RPGmasterBoo

Yes if you've been around the DA forums there's a horde of people pushing for m/m romances with quiet support from the developers. The issue is pushed so adamantly you would think that's the only thing thats keeping DA from being the next best thing since sliced bread.

It was sarcasm

Why not, it sounds so cool?

Hey those are my other two favorite Sci Fi RPG's right after Homeworld! +50 xp for you

RPG: Baldurs Gate II FPS: Half Life RTS: Homeworld/Myth II FPS/RPG: Bioshock Space sim: Wing Commander 5 Adventure: Gabriel Knight 3

I liked it. ,o/ The odds aren't in our favor, the Combine will win. I liked it as well. Now we need more haters to even out the odds

It was too easy on the hardest level, its plot was beyond idiotic, borderline Tom Clancy propaganda crap, and the shooting mechanics too easy. Even though most reviewers and gamers wouldnt agree - Call of Duty 5, in its Soviet campaign was much much better. It actually tried to make war look horrible and serious, it was quite challenging on its toughest difficulty, and a much grittier experience.

As much as I like Undying the fact is that its an unbalanced game (almost broken,from the point you get the Scythe of the Celts), with poor level design (in the latter levels). The first impression is amazing but if you stick through you begin to see major cracks in it.

For me Half Life 2 was playable, but somewhat boring. It didn't come off as sinister or as claustrophobic as the first one, the areas were pretty bland and the overall plot semi interesting. Some of the monsters like the spinning flying things ruined the immersion with their arcade appearance. The enemies were less intelligent than in the first one, (meaning combine soldiers) of which i was expecting a lot, the gunplay not rough enough for my taste. However its much praised competition at the time was in fact vastly inferior, those being the NoDuctTapeOnMars Doom3 and Jungle simulator Far Cry. Episode One was where I started enjoying the games new direction. It was too short but Alyx made up for it and I really enjoyed her presence and character (and voice too). Episode two was where it got somewhat dull again, for inexplicable reasons. That said, I'll play Episode 3 and hopefully they will wrap up the story of the mute scientist in a sensible and entertaining manner. Overall Half Life 2 was a very good shooter. Half Life 1 one was perfection. Since its impossible by definition to improve upon perfection, I think the end result was satisfactory.

Not completely new - sufficiently new. Exactly what the previous games weren't. Its hard to describe - a subjective feeling, not a rational statement. Just like I felt it playing the Witcher, which was the closest thing to Baldurs Gate for me while actually not having anything in common with Baldurs Gate. If I had to describe it, it would be the thrill of jumping in a new, immersive world, where what awaits around the corner hasn't been done to death a million times. Small touches, like Geralt stone drunk stealing pickled cucumbers from the old woman, and Zoltan's life lessons ("just because a woman says she doesn't want it it doesnt mean she doesnt want it...")

IL2 Strumovik is the alpha and omega of combat flight simulators. Grim Fandango is ingenious as well.

Nah all they have to do is show some cohones and originality and I'll be satisfied.

We won't really know until we see it. But there is little reason to be optimistic given Bios (recent) track record.

This from someone who's played through BG. I recall taking down legions of kobolds, orcs, orges, gibberlings, wolves, bears, and skeletons with 1) shoot arrows, 2) pause every five seconds as you select a different target for your archers, 3) continue until the enemy gets near, 4) run off until they stop chasing you, 5) come back and shoot more arrows. That's 75% of the fights right there. Though when I was really feeling saucy, I had Minsc stand in the middle of a crowd while my archers picked the opponents off one by one. After that, not even WoW quest feel repetative. You want me to kill 7 shadowboars and bring you eleven sabercat talons? Sure. Sounds fun. I meant repetetivness in terms of story and characters, situations, quests, plot arcs etc. Anyway what you describe are (cheap) tactics which actually require some sort of effort. In terms of gameplay, NWN, KOTOR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect had the most boring combat ever devised. The only thing needed to win was participation and you could only gain a measure of satisfaction/feeling of accomplishment if you were a total beginner or just plain bad at playing games. While combat was an important part of BG it was not the only thing the game had. Unlike WoW, which you yourself said was a game of "fantasy combat".

Apparenty DA has only a diskcheck.

On 7. You have a high tolerance for repetition. On 8. I felt the exact opposite when NWN, Jade Empire and Mass Effect are concerned. In fact I rarely felt so cheated. Things I like about Bioware. They made the best cRPG series ever - Baldur's Gate. I admire them for that, but those days are long over. Things I like about Bethesda. I've played only Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3. Oblivion was utter rubbish. Morrowind, they say, is much better, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out. Fallout 3 was a travesty. I tried the former games but their control interface is beyond my patience. Hmm I like nothing about bethesda. Dang. Except for the first feeling of going into a dungeon in Oblivion, a torch in one hand and sword in other. That was cool, up until the next dungeon.

