RangerSG

Hmm, I'd say let the PC choose the gender (which would choose whether you play the exile or Revan). Then do a mission that would determine their alignment, with a quiz to follow for any starting companions that may or may not have survived. Whichever protagonist takes a mission in the beginning of the story that moves them far away from events surrounding the PC, but still important to the plot. That could be gathering forces or allies, espionage in the unknown regions, what have you. They're not arbitrarily killed off, and maybe they "check in" from time to time, but they're not forced into your party either.

Morgoth, That's my point as well. More or less. Every game has conventions. Those conventions may not be for everyone, but trying to force personal preferences on everyone else is simply rude and uncalled for. I'm interested in both AP and DA, and I don't see any reason not to be. Certainly not because of assumptions about the genre.

Ack, my bad, wires crossed on that. I meant Deux Ex.

I don't know. It's consistent with magic being "rare but powerful," though. Low magic won't be able to be gaged until we see the actual game and see how common spell-casting or items actually are. Who would really 'want' to play a mage who is useless?

Kaftan, Aliens is inherently different from ME or KotOR? How, they're all sci-fi. So Aliens claims to be slightly lower tech. DA claims to be lower magic than the typical fantasy. You don't believe their claims, why should we believe the hype on Aliens just because you do? I don't know what to make of Aliens yet, for myself. I'll judge when I see it. As for AP, 'lots' of spy games have been done before. And the Max Payne stories combined FTS and RPG elements before. So although it interests me, that doesn't mean it's "unique" and nothing in it has been done before. It means it's interesting on it's own merits. Which is what 'every' game should be judged on. Bottom line, stop trying to foist your assumptions about fantasy onto everyone else. They're wrong, they're rude, and they add nothing to the discussion.

Kelveren, Seeing as Bioware has had "M" ratings on two games recently, and that didn't stop their release, I doubt that they're going to flinch if DA gets one. And as a point of fact, Gaider has said if it gets one, that's fine with him. So it seems to me they're not 'trying' for the M. But they're not going to cut content to avoid it, either.

Actually, Tolkien borrowed far more from Finnish and Norse mythos than he did Celtic or Arthurian, for the record. And I don't think I said anywhere that Tolkien was utterly original. But he is the starting point for modern fantasy literature for good reason. Before you assume to correct someone, Volo, please be sure you have a clue what they said. As for low/high magic discussions. What matters more than anything is consistency and believability. When the player feels they are getting shafted on the loot/magic scale; typically because they see enemies running around with much better gear than they can have, and then they get nothing off of them, that is when a player feels the game is cheating. The problem with low magic is that typically it makes being a caster more rewarding. Why? Because the magic the caster can use overpowers the setting. High magic typically renders casters increasingly unprofitable. Now, if the setting has some inherent equalizer, like magic is illegal, then that can balance the nature of magic, IMHO. And a lot of the setting material on DA has interested me.

Single blade for counselors, for RP. Double bladed to begin with for other PCs, then switch to twin-blades when I start finding off-hand sabers.

I'd say the Witcher's story was very good. You'll have to decide for yourself whether you think it's as good as PS:T. But it's easily one of the best stories in a contemporary RPG. And I'm hardly the only one to say that. If you're bypassing it for the pre-generated PC, you're selling it short. In gameplay terms, the only thing the PC means is a name and legacy...which you aren't even fully aware of yet. In terms of what you can do in the engine, you can take him any way you want to.

Microprose going under was the first sign that gaming as I had loved it was going away. That said, to be fair, when Meier and Reynolds left, Microprose wasn't going to do anything interesting after.

You know, I liked KotOR, and I liked Witcher. But I don't see anything in common between the two. And no, there's no accounting for taste. Witcher is what every fantasy RPG publisher right now wants, a unique, believable setting for a quality RPG. It's a bit too twitchy for me to get completely into it. But even with that, there's no denying it's brilliant, believable, and distinct.

