Wrath of Dagon

No, I meant AoD quests are actually done using a text adventure interface, I expect very little if any of that from DAO. I wasn't talking about dialogues.

The choices and consequences come from being able to take different paths depending on your character build. While many developers pay lip service to this concept, in practice you usually get a few fairly meaningless skill checks which don't affect very much. I think Vince has shown multiple examples of taking different approaches in AoD, including in the link posted earlier. He also posted a diagram of the main quest, which is quite involved. As far as writing, I've been reading the forums regularly and thus have seen many examples. You and I seem to have very different ideas on what costitutes good/acceptable graphics and writing, so I don't see a purpose in arguing that point. As far as EA, EA is not going to make an RPG that relies heavily on a text interface, so I'm not sure what that comparison is worth. I'm expecting DAO to be a good game, in spite of all the hits it's taking for writing and graphics, and that's an EA game.

I never said the game is guaranteed to be good. At most all I can say for now everything I've seen of it looks very good. The game is not ugly looking, as I said before, technically the graphics are very decent, and the art design is great. To me the writing looks good, and the parts of the story we've learned so far sound very intriguing. Vince never claimed AoD is innovative. He is shooting for a high quality traditional RPG. It's not that he's trying to make it just like Fallout, it's that he believes that providing choices and consequences is key in proper RPG design.

The question is what's your criterion for judging? Is it something irrelevant like cutting edge graphics or is it design? Also a combat demo should be released soon.

Yes, you can't judge video game writing in isolation, it's not like a book. To me you need good quest design to support good writing, otherwise it's kind of pointless.

While Vince's writing may not live up to the best from those games, they both certainly had their share of mediocre filler writing as well, which AoD will easily surpass.

Bioware's writing is frequently pretty good, just not that original. But it's usually at least functional, most of Mass Effect excluded.

You guys don't know what you're talking about, these are very old graphics, the new ones are much better, and art design is great. Go look at the website. Edit: Here's an example

Not where Bioware is located, I don't know about croissants though, we eat them here too. Edit: Actually, I take that back, I think they have a Montreal studio now.

Pretty sure what you save will be the checkpoints. So you can have multiple saves, but they will all be at the various checkpoints.

I guess that'll work if you can't quit out of the dialog, which would mean you have to leave your machine on if you have to leave suddenly. I can't help feeling I'm being treated like a small child.

Well, we know it's an RPG not a platformer. Chances are you'll get a checkpoint just before any dialog anyway, so if you want to reload the dialog just blow youself up with a grenade or something. Another issue is what happens if my one and only checkpoint gets corrupted, that's a horrible problem in some games.

We're actually on topic, why, you want to hear some more whining about Bioware and EA?

I don't recall that he sacrified anything. In fact, as he started out the son of a bandit and ended up a powerful warlord and noble, I'd say he gained a great deal. They weren't bandits, they were part of the resistance. And whatever he gained, he didn't seek, his motives were entirely selfless.

I saw him as a good guy. He sacrificed everything he held dear for king and country.

But we're gonna party like it's 1999! Loghain is supposed to be the good guy, and David Gaider said something about not everything being as it appears in the video.

Why not give the player some credit for being smart enough not to ruin the game for himself? Yes, in a perfect world you could have all the checkpoints in just the right location, but no game is perfect, and the designer can't possibly comprehend the full range of abilities and play styles and taylor their game to everyone. I think most RPG players understand that reloading convos until you get the optimal result is pointless, and constantly saving in combat makes the game too easy and not fun, but if someone wants to play that way, how does it hurt anyone else? If I really mess up in a convo and do something I didn't intend to, or if my wife starts talking to me right when I have to make a crucial decision, why shouldn't I be able to reload? I don't think the argument that if you don't have save restrictions then you shouldn't have any restrictions is valid, save anywhere is similar to having selectable difficulty levels, you can decide for yourself which policy best suits your needs. Edit: It's a psychological effect also. Once I save, I feel confident about continuing the game, because I can't lose my progress so far. If I keep getting reset to a checkpoint, I feel like I've lost control, which starts to erode my enjoyment of the game.

The game was planned that way all along. It's only their marketing that started to push blood and lust more agressively recently.

I think it's a lot more important for the developer to allow people maximum flexibility to play in their own playstyle than try to prevent some people from exploiting the save/load system. If I want to crank up the difficulty to max but save every 5 sec because I hate repetition, why should a developer take it upon himself to deny me my preferred playstyle? I've had a number of games ruined for me because of sadistic check point systems, but I've never had a game ruined by save anytime, because I'd have to chose to ruin the game myself.

Normally in an open-ended game I like to save and then experiment. With checkpoints, I feel like I need to perfect the most obvious route instead so I can get to the next checkpoint. This is better suited to linear shooters IMO.

You could make it so the first option when pressing the start button would be quicksave, so you press A and you're done. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath did saves particularly well, but I don't remember the exact system.

You can save at any time in Splinter Cell too, no? The way I remember it, I could. On PC at least. I played on the Xbox, and it only had checkpoints, and they weren't generous either.

You can save any time in T3, which is one reason I infinitely preferred it to Splinter Cell.

Sexual assault and sex are too very different things.