Monte Carlo

I'm sure you'll get to the option to enslave nations via ponderous cut-scenes.

Has someone been reading our thread in WOT? I predicted as much, Our World of Dreck setting is about to be ripped off. Oh well.

My next tip for 2010-2012 is that CRPG players will flock to free rogue-likes in their thousands. Would you like fries with your mainstream CRPG release?

Ha! The original and groundbreaking Warhammer setting meets Bios unique, rich story-telling experience. What could possibly go wrong? Monte Prediction - A massive assault on the MMO market for 2012 with an unholy legion of Mythic and Biowarians. Be afraid. Very afraid.

Yeah, I only ever played Doom 1 & 2 on the original Playstation and have nothing but fond memories. A big, scary, desolate sand box game full of strange places to explore, demons, a space marine guy with a skillz tree and lots and lots of guns / chainsaws / etc. Why not? Sounds cooler than Oblivion (etc). I'm thinking Diablo-esque RPG-lite fun. Cheers MC

:face palm: Great, now we'll have the DOOM SANDBOX GAME. Sorry, but that sounds quite cool.

^ Dude, I know it's a big ask but would enslaving nations with one of the other schools of magic be acceptable. I'm aware that "Enslaving Nations with Abjuration" or "Enslaving Nations with Conjuring" don't quite have the same ring about them, but it might be the best you can hope for.

We need to be careful with this stuff. It's freaking CRPG dynamite and we're just touting it around an open forum with no copyright.

Yes, but I maintain hope that it will be possible to join the Uber Bad Guy and wipe out humanity from the face of the planet. Or even better, enslave them. That would be in line with the origin of the character I'm planning to play, the poor City Elf bride whose life was ruined by the cruel human overlords. You sir, are an optimist of considerable proportions.

Naturally, by the way, Hot Cleric Chick is in fact the farm-boys long-lost sister. Cruelly scarred elf gets the girl, but not before he is turned to stone and captured by bounty hunters.

^ Good point, I'm wondering if hot cleric chick being possessed by an evil spirit would suffice? Being the Worst Fantasy Setting Ever this means that she can be redeemed, and indeed subsequently romanced in a series of unconvincing cut-scenes. Honestly, I'm expecting a PM from Bioware at, like, any minute. The snarky pet is too much fun. I'll not hog all the good stuff, someone else can have a go at that one. I'm trying to figure out where the psycho elven anti-hero fits in, don't worry I'll get there, will probably involve a portal or a curse or a djinn in a bottle. Cheers MC

Our heroes are a farm-boy who discovers a magic sword in a hay-bale, a mysterious wandering gypsy with a magical lute and the ability to charm snakes, a sullen elf hideously scarred after Torture By Orcs , a drunken dwarf with an axe and a ludicrously hot female cleric who has sworn a vow of Utter Chastity, which allows for moments of comic relief when the dwarf is even drunker than usual. They are brought together by a Very Old Wizard (who has a secret, oh yes he does) and given the Widget of Power, which must be taken to the King of the Dwarves. Drunken dwarf is banished from this clan for reasons of stubborn dwarven pride. Their enemy is Ifj'agy, a five hundred pound evil warrior with blue hair and a horned helmet in the shape of an octopus, a big Black Sword and a castle with a skull-shaped gate. He is in thrall to Xfoj'iad, a narcoleptic lich (slumbering evil, geddit?) who has stolen his mortal soul and is hawking it around to evil but hot demon chicks. Later in the plot drunken dwarf will find this hilarious. En route our heroes seek sanctuary in Cutehaven, home to the teddy-bear like Ewok / Hobbit hybrids called the H'zk'jop (one of whom joins them but is sadly slain saving the troupe of adventurers from an army of orcs led by Ifj'agy. After the Widget is delivered to the Dwarf King, hot cleric chick loses her powers after she declares her undying love for the farm-boy. Sullen, hideously scarred elf learns the folly of prejudice against dwarves and wandering gypsy becomes a powerful sorcerer. Honestly, this all comes naturally. What happens next?

I don't see why it shouldn't work. As long as it's handled properly, you get time to know the character and develop it yourself and they're aren't too many then it could be very cool. Working as three characters towards a common goal, and when you reach it the decisions you make impact on what character you play next... yeah I'm warming to that. It's a whole new way of looking to what we previously called 'NPCs'...

I think a politics game, or a game about economics, where you played a Gordon Gekko type character would be an arena where you could explore ideas like good and evil without scaring the horses too much. Having said that, and unfashionable as it may be, I think Gordon Gekko isn't necessarily evil...

I'm glad we got that one sorted out.

