RPGmasterBoo

Turns out the game is bug hell in both versions, retail and pirate. They shouldn't have bothered protecting it in the first place if they planned to release it in an unplayable state.

Doesn't it use the same ACII DRM?

As far as Bethesda's games are concerned "sense" is an unintentional byproduct.

Really? I've been itching for a space sim for years

If a snack cake lasted for two centuries I'd be really wary about its contents.

Whosa doing this travesty and playing JRPGs?

Sweet. Now comes the wait for the int edition.

An adventure game has really only two parts to it: the story and the puzzles (i.e. the gameplay). Dreamfall only has a story. That's not good enough (for me). Plus it represents (unsuccessful) tampering with a perfectly functional genre to make it more accessible to the casual crowd, which is an instant minus in my book.

I'm with you there. Weren't we discussing this in the PnP forum? To make it seeem natural you start with elevation, then you imagine water flowing through it. Water makes for humans, and humans then move along the water, linking up. Later they begin making paths and tracks between settlements. Settlements on big bits of water, and especially on the way to places end up being biggest. Not, as Boo points out, because they are parachuted into inexplicable places. EDIT: Actually I forgot something - defensibility. Post-apocalypse has to have water, food, and also some way of keeping the rad bastards out. So Megaton almost makes sense. Essentially I'd expect either hill forts with plenty of guns, or isolated settlements would be hidden and only emerge occasionally to forage. Yeah, most of this already covered in many post apocalyptic films and books. Really, there is a relatively small number of ways a post apocalyptic society functions especially as further away as one goes from the disaster that ended civilization. If the goal was supreme realism, given FO' NVs timeline, there should be very few functioning guns around, (almost) no working electronics, the high tech stuff should be broken beyond repair - not to mention that people with actual knowledge to work these things should be long dead. Larger cities should be abandoned because they're essentially unsustainable without a steady influx of food, electricity and running water. The presence of high tech factions such as BOS and Enclave should be minimal to non existent etc. (in fact they shouldn't exist at all but they are sorta canon so...) Of course the Fallout series always suffered from the cool sh!t syndrome, particularly from Fallout 2 onwards, but there's no reason not to take things a bit more seriously...

A valuable contribution to this conversation Krezack, you have really indebted us all. Let no one say I didn't elaborate: 1. the gameplay sucks. Its probably the worst point and click adventure I've ever played in this regard. The puzzles are ridiculously easy, and offer no challenge at all. There is no tangible reward for playing this game, its more a movie where you occasionally click things. 2. Zoe is one of the most irritating protagonists ever 3. the action based gameplay is crap and unnecessary in an adventure game Nothing in the game really works well apart from the storyline, and I gave up on it twice halfway through because the gameplay sucked so bad. Considering its predecessor this game is an insult to the p&c genre and should never have been made (this way). IMO it shares the "most casual/dumbest AAA adventure sequel" position with Broken Sword III.

Hilarious. I suppose I wont be smiling when a game I actually care about is published with this DRM but what the heck, its lets savor it while it lasts.

So ends another strong, substantiated argument.

You could start WWIII with this

Played three skirmishes to test out all the races. First impressions:\ Graphics: the cartoonishness I was complaining about earlier is in there but its significantly less apparent than I believed. In fact the WCIII graphical style only irks me when playing the Protoss which look a bit too high elfish for my taste. Otherwise - the graphics are fine. Apart from the fact that the advanced shader options cause insane things to happen with my graphics card, like the screen becoming tinted red or green (probably some ATI compatibility flaw). The animations are great. Sound: the music is... well I dunno. I like the original terran soundtrack more - as far as the other two races are concerned - its okay. Overall, it does the job. There is an orchestral main menu piece which conveys a very epic space opera feel, but other than that I'm not noticing anything. The sound effects are good as are the VO's. Gameplay: its there. The game plays quite differently but its unmistakably Starcraft. Of all the races I think the Zergs new units fit in best, and I look forward to playing with them. I don't feel that way about my old favorites, the Terrans because they're a little bit too crazy for me now: buggies with flamethrowers, oversized anime robots, medivac ships that heal with beams of light etc... The Protoss were never my cup of tea but now I like them even less because of the gaudy look and the weird new units, like the mothership, colossus... Overall each of the races has some new strategies fixed around old ideas, like Terran barracks being able to churn out two marines at the same time with an upgrade thus setting the stage for a massive marine attack. Additionally they have a radar tower that shows impending attack, which is cool. Buildings fly much faster now. The Zerg's burrow capability has been extended, some units can move while underground and one thing that's especially nice - most Zerg units are now blindingly fast. The main new twist of the Protoss is their ability to call down units wherever there is a Prism affected area which gives them a lot of flexibility. I feel they have too many single purpose buildings, but that might not be strange given how powerful they are. Along with the graphical quirks, I have experienced severe slowdown issues at times which I think is due to the game not being optimized as well as it should be, but that will be fixed in time.

