Gizmo

These days you do... I remember trying to play Dungeonkeeper over dialup and it was a synced slideshow (Can you imagine multiplayer D3 and tracking all of the swarm with dial-up connection?) **What of those on a paid plan were just connection costs them money.... They would have to pay every time they wanted to play a singleplayer game at home. **What of those with Satellite Internet? Those unlucky folks won't be able to play when it rains. Its nuts to require this on the single player campaign. I'm sure they had options... This is just the most commercially advantageous. IMO they should rather of prohibited Online play without an online character ~and/or the option to convert a Singleplayer PC (which they could control, or even interpret as a means of filtering out hacked PCs) ~or just not allow single player PCs to ever access battle-net. I'd have bought it, and likely never bothered with Battle-net. Between Diablo 1 & 2, I think I played Battle-net less than 20 times total (and that's double what I recall).

Not fine, just legal. The world is full of jerks that get by on that. **There is a flip-side though (and it can be equally abusive). I worked in a "central business district" that was primarily non-residential, and did not offer cable tv or internet, because there were no lines laid, and too few customers to justify the expense. My boss's nephew came to work for him and was to share the upstairs mini-apartment in the warehouse. He flipped at learning there was no cable and them refusing to supply service; Somehow he learned the conditions of the cable company's arrangement with the city, and that it stipulated that they MUST provide service to anyone within the city limits who asks... So after a letter threatening to put his complaint into the local newspaper. the cable company agreed ~and tore up parts of the street for several blocks. They laid the line, and the supplied service; (And he was only staying in town for two months).

But it is uncomfortable, the idea at least, of having a single player game you can't play without going online. Or at least not having the choice to do so, if you want to. Absolutely agreed.

Alas, I was a locked in buyer as well, and have played since the first game; and was looking forward to it additionally, because Leonard Boyarskiy was a lead developer on it... But I have already decided to let it pass by due to the internet demands and the single-player saving my games on their server requirement. I've got plenty of other games I've bought and not finished to last me a few years. I won't even bother with Diablo3 except to admire the game on Youtube.

How's that any way related ?Everyone, the industry and consumers, benefitted from having one standardized storage medium instead of two competing ones. Because they were better. (Do you disagree?) ** Consider the HD player: Every one of them was designed to update online, and the spec ensured that every HD player would play every HD disc... Was that true of Blu-ray? (rhetorical).

It is another nail; Now we know how Betamax and HD-DVD owners felt; (and for similar reasons ).

It was a strategy game long before FO:Tactics. and neither of those games were Fallout #3; they were spin-offs... and I would have loved for the combat system in Tactics to had been folded back into the series ~Sans the RT/mode. I draw the boundary at looking at a localized version (with an unfamiliar language), and not recognizing it for a Fallout game. I draw the line at abandoning the core game and simply re-using the IP setting and assets ~in a differently designed game, made for a player that's looking for a Sci-Fi TES. Why would a series player want a TES-like franken-shooter as a sequel to a top down tactical RPG that [actually] rewarded varied roleplaying? In TES/FO3 all you can make is a Walker Texas Ranger clone ~anything else and you go against the design of the game. IIRC it was learned on the forum that few if any had actually played the games, and some of them had never heard of it. I assume that Emil & Pete played them (they were reviewers at Adrenaline Vault). The originals exist, and that's plenty ~they did it right to begin with and its a setting that loses its charm the farther you go into the future; because the series is about recovery and not perpetual 50's apocalypse. Their interpretation is a disservice IMO. It seems derived from a cursory glance at some Lets-Plays on youtube, and has gone overboard with wacky 50's shtick (Due I suspect, to misinterpreting the special encounters as canon, and not 4th wall pokes at the player for sake of atmosphere and levity in such an oppressive setting). It gets you free publicity. By people naive enough to think that a new game will resemble the old one in the gameplay department. And by those who cry and complain that the new installment will somehow ruin all their precious childhood memories. It works because gamers get terribly upset when someone so much as touches their beloved franchise. Take the emotion out and it should be pretty obvious that revisiting IPs that had their high-point 17 years ago is an indication of a cheap cash-in or a desperate act to gather some attention. And if publishers have no faith in those games why should we care? There is plenty of bad games out already. I've played good sequels that were in keeping with the series they came from; Making everything a First person shooter/stabber is not some great gaming panacea.(Though it will sell a lot of discs & downloads. ) *Troika's PA project demo video [iMO] had more "Fallout" spirit in its four minutes than any other game I've seen in the last ten years. Its a sad shame they did not get the chance at it. Sadder still is that Bethesda's engine is perfect for a Fallout game ~just not the way they chose to use it. **Yes, I'd have preferred the setting only used for spin-offs if they felt that a FO3 could not sell this decade ~there is always the next decade.

