Sannom

- AP lingered in 'Development Hell' for a while, and went through three iterations of the story that saw massive changes to the tone and characters. Apparently the team on it was utterly depressed at the point when Chris became Lead Designer and nobody really believed in it. In short, AP took a lot more ressources to make. - Aside from the commercial success, there is also the critical reception to consider, and that wasn't good, with many a publicized review that completely slammed the game. (1) Again, the costs aren't comparable. The time it took to get the game out of the doors isn't the same, the amount of resources put into the 'shiny' stuff, like cinematic dialogues, isn't the same, the score isn't the same, the development history for DS3 seems to have been a lot smoother than the one for AP, etc. (2) DA2 is considered a disapointment because people feel like Bioware's decisions made their toll on the reception of the game, and many gamers see it as the sign that the new direction didn't take very well with the fans. Despite this, Bioware and EA are more than likely pleased with the numbers that the game made, just like SE is pleased with the numbers that DS3 did, despite some gamers' insistence that they were, in fact, failures. (3) All those sequels were released three years maximum after original installments that were all massive hits, the public was still very aware of the existence of the previous game and the sequels kept the general gameplay of the originals. The DS series isn't as popular or well-known, even downright derided by some people as 'a game that plays itself', DS3 saw a big change in gameplay and focus, and was released a good 6 years after the last installment, all the time needed to get it out of the gamers' head.

Yeah, I thought the Texas had something to do with it . Well, best of luck in your future career!

More bad news, more people leaving Obsidian... what is happening ? Best luck to him in his new job though .

I'm always confused about that : I get the Red Alert reference, but did he ever say something even remotely like that in real life, or did the Red Alert crew just thought Stalin would have been the kind of guy to rip Machiavel off like that?

I don't know, I found what Feargus said to be smart and intelligent, but with their business model, those decisions are always out of their hands, so it doesn't feel like he's taking a huge risk in saying this. I laughed at one of the comments that said that Bethesda was having the right idea, contrary to most of their competitors. That's the company that now makes all of its games into Steamworks games, people! That's DRM!

Great ! Now even people outside the company are teasing us with that project !

The attack where Jeyne throws her spear is very, very vicious though, I wonder if that's what we're talking about. It's really hard to take it (seriously, Jeyne's aim is terrible) but when you do, the damage taken is obscene!

You can't enter the DLC from any point in the game, so I think you just have to download one of your saves and a pop-up will tell you what to do.

One thing : how the heck do you lose your endgame auto-save? Those things have their own spot in the list of saves, they're named differently, you would have to willingly delete them to lose them!

What makes you think this isn't a lesson they really learned after AP's release and subsequent bad reception?

The auto-save is called after the characters, it's called 'Katarina Endsave' for example.

Oh yeah, me too. I don't express it, but there is always that fear that maybe things won't work out. Cain knows some people in the team already, that should help I suppose. Also, the ones who are making a very big deal out of this are the fans, not Obsidian or its employees. To be frank, I wonder if we're not blowing things out of proportion. Well, at least those who have played Tim's games.

I wonder if he will be made a Project Director in the next few years? He's got the experience for it, I suppose!

You do realize that Nathaniel is the Lead Designer for the game, right?

Dungeon Siege 3 would probably disagree with you. The storyline and the characters are 'mature', but the game is still very colorful and you can play a real optimistic and idealist (the best example probably being the cyclops situation).

What was your decoy last time? Something about soccer? Yeah, not this time, mister

Not really. It's dead here, but the thread on Something Awful is still alive and kicking, more than sixty pages after two thread locked at 250+ page. I'm not sure Obsidian hoped/thought the game would be 'alive' for long. It's a single-player game with couch co-op, a short story and a big focus on combat. Nothing to make it last long. Obsidian's people aren't delusional.

I like playing Anjali as a glass canon myself, she is a crowd-murdering machine . I once wondered if playing human-Anjali was efficient... well, yes, it is. Especially once you get the Spear. And Fall from the Heaven is a weapon of mass destruction in its own right. Fully upgraded, even the biggest of enemies cannot resist it!

I'm not sure those are the good criteria for a comparison between the two . Sure, those are basically the reasons why I dislike Diablo-like, but it's also the reasons why the fans like it. If you're a fan of Diablo 2, maybe you should compare the sequel to it?

They're all presented as Dungeon Siege 3 art on the website though : http://cldesignstudio.blogspot.com/2011/05...re-to-come.html Which also makes Kotaku's article kind of really late. I think funcroc or someone else dug out those back in June.

In the Aliens gallery, you mean? That's Dungeon Siege 3 art.

I had the impression that Attack didn't affect the abilities' damage, and indeed, why would Attack improve the damage dealt by an invocation? With that in mind, the advantages of Will over Attack are obvious: - for some characters and stances, regular attacks are completely useless past a certain point while the abilities linked to them are still extremely powerful. Anjali and Lucas' crowd-control stance come to mind, with slow attack patterns but devastating abilities. Katarina, on the other end, has a stance that is completely focused on single-target damage, with an ability that does a lot of damage from the get go, so that you can forego Will and focus on Attack in order to make her regular attacks really powerful. - abilities will often be your best way of dealing damage, especially to crowds. So getting Will up is a very good thing to do.

I have my doubts that Obsidian would make that game after all this time. Perhaps something similar, but not the exact same game. If you're interested into that game, read this.

If it works at all like the Fall from Heaven power of Anjali, you have a little spot of light that indicates where the power will happen, I have a tendency to launch it at the feet of Anjali too by mistake.

Maybe I misunderstood the interview, but I also got the impression that we will never get to see Ulysse's face when he's talking, because his custom model makes lip-synching and facial emotions harder. We will only get to see his face when fighting or something. Also, Veronica's dialog about Elijah was recorded before the main game came out? No wonder there aren't so many call-backs to the DLC in the main game if they had to be thought of so much in advance!