RPGmasterBoo

I doubt it. But it could be financially successful and not match up to the expectations of some git in EA marketing section. That's a bigger worry. But that was Biowares mistake given EA's record of killing all creativity.

That's one way of seeing it. Another is that the project never was their full priority, which is a common speculation. BGII was after all made in 2 years. But until it comes out all we have is speculation.

You're just repeating your previous argument of judging a game by its one optional - almost comic relief segment. Its biased, and therefore invalid. In fact strong personal dislike is all I get from your post, justified by repetition of one sentence, unfounded and unsupported by proof of any sort. Besides your signature would raise the eyebrows of any serious RPG player, as to the value of your judgment. Therefore what's the use of arguing?

It a strong gut feeling. So sue me.

Your focus on nude cards really shows you didn't even consider the game properly. Its a lame argument - the equivalent of me saying that Jade is a stupid arcade game because it has a flying minigame. I can name these people, and I know their gaming background. If you can name yours as well and their arguments- fine. Superficially different, the basic setup of the games is the same. I should have replaced stories with gameplay, and overall game design. My mistake.

DA isn't out, therefore it cant really be discussed yet. It could be the next best thing since pre sliced bread, or it could be just like all its predecessors. No use commenting.

The Witcher had its flaws, and lack of polish but the underlying experience was fresh and original. I've personally participated in discussions and the general consensus amongst a very large crowd of veteran RPG gamers was that it was a superior product to almost everything that came out since BGII. Its not Torment but, what is? True their pacing is better. But their stories are all the same from KOTOR onwards. They are not even trying to break the fairytale good/evil mold. The alignment systems shows this. Their gameplay is devolving to a mind bogglingly stupid level, at the point where you can go through the games blindfolded. Etc etc.

The Poles have a long way to go to become a civilized western country.... Mature...tsk. The girls from your country don't even require flowers. I can confirm that myself Not that that's an answer to my reply anyway.

And just shows how far you got in the game. Not to mention it shows what was your interest in the first place, since you ran around looking for flowers (probably expecting her to bake you muffins in return or something) instead of following the story.

The Witcher was mature? How? The world lacked the fairy tale black and white morality and the motivations of individuals in it were wholly believable. The PC's actions had real consequences, and there was no "good" or "evil" path through the game, merely the choice between bad options. The game didn't care for mainstream opinions, and included sex, swearing, drugs, alchohol, rape, incest and all sorts of things politically correct games avoid. At the same time it didn't preach or take itself too seriously, knowing to joke at its own expense. This kind of not pompous storytelling, unburdened with moral absolutes is probably only seen in fallout 1 and 2, and ultimately that's what made it popular and admired in the community. While the reviewers were essentially bashing the game for not paying them the usual bribe, the gathered grades of users on various game sites showed how people knew to appreciate not being treated as morons. As is prevalent in games today.

The Witcher did it right because its developers did what they wanted - political correctness be damned. Plus they were mature people working to please a mature crowd. Dragon Age won't do it correctly because someone in Bioware equates maturity with tons of blood, lame brothels and gay romances. Not only that, it buried itself with the claim that its the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and I for one have been playing that game for almost a decade and I don't see the resemblance. At all. What makes me sad is that someone who offers something new eg. Troika, today CDProjektRed always ends up bankrupt while Bioware who has been repackaging a dumbed down version of Baldur's Gate gameplay, for the last decade - is showered in praise. The only true reason their games are considered best is that there is almost no competition. There hasn't been for years. Untill the Witcher came out and it became obvious how immature Mass Effect, Jade Empire and KOTOR are in comparison.

Well you'll probably enjoy the 15 or so hours of the main story line. Just don't blink, or you might miss it.

Well we are all waiting for DA. Its hard to say anything conclusive about the game but my hopes aren't exactly high after playing Bioware's games from 2002 onwards.

All except a few. You are quite intelligent enough to see that and sice you played the game you know it very well. It could mean so many things yet you didn't ask for clarification and went straight to contradiction I dont get this better role playing mantra you keep repeating, and since I'can't bother to repeat the same thing for the tenth time I'll just quote Morgoth: "It's still the overall experience that matters. BG2 may have "worse" role-playing than ME, but it's still the better and more enjoyable game, thus superior. So I don't care about "better role-playing" since every supposed choice has been a weak fake anyway."

Of course. NWN OC was DnD's Diablo 2. Except that Diablo 2 was more fun to play.

You are getting very tiresome and contradicting only for the sake of contradiction. Everybody knows that BG1 was the first real time-with-pause, isometric DnD RPG in the infinity engine. Every single Bioware/Obsidian/Black Isle game is derived from it as far as gameplay is concerned (except for lionheart). Those are facts, nothing more nothing less. You'll have to start reading my post. Its quite clear. I said they made one aspect better, but everything else was screwed. Yes, Jade Empire had more in depth characters, but it had the the worst action gameplay ever seen, the shallowest charater progression possible, a very predictable plot,very few side quests and places to explore, a lame morality system and finally for the 50$ it costs you could finish it in a day of playing, after which you wont even remember what you played since everything except for a character or two is utterly forgettable. Like a friend of mine said, if games were drinks, Jade Empire was lemonade. What are you talking about? Every single planetside mission on ME is a kill mission. You can wrap it up in whatever lame quest you want, but the only thing I recall doing in ME on planets was going through tottaly identical corridors of two or three generic dungeons stuffed with crates and killing everything in them. A few of the missions had a non violent option and that was it.You are stretching the truth to prove your point as if we are in court or something.