That's probably correct. That's also obvious and logical. It might not be choking itself financially (because there are always new gamers coming) but creativity is in short supply. I'd say that todays games get boring too quickly and are often too derivative. This will probably have a steady negative impact on sales and help piracy to grow, because people simply feel that the games are not worth their money. Who wants to buy the 50th sucky Diablo clone? Most people don't. But they crave to play that sort of game for the lack of anything better. So they just get the pirated version, get their fix and delete it. The reasoning might not be sound, but its what actually happens. i should have clarified that, I meant the PC games industry. Its in a sorry state over the consoles as it is, and derivative games/console ports wont help it regain its former role. Entire genres are on deaths door like flight simulators, managment games, adventure games, third person action comes almost only in the form of console ports, unique cross genre titles are beyond rare, RPG's have come down to one or two good titles a year... Shooters and strategies are the only ones holding their ground and that's only because of control issues on consoles.

Actually its a pretty decent shooter.

I never said they didn't entertain the sociopath in me, just they were in no way as fine or as successful as the latter ones And Oblivion sold a ton more than Morrowing and looked better. What's your point? Oblivion is a case of good advertising, GTA III of great design - vastly superior to the original GTA1/2 formula. Their success stories can't really be compared at all. In fact Oblivion proves that you can sometimes get away with no innovation at all if you know how to repackage and reuse ideas to look appealing.

I never said they didn't entertain the sociopath in me, just they were in no way as fine or as successful as the latter ones

You've said it youself. Sequelitis and lack of innovation are what's really choking the game industry, not pirates. Games get worse every year, and ultimately the blame, again, rests on developers/publishers who would rather make FIFA 2026 than take a risk and innovate. Pirates won't be the ones bringing anything down in any substantial way. The greed for quick and easy money will though. Grand Theft Auto series are a prime example. The first two games were more or less rubbish, but they we're innovative and the gameplay was improvable. The Rockstar people pushed onwards and made GTA III, which made them successful and proved that persistence pays off. They dared to innovate and grew rich as a result. The same goes for Blizzard, or Bioware with BG and there are tons of other examples. Squaresoft's Final Fantasy was named so, because it was the companys last bid for success before bankrupcy. The lesson is, if you dare to innovate you have a chance at succeeding. If you repeat the same thing endlessly (a defining trait of EA) you deserve to fail, and the pirates wont be the ones to put the nail in your coffin. Your stupidity will. DRM, piracy bla bla - its all just running away from the real issue: if you want people to buy games, make good ones. With good games the chances that you'll go bankrupt are slim. With bad ones its inevitable.

It appeals to your common sense in the first place. If that isnt enough then get this: games have come from garage based projects to multi million dollar affairs in just two decades with the pirates there from day one. Its obvious their impact is vastly exaggerated, therefore all the moaning over piracy serves nothing but to support a corporate policy. A senseless corporate policy at that, whose only trait is that it damages legitimate users.

Then it will cease to be important, but we're talking about now - now they are a hassle and they are having a detrimental effect on actual sales with corporate people shifting the blame for their own greed onto pirates who as is an obvious fact - have coexisted with the gaming industry for decades.

The first delusion is that piracy has in fact substantially harmed the gaming industry and it throws people into advocates/justifiers on one side and opponents on the other. In the last decade I've only seen the gaming industry expand and grow at a steady rate. Never has a developer gone bankrupt because of piracy, rather the usual reason was a string of economically unsuccessful games and lack of funding to support new projects. Therefore the impact of piracy is in fact slight. This is because piracy does not equal sales lost, as corporate people seem to think it does. Simply put, those who pirate in 90% of the cases wouldnt buy the game in the first place. Therefore its important to know that when we talk about piracy we talk about a 5-10% added profit to the publisher/developer. Its not a case of a terrible economic blow ,its just a cut in profits. While they are entitled to it of course, as the product of their labor, the lack of it will hardly ruin either the developers or the publishers. And that is why no dev has ever gone bankrupt over piracy, and none ever will. How does this relate to DRM? My main argument is this: Over 5-10% profit increase, you, the publisher/developer are screwing over legitimate customers with annoying and intrusive software. Now, I can get any pirated game at any time, and we all know it wont have DRM and will likely work better than the original. I wont get caught, and it will be free. So what's my reason for buying a game? None. Throw all the moral crap out of the window, and the stone cold fact remains: I have no reason to buy your game, when I can get it better and free. But if I do want to buy it? Why would you want to turn me away by adding DRM? This is where DRM ceases to make sense. It will not stop pirates, it hasn't obviously. It will not make you any richer, and in fact it will make you poorer as more and more people turn to piracy. Whether their justification for doing so makes sense is a moot point, but its ultimately unimportant. Again the facts are: the more DRM > the less you will sell. So DRM is just digging one's own grave through typical corporate greed "for just that 5% more". And thats all there is to it.