bhlaab

As someone who is actually spending money on the games, I don't really give a **** how much it sells I just want something that's good. If it's a success that's alright but I'd rather have a game that doesn't pander to demographics or use a reliable brand name as a crutch. "Games are art" I hear. Well act like it then! ps: The entire gothic series is unplayable garbage because of bad control and interface decisions

I think the biggest way to reclaim the Fallout "feel" would be to have a more reddish-brown color pallette. In Fallout 3 the only places where I got that feeling was around the southwest area of the map, the rest of the game used a lot of hazy greens which is more Postman and less Mad Max. Since it takes place in Nevada I'd say flatter terrain is more or less a given. However, I personally can't see myself being too happy with trundling through empty deserts to get somewherem and fast travel always feels like cheating to me. What would be cool is if fast travel had random enemy encounters and, if a special landmark happens to be in the "path" of your fast travel a mix of perception, luck, and maybe an outdoorsman skill would roll to decide if a little window pops up "You discovered an abandoned church. Check it out? [YES/NO]" That way it kind of balances out the fact that you're missing all this neat stuff if you don't take every journey in realtime. Another thing that was kind of a pain was that after level 10 or so the wasteland becomes filled with about a billion Death Claws. I thought they said they were fixing the scaling issues!

Eidos Montreal has heavily hinted that their soon to be announced second project is a new Thief. Yeah, they've also heavily hinted that Deus Ex 3 will be godawful so again, don't hold your breath over it.

Baldur's Gate 1 in Tutu. Never played it before. It's alright, but I'm starting to get sick of it. I'm in the middle of doing the expansion content right now I think I might just let Dulrag and his tower Sit on It and just finish the game

You really wanna know? Fuel (05/12/09) Damnation (05/26/09) Bionic Commando (May 2009) Red Faction Guerilla (06/09/2009) Ghostbusters (06/13/2009) Prototype (June 2009) Resident Evil 5 (07/13/09) Dark Void (08/04/09) Just Cause 2 (September 2009) Alpha Protocol (October 2009) Dragon Age Origins (11/03/09) Max Payne 3 (Winter 2009) White Gold (2009) No Time for Dragons (2009) Age of Decadence (2009) Borderlands (2009) Man of Prey (2009) Mafia 2 (2009) Arcania: A Gothic Tale (2009 winter) Precursors (2009) The Broken Hourglass (2009) Risen (2009) Black Mesa (2009) Tension (2009) Singularity (2009) Dead Rising 2 (2009) Painkiller: Resurrection (2009) Reluctant Hero (2009) Wolfenstein (2009) Afterfall (2010) Zero Projekt (tba) Rage (2010) Mass Effect 2 (2010) Scars of War (2010) (PS: You really don't want to start looking forward to a new Thief game, you're only setting yourself up for crushing disappointment when it turns out to be terrible)

If New Vegas sticks with VATS instead of, say, having a fully turn based system (cough)... I would definiately like to see VATS expanded a lot. Like instead of zooming in on the enemy, it goes into a sattelite view of the battlefield and you can do a lot more than just shoot. Like spend AP to move around with frozen enemies, make a choice between normal and targeted shots, use items, change your stance, choose between burst and single fire, and reload (It was SUCH a pain to not be able to reload your weapon manually in VATS) Also rebalance the damage modifiers and keep the enemies from moving around during VATS. There was nothing more aggrivating than having a 95% chance at your shots and not making any of them because the **** ducked behind a wall. There is a modder at NMA who has been working on a huge megamod, and he's working on a lot of other interesting things like making enemies have a set amount of ammo to expend and action points. He also happened to do a pretty substantial rewrite of the AI so all of that working together means the bad guys no longer just charge at you and unload-- one of the absoloute biggest problems with Fo3's combat. In realtime it just looks ridiculous and stupid and plays cheap. I know in the short-ish turn around time for new vegas not a whole lot can be addressed about rewriting entire routines, but something needs to be done.

I gotta say I am sick to death of this awful KotoR good/evil mechanic. Not only is it pointless and easily exploited, but designers tend to use it as a crutch instead of actual emotional depth and choice. Instead of the player's actions having a naturalistic effect on the world, it just turns into an incredibly transparent "pick your alignment" For example, there was nothing difficult or morally ambiguous about Bioshock. You'd come up to a little sister and the icons might as well have been labeled [GOOD ENDING] and [bAD ENDING]

Right. Look at Anachronox on how to do serious and humorous at the same time. Also being able to play for all the families in New Reno was a disappointment. More decisions that mean something. Players dont need to be coddled. Something Beth doesnt seem to understand. I liked how you could focus on one or play them all against each other for your own benefit. Maybe they should have made it so doing quests for one family makes the quests for the other families more difficult, so you end up screwing yourself a bit.

I think people focus too much on those few negative aspects of Fallout 2, and forget that gameplay wise (not to mention scope) it was an improvement over Fallout 1 by leaps and bounds. And to be honest, the tribal stuff at the beginning bothered me more than the dumb gags. Of course, any monty python reference in any entertainment medium is instantly groan-worthy.

Desperate; Hopeless; Alone... Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression... What can I say? It's Fallout.

This should be in bolded in point 72 font at the top of every page in the design docs

Use a town-by-town reputation system for NPC responses, and a less tangible karma system for generalized alignment. You know, like Fallout 2 did. It worked.