The FR doesn't have 'anything' to set it apart from 'anything.' Everything in it is stolen from other campaign setting or mythology. Period. Nothing in it is unique. Greenwood originated it as a higher-magic Tolienesque fantasy, intentionally. He didn't care about the similarites. When it got taken over, TSR and then Wizards stole from all their other settings and any requested myth setting and crammed it into the FR. They never worried if it 'really' fit. They never worried if it made sense even. The FR isn't unique in any way, shape or form. It's completely derived, and any imagination it had in it died a decade ago.

There's absolutely nothing unique in the FR. It's a hodge-podge of stolen mythologies smashed together with no sense of direction or creativity. It was a mistake ever to switch to it. It was never more than a mediocre campaign setting, and any life that was in it has been beaten out of it by the overuse of it. Derivitive and unimaginative in the extreme. And, IMHO, the beginning of when D&D died was when they adopted it as the only setting they would seriously support. And now, the game is so wrapped up in the FR that they can't even make a rule set without smashing the lore into it first. Pathetic.

Seconded. But then, mkreku said similar about the Dragon Age trailer, which I found was also graphically acceptable. I mean, come on mkreku, do you really want to encourage the cult of graphics? Perhaps graphics have gotten to a point where they are sufficiently detailed that improvements can be made, but it's not worth the development time/resources which could be better spent on story and gameplay? Graphics can't improve at an exponential (or even linear) rate forever; graphics and processor hardware is slowing down in improvements, and once it hits the wall, game graphics will soon follow. I hope you won't be saying "Graphics look ****! They're 4 years old." then. I've certainly noticed a trend towards ever less stunning/amazing graphical improvements over the years (i.e. things look better all the time, but the margin by which they look better gets smaller all the time). It's particularly interesting because many observers have noted that Moore's law is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As for what Ranger said... well, yeah that's a different kettle of fish. I'd agree with him for things like Oblivion because it's somewhat shallow, but dark-themed games it doesn't seem like a youthful, beautiful character would really suit. (Making a character look pretty and making a character look graphically aesthetic are disparate.) Edit: What am I smoking. I thought this was the Hinterland thread. Well, point remains, although now mkreku is getting angry about one game's graphics instead of two. Dark Fantasy can't have beautiful characters? Jaime and Cersei Lannister? in ASoIaF? Littlefinger's pet Stark in the same series? Apsalar in the Malazan Book of the Fallen? Pretty much any of the female characters in Glen Cook's "Tyranny of the Night" (and try to get darker than that.) I don't buy that logic. But aside from that, I'm not saying 'everyone' needs to look young and beautiful. I'm saying that the choice should be there to BE that. But it takes a half an hour or more these days to make an even 'passable' looking PC in the typical fantasy. Most of which are not "dark fantasies" anyway. Oblivion was supposedly darker in mood than the NWN2 OC. Not much darker, in theory, than Hell unloosed on earth. Though I'll agree Bethsoft missed the mark. What's really interesting is Bioware promised that the 3d character animations used for DA would be so good that we wouldn't care about those painted portraits of old. Looking at these, I'm inclined to say, "oh really"?

if Oblivion is what passes for real combat these days, i'd be happier with point-n-click. Witcher combat was good though. i hope this isn't an RTS/RPG hybrid btw. the large scale battles in HOTU and NWN2 were fine but i don't need them to be a recurrent feature of CRPGs. besides, any resources a developer expends on the RTS aspects of a game is typically resources that could have gone to the RPG aspects. if i wanted to play RTS, i'd buy a proper RTS like the old Warcraft, not some watered-down version of it. I've seen nothing on the forums indicating they're thinking of RTS in this at all. And since RTS isn't in their mission statement, I really doubt it has anything to do with that. They promised "larger scale battles" in DA than was possible withe the Aurora Engine. And, IMHO, this was an attempt to prove the DA engine will be able to do that within the confines of an RPG. For an IG cutscene (which it was confirmed this was) it's not dreadful. It's not scintillating, and I stand by my earlier comments about the NPC appearances, but it doesn't turn me off the game.

