Matthew Rorie

But when you do get past it, it's awfully fun to start fights and throw guards off of tall buildings. I really never got tired of that.

This will be interesting, seeing as how most of his work consist of Tony Hawk games. I guess you guys haven't heard about how Michael Thorton gets from his safehouses to his missions, then. It's pretty "rad".

Weapon mods do show up on the weapons themselves while you play.

It's not.

The multiplayer is great, I was commenting on the campaign. I wasn't really replying to you, just making a general comment. Although I did have a really good time with the campaign, myself. Maybe it could've been longer but it was a solid game that I had a really good time with. Nothing particularly crazy innovative, but it was really well executed. But then that's pretty much the history of the Infinity Ward COD games, I guess.

I don't play much multiplayer anymore, but I have to say that COD4's multiplayer was pretty damn incredible, especially on the PC. I might have to make myself a new box before this comes out, assuming the PC implementation is as good as it was last time around. November 10th will be my 30th birthday, too; should be a nice bday present. And the singleplayer was terrifically fun, as well. No wonder the thing has sold 12 million copies or something crazy like that. Because I'm too lazy to google it, I know someone must've interpreted the Russian at the end of it. What's the guy saying? That's an awesome trailer.

We were recently at a gathering of old-hand game developers (Feargus was on the panel) that was giving advice to upcoming college grads. One of the speakers (Steve Perry, if I recall correctly) said that when he is listening to a game pitch, he tells the person giving the pitch to not mention the game's story at all. All he wants to hear about are the unique mechanics and gameplay that the game will have. He says that many of the people who pitch games to him are so enamored of their storyline that they basically collapse at this point and can't explain why the game would be compelling at all outside of the plot. That's a poor summary, but it was an interesting point to make. More for retail games than mods, though, I suppose.

Yup. Apart from that Obsidian is not going to have a major presence at GDC. A few of our employees are going to soak in the knowledge on display, but we're not doing a lot of talking or press stuff.

No worries, it's understandable. Especially since there is absolutely no way to know what you're in for before you buy (I don't think Best Buy and the like carry Dell monitors, and even if they did it's tough to know how they were calibrated or whatnot). I'm the same way when it comes to gaming mice - I've yet to find a store that has gaming mice on the floor for people to try out (at least not a good sampling of them), so in the end if you want to buy a piece of hardware you wind up having to get it off the internet and hoping that it feels ok. Which is rarely does, at least in my case, as I'm super picky as to the feel of gaming mice. I actually wrote a roundup of them when I wrote for GameSpot and wound up liking none of them. Still sticking with my old Razer Deathadder for the moment.

One could say the same thing about X-Com. With certain games, the journey is the important part.

To be fair, we have plenty of what you might call "graphics professionals" at Obsidian and this is still the standard monitor for most of them, I believe (outside of the backlit wacoms that some of them rock). If you are doing high-end graphic design for advertising or something, then yeah, you might need something specialized, but at this point the gulf in price between general-use monitors and specialized monitors is pretty significant, or at least it was the last time I checked.

I've been starting and not finishing more games as of late. It's rarely a reflection on their quality, just a general hyperactivity on my part which causes me to jump around from thing to thing. And luckily we have a decent lending library of titles from work that lets me indulge whims without shelling out 60 bucks. Ones I can remember from the last year that I started and didn't finish: Ninja Gaiden II Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Valkyria Chronicles (might finish this one, just got annoyed at the gigantic-tank mission) Professor Layton Prince of Persia Lunar Knights Command and Conquer III Gears of War II Battlefield: Bad Company Burnout Paradise The Witcher Condemned 2 Dead Space Dark Sector Fable II Mercs 2 GRAW2 Tales of Vesperia Too Human That's actually a lot more games than I thought when I started writing it out. I guess there's always Peggle.

We use the 2405WFP's in the office. Pretty slick, work great for games and pretty much everything else as far as I can tell.

I'm not seeing how this topic is going to be very applicable to the subject of Alpha Protocol going forward. We do have a Way Off-Topic forum if anyone wants to discuss some of the issues that you guys are talking about, however.

There are 3-4 options for each dialogue node, with the fourth (bottom) usually being an optional "I want to cut this dialogue short, so let me shoot this dude in the kneecap" or "I don't like talking to you - I'm going to hang up the phone" type thing.

Apparently Alpha Protocol helped GameTrailers post their biggest ratings of the season thus far, so apparently a few people tuned in for it. Just keep in mind that we have a number of months left to work on the game and show it off, and that it's getting better and better with each build.

Seconded. I can't decide whether Thornton looks like a commando or the lead singer in a Serbian industrial rock band. WHO HAS BEEN LEAKING INFORMATION ABOUT THE SERBIAN UNDERCOVER OPERATION????????!!?!?!?!?????

The game defaults to "Professional" if you have not inputted anything; after that, it will default to whatever you've chosen during the first option.

The first Castlevania DS game was one of the best portable games I've ever played. Highly recommended, if you like those kind of games.

Yeah it's a paid thing on PSN, I don't think there's any way to watch it online.

Check it, yo.

I believe 1 AM is eastern time. Not sure, but I was told it'll be on at 10 PM PST. "Check your local listings", as the saying goes.

The gameplay trailer is in addition to other footage that they received. So there should be more video than just the trailer.