J.E. Sawyer

I was having trouble getting the .avis to play. You can just enter the following URL in the address bar and replace the creature name: http://www.editmesh.net/artists/ccheek/med...ster_video1.avi

This looks like a great start. I hope to have more comments tonight.

Well, it's not like I need documentation to remember what all of the plot points/threads were for Jefferson.

Probably more than any other designer here. I looked through our spell icons and apparently we are still using a few of the Jefferson icons. They were used in IWD2, but they were really made for Jefferson. IWD2 needed spell icons, but Parker used his powers to ensure that Brian Menze made the icons in the format that Jefferson was using. It's coincidentally the same format as the icons used in NWN2. The problem is that we have about 3500 icons in NWN2 and Menze's icons could only really account for maybe 200-350 of those. Ian and krew re-used some of them, but they still had to make boatloads of new ones.

We bought them, along with all of the other assets that were part of Jefferson/Van Buren. He doesn't need much bossing. I crush dreams.

We used the "IWD2" icons as placeholders, but I think they've all been replaced now.

Last year I saw a demo that had some pretty extensive dialogue going on. The whole sequence revolved around The Witcher trying to get past a guarded gate. He could convince a prostitute to lead one of the guards away, get some thugs to attack the guards, etc.

There's a lot of good looking stuff in there. I'm not a big fan of mouse-driven high-action melee combat, but I'd like to try it. I wonder how ranged targeting works. Is there auto-targeting, or is it manual?

The dream is dead.

No, I'm just not really into the quests that aren't related to the Dark Brotherhood.

Dark Brotherhood spoilz. I finished the Dark Brotherhood plotline today and I think I'm pretty much done with the game. http://diogenes-lamp.info/images/listeneroftheblackhand.jpg

lol more like $3800. I got the high-end version. It wasn't insured, but I am getting another one. Someday I will tell the tale of what happened to it. >_

I liked my XPS M1710. http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...s=19&l=en&s=dhs Until it was stolen.

I have an evil horsey.

Those really are the minimum specs. You should expect to have hardware similar to what Oblivion needs to look fancy/fast.

What are you talking about?

Suki loves antlers.

Click 4 hugeness. post urs plz

The assumes you can find a place that still sells the game. Similar catastrophic problems apply to retail distribution as do to DD.

Okay, so how do retailers make money? Since you're doubting what we're saying, you must have a theory that explains why a retailer would take video game boxes and put them on their shelves for months at a time. I work for Obsidian Entertainment, not Valve.

If a specific developer chooses to make a direct download at a cost you feel is unreasonable, what does that have to do with me? The cost for the developer/publisher is almost always going to be lower to do DD instead of putting it through retail.

So, because a developer keeps their DD pricepoint at about the same level as a retail outlet, that means that we're lying about how retail and cost of goods are added into retail pricing? I never said that retailers are greedy. They are retailers, and their function in the marketplace is to provide a location at which to buy physical objects. It's a pretty basic function, but it comes with a lot of overhead. I'm not sure you can really argue with that.

If only there were some form of high-storage capacity portable optical disc media upon which one could write data.

In case anyone missed McCarthy's description of what you're paying for at the retail level, a good $6-12 of what you're buying isn't the game. You're buying retailer profit and absobing cost of goods and distribution fees. I find it hilarious that people think this is a good value. Furthermore, retailers set stifling standards about what they will and will not carry. For example, Wal-Mart will not carry M-rated titles because they are a family-oriented company. Whoops, I mean unless it sells really well. In turn, this prevents publishers from wanting to support M-rated titles. When publishers don't want to support M-rated titles, they won't pay developers to make M-rated titles. Or Western titles. Or whatever titles retailers are nervous about because of market studies and what the a gypsy in the form of a dolphin told them in a dream two nights ago after a bad acid trip. Online distribution methods like Steam should allow companies to circumvent a lot of these problems, and ultimately that's what Mike was getting at.

The fact that the ESRB did not rate the game M based on violence surprises me, to be honest. I have no doubt that Bethesda showed them the game and tried to be honest with their answers, so the violence angle is most certainly the fault of the ESRB, not Bethesda. However, I think it's pretty careless for Bethesda to have let those base skin textures stay in. The argument may go, "But a person can't normally see those without a third party hack." Great, then don't make the textures anatomically correct to begin with. I don't understand how someone can know what happened with GTA:SA and think that the "can't be revealed without a third party hack" argument flies. Clearly it doesn't -- whether you agree with it or not -- so don't do it. Seems pretty straightforward to me.