Monte Carlo

Sten is the best NPC in the game. He's done something very, very wrong. He wants to die. He asks for no mercy, and expects none either. He loathes you, partly, because you offer him redemption in an honorable death in battle --- which you delay. OK, the way it's written you don't get much choice but that's a design fault. Mary Kirby can, IMO, take credit for one of the best Bioware NPCs for some time. Distinctive, nuanced, occasionally amusing. You even take him along despite his sub-optimal characger build. Vol, if he offends your morality leave him in his cage --- the darkspawn will slay him when Lothering falls. No problem. Cheers MC

Alignment is so, like, last century in RPG behaviour paradigms. Let's all move on.

^ I eagerly await a Qunari artillery minigame.

That Gamebanshee review is pretty much on the money, except that I would disagree about the combat... a bit. Yup, it's slightly too grindy but it's still good for a contemporary CRPG. Like everybody else, I'm interested in seeing where the franchise is going. Hopefully beyond the whole Grey Warden / Blight schtick, I like some of the nations they've described (The Imperium for example) and think they are solid enough to carry any number of plots. Cheers MC

I'm wondering how you have DA2 without Grey Wardens / Darkspawn / Blights etc. It seems to be the core of the setting. Not that I'd mind, I think Thedas is interesting enough to support a totally different plot but I just can't see Bio making the leap out of such an obvious comfort zone.

^ Wrong. How about a Shadowrun game set in 1972? Richard Nixon is a warlock, the monsters all wear flares and you can tear about in a Ford Camaro with laser guns on the hood. Groovy.

Mwuahahahahhaaaa!!! As for a tougher arch-demon... it's a Bio game right?

I vote for the Chaos Warden option --- let Ferelden fall as a firetrap for the Darkspawn to feed on and then reinforce someplace else for a counter-attack, a la Duncan's strategy. As the game makes clear, Ferelden is a backward place that smells of dogs and is run by buffoons. To hell with it, Chaos Warden's end cutscene sees the Archdemon raze Denerim as our (anti) Hero smirks, riding off to take advantage of the break in hostilities to form a new army. Of course, he sweet-talked the dumber NPCs to make their last stand with the Fereldens....

^ That's incorrect. If I leave my laptop, iphone and wallet on the backseat of my (unlocked) car door I can hardly complain that the police weren't doing their job properly when someone steals them. On the other hand, if I block the road both ends with rubble so nobody can walk down the street and booby-trap my car with dynamite in case anybody tries to break into it then I'm in the wrong. Copyright infringement is multi-jurisdictional. In some countries the legal infrastructure is good, in some it is poor. In certain parts of the world the authorities might have bigger problems to worry about than Ubisoft losing some money. That is an issue for Ubisoft --- and there are things they can do about it. Cheers MC

Until the very end DA robs you (robs I say!) of the sublime feeling of hitting level 19 and mowing through swarms of mooks like a tsunami of death. And when DA does give you that opportunity, it feels cheesy and contrived. I don't like the levelling either. Cheers MC

Security compliance schemes across all areas of human activity are problematic. Any crime prevention expert will tell you that --- it's the argument of proportionality. We could eradicate virtually all acquisitive crime by imposing curfews aggressively policed with heavy-handed sanctions. Execution or state-sanctioned indeterminate sentences for narcotics possession would put that one to bed. We could curtail people smuggling with privacy-degrading biometric ID cards for all. And so on. But they're not proportionate. In the UK the identity card scheme has cost hundreds of millions of pounds and is heading for the dustbin of political history. People asked, not unreasonably, why the government wasn't taking less draconican measures like actually enforcing the laws we already have to address the issues the ID cards were meant to solve. It's the same with gaming. The industry simply puts the smackdown on the honest. There seems to be little or no effort to punish theft. And it's wrong.

The movie industry, more analagous perhaps with gaming, is also managing quite nicely thankyou. In the UK IP bans for copyright infringement are beginning to become more popular. Any business that penalises the honest because it's easier than prosecuting the thief is on a hiding to nothing.