The mistake (from my perspective) is recycling an old franchise with new gameplay... If they want a new game they should make one; IMO they should not make a new Diablo (as anything but) ~that's what the series gameplay is about. How does it make sense to pull a game out of the last millennium and redesign it for modern users (who don't want it unless its completely re-made as something else)? ** Imaging a company digs into the past decides to market slide-rules; but no one these days would use one like they had originally... so they add a digital read out to display the results, and later they decide to make it smaller by replacing the bulky metal rules with a numeric keypad... But they still call it a slide rule on the box. Is that so different as we've seen with redone games? I like finding a new weapon that works better and replacing the old one; Its something the PC would do in that situation. Combat in RPGs is the minigame where you have to win the privilege of being shown the next piece of the story; If your PC dies on their way through the swamp, you (the player) don't get to the next chapter in the game. Wanting to "skip the grind" is perhaps reason to just skip the game and watch the cutscenes; or perhaps suggest a "skip" option be present during combat and when pressed, have the game assume that you won and continue on getting to the point. The problem is the word "grind", and that is that it means differing amounts to different players. The guy that finds combat or skill use to be boring thinks, "Oh not another one, I hate these silly overland fights when I just want to get to the town"... While a different player thinks, "So he gets ambushed again by another fool" and he dives right in to the fight merrily dealing out carnage to the unsuspecting brigands; While still another player thinks, "these guys don't have any good loot, so I'm leaving", then at the next encounter, "Ah... These guys have some cool loot so I'll be taking it from their decapitated corpse". I'll admit that calling it a +3 sword, and the next a +5 sword is pretty uncreative, and uninteresting; but having them perform that way under the hood is not wrong IMO. Having the hero find an elvish saber that is just incredible in a fight is a good way to put it, but actually might be no different at all to the engine. *** Interestingly enough... I like the Witcher (we are talking about the first one right?); I liked it for the combat most, but I also liked the visuals, the art design, the animation, the ease of suspending disbelief with the world and the main characters. I also liked that the player had to put out some effort to research monsters or miss out on certain components due to lack of skill and information. I liked that it reminded me of Fallout (1) where the NPCs opinions seemed to matter and could make things hard or easy for the PC. I liked that his choices caused consequences later in the game; and that it discouraged 'baby-stepping' or 'save-crawling' your way through the game.

My secret dream has always been to have a space sim/fps/rpg hybrid. Something along the lines of Privateer meets Deus Ex. But (in my example), the entire battle would either have to be paused while you played the marines boarding the ship, or lose the battle as it continues during the marine assault. *Its mutually exclusive gameplay. That's fine by me... so why dredge up a decade old game [not suitable for today's audience] and create a "food court" version? (Carefully tested to have just enough to be palatable to most, while never enough to be great to any ~as enough for one group is too much for the other.) What RPGs have you been playing!? (that you assume "coherent storylines, involving quests", and "diverse gameplay", are products of this "day and age")If anything RPGs have stagnated or even gotten worse in every single aspect other than 'eyecandy'. (And the sad part is that its not always the developer's fault ~ the market will pan a game that is too deep.) Its a funny thing, but if you play an older game like IcewindDale [or Eye of the Beholder 2, or Curse of the Azure Bonds], and you use a hacked PC at some ridiculous level and power ~Its no fun unless you actually built them up to that point. So yeah, I'd take that virtue any day in a good RPG. ___________________________________________ As an aside: I have not found a better shooter than Monolith's original BLOOD ~and I look. If you were making a Gauntlet Sequel, Diablo is not appropriate, If you are making a Diablo sequel, WoW and Oblivion are not appropriate. Changes away from the core series are never appropriate; You need to make a new series for that. It should not be a priority to bring Fallout (for instance) to a new generation, if you have to "tweak" it to the point of being something else completely; better to have left it alone.

