J.E. Sawyer

As a male or female character, you can sleep with a ton of different people. You can also get married (including same-sex) and later pimp your spouse out as a prostitute.

hay guys does anyone remember fallout 2

Yeah, they basically made the game unplayable for me. I'm not even exaggerating; I can't tell the colors apart. SC is one of my favorite franchises, but I honestly couldn't get more than an hour into SC:DA.

We put a capture suit on the actor's tear ducts. It was epic.

I get what you guys are saying, but I'm trying to remember a time in any RPG where you could choose an option that actually implied your character was crying. Just sayin'...

Even Marcus Fenix cries.

There are a few qualifications here: 1) There are problems that can be practically fixed and there are problems that can't be practically fixed. Sometimes, a problem that isn't practical to fix can become practical depending on the scope of a project. Aurora's client/server architecture and animation systems could certainly be re-written, but I don't think that would fall in the scope of an expansion (for example). The Witcher shows just how much Aurora can be modified given enough time. 2) It's important to remember focus when looking at an engine. While I honestly don't think Aurora's animation/state updating is good for anything (sorry to be blunt, but I can't think of a good reason for it to be engineered as it was), certain other aspects lend themselves better to NWN's intended purpose than the IE's intended purpose. For example, IE game spells were all created in .spl files through an editor called Spell-O-Matic (yes, really). In NWN, most of a spell's functionality came from a script. Creating and debugging spell scripts can honestly be a pain in the *** when compared to the .spl data-driven format, but it allows a lot more flexibility. Also, a 3D engine of any sort makes developing new character/creature content (models, animations, etc.) much, much easier for hobbyists.

In this case I am correct, because I actually understand how the underlying code that governs combat and states works in the IE and Aurora. Responsiveness, in this context defined as how quickly the game updates states after player input is given, is consistently faster and more reliable in IE than Aurora.

NWN2 was twenty hours long?

No such thing. I want to make Yuan-Ti: The Game.

1) Pimpin' 2) Crip Walkin' 3) Kung Fu 4) Safe Cracking 5) Alchemy 6) Knowledge: Religion 7) 9mm Semi-Auto Pistols Heavy Weapons 9) Pet Grooming 10) Rope Use

My judgment is that Patrick is owning you, possibly even "pwning" you. Condolences. Peace.

The yuan-ti weren't my idea, but I am glad they are present.

The game supports riding mammoths, therefore I must recommend it in spite of any flaws it may have, no matter how serious or endemic to the gaming experience they may be.

RPGs with guns = the same.

Nope.

Even Darklands really was a late-comer to the overland map scene, so to speak. I think that's where a lot of us at Obsidian draw most of our inspiration from when thinking about it, but overland maps go back to earlier games like Phantasie and (more importantly) Ultima. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Ultima1-3.gif 1980. Booya.

Has our gaming culture really lost so much of its (short) historical perspective that Final Fantasy is considered to be the original franchise to feature an overland map?

I think it's also safe to say that we added some stuff to support our hand-to-hand combat since UE3 focuses mostly on firearm mechanics.

Correct. Any modifications we've made to the engine have been done in-house.

Darklands is genuinely low magic, though I don't think MPS Labs ever went out of their way to market it as such. Potions were the most common magic items, but they were essentially spells. Even calling on a saint's aid was relatively rare. Yet another reason why Darklands owned so hard.

Yes there is absolutely no way that anyone at either of those companies could ever tell anyone at another company what the budget was.

Sean owns.

Yes. The main dialogue tool is pretty similar to the one(s) BioWare/BIS/Obisidian have been using for a while, but with a few extra bells and whistles. Their plot state/story manager looked extremely useful, though. It allows devs to update a database of quest states and then run another tool at run time to a) check and b) set those states in the game. Very powerful for testing purposes.

The overland map(s) are huge areas, as in Fallout (although in Fallout it was just one contiguous area; in SoZ, there are multiple large, non-contiguous areas). I made a demo character for my Paris GDC presentation and it was a ranger with a dino animal companion. Total ownage.