I think it will be fun, but here at the Schloss Monte, our main query is will it be fun in the way the developers intended? I'm waiting for Vol to turn up to lecture me about hype... but Bio's insistence that each of their games raises the bar, to the extent that it's basically the video gaming version of Penicillin, is lame. Wouldn't it make a refreshing change for them to say, "we've made a game. It's fun." Hey, it's shipping with tools. This is a massive and kudos to Bio. Fans can put it right - look at the Total War series. Plus, I can see an Obz forum 'make-your-own-cutscene' competition coming on... Cheers MC

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos I like a war-gamey RTS. I bought it when it first came out, had a mad surge of activity at work and forgot about it. Have unearthed it, am re-installing / patching it to see if it's fun and worth getting the XP (which is now probably at uber-bargain bin prices). Have tinkered with it, at max resolution with all the settings up high it's quite purdy. However, it lacks that visceral CRUNCH one now expects from cavalry charges (etc) that one enjoys from MTW2. I'll wait to see how the tactical aspect works out. The setting is utterly ridiculous, the most ripped-off high vanilla phantasy. So much so, in fact, it's almost... cute. Cheers MC

^ The obvious answer is Regeneration - the worst fantasy setting would be heavily powagaemed and munchkin-central.

^ I've no reason to disbelieve you. Personally, I think Bio have form for saying one thing and delivering another over NWN1. Let's hoped they've learnt from the experience.

Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer, it's a series but (gasp) there is an end. It might not strictly count as 'fantasy', nary and elf or a magic sword to be seen, but it's pretty cool nonetheless. Cheers MC

No, I didn't, I'm as guilty as the next bloke of making assumptions. It still makes me wonder about the volte face. EA are likely to have had an input, right?

Er, forget the E3 videos, what about the new website? And marketing campaign? And that the developers are clearly embarrassed by the marketing campaign? And that on the website the origins / RPG stuff is hidden in a bit about 'The Hero', as if your are playing a game where you're a pre-defined character? And the Paper / Scissors... review that outs the frankly toe-curling romance content? Hey, I know you are involved in all this and you know stuff we don't, but please don't take us for complete mugs. Cheers MC I only interact with a small group of people on a consistent basis, but where are you getting the idea that the developers are clearly embarrassed? From Bio's boards? I've been browsing a number of threads where concerns such as the ones raised here have been addressed by Dave Gaider. Now Dave has always engaged with the fans... so, on the now infamous sex scene he says... OK, it's a gentle rebuke to the marketing guys at EA, but you'll see other comments that share the hey-it's-those-chumps-up-at-marketing-not-me theme. Bio Kremlinologists may well translate this into 'Dave Gaider is pissed off with EA marketing.' If it is indeed the case that DA is a serious, mature, DaRK HeROIc FanTaSY (etc) and one or two scenes have been represented as what the game's all about just to market it to the non-CRPG market then I think he's got a point. Then again, DA might be unintentionally hilarious, campy, mainstream CRPG fun. We'll see. But as usual, the problem is the usual Bio hype machine, which looks like it might have collided, messily with the Imperial Battlecruiser that is EA marketing. Cheers MC

Er, forget the E3 videos, what about the new website? And marketing campaign? And that the developers are clearly embarrassed by the marketing campaign? And that on the website the origins / RPG stuff is hidden in a bit about 'The Hero', as if your are playing a game where you're a pre-defined character? And the Paper / Scissors... review that outs the frankly toe-curling romance content? Hey, I know you are involved in all this and you know stuff we don't, but please don't take us for complete mugs. Cheers MC

I still don't get it, maybe someone who's followed it more closely can explain? You start off with touting a game with a five-fricking-year plus dev cycle as the spiritual successor to one of the most loved CRPGs ever made. You bang on, for five years, about the rich characterisation, NPC dynamics and personalised impact on plot outcomes. Even I'm impressed when you announce your in-house world lore wiki whereby everything is carefully planned under the hood to make the setting unique and crunchy and cool. You feed the Bioware forum fanbase all of this, and they are some of the neediest, passionate people out there in fanboy land. Your website reflects this and starts stoking the fires of slightly-geeky excitement. For chrissakes Dave writes his fan-fic and Green Ronin announce a pen and paper adaptation. Even by Bioware's standards, this is a carefully planned and focussed marketing assault. It's the D-Day landings of pre-release hype operations. Then... BOOM. This is the new faeces muzak, gore, sex and the least subtle assault on the console market I've ever seen. It's dressing up BG2 as Crysis and nobody at all is fooled. It's like 3/4 of the way through the LotR filming cycle somebody hit Peter Jackson over the head with a hammer and replaced him with the people behind xXx. Happily, I find this marginally amusing. DA will be, as I have always predicted, campy hack'n'slash fun made even funnier by it's pretensions to greatness. Now all I'm wondering is, like my learned friends, how much of this damascene conversion to action-RPG (which has to be EA-driven) will impact on the finished product. Perversely, I'm looking forward to it even more, but in a sort of "Wow, that's a really interesting car crash" type way. So, please can someone who's followed this explain? And, as our friendly half-orc used to say, Why, Bio? Why? Cheers MC

Because, as a Moderator, it is your fell responsibility. You knew the risks.