Cl_Flushentityhero

But if I wasn't writing things off out of context, what would there be to do on the AP forums?

While I personally find some of Thornton's delivery laughably bad, I think overall AP will be seen as having utilitarian voice work. Not good, not bad, just there.

Looks good. I'll believe these "massive" improvements when I see them, though. I maintain my stance that Bioware games are typically good, but lack the stuff of greatness. At the end of the day, they're story-driven WRPGs that have a merely functional story. No matter how cool a car's chassis may be, without a good engine it's not going anywhere fast.

I think the basic FO3 gameplay could be turned into a much more compelling experience than FO3, though a few innovations would be nice.

I'm looking forward to it. I figure that if they don't somehow enhance the gameplay of CoD4, people will just keep playing that.

They said that the AI was actually *too* good at avoiding grenades prior to that trailer. Also, I would figure it's pretty much a given that using a silencer has an effect.

This.

Yeah? Well, I happen to like fast leveling.

So, like Mass effect? *ducking and running*

Well, skipping the KOTOR2 tutorial was like getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. Peragus got pretty old fast. Whether you call it a continuation of the tutorial or a prologue, it's a part at the beginning of the game that drags down the pacing and bores people trying a bunch of different characters. I don't think this is inherently part of a mandatory first level. As long as it flows quickly and is relevant to what occurs for the rest of the game such a level should be fine. With Peragus, Irenicus' Dungeon, etc., it felt like developers were trying to ease me into the gameplay with a lengthy and hand-holding experience. This became unnecessary after the first playthrough. I do agree that, unless the mandatory intro portion is one of the coolest segments in the game (which I hope it is), it should be kept short. Regardless (yet somewhat dependent) of length, I hope it's enjoyable each time.

Yeah, Bloodlines was similar to Deus Ex.

Agreed, though I don't think Obsidian has the tech in place for crowds, otherwise they would've been showing it off. Now that Rorie has bitten on this thread, I'd like to pose a further question: is there any gameplay significance to traveling between hubs or the order in which you do missions? How do the main missions fit into the overall structure?

I put it in my request that these *not* be handled like CoD4, where every few steps a bunch of henchmen appear out of nowhere to stall you.

From the footage (can't remember which) I got the impression that there are no arbitrary "character levels," and it's more of a DX-style XP system.

I dunno, I guess believability kind of went out the windows when I saw the CQC animations I don't think stealth characters necessarily need to be able to reboot the world, but they should be able to fight their way out of a mistake and then escape to another area before every enemy in the level shows up. Ergo, the alarm was tripped and everybody is looking for Thornton, but they don't magically know where he is or what he looks like so stealth can proceed. Okay, authentically speaking the enemies would clear the entire building in teams, covering each others' backs at all times and maneuvering so that you couldn't get around them. I haven't seen many games even *attempt* this kind of realism though; it seems unlikely that a hybrid game would innovate where pure shooters have failed.

By the same token though, it'd be best if stealth characters don't automatically fail a mission when they lose the element of surprise.

Er, dialogue system? Gadgets? Stealth? Wait a second, are we being trolled again?

Damn straight

I think at the end of the day what they were looking for was a reaction, and they got one.

Okku's burrow from MotB? I suppose that's the idea in principle, though I don't recall Okku's burrow standing out as particularly fun. Then again, that may be traceable to my general disdain for straightforward dungeon hacking.

Has anybody broken it to them a 4 doesn't look like an E? I'm having 4 Fast 4 Furious flashbacks.

It doesn't matter how fun the tutorial is, it's a bitch to play through the fifteenth time. Can I just point out the fallacy of uttering the phrase "it doesn't matter how fun" something is? I'd rather have the first level of the game with some optional control-scheme prompts than a tutorial level, if that makes sense.

O RLY? Anyways, yeah, it uses Games for Windows Live as its DRM and costs $10 - however, once you buy it, you can extract the files so you do not have to be logged on to GFWL to play. Yeah, just to point out, this allows you to use the DLC with the Fallout Script Extender.

It seemed like a pretty typical trailer to me. They showed some NPCs giving speeches, *some* combat (they've been showing off the mass battle scene in almost every official trailer anyway), some NPC interaction. Calling it a "violence" trailer doesn't change the actual content, which is nothing out of the ordinary for game trailers.

I think whatever people say, the real complaint is the music choice. If they used scoring even mildly appropriate people would've just been like "oh, another DA trailer."