^ No, actually it isn't boring without a mage... it's an entirely different game. I played about 75% of my third playthrough without a mage... 2 x tank, 1 x melee rogue, 1 x archer (PC DW rogue, Alistair, Sten, Leliana). It was a lot of fun, the PC was a trap / bomb / backstab maestro, Al as meatshield, Sten as damage supremo and Leliana as all-round AK47 goddess. Some of the boss monsters were a pain, but it wasn't boring at all.

The music industry managed to adapt and survive in the digital age, but the gaming industry (allegedly hi-tech) is still flailing around like a rubber Godzilla in a late 60's Japanese disaster movie. Piracy is an issue, sure, but the happy confluence between DRM and increased revenue harvesting hardly seems coincidental.

It's pointless arguing about balance with Vol. Because DA does have a definite balance problem with mages... it's all pro and no cons. That you can make a pure melee mage adds insult to injury, ditto consequence free Lyrium-chugging. Balance demands that for these benefits you pay a couple of hindrances. In D&D it's glass cannon syndrome with mages --- great magic but mucho fragility. In Company of Heroes the glass cannon is the Sherman Firefly tank. It has the best Allied AT gun in the game. You hear the gun going off as a German player and you crap yourself because two or three of them can make scrap metal of your tanks... but they are fragile. Average AT infantry can eat them for breakfast. You have to protect them with infantry and other armour, spot for them and think. In other words, they are a balanced unit to be used judiciously. DA abandons this completely with the mage class, which is why I only have one in my party. Two and it becomes a screen-saver, just like CoH would with up-armoured Sherman Fireflies. Cheers MC

The irony is that Krezack is being patronizing by... not trying to be patronizing. 'Normal People' like a whole combination of things. One minute they are playing Guitar Hero on the Wii at 3AM with their friends then the next day they are playing Alpha Centauri III and micro-ing their space empire. Not in Krezzie's world, where you are either the sort of person whose brain is taxed by Halo 2 or a backwoodsman who only plays American Civil War hex-based wargames only six people bought. :: sigh ::

I defer to your knowledge, mighty one.

The way I feel about DRM I almost want big-budget gaming to die on the PC. A small cottage industry making a few games for people without attention deficit disorder free of DRM, DLC, invasive malware to track how you play... Yeah! Year Zero gaming. Rogue-likes! Emulators! The gaming equivalent of heading to the hills with a hunting rifle and a box of tinned food.

Mod Request: Ostagar-Be-Gone. Wow I'm starting a new game and it feels pretty hard work. Just like Dungeon Be Gone for BG2 I'd like a mod that gives me all the loot and XP I'd have gotten just after the ogre battle and waking up in Flemeth's hut.

Just read the Awakenings FAQ --- the 'Dead Warden' thing is OK by me (they simply say if you want to suspend disbelief and play that character then that's your call and they ain't gonna stop you) but both NPCs already leave me cold. And Oghren. Oghren? Honestly, he's the major NPC. I shake my head, he's probably the worst DA NPC. And there's no romances A mixed bag, but lots of new skills and talents and powaz too.

No I don't think the term RPG is meaningless, it's just that the genre has become extremely broad. Within that there remain identifiable elements that still make it what it is. After all, we all know what we mean when we say 'Family Saloon Car' right? But it might have fuel injection, or be a quasi-SUV or a four-wheel drive or a fabulous new convertible roof... But it's still a car big enough to get two kids, a dog and a weeks shopping into and not break the bank when you fill it with petrol... that's the meat and potatoes. Character, story and progression are the same thing for the RPG.