3d faces in RPGs are at best bad and at worst horrible. Oblivion, NWN2, KotOR, TSL. I don't know that there's been one RPG I've seen since 3d graphics came into play that has had decent character animation in general, and even tolerable head/face/hair graphics. And it's not the tech that's the problem, IMHO. It's the fixation by developers today on "realistic looking" characters in RPGs.

Actually, the graphics look exactly like ME's would if it was a fantasy setting. That means nothing to me, since I really don't want super-graphic games. I want games that are fun to play. This teaser doesn't tell me anything about whether or not I'll like the game. Supposedly, someone is going to get a walkthrough of the game @ E3. Will it be someone who knows about RPGs is the question.

It looks like FO1/2 atmosphere from the trailer...actually looks like a dead-on copy of the original FO lead-in video. Tells us absolutely zilch about the game, though.

You know, I expect bad character graphics in RPGs these days. NWN2's character graphics are still dreadful, IMHO. Oblivion's did little for me without significant modding. And this is no better than either of the others. ALL developers seem to be on this giant "realism" kick in fantasy RPGs these days. Don't let anyone look too good. And absolutely don't make anything too stylized. The end result is everything looks DRAB. That was NWN2's problem. Oblivion's NPCs uniformly were revolting, and it seems DA is going right into the same dredged mess. Can someone PLEASE wake up and realize that if I wanted to see ugly all the time I could just go look in a mirror? It's NICE to have an avatar that looks decent if I want to. Especially in a FANTASTICAL setting, even dark fantasy.

I don't see how the term vaporware applies at all. It was never put on the front burner until recently. How in the world can it be vaporware when they haven't made 'any' promises about a release date? By definition, vaporware has to be expected to be released, and not arrive. DA has not been given an official release date (or even an expectation from a developer in jello); not once. This is hardly Duke Nukm Forever stuff.

Yes, the forums have been up for 4 years. But they were pretty honest about the game not being fast tracked until the last year. Developing their own setting and rule set as opposed to using an established one would take additional time as well. And if they wanted community input (which to be fair, they've taken fairly seriously) I can't see them garnering much interest if they said; "To be named unannounced game forum." It's not like they really started marketing anything for it until this week. Maybe you find that excessive time to talk about a pre-released, low-priority game. I can understand that. But I don't think it classified as "hype." Really, until the past 6 mos, no one was working on this except Gaider and a couple acolytes. And if his name wasn't attached to it, would anyone care?

That's an exploit, it's an easy enough game without cheating.

Thankfully even Bioware does not share your attitude. As I've been PMed by their tech support trying to replicate the numerous GPF faults the game generates. I'm very glad you aren't in QA. If the game doesn't run for large swaths of people who meet the recommended stats for the game, it was prematurely and inappropriately released. Period. The only saving grace is that Bioware technically did not control the release on the title. Demiurge did, as they were the port's developer.

I don't hate Bioware. In fact, I'm often accused on here of being a fanboy of theirs. I enjoyed KotOR a great deal, KotOR2 as well. As for ME, I have no way to evaluate it yet, as I am one of the hundreds if not thousands who cannot run the game yet. Whether the problem is Demiurge's port, DRM glomming my PC until it dies, or (as I suspect) both of the above, it still makes the game impossible for me to judge. And it points to the very real reasons for trepidation about where Bioware is headed...EA insisted on DRM, it broke the game. And they have a reputation of destroying studios. Now, if this was old EA, Dragon Age would be dead already. It's a game they don't get. And it's on a platform they don't believe in. But Bio has this window to prove that they are right and the suits are wrong. Will they? If not, it'll be the end of whatever Bio was, period.

Even once Atton is Jedied, I prefer to leave him on pistols for a while. He's so far down that line, making him a melee character takes too long to merit it. By the time he's ready, Visas is already better than he could be. So while Atton is great for support, and it's nice that he can use a saber to defend himself if people get close, he's never going to measure up in front-line combat. And again, most area maps are too constricted, IMHO, for 3 melee characters. So I'll always go: PC; Visas/Handmaiden/Mical; Ranged support.