Monte Carlo

^ I can't imagine that it's not on NWN Vault. Cheers MC

It's not the lack of the 'Human Commoner' origin that bothers me, it's the comparative lack of choice. That is to say I'm forced to choose one of six backgrounds that pretty much define my character for me, and then whatever happens I become a Grey Warden so I'm funnelled into two significant character development boxes by the all-seeing eye, Dave Gaider. It's typical Bioware spoon-feeding. Hopefully you'll be able to dump the origin story baggage fairly quickly and move on to do your own thing. Elves as the 'underdogs' might be a new one, but the archetypal Legolas ranger is still there. To be fair, knife-wielding Bunny Boiler elf chick looks a bit more original (except for the aforementioned Braveheart rip-off). Do Bioware think that their player's minds will, literally, melt if there wasn't an elven archer or a surly dwarf warrior in their game? Cheers MC

Are there only the six origin stories, or are there a load more? It's just that none of them really do it for me. And the crazy elf chick one looks like a rip-off of the first ten minutes of 'Braveheart.' Cheers MC

^ Many thanks. Personally, I like the NWN2 engine for dungeon-crawling (camera issues aside). BG has some great dungeons, I'm looking forward to see what Durlag's Tower will end up like. Are they planning to import the original BG music? I hope so. Icewind Dale / IWD2 using the SoZ build-your-own party and overland features would be pretty cool using the NWN2 engine. Cheers MC

Mkreku, I think 'Master Chief' is a real US military NCO rank of some description. I'm sure the Americans here can help us out. As for there being only 7/12/whatever stories, it's a superficially attractive idea. Then you read, say, Necronomicon by Neal Stephenson and you realise it simply isn't the case. Cheers MC

Has anyone played the demo? What's it like/ I checked out the screen shots and thought "whoa, that's not Imoen!*" Big problem if you're trying to make such an iconic game - everyone has an idea of how the NPCs should look. *Not that this is a biggie for me, I always get her squished by the Ogre in the wilderness area where you find the abandoned merchant caravan, then move on.

:: Shrugs :: Mkreku, I'm not a computer graphics / animation mentat. Sure, I don't like ugly games but I'm not expecting everything to look like Crysis, either. DA:O looks like a classic CRPG with decent-enough graphics. If it's stable with good performance then as far as I'm concerned it could actually be a hell of a lot uglier. So no biggie for me, and I suspect many others. As for death, I completely agree with Killian. In BG2 I fought a number of key battles where I was down to single figure hit points and my last healing potion (Demogorgon springs to mind) plus I lost a treasured NPC who had been chunked - no prospect of raise dead. The choice was mine - pick up his kit, sell it and move on or re-play that battle again and see if I could do it without losing any party members. I moved on, it was actually a bit of a wrench after that amount of investment in the character. It was, however, rewarding because it provided an extra challenge. And, for people who don't like playing that way, there's the difficulty slider (which is better than Easy / Core / Hard because it's scaleable). I accept that I might be in a minority here, but I would appreciate having a permanent death option, or the option to switch on death penalties such as those proposed by CrashGirl. Cheers MC

I'd love to see BG/BG2/ToB remade for NWN2, using the SoZ overland map. Having said that, if I was modding it I'd end up (a) putting in all the mod stuff and NPCs I like from PPG and G3 and (b) tinkering with all the stuff I didn't like about the originals. So it would look very different from the vanilla version. Cheers MC

I like that video a lot, it gave me an excellent idea of what to expect. The combat looks reassuringly old-school and I like the interface. The character movement icons around their feet are a bit clunky, but that's just me being picky. Full control of the whole party is very important to me, and for that decision alone I remain impressed with DA:Origins, not least because a lot of gamers absolutely hate it so it's counter-fashionable. I'd have liked to see one of the fighter characters using a ranged weapon, I'm sure we'll see that later, as well as a lightly-armuored rogue type character. Did anybody else get the feeling that the female wizard's spell-slinging was strangely reminiscent of Gauntlet? This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I spent most of 1987 down the pub playing Gauntlet with friends. Cheers MC

