Wrath of Dagon

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.

Yes, since it's an abstraction, you can imagine anything. But the point is it's an abstraction of combat, and we know what happens in combat.

Ok, so I guess checkers, by that standard, is also all about war. You seem to have ignored the fact that, as I pointed out, Chess is a game of strategy, one where, I might ad, you cannot kill the enemy king

Actually, no, Chess depicts the grand strategy of war

Therefore, you would not play, or support, a game that had you killing other people in cold blood, required you to steal, or otherwise commit a crime. Is that what you are saying? If so you must not have like, to name two examples, either KotOR or KotOR II

What do you call having the player perform those acts? I hope you are not saying that committing an act in a video game will make you do the same acts in real life because that is what it sounds like you are implying. If so, I suggest you go seclude yourself from others, contact Jack Thompson, and stop posting here as clearly you would likely murder someone or commit some other horrible crime due to all of those

What do you call having the player perform those acts?

If you play an Xbox game on the 360 all the colors are washed out. No one seems to notice though.

There's a big difference between BG&E which resets you to just before the battle and most other Ubisoft games where you have to go for an hour before you get a checkpoint, which with my mediocre skills results in lots of repetition and leads to tedium and boredom. Another concern for me would be the checkpoints in an open ended game suggest either a certain amount of linearity or rarity of checkpoints.

That's an argument against cross-genre games then, since a game which focuses on only one thing will generally do it better for a number of reasons. Personally I prefer the cross-genre approach, as I find most one trick ponies boring and repetitive.

Check point saves, ugh.

Some pieces of human garbage simply can't be allowed to go on living. It's a matter of principle.

Pretty sure they will have working jet packs. There's a description of the bounty hunter class on the TOR site.