I see nothing wrong with that at all. What are they supposed to change? (and why would it matter?) If something works (and works well), there is no reason to break it or mutate it for the sheer sake of mutation. (While I'm not planning on buying it), Diablo 3 looks like a superb sequel to Diablo 2 (and that is as it should be). If a developer wants a purely new creation, then they should come up with a new IP and new game mechanics. To needlessly alter the series mechanics in a sequel (like they way they did Fallout 3 for instance ) is tantamount to deliberately deceptive name re-use... Same as if someone tried to sell maltitol syrup labeled as honey, and packaged it in a little bear shaped bottle. You see the name, you remember the game, and you get nothing of the sort when you install it and try to play it. Starcraft 2 would have been many times worse of a sequel had StarCraft: Ghost shipped as StarCraft 2. I remember Ashley Cheng made a ridiculous comment some time back almost chiding Blizzard for not going First Person with Diablo 3 ~it was nuts. * About as nuts as releasing a turn based sequel to Gauntlet, a first person sequel to Myth; or a Homeworld 3 that goes first person during the marine assaults when boarding enemy ships. How? Please be specific. Diablo is about frenetic top-down hack-n-slash with a heavy dose of 'swarming'; Anything else... [making its gameplay like Resident Evil or left 4 dead] is an absurd break from the series ~and would be better incorporated into some other game series and not Diablo. Leonard Boyarsky's interview about it made some good points about their reasons for not going the deep multiple choice route with D3, and even though that's opposite my favored style... Its very in keeping with the Diablo series IMO.

Ah but I am. I love an RPG that contorts on the player's actions. I will replay a game years later and once again be impressed with it. ** What I find that I don't like much is a game whose developer decides that every location needs to be shown off to the player in one go. Its not so terrible for an area to be re-used with differing events, but IMO some areas should never be found by some PCs. ***Put more plainly... I'd be fine with entire cities not being mentioned if it went against the PCs attitudes, luck, or ethics. Consider Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean...

I agree, and I used the OTS mode for that ~I just couldn't stand to explore or fight in that mode. Then let them. Its a risk; and one that existed in Witcher 1 as well. See that combat clip I linked? Geralt should have been capable of drinking a potion at several points in the fight ~especially while he was in the hall by the steps and they were in the courtyard.

That seems perfectly fine, you just have to be careful, know your distances and use a few tactics. It looks like an improvement over the first game, but I can see why some find it tiring. Especially those used to bioware's (and others) click to win combat. I would not have minded at all if this was the gameplay in the close over-shoulder view (like the original had ~in a way), but I was disappointed that they discarded the other two modes seen in the original, and I could no longer play the series combat as before (this was something that had drawn me to the series to begin with and the way I'd have preferred to keep playing the series; In the previous game it was an option ~in this game its not ). The second problem is a bigger one though. In Witcher 2, Geralt is incapable of pulling a potion out and drinking it. That's right... To drink a potion [now], Geralt must find a place to kneel down (away from active threats), and pick one out of a list. Its awful (IMO). What it does is mildly akin to Painkiller's method of activating Tarot cards before a level ~it removes the the option of quick slots... Those three potion straps you used to see on him. Its jarring, because it not only goes against common sense (and Geralt's pragmatic approach to threats), but it was his common behavior before. Its a great game visually, but its developed some very contrived game mechanics IMO ~making it less than the original in some ways.