Many thanks for all your helpful and informative replies, especially Moatilliatta. The reaon I want something tangible is because I'm old (er) and still find it difficult to get my head around buying something online that I can't touch or hold. My son's generation will find this, quite naturally, a ludicrous notion. I'm still wary of actually using my credit card details online and only do it once or twice a year. I tried the Atari site today. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, rubbish. Wouldn't let me log in. I'm a choosy customer: Atari, don't make me work when I'm trying to spend money with you. Will check out the other sites. Mods, feel free to lock the thread and save bandwidth, my question has been answered fully and comprehensively. Cheers MC

Well, perhaps not. I've never bought a whole big ol' game online before, and am considering doing it. I'm not as IT literate as you lot, so how does it work? Can I burn a copy so I actually have something tangible? What if the download is interrupted? Etc. I've got a pretty vanilla wireless broadband internet connection - any issues there? Please don't move this to the tech forum. It's scary, and full of people who talk in 1's and 0's. Cheers MC

Hmmm, not visually. For a 2D isometric game FO:T is pretty good-looking, especially the environments and vehicles. JA2, and I love it JA2, is extremely ugly by comparison. I wasn't thinking in this day and age that any big commercial outfit would pick up an engine as dated as FO:T. Just wondered if it would be feasible for skilled modders to MacGuyver it. Cheers MC

With the greatest respect to CrashGirl, with whom I invariably find myself in agreement: How would JA3 made using the FO3 engine actually work? The whole point of JA3 is that it's a squad-based tactical game (note that I'm not dying in a ditch on turn-based, although I'd be tempted to). It's a bizarro suggestion IMO. JA3 would, on the other hand, absolutely rock using the Fallout: Tactics engine. FO:T borrows so many elements from JA that it's halfway there already. And it's a dead game... can you mod it I wonder?

^ Looks like a modded game of JA2. I say modded because of the purple / mauve ammo in the machine gun... don't remember that from the original.

Yeah, I'd pay for that too. It wouldn't have to be turn-based, but I did like the TOEE combat engine a lot.

^ I suppose that the expectation was that SoZ was billed as a story-lite dungeon-crawling romp. Without dungeons, as it turns out. Hmmm. IWD was a story-lite dungeon-crawling romp (and fondly remembered by those of us who enjoyed that sort of thing). Comparisons were sort of inevitable given our collective tribal memory of the IE games and how those design decisions Must Inform Everything . Personally, I'd be happy if the NWN2 modding community played to the strengths of the game and made IWD-inspired modules rather than try to tell stories (why not just write some fan fic and put it up on the web instead?). Cheers MC

Hey, maybe it should be a deliberately bad Fan Fic competition, then me and Dave Gaider could meet in the play-offs.

I'm Brian. And so is my wife.

1. Free Trade. Real free trade. I suspect the new US President, a machine Democrat, won't be very keen on that. The EU definitely won't be (q.v. the aforementioned CAP), the preferred vehicle being aid packages (spent largely on gold-plated limos and helicopter gunships for the generals). 2. The mis-directed US Neo-Con zeal directed at Iraq would have been better focussed on Africa. South Africa would need to be won around, sure, but stabilizing East Africa from Zimbabwe to Somalia would have had as much, if not more, of an emmolient effect on global instability and the "War on the Abstract Pronoun." I imagine many Zimbabweans would have been throwing flowers in front of the US armoured columns, as opposed to bombs. I hope to see Africa on it's feet in my lifetime, with decent, functioning democracies, tangible health outcomes for it's people (and the defeat of HIV) and growing economies of the type the continent could easily develop (and deserves). Unfortunately, trading blocs and patronising cant from Western politicians continues to frustrate that laudable objective. Cheers MC

"How much can you possibly know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" Tyler Durden - Fight Club. Having said that, methinks a spiritual fight is as valid as a physical one in the right circumstances. I'm sure a lot of people would nominate a Mandela or a Ghandi.

Lee Marvin is still up there, closely followed by Ollie Reed. However, I give you Warrant Officers Josef Gabč

^ Hmmm. Lovely place, lovely people but it is about the same size as a small town. They've got about 600 part-time cops, me and my 76 year old mother could probably stage a half-decent invasion there armed with a fish. Anyhow, I hope it works out there. Cheers MC

Huh? The CAP that is criminally corrupt and has been since it's inception? The same CAP that hinders fair trade in developing countries? I don't want "trying to make progress" I want the thing scrapped. Now. Oh, