J.E. Sawyer

I admit that I would prefer if the player had the option of loading some sort of emotional content into what was being said, but I am still interested in what the end product of Oblivion will be.

There are a lot of people who believe that writing an ultra-tight story with minimal amounts of mostly insigificant player choice = role-playing. I know that Oblivion seems to be going very far away from that concept and that annoys a lot of people, but it seems great to me. Bethesda tries to do a lot of experimental stuff in their games. Sometimes it fails (spectacularly), but I like the fact that they are doing it.

I don't think anyone is arguing that AC isn't an abstraction, but I would argue that Fallout/SPECIAL's system of abstracting armor is unintuitive and forces characters to always adopt the heaviest armor unless they want to intentionally handicap themselves. If I were coming to Fallout for the first time, my expectation would be that metal, Tesla, and power armor greatly increase protection but reduce my stealth abilities and my overall mobility. They're bulky, heavy suits of armor. I understand that PA is motorized, but I've always believed that the actuators in PA are there simply to give the person the great strength required to wear it, not to enhance movement speed and grace above and beyond their normal capabilities. I would expect the leather and combat armors to protect me less, but to give few penalties to my stealth abilities or to my movement-oriented stats. If we think of an attacker's skill check as determining their ability to hit a target of a certain size moving at a certain speed at a certain range, the properties of the target certainly factor into that calculation. I just don't think that the durability of the armor should have any positive effect on it. But in Fallout, this isn't the case. Heavier armor both increases AC and increases damage reduction. It also has no penalty on stealth skills. On top of this, the DR/DT system combines to result in virtual invincibility in the late game unless the PC suffers the effects of a rare critical. To make matters worse, the gulf of difference between armor types is huge. If you fight Enclave troops in the best combat armor you can find, you will take massive damage compared to those wearing APA. Because of how good the endgame armor is, all of the enemy weapons have to be jacked up in power more and more just to make a little dent in the PC. Against all other armor types, it's Bedtime for Bonzo. In my opinion (duh), the changes I wanted to make in F3 would have resulted in different character types having more options in the late game. Power armor variants were for people who wanted to be tanks. They could take a great deal of punishment, but they were pretty easy to see/hear coming and to hit. People in combat armor variants retained most of their movement/stealth capabilities, but couldn't quite take the heavy hits in extended combat.

That's what I wrote in the first place. But please, continue to turn a thread about console games into an unending discussion about the merits of 2nd Edition AD&D over 3E.

Considering that people seem to differ on whether or not 20 levels in 30 hours can be balanced, I don't think you share the same definition as some others.

We've been over this already. AoOs were introduced in C&T. Besides, we don't need to point to AoOs when we have things as intuitive as the 2nd Ed. thief skill system vs. everyone else's non-weapon proficiency system and the wondrous saving throw divisions. EDIT: lol 2nd Ed. multiclassing lol

If you want a 2nd Ed. list, it would be twice as long.

The armor system resulted in making characters invincible near the end of the game unless an armor-bypassing critical hit was scored, which often resulted in massive injuries/death. I disagree. Fallout's firearm skills were stratified in way that encouraged players to dump all skill points into them in a certain order for the entire game. Basically, small guns was designed to obsolete at a certain point, then big guns. The same didn't apply to characters who focused on speech or science -- or unarmed combat, for that matter. I really disliked most of the CNPCs, I really disliked being forced to go find Imoen, I really disliked the style of dialogue, and I really disliked being flooded with a million quests by every shmoe on the streets of Athkatla. Basically, there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it.

I thought IWD2 was a little too long, as well. It was a reaction to criticism about HoW. If we had cut a few maps from that game and made the rest of the game better, I think the end result would have been superior.

I wish I had the design doc for Final Fantasy VII so I could learn the exact formula required to make 40% of the gameplay hours consist of random encounters and summon effects.

I had more empathy for my pikmin than for pretty much any NPC in any CRPG I've ever played.

Pikmin/Pikmin 2

It was created to be a defensive cannon for the Kremlin, but it was never used. It's called the Tsar Cannon.

For me it depends on the quality. Much like musical theatre, most examples of tattoos are horrible, but the good ones are great. I have about a dozen.

1. No. 2. Yes.

I "was asked" to write up something on this topic. Reasons vary from project to project, dev to dev, pub to pub. But here are some basic reasons: * Avoids setting people up for disappointment. Devs are notoriously bad at scheduling and foreseeing problems. * Avoids burning people out on the idea/ideas of the game. High buzz/interest only lasts so long. It may continue to build among hardcore people, but the general public will forget about it after 4-6 months of heavy coverage. * Avoids confusing people. Even if the devs schedule and plan well, their focus may change over the course of development. Radical shifts in focus are fine during the early stages of a project, but it might be hard for the public to sort the "early game" from the game that ships. Imagine if people knew what WoW was supposed to be back in 2000 and they had to reconcile that with the game that shipped. * Avoids annoying stockholders. In public companies, stock price may fluctuate based on the promise of a title as presented through press. If something big changes, stock holders may become angry dinosaurs. Those are the big, basic reasons why info usually doesn't get doled out early in a project's life.

I wouldn't really go that far. Ducatis are nice bikes, but they don't dominate like they used to. Also, the Monsters are basically baby Ducs, naked middleweights that contend with bikes like the SV650 and Honda 599. My 750 is carbureted and it doesn't even have dual front discs. My friend Mike (who is an animator on PNJ) once owned a Ducati 999R. Now that's a crazy bike. http://webpages.csus.edu/~jc259/4_800.jpg

I bought this for myself. It's a 1999 Ducati Monster 750.

I do, but I like it more for how and why it was made than for its stories. It's a piece of literature that I find fascinating, but it isn't full of events that make me go, "Oh man, that part was so great!" or "Oh man, E

At one point during the development of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, I was talking to someone on the team about the story. I asked him if he liked it. He said, "Well, maybe for a movie, but not for a game." Someone else told me that he didn't like the story because it didn't fit into the traditional archetypes. I have since decided that I should be very careful about trying to contribute to game stories because my tastes are so different from those of many people.

I think cliche reversal is an okay tool until the reversal or twist becomes the new cliche. Just look at every M. Night movie. Everyone waits for the twist because they know it's coming. The twist becomes an impotent tool in many cases because the viewer either sees it coming or the twist is so far-fetched that it comes off as absurd.

All OEI guys have to share the same connection out.

A lot of us (OEI) had to leave early; our pings were in the 300-400 range. Hopefully when we get our phatty pipe next month, things will be better.