J.E. Sawyer

Coming in early '08 to Xbox 360 and PS3, frantic fighting at a glorious 60fps. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/26663.html No new weapons for Nero this time around. Instead he upgrades his crazy hand to do crazy things. Also I have to say that Japanese trailers always confuse me because the music seems so inappropriate for the action that's going on. Also, watch the in-game footage between Dante and Nero closely and you can see them shooting bullets out of the air.

I think the ideas behind the combat design are pretty solid (other than impact feedback and early weapon feel, which I think starts just north of Bloodlines territory), but I think it falls apart when you try to use allies tactically. They have a lot of problems pathing/using cover properly and they also botch the use of their abilities a lot. You can plow through battles pretty easily by min-maxing the advancement and equipment systems on your main dude, but the allies wind up being tag-alongs that sort of take a few solid shots here and there. Sometimes they help a lot, but their contributions are pretty... haphazard.

ME's mini-game is pretty nonsensical, but it's really low-impact on the player. The mini-games take maybe 8 seconds and they all follow the same format. No attempt is made to integrate it into the world (as with Bioshock), but I have to say I appreciate ME's mini-game more than Bioshock's. I'm still involved actively in the resolution of the action, but the involvement is very short and reasonably easy to circumvent at a cost.

Ao is around to do whatever the heck the designers want. Maybe he'll pass control of magic to Azuth, who will re-structure it in new ways. Or maybe it will be divided among several deities who will each allow access to it in different ways. Whatever, as long as Ao gets involved at the deity level, anything can happen.

There's always been a lot of hoopla about Mystra regulating magic. In the old Arcane Age boxed set, they talk a lot about the "good ol' days" of Mystryl, when packs of 20th+ level arcanists sailed around in Netherese flying cities casting 10th level spells and dozens of 41st+ level elven spellcasters would lay mythals and other high magic rituals whenever they felt like it. After Karsus effectively killed Mystryl, the Mystra that replaced her became the boss of how magic worked. Shar messing with the Shadow Weave allowed for some "alternate" spellcasting, but ultimately it's just standard D&D spellcasting with a few modifications. Killing off Mystra gives the WotC designers an in-setting reason to mechanically change the operation of magic. Also the spellplague sounds like it gives them the opportunity to thin out the engorged ranks of wizards throughout Faer

R6V was fun until, as Kaftan suggested, the fights all became pretty run-of-the-mill. It wasn't like the old R6 games at all, but it was still a satisfying light tactical shooter. Some of the scenarios were a little annoying because they essentially forced you to do things you were trained not to do (put the whole squad in a very vulnerable position), but overall it was enjoyable. Hopefully the sequel will build upon the good stuff they had in the first title.

It's easy if you hijack other weapons.

When I played Jade Empire I had my character do stretches before and after every fight and drink a lot of water to avoid dehydration.

Bards can be very useful unless you're Count N00bingt0n of Nub Manor.

BioWare's power is so great that they made Austin part of Canada.

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/v...eloperId,83003/ That and D&D Online. I remember that someone on these boards wrote something to the effect of Feargus being dumb for putting an MMO designer in charge of the story for NX1. gg

I think this has less to do with the core spirit-eater mechanics and more to do with its ancillary effects. But the same could apply to alignment shifts that occur in conversation. I agree that the alignment shifting can be problematic to deal with.

Personally, I thought it was pretty easy to deal with. Then again, I did the "good" path with it.

Obsidian does have a Steam group. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/OEI

ET:QW shouldn't even be compared to the BF games, but to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. I thought W:ET was a lot better than BF1942.

It was only called that very late in development. It was originally just called FR6/Jefferson internally. In late 2002/early 2003, we started losing various rights to make D&D games. At a certain point, our PC D&D games could only have IWD or BG titles. FR6 was more like a BG game than an IWD game (in that you had a party of CNPCs instead of a full party of created characters), and BG was a bigger franchise, so IPLY wanted to call it BG3.

When it started development, we did have the license. Also I wasn't planning these mechanical changes back then.

SteamID: baby_goat

Team Fortress 2. Very fun.

Not much. I just made suggestions for various mechanics and gave balance feedback for combat.

It's not really that freaky. It just involves adding or changing strings, modifying a few 2DAs, and then creating new blueprints. The basic functionality for all of this stuff has always been in NWN2.

Very little progress. A fair amount of documentation written but not a lot of real in-toolset work done. MotB is out now, so I should be able to start focusing more time on it and taking advantage of all the new available assets. One thing I can talk about is how I'm changing the standard weapon and armor options. I've long been in favor of armor as damage reduction. Each type of armor within a weight category (light, medium, heavy) grants good DR against one or two damage types (slashing, piercing, crushing) and weak DR against the remainder. All have an attendant penalty to "AC" (which won't actually be called AC, but it's basically your ability to dodge blows) that's based off of the category. Heavier armor makes you easier to hit but protects against increasing amounts of damage. And depending on the situation, some light armor is as good at protecting against their "strong" armor type as heavy armors are against a "weak" type, but with a lesser "AC" penalty. So I believe it will result in more interesting choices for armor. None of the base armor types are inherently superior in a given situation, though the heavier armor types are inherently superior across a broad spectrum of encounters. And that's by design. You earn feats that unlock heavier armors. Therefore, heavier armors should be broadly better than lighter armors. That's how I view it anyway. Weapons are also recategorized. There are actually more categories now, but feats never focus on individual weapons, only categories. So you'd never take Weapon Focus: Longsword. Instead you'd take Weapon Focus: Advanced Slashing Weapons. The categories are Simple, Advanced Slashing, Advanced Piercing, Advanced Crushing, Advanced Ranged, and Advanced Unarmed. Damage type always directly correlates to a trade off between base damage, crit multiplier, and crit range. So slashing weapons always do the most damage and have the lowest (x2) multiplier. Piercing weapons do the least damage and have the highest (x4) multiplier. Crushing weapons are in the middle. And then within each category, the more base damage a weapon does, the lower its crit range is. So misericords do very low (1-3) damage, but they have an 18-20 crit range. There is a tendency toward this in D&D, but I am making the trade-offs very clear and distinct. Advanced weapons always do higher damage than their "lesser" simple equivalents and they always have an additional special feature that's automatically built into the weapon. Flails have an inherent attack bonus. Sabres can cause bleeding wounds. Mauls have a large knockdown bonus. And as you might be able to tell, I'm adding in some weapons that aren't in core D&D: misericords, main-gauches, sabres, hurlbats, and a few others. In part because they're just cool weapons, but also because they can help fill niches in each of the categories.

People are pretty heated up about Epic BAB, but I have to admit that my temptation to start a parody thread about epic baobabs is at a critical level.

What? In their ventilation system? You can't be more of a fan that a set of whirling blades. All jokes aside, I believe NWN2 did sell better in Europe than North America.