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"Exclusive" as in "until other sites copy them", I assume?

MODERATORS' TYRANNY!! THEY DON'T ALLOW YOU TO EXPRESS YOUR THOUGHTS!!1! Also, in before lock.

Uh... That would be it. Building a hybrid character who gets something from both worlds should definitely be possible. However, if a player did put all his skill points in social skills or thievery and completely ignored combat training than there is absolutely no excuse for him to whine about how his character holds a sword by the wrong end. Allocating skill points this way was his choice. He has to be a man and face the consequences. Either that, or roll a new character. It isn't, if you want the character with 0 points in combat skills to be able to survive fighting. If you have a better solution, feel free to share it with me. Fun trivia: most people think that RPG is a game where the character kills stuff, loots treasures and saves the world, and hail Oblivion as the second coming of Christ. I would be surprised if most people knew what role-playing meant. See the first bit of this post. Looks like we misunderstood each other on several points. Oh, and sorry for the late reply.

Ouch. And here we thought that through some heroic effort you managed to crush the bastards, despite having only 7 players on the team. Try to compensate for your lack of practice by, I dunno, making your writers to demoralize the enemy with witticisms next time. In soccer and war...

Well played, guys. Keep up the good work, and Obsidian will have the most feared football team in Orange County by the end of the season. Or soccer team, or whatever funny word you use for it at the other side of the ocean.

Gimble, ke ke. ^_^

I heard one of the Battlefront titles was the best-selling Star Wars game of all times. A poor Battlefield imitation managed to outsell KotORs and Jedi Knight series.

VtM: Redemption - making a Diablo clone when you have a WoD license.

I'm sorry, but if a game doesn't allow you to create a munchkin character that can do everything in a single playthrough, it's a damn good game with great replay value. Thing is, in a well-designed RPG charismatic characters simply don't need to fight. If you can get through the game using diplomacy only then what's the problem? Supporting several distinct playstyles with each of them having their own rewards and penalties doesn't strike me as poor design. So creating a tactician who relies on coordinating the actions of his followers doesn't belong in role-playing games? You seem to have a strange idea that every character should be able to kick some ass in RPGs. Well, you are wrong. The more ways there are to finish a game, the better the game is. Combat is (or should be, at least) just one of these ways, not a mandatory element that should be present in every single playthrough.

Depends on the thoroughness of the beta testers.

Earthworm Jim 2, actually. I hope Shiny will make another EWJ game someday, the first two are among the best platformers ever made.

And now for something completely different:

Most people don't buy RPGs for the dialogue and diplomacy. Still, I know several persons who choose stealth or persuasion over direct violence whenever they can. Why? There is nothing wrong with being able to play a weak character who can't hold a sword, but can talk his way out of almost any trouble or, if that fails, use his stronger and better equipped friends as protection.

19 pages of nerdraging about small deviations from the canon.

For the love of God, no! The setting of Star Wars is full of silly-looking machinery, but this one beats them all. The whole thing looks like it was designed by a five-years old: "Oooh, I want a walking battle droid with big claws! Then it would be cool to add some rocket launchers and a huuuuge minigun. And let's not forget about throwing in a couple of lasers! Man, I'm so creative.".

That's the problem the majority of classless systems shares: spread your skill points too thinly and you're screwed. That said, I've never seen a person who would actually do this. Most people tend to focus on several skills and abilities only, with a bit of dabbling in a other areas. Newbies are prone to this mistake, but it was possible to turn the auto allocation of skill points on. Agreed. The way XPs were awarded was unbelievably dumb. I don't think Arcanum's chargen system is fundamentally wrong, and this approach should be ditched and forgotten. Some polishing certainly would be welcome.

Wait, what? Arcanum had the most flexible character creation system I've ever seen. The mere fact that it supported plenty of different builds speaks in its favor. Kudos for the Futurama reference, but what's your point?

High Charisma score also increased the number of NPCs that could join you. Bringing along some muscles and letting them to handle the fighting was a viable solution for a frail diplomat.

I loved how Arcanum handled diplomacy. In order to be able to increase Persuasion skill you needed to keep pumping Charisma up. In addition to that, more sophisticated dialogue choices required your character to have high Intelligence to show up. Maxing all of this out took plenty of skill points, which were rare in Arcanum, and choosing Persuasion over other skills wasn't a no-brainer as a result.

What are you talking about? Here's an exact quote: Looks like the devs are going after fewer, but more fleshed out choices. Fine by me. The article also states that different stances lead to different results. Mixing stances in the same conversation also yields a different outcome.

Sacred is the best RPG ever. Sure, the storyline wasn't that good and the combat system was taken straight from Diablo 2, but knowing Ascaron's skill, it really couldn't be any better.

I'm voting for the ultimate alliance of Avellone and Mitsoda.

How about throwing a knife at a leg? And at an arm. And at another leg. You get the idea.

Well, there is a couple of levels so hard that they make you want to kill the devious bastard who designed them, so torturing people with them really isn't impossible, but I was actually thinking of a navigate-your-way-through-a-warehouse-by-playing-sokoban mini-game. Add drunk warehouse keepers using very harsh language to make it more mature.