The game sucks in so many ways I don't even know why you bother ramza.

Note: I read only "A game of thrones", about half a decade ago so I was just conveying what little I remember about the book (fragments really). It wasn't a definitive opinion of any sort. Anyway I don't see a significant influence from any of the things you mentioned in DA (except Moor****s works which I'm not familiar with).

A game can have a dark tone through its graphics, like the Witcher where everything is run down, filthy, it rains half the time and the mood is instantly depressing. At the other end of the spectrum are games like Drakensang with their intentionally fairy tale-ish appearance. DA's graphics don't set a prevailing atmosphere. They're just typical high fantasy. Eg: the deep roads, an obvious nod to Moria have none of the dread you would expect, the denerim alienage which is supposed to feel really, well, "slummy" looks like just another location albeit with a few more beggars (Vizima slums look like a hellhole by comparison). The "perfect" doll like look of the characters never convinces you that those are genuinely troubled people since they all look "flawless", even the dwarf casteless. The only significant difference in graphical tone from say NWN is the gore, which as Gromnir noted begs to be turned off. Writing could make the game darker, but Gaider never dares to really go through with it. Like the thugs in the Carta and their final boss, whatever her name is. Even though they say "threatening" stuff the delivery always makes you feel like you're looking at a masked highwayman. Its so... innocent? That's the problem with Gaider's work in general, he's probably a nice guy so real, intimidating "bad guy" stuff seems to be beyond him. He seems to avoid all the areas that call for swearing, real threats and cringe worthy actions on part of both PC's and NPC's. Apart from Duncan's crap which was spot on, but a bit nonsensical as well. Then there is the stuff you can do, which can make you feel you're participating in a "dark world", like say the quest resolution of the first Witcher area where you have a rapist, a child trafficking priest, a murderer on one side and a profiteering witch on the other, and whatever choice you make, it will suck. But no says Dragon Age, you have to help a cheery dwarf gain entry into the mage academy or you have to help an elf kid romance another elf chick. What the hell is that? What's the point of that in a supposedly "dark" game? Like Gromnir said, its not really dark which raises the question why they were bringing up promises they couldn't deliver in the first place? And what were those? I vaguely remember G.R.R.Martin's works mentioned early in the development cycle, and from what I've read of his works the "dark" stuff is everyone being bastards, the principal characters going through hell and there being a lot of violence (amongst humans) some of which DA implements albeit half heartedly.

I just got my beta confirmation... downloading

Its practically manga. Yuck. Horrible manga at that. (of course I hope nobody remembers the Baldurs Gate comic, which was almost as bad) They should use Juan Ramirez, who made the concept art for my favourite game - Myth II.. http://www.bungie.net/projects/myth/asset_...c=31&item=6 J. Win for you. Myth II is one of my favorite strategies as well. Its kinda sad when you realize that Myth did the "dark forces are coming" atmosphere way better than DA. And Myth is just a bunch of sprites and ominously read journal entries. People have forgotten how to do dark.

What the hell does this mean?

He is, isn't he.

Sanitarium is one of the best adventure games ever made.

Return to Krondor!! Never played it but it has quite a few devoted fans.

There is nothing hilarious about it. Post apocalypse practically as a rule tries to show how a society functions after major disaster. That's the point. Fo1 and 2 didn't go into extreme detail but the setup they had was, in general, plausible. Fo3's wasn't. It was a jumbled bunch of nonsense thrown together in the exact same way fantasy role playing games are made. While you can go into all sorts of excess when fantasy is concerned because there are very few genre restrictions - post-apocalypse isn't like that. Even if you don't want to show how the world functions at the very least you can imply it in some way. Fo3 says: NO. I'll just dump a village here, a city built around an atomic bomb there, five minutes from that a legion of ogres with miniguns that have enough ammunition for a perpetual war with dudes in metal power armor and laser rifles they seem to leave lying around everywhere. Make sure none of them have anything humorous or intelligent to say - as long as they die in really entertaining ways no one will notice. Splatter enough NPC's around for the wasteland to look really populated (wait, wot?), and make sure there are people doing history tours and writing survival guides around - because there is really nothing better to do after the world ends.

And the quest fails... The troll regenerates and I haven't brought fire and acid.