Monte Carlo

In all the time he's posted here I've not seen anything that wasn't provocative and / or disputatious. At first I thought he was a clever troll using a .alt then I realised he was just an old-skool troll. Get him onto Stalin. He'll defend purges, famines and genocide. The guy is, literally, vile.

Wow, are you the owner of www.strawman.com? The drama queen was the guy who flounced out and withdrew his pledge because of muskets. I'm here for the long haul and have been since 2004.

I've flogged it to death dlux. I really have. As I've said, we can reach a compromise, I'm sure. BG2 is the least worst template for me. But my biggest fear, as Lurky has so eloquently pointed out, is the hordes of bloody awful CRPG romance fans who will flock here from Bio social as soon as Obz announce romances. If they do I'm outta here.

I feel the same way. Do it right (like in BG2) or don't do it at all. The romances in BG2 were a very small part of that huge game, but they really improved the story imo. And I have no doubt that Obsidian cannot do it though, they are an awesome developer. You see, if they confined romances to BG2 levels then I could live with it. I wouldn't much like it, but I could live with it.

We live in a process-driven world in the West. I see it with some people in their very early twenties in my job: if they don't have a process or organogram for how to do something they kind of... power down. Now, I'm not hating on young people in their early twenties, far from it because I enjoy their company. It's just that the way they've been educated, in a very PC, risk-averse, all-must-have-prizes world, where even rebellion is regulated, rubs off on their problem solving skills. So the quote from Dishonored does not surprise me.

I am not going to trouble myself with tropes or characteristics like wit or style or urbanity. The bottom line is that the bad guy needs to do something to you that is beyond the pale. It should become, if it isn't already, personal.

Molarbear, I'm a big fan of RTFM (note the 'F') but I'm in danger of being run out of town for being too old-skool as it is

I mean no offence, I really don't... but you do realise that this is the language of the re-education camp, don't you?

Yeah, Tim needs some serious bling. And some diamond studded teeth. He'd be da bomb.

When I finally get around to recruiting a relentless army of zombies to storm the Houses of Parliament, made up of indefatigable, drooling, single-minded fanatics, I'm going to get a load of CRPG romance fans on board. They are incredible, completely irrepressible. Like knotweed.

I'm a massive fan of planning replayability in at the start of the process, i.e. taking into account that all of us are going to be playing the PE version of Chateau Irenicus lots of times. But... and but. They should always plan for the first time too. We only get to experience the start of this story for the first time once.

I am assuming that there is one starting point for all characters regardless of their race / class etc. From a narrative point of view I think that this is actually trickier than it looks. We know this game starts with a very significant, impactive event. Is that the time to be showing us how to left click / right click / kill rats? I don't think so. From that event on I want to be wrapped up in what's going on. So, from that perspective I say have a tutorial outside of the game or the main event. A bit like in BG1 you moseyed around Candlekeep and learnt how to do sutff before the big event with Gorion and Sarevok.

Actually, most evil characters in popular culture are white men with European accents. Particularly British and Russian accents. As a white man with a British accent I couldn't care less, because generally most rational people don't mistake me for the evil bad guy in a game or movie. And I think our accents suit the archetype, as it happens, as much as German ones did thirty years ago. Do I start a fiery crusade about this? No. Most achingly PC artists, who are usually left-of-centre in any case, go out of their way to shoe-horn non-traditional characters into movies and games. Again, I'm relaxed about it and I see why they might choose to do it. But no, to Long-Marchers you must always be aggrieved. No concession is enough. Everything is an insult. I tire of it.

The Obsidian developers are, basically, the A-Team abut without the jewellery, fear of flying and poor marksmanship scores. They went rogue and hit the LA Underground after a series of bad Metacritic scores. They use dubious funding sources. They are currently locked in a shed making a CRPG using acetylene torches, pieces of corrugated iron and the big end of a 1978 Chevvy Impala. They even managed to rescue Tim 'Howling Mad' Cain from Troika a lunatic asylum. Col. Ferg 'Hannibal' Urqhart loves it when a plan comes together.

Another thread inspired by sociologists trying to despoil gaming with some old-school Gramscian bull****. Begone! IT'S A GAME.

Denial ain't a river in Egypt, baby. Ain't you read Ferg's half-hearted comments about romances?

Hey, like I give a toss if you want to use your professional knowledge as a stick to beat me with. You get my drift, and you also know that I haven't got a clue what OnKilled() means.

I would be astonished if anybody under the age of twenty had even heard about this game.

... and this is my least favourite update and it creates more questions than it does answers.

I want to see characters as dumb as a bag of hammers have as interesting dialogue choices as those who min / max their communication skills and stats. Indeed, PS:T was awful for this, and it wasn't really clear when you made your first character that TNO didn't really need anything other than soft skills.

They said they will add at least one dungeon like IWD, not that the entire game will be a dungeon crawl. And how will XP work in that bit? We need a dev to give us a clue. I don't want every little action to be a scripted objective.

^ I'll keep saying it, but they referenced games like Icewind Dale, not me. How does this decision fit into that?

what answers have we had? I'd like to see a green name on the left hand side of the post before I'm completely happy.

Excuse me? It's a single-player game.

Completely agree with Sylvius. I don't want to be completely constrained by a critical path. I want to have the option to explore and Do Stuff. I leave rigid, critical path-type stuff to Bioware. If Obz could elaborate on how XP will be handled I'll be grateful.