Monte Carlo

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.

I'd love to see how this would have worked in Icewind Dale. This system is reminiscent of a game like Fallout, not a classic Fantasy CRPG and especially not a dungeon crawler.

They should be. If it's to be a credible world, some things should simply exist because they do, and not be part of some pre-written narrative. I'm talking specifically from a game design perspective. If they are there, then they provide a challenge for some reason. Even if that challenge is simply killing said creatures. The same reason you'll have chests to unlock and caves to explore. And so the circle turns. Why not just give XP in the first place then?

Alan you are basically saying that nothing should happen randomly. It's a reverse sandbox, in fact its a straight-jacket. It would suck.

Because you're looking at the term "quest" too rigidly. Think of it as "objectives." And in some cases, going out and exploring and killing some really tough guy that doesn't have a "quest" associated with it is still an objective and you'll gain XP. The same way that getting behind a locked door for fat rewards can gain xp. Alan I understand that but nobody has adequately explained to me how that works. I'll say it again - what happens when I meet tough wandering monsters and kill them? It's not part of a quest or objective or whatever you want to call it. What was the point?

Well I'm happy for you. Me? I like grinding wilderness areas, power-levelling and fighting tougher groups of monsters in new and interesting ways using different tactics and class combinations.

My concern is that exploration of wilderness areas / non-quest related content / dungeon crawling is somehow gimped so that the pure role-plaeyers feel good about their 95% score in basket-weaving. Edit: Before I get flamed and told to study game X or game Y, remember that this project was not advertised as the spiritual successor to Fallout or Vampire or whatever. It implicitly mentions games with more traditional models of XP gain. I'm not saying that non-combat skills shouldn't be rewarded, nor should there be no fulfilling non-combat quest resolution, but what I have seen mooted smacks more of Fallout than Baldur's Gate. And that wasn't what the developers presented.