Wrath of Dagon

I think that means the NPC responses depend on the reputation you have with that NPC.

I doubt this game will be as infantile as the Witcher in this regard. This is a Western game and thus is more likely to be politically correct. Anyway, they said you have a choice how to play your character, he can be a womanizer or an ascetic from what I understand. I'm personally planning to try to avoid involvement, unless the characters/dialog is really interesting and I wouldn't want to miss out. I'm not too thrilled about sexualization of games either, but if it helps them to make the game financially successful, and it probably will, I grudgingly accept it.

I think unfortunately Obsidian needs to emphasize the sex aspect in their marketing. To us it looks like this game will be something special, but I'm afraid for the general public it'll just get lost in the shuffle. Perhaps you guys can get Fox to start hyperventilating early.

What was there to explore? The big mall called the Citadel? The same boring cut and paste planet repeated 35 times called the Uncharted Worlds?

OK, I guess I better consult you on my exact phrasing next time before I post. Edit: Here's my first post in this thread btw: Name one. It's true, AP does look similar to ME both in concept and graphics. I'm hoping Obsidian knows how to do it right though.

It's useless to argue how long a particular game takes someone, everyone plays at different speeds. That's why I try to use standard reviewer hours, or compare well known games to each other. Also when talking about game length, it's more useful to compare normal first time playthroughs, including all sidequests.

MotB still seems to have a lot of dungeons, dungeons you can't fricking see anything because it's dark!

It's hard to say exactly, but in standard reviewer hours, Jade was about 20 hrs long, KOTOR's were about 40, NWN2 may be a bit longer, it was just so slow because of inventory and crafting, argh. ME was about the length of Jade if you don't do the Uncharted World tedium.

NWN2 was plenty long enough, I wonder what the direct comparison to AP would be.

Huh, when did I say or do any of that? I assumed from the aggressive stance you have towards ME that something like that is what seems to be your problem with it, is my assumption wrong? You assumption is not wrong about ME, but when did I say I expect AP to have the faults of ME? The only thing I said was I hope AP will be ME done right. We already know it will have a faction and reputation system, so right there it's different. Edit: If I thought what you claim, I wouldn't even bother. No, I said Bioware did it wrong, I didn't say anything about Obsidian doing things wrong.

20 hrs sounds pretty short for an RPG, where are those DX comparisons now?

Not to be argumentative, but in what game does the character make choices on his own without player input? I mean, choices are available for character action or dialogue... but in the end, who decides what exactly the charaction will do or say if not the players themselves? My only point is that in any game where the player controls a main character, that character will throughout the course of the game have choices of action and dialogue. Thief certainly did, and it was no RPG. No One Lives Forever certainly did, and it was no RPG. Gothic did as well, and I didn't consider it an RPG... just one man's journey, which is what Deus Ex was and many other excellent action games. I suspect that in my view Alpha Protocol will be the same. Now clearly I'm a big fan of some of these non-RPG genre games, like Deus Ex, so if Alpha Protocol is along those lines I very well might love it. However, if it's more the spiritual successor to, say, Hitman, I'm fairly certain I won't be buying. In Thief 3 (I assume others are the same), you make decisions how to approach a situation, but you don't make any dialog or story related choices, so it's an adventure game, not an RPG. If it did have dialog choices as you appear to claim, then I'd say it was an RPG. Although choosing to side with Hammerites or Pagans (?) does come pretty close to making it an RPG in that one aspect. Anyway, it appears your definition of RPG is different from mine, and I'm not sure anything is acomplished in arguing over definitions.

Huh, when did I say or do any of that?

I believe that's a sub-skill of pimpin'

SirPetrakis, you've made so many wrong assumptions in your post I don't even know where to start. You'd pretty much have to negate every sentence to arrive at some semblance of the truth. Let me just point out I haven't played a PnP RPG in my life, and I already said an RPG is about player choice, not about combat.

It's the player who makes choices, not the character, so I'm not sure how Duke Nukem fits into this. In a wargame you're not playing a character, so you're not making character related choices, so that's not an RPG either.

@Ghost OK, so the truest RPG's have all kinds of C&C, you can affect the entire story, have multiple approaches to everything, etc. I haven't actually played any of those. Then you take a step back, you can't really affect the story very much, but the game is made up of quests, and you do have a couple of ways of completing the quest, so you still have some choice. That would be KOTOR. Then you take another step back, and almost all your choices are limited to dialog and its immediate aftermath, because the structure of the game is too linear to accomodate anything else. Sure there are some quests, but almost all are bad. That's Mass Effect.

That too. My taste is beyond reproach.

I'm glad you see my point. As far as providing reasons, I did link to my review already for those who are interested. It's always frustrating to see that most people on forums seem to have missed the day in elementary school when they explained the difference between opinions and facts. Jenny wears a green dress - fact; Jenny is pretty - opinion.

That those who don't share my viewpoint are wrong.

So you can't just spout any old crap and expect people to know exactly what it is you are trying to say. If I create a product, and someone points out an error in the product, I'd like to know what it is so I can correct it. If it's not an error, it's just something they don't like, then frankly I'm not likely to care. I already pointed out plenty of faults in ME, unless you think the only possible problem in a game is a bug, since that's objective. And I've yet to see anyone explain why the faults I pointed out aren't faults.

Yes, so what?

How am I doing that, am I holding a gun to their heads? May be I should throw a hissy fit and threaten not to buy the game unless it's done to my exact specifications, as per usual forum protocol.

To avoid endlessly repeating myself, here's my review on Bio forums, towards the bottom of the page: http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewt...=125&sp=285 The fundamental problem as I said is that ME is too linear to offer any meaningful player choice. If you want every single flaw pointed out, you can read the parody in my signature. Amazingly though the author thinks the game is brilliant.

Can you honestly not see that this is your opinion? There's a massive number of people who would beg to differ that Mass Effect is a "badly designed RPG". Most importantly, if Obsidian doens't share your opinion of Mass Effect, you're just pissing into the wind anyhow. Of course it's my opinion, what else would it be? What amazes me is that people don't see something so obvious.