D sculpts, your best written NPCs etc. into the hands of a wrong composer (director, designer etc.)....well, then it end's up in shyt. As I said, there's no doubt that video games contain art, but a film noir presentation a'la Max Payne doesn't make it stand out, or trying to copy the moody atmosphere of Thief into a movie doesn't make it Thief to me, either. Playing Kotor or NOLF2 gives me quite a similar feel to watching an average movie (with average I mean formula-working movies), as is the feel of getting sucked in by playing Torment similar to getting sucked in by reading a novel. Shock2 or Thief however gave me an experience that is searching for something comparable. Those games were generally slow paced, and allowed you to use the time/space for exploration and to set up things in context.... something you couldn't do in your 90min Thief movie.

http://newswire.gamehelper.com/articles/463.htm It's certainly not the first article where this question came up, but I feel discussions about that subject are always fun. I'd say video games obviously contain art, but are they an art form, or just pure entertaining? Isn't it quite disturbing that most of the progress in this industry today is too much relying on presentation (aka better graphics), "borrowing" movie/literature elements and satisfying immature jerks like us (yeah, me included) with immature media coverage and general hype that still raves too much about production values and too less about intellectual substance? Personally, I think (with a few exceptions) video games aren't art (yet). Those exceptions that immediately come to mind are System Shock2 and Thief(2), because of the way these games lead you through. No ingame cutscenes or static text lines to choose, instead the world the designers created contributes to the whole story progression. Log-books lying around, overhearing guards to reveal some clues etc. and then make a plan, and continue your exploration. I like this more then "run to A, talk to B" or stumbling from cutscene to cutscene. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to make a movie about KOTOR, or a novel based on Planescape.... but how would, for example, a director catch the quality, or "feel" of Thief and make this unique feel an integral component of a movie? Dou you think this might work? Me not, hence it's something special to me, something I'd consider not only as entertainment, but as art too. I'd love to hear something from the devs too!!!

Well, I guess since Electron and all appendant tools are developed by Obsidian, it's also owned by Obsidian and may be used for future titles without any fees.

DX10 or not, it's probably just ending up like the Doom3 demo and the introduction of the Geforce3: Teh Shaders will revolutionize teh games!!!111.... whatever. It should run on DX9 hardware too. I just got the chance to take a look at the Gamestar in a kiosk, and I was indeed blown away by it's graphical splendor. Those pictures where the aliens with their ships are frozening a jungle in Mars attack style really looked cool. As for the story, it seems like that you fight humans (war against Korea) first, later on the aliens start their invasion, humans unite and then you blow off slimeheads instead.

You first have to wait for Starcraft: Ghost, WoW2, World of Diablo, Ghost2 and Warcraft 4 - MMORTS before there will eventually emerge a SC2. By that time, I'm already an old grumpy man who lives in a Holodeck and plays with LULA in real 3D instead. :cool:

Those Obsidians are quite a bunch of assiduous bees... Next-Gen Tech done in 2007, not bad. I bet Obsidian releases Dragon Age 2 before Bio releases DA1. :D

It was actually requested from the fans that vanilla G2 was just too easy... Piranha agreed and made the expansion just a little harder. Heh. But I think G3 will now have 3 different difficulties which may serve Gothic fans, hardcore Gothic fans and "teh Gothic hardcore champions". N00bs may be better suited with Oblivion.

You pretty much seem to despise everything that isn't a BIS/Bioware clone, huh?

No, this is not Oblivion. The Piranhas never raved around about some silly engine features. About the movie star: Unlikely, because movie stars are expensive, and mostly non professional. Again, this is not Oblivion.

You made your point, but I'm still hoping for large scale cities. Herr Rosenkranz will eventually tell us how much there's true about those rumors.

Gah, you're kidding, right? Khorinis was okey dokey for an island village, but in G3 (Main land) I expect something gigantic, a city full of life, culture and people. Half the size would be a disappointment.

I'm not so sure about those screenshots. Some evil tongues claimed that those shots were directly taken from the editor, not ingame.... who knows. But I know for sure that Jannuary was a big milestone for Piranha, because they told that they implemented a completely new lighting system, have now motion captured combat, doing the final score mix (Taikos for the orcs, also some famous female opera singer was recorded...don't know the exact name anymore), ans so on.... so, things are coming together now. Ahh, one other bad thing I heard: The biggest city in G3 should only be half size of Khorinis (city) from G2.