ToB? Here's mine BG2 ToB BG1 KOTOR Hotu NWN Mass Effect Jade Empire SoU Overall its: BG2 + ToB Planescape Torment Fallout The Witcher Vampire Bloodlines Gothic II

If you could tell an epic story in a few pages, LoTR wouldn't have a thousand. Epic role playing requirs a lenghty plot, lots of twists and a feeling of lasting adventure. Obviously epic isnt a requirement for a good RP. Fallout never really feels epic but its still great. The same goes for VtM Bloodlines, for example. But Bioware likes to make epic games and I feel that is exactly where the stories of latter RPGs are unsuccessful. You forget that BG was first of its kind. The concept has been refined later, but what I always thought and still think is that Bioware hasn't really improved anything since BGII, even though you get more options quest wise (in NWN and KOTOR), or more detail to characters (Jade), or a more cinematic experience (ME) the games as a whole fall flat. For everything that was done well in them something else collapsed. For example in ME for the sake of (admittedly) pretty graphics, and good (visual) character design, the same characters ended up shallow and the overall world design felt crappy since every planet except the main quest ones was more or less identical...

Ah so that's where the misunderstanding was. To me better role play has nothing to do with how many options the PC has, what's important is whether the ones offered feel meaningful, whether the gamer really feels that the chosen dialogue option carries weight and that it would be something he would say (regardless of what's actually going on behind the scenes). For me the choices offered in BGII felt like real choices, while in the latter games whatever you chose felt irrelevant, you're still rewarded, usually much more than you felt you earned (It took 3 days to reach lvl 20 in NWN, while it took the entire gameplay of BGII for just around 12 levels) . Choosing from the offered options felt like choosing between vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Whichever you pick its still ice cream. This goes for Jade Empire and Mass Effect especially, and somewhat less for NWN and KOTOR. Here's an example, when you burn through the 300 hundred hours of adventure from the first BG to ToB, and finally get to make the choice at the end, you look back through all the sweat and blood it took to get there , and damn - you are actually getting to decide your destinly at last after being thrown around by fate, hunted, chased and god knows what for so long. You're choosing how things go and you feel you earned the choice. On the other hand in the last six days I've thouroughly completed KOTOR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect (90% of game content seen). For something that was supposed to be epic role playing, it boiled down to the goodie goodie choice and the baddie baddie choice, none of which I cared about, forcing you to make the persistantly irritating (and totally impersonal) save the world goal (or screw the world goal). I'm role playing me why do I give a toss about the world, galaxy or whatever??

BG3 rumors have persisted for years... At least it would be unrelated, I wouldnt like to see a real sequel, that story is done and it has played its part.... But I dont see the point of using the game's name anymore, a lot of time has passed and the older games who know what BG is about wont be fooled by the use of the name, while the newer gamers are just likely to be confused...

Its just a question how much repetition bores you. As for DnD, pathfinder is an option certanly, while the 4E is... horrible Funny thing though, regardless of our opinions on the matter Bioware has abandoned the license for a time at least, and Obsidian is making an expansion only. Actually I'm not aware of any DnD games being made at this time apart from SoZ. (KOTOR3?) Which just might show that devs are foucsing on other things as well.

I disagree. It is precisely through intertwining the story with the gameplay that Obsidian has pushed the boundary of RPGs in the Mask of the Betrayer, as story is such a vital feature of RPGs. The Spirit Meter mechanic in the Mask of the Betrayer is the perfect example of this - it was innovative, fitted well with the story and provided for very interesting gameplay options that fed back again to an engaging story in a loop. That definitely pushed the boundary of RPG gameplay and in a very positive way. If you exclude the Mask of the Betrayer, however, and concentrate solely on previous titles, than you may have a point, though I never felt particularly bothered by that. That said, I liked the innovation of the MotB so much, that I am somewhat apprehensive that Obsidian might back off further such experiments due to the negative reaction of some posters on the forums to the Spirit Meter mechanic. Yep though it seems the best way to enrich the experience is to break rules and introduce new things. Perhaps DnD 3.5 might be getting a little stale cRPG wise. Like in the Witcher, where a new studio sold 800000 copies of a game practically overnight just because they dared to offer something different. That's what I was adressing in the first post, the need to move on from tired and overused concepts. Its easy to forget that Bioware invented the real time party based, isometric dnd gameplay what, nine years ago? A lot of time has passed, and it might need to be thoroughly changed. I'm very eager to see what the Alien RPG will have to offer. A bit less enthusiastic on Alpha Protocol. And as far as Stom of Zehir is concerned, i think it'll be good, though without breaking new ground....

How are you debating, by repeating that those games are better RPG's, no reasons, no clarification - nothing? At least I tried to list what I believe to be glaring faults of those games. You just repeat one sentence over and over, stating what you believe is fact and its up to me or anybody else to accept it. Besides, wheter you agree with me or not is completely unimportant, this is a forum not a church. Not because you disagree, but because you communicate on the level of a teenager. Most sucessful at what? In bringing them cash? That's the only thing that they could have meant when they said it, but if money is what counts then The Sims is the best game ever made. There might be such adventures, but in cRPGs many things that are part of pen and paper rp don't count. So in a computer game unlike real rp you are by default left with a limited set of things you can do. NWN simply doesnt use even the resources it has available to give the game at least a little depth. Except in BG you get 6 characters with their own class skills and abilities which gives you a lot of options in combat. in What are you options in NWN? BGII and especially Temple of Elemental Evil showed how you could use a lot of DnD's potential - combat wise. NWN limits this even further up to the point where even Diablo II might be more tactical.