^ He's right. 90% of my hundreds of playthroughs have been a leisurely dungeon crawl around Amn followed by a Spellhold / Underdark / Elven City / Hell derby galloped at tremendous speed. BG2 is appallingly designed --- it's cool by accident. I like it. But it is appallingly designed. It's like a twinkie --- only a madman would design one but they are strangely more-ish. Although I only do Watcher's Keep after ToB starts. Cheers MC

LOL they've been having this discussion in the pen & paper RPG world since the Year Dot. After rules-heavy systems heavily influenced by hex-based wargames (Chainmail, OD&D to Chivalry & Sorcery... Bushido FFS) came games like FUDGE which were simple story-telling systems with very loose mechanics. Trading card games came out of RPGs. Computer games came out of RPGs... so I'd say look at the source material. A role-playing game is one where you take on the role of a single character within a story controlled / referee'd by a third party (be it a games master or a computer). Everything else is gravy. Doom could be considered a RPG if you want to apply that test. 'RPG' lite (Deus Ex, ME etc) came to mean that an action game took on story elements and character progression beyond that of the shooter genre... we all know the story and the arguments. Personally, I'm a grognard, a backwoodsman and a snob. A RPG needs stats, NPCs, inventory, tactical combat, loot, a compelling story and rust monsters and / or half tracks. Everything else is just a shooter or a dumbass MMO. Cheers MC

Two things --- (a) BG2. I'm actually indifferent about the backstory, I think DA is far superior. I know it's intangible and not even defensible (I don't even think it need be either), but I just find BG2 more fun. I know, go figure. Maybe it's a D&D thing, that it doesn't take itself seriously, that it's hokey and all the rest of it. It's the apogee of hammy H&S, Monty Haul, Gygaxian fun on the PC as a gaming platform. It's flaws make it more enjoyable for me, as much as DA's just make that fingernails-down-a-blackboard sound in the back of my head. This doesn't change the fact that I enjoyed 75% of DA, (and of that I loved 25% of it) and hated 25% of it. The lack of an urge to replay it is for me telling... and that's never been a problem for me even with mediocre CRPGs. (b) Now you've got my wargamer head on by making perfectly valid points about how you stymie the advance of an amorphous, leaderless horde living off the land with no other objective than destruction. Hmmm. Look at the battle of Ostagar clip. The Darkspawn use skirmishers, archers and ogres as arty support with boulders. They rely on emmissaries as their officers. They do have a rudimentary organisation. I don't know if they need food or water (I presume so) but it is a big army. Flood fields to slow them down, salt the earth to spoil food, reinforce key points and delay them, harass them with skirmishers --- the Crusader armies of the 12th Century were slow-moving and were constantly hampered by Saladin's light cavalry and mounted archers. Now, I know that the Darkspawn really are a plot device, a trope, a meme. They aren't meant to be anything else than a screensaver villain lurking in the wings to give you a reason to plunder all the key hubs. But wouldn't it be nice if they at least gave a nod to their key bad guy, the Horde that is allegedly driving the whole game onwards? Cheers MC

^ I don't know if we are speaking about different things here. What I'm getting at is that there are key points in the game that apply to everybody (i.e. Ostagar / Landsmeet). As Tigranes says, inbetween you complete the main quest hubs and apart from the invasion of Lothering (a la the 'coffee stain' on the map and the occasional overland encounter) there isn't much to suggest that there is A DESPERATE WAR WITH THE FORCES OF UTTER RAMPAGING EVIL going on. What I would have liked is two or three episodes, which don't all have to be hack'n'slash, to show you slowing the advance. Maybe you need to persuade someone to do something, like rally their forces and block a route of advance. Leliana might have to flutter her eyelids to achieve that one. Yes, in one episode you might have to take action --- kill the vanguard of Emissiaries to blunt an advance, maybe Sten needs to show you how his unit does things. Maybe you need one of the existing allies to do something pre-emptive, maybe the Dalish need to be mobilized to engage in early guerilla war to draw the Darkspawn into the woods.... I'm sure you see what I mean. Any one of these objectives is triggered by achieving any number of hub quests. OK, it's a resource thing, so move the Chanter's Board or one of the Fedex-heavy stuff like Blackstone irregulars. Result? Increased immersion. Fun. Feeling involved. Impactive gameplay. Cheers MC