I thought some people here might be interested in questioning Kai Rosenkranz (Piranha Guru) about Gothic 3. Here's the original thread. Also check out some new G3 screenshots. This game makes me hawt!

Maybe he quit his job as a Hutt-actor....

Normally I avoid crappy games like the dentist and don't waste time on playing them, but even Morgoth's wisdom couldn't prevent him on wasting money on Commandos 3 and then eventually gets completely de-fanboyisted just with this single POS. Mustn't see how Pyro is gonna rape CSF....

Probably... but eventually, nobody's spared from the horrors of hardware-upgrading when it comes to next-gen stuff. Ohh, and it was also mentioned that Crysis will be the first DX10 game, using advantage of Shader Model 4.0 and stuff.... I'm even not sure whether there'll be DX10 cards available at it's planned Q4 2006 release!?

Although I'm myself not overly hyped about Far Cry (never bought it) or FPS in general, I'm never hesitant of digging out some infos about the latest & greatest technologies in development. Germans biggest PrintMag "GameStar" visited Crytek and got a world-exclusive preview about CRYSIS, a game that splurges around with super-smart AI, crazy weapons and aliens that try to frozen the whole world. Here's a picture of the cover. Here are some facts from the preview I could derive from the forums (I do not have the abo myself anymore): -There're no levels, the entire game consists of one big chunk of landmass (Isle?), no loading times at all. -You can upgrade Jake and weapons thanks to a nano-suite. (a'la Deus Ex?) -You can almost move and destroy every object in the world (i.e. you cant get stuck on a little bough when roll over with your vehicle.. you just crush it) -Enemies can find Jake due to his traces that you cause in your environment. -Persons remember what you've done through the course of the game (i.e. killed allied units). However, with some skill you can also establish a romance with a female soldier. -There're no cutscenes a'a Half Life 2. -There're boots with magnetic soles. (Gamestar also mentions a space ship) -You can now use aircrafts and helicopters -Day/Night alteration (Gamestar also mentiones weather-effects) -Multiplayer should be improved over Far Cry -Free saving allowed -Around 10 hours of gameplay, but highly replayable. People who have the mag are also raving around about the realistic faces (like a true photo). It's just too bad there haven't slipped any screenshots through yet. And here's a techdemo (not related to Gamestar's video) that some of you already might have seen... I'm just downloading it now. I hope for Crytek that they have more powerful/verstatile tools available when they try to license the tech to other devs... otherwise Epic (Unreal Tech) will stay as the only inarguable ruler of sellable next-gen tech. Ohhh, and I wouldn't mind a great RPG from Obsidian using this tech at some point in the future. Please?

Nem, osztr

Nem. Probably... but then again, I'm mostly interested in the art style when it comes to Anime. Those Pixar movies are pretty, but uninteresting.

Couldn't care less.... When it comes to animation movies, I'm only interested what Miyazaki-san has under his wraps.

Well said, Herr Llyranor. For example, I don't want to find out how much money Activision put into this distent Vampire-Promo-Event in 2004 with all the chicks and producers doing lavish things... and then don't have the money to pay Troika back. Ohhh, I guess this leads into another inevitable "Troika vs. teh evil publisher" fight now. " Otherwise, I wish the E3 would become slimmer in general so that new devs with their first product actually get a chance for attention.

100 times BG2? You mean completely through? Jesus, some of you really have too much time on hand! I play games mostly one time, extraordinary good maybe 2-3 times. Anything above that would lead me into pure boredom. The only exception is System Shock 2, which I played 5 times across several years... So I guess Shock2 is my personal replayability-king. 100 times however.... And I thought I'm hardcore. :">

Maybe it is a matter of preference. I found Max user-friendly, though I couldn't figure how to do simplest things in Maya. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I always felt the opposite. MAX is just too clunky, whereas Maya (once you understand the design) is a very productive, customizable and intuitive 3d package. I guess the reason why so many Devs still use MAX today is probably due to tradition. MAX was earlier on the market, so the artists got used with it first.... and maybe there's no time or desire to re-train the artists with another 3D package. But maybe I'm totally wrong with that assumption.