My biggest peeve was the changes to combat/ and potion use. I know from your post that you did not much care for the combat in either Witcher, but I really liked it in Witcher 1; and I agree with you about wanting to just be able to select a target and have him attack. And I'm of the same opinion with Fallout 3 / NV; I seriously would have preferred a game that was closer to the original series, than to FO3. * Closer in the same way to Dawn of War than say... Space Marine) The view is now restricted to the over-shoulder camera, (The ISO modes are completely gone ), and the combat game is all about accurate twitch attacks; Which means ~predictably that Geralt can hop around chaining attacks at nothing but air while his opponents just off center of him. It can be fun ~no mistake... but its not the fun I was hoping to find. Here is a clip [of combat] I made the first day I when I got the game. http://www.youtube.com/user/GizmoJunk?feat.../14/4olt1v4bPXA True.

Homeworld: (Is there anything better in all of Game-dom soundtracks?) Ground Control: C&C Generals/Zero-Hour: GLA Soundtrack Track #11 GLA Soundtrack Track #6 GLA Soundtrack Track #2 Heritic: The Docks (Unfortunately its a touch up.. Midi is hardware dependent and most examples of this one were pretty bad IMO; this one is close though). Tron 2.0: (Actually there are a lot of these, but not a lot of easy links to them.) Diablo 2: Fallout: Khans Of The New California

Well damn, that is pretty bad. Visually its very good; Doors in the game are a bit awkward, but not too bad. I don't personally like the changes to combat or item use ~That really screws up the game play IMO. Dialog is improved (based on what I've seen so far). The minigames are... eh.. passable and with some neat parts, but I don't much care for the timed button icons that flash on to the screen.... It ruins the event by directing your attention elsewhere (at the buttons). A clip that I made the first day: I have paused at the Kraken thing, but I plan to play the game through.I agree... The UI is beyond bad.

Thank you very much for that (and thank you for the great link)

Currently Disciples 3:Renaissance. (about 60 hours in)

Steam rather reluctantly because it's the only platform for launching FO:NV , although it's in offline mode by default. I have nice file shredders and real world physical document shredders which I use regularly. I use google for searches. Yes, I know they do profiling on just about anything. Were you thinking of google analytics which just about every second website is hooked up to? In that case, NoScript blocks it. As for cookies, I allow them where it's convenient (like these forums), for the rest, there are disposable virtual machines. Paranoid? Maybe, don't know. I give out info on a need to know basis That's pretty much me as well. I installed Steam because New Vegas was wrapped in it ~and that's the only reason. I use it for demoing games sometimes, but I'd buy the retail box [non-steam] if I decided I liked the game. (I also have a shredder, and I use Noscript, and I use Ghostery ~set to block everything possible.) **With the advent of D3's requiring a dedicated internet connection, and storing characters on their servers... I think I have re-evaluated my interest in buying D3. I like Boyarski's work, but that by itself is not enough; I think I'll pass this time. (and just watch the Lets-Plays on Youtube; Its a shame.. I was really looking forward to it.)

What is a "Technical Artist" @Obsidian ? Is that simply an Artist that can work within technical restraints (limitations/guidelines: like file sizes, pallets, and non-diffuse textures)? Or is there more to it?

I'm still in Chapter 1, but its looking good ~except for the limited potion use and simplified alchemy (or is it? So far it seems so.) I must say that I'd have preferred a game far closer to how Witcher 1 was, and was immediately put off by the dropped camera modes ~with only the scalp-cam remaining; but its a good game on its own merit. Combat is fun.

Its a wicked easter-egg that spans three products. It uses the adamantium golem artwork. I can't know it for fact without someone who was involved confirming... but its difficult to look at the art and description, and not make the several connections with Fallout Power Armor.

Power Armor in Baldur's Gate2:TOB

Two days ago... The Witcher Yesterday... Witcher 2 Today... Devine Divinity

The Witcher, Arcanum, Dragon sphere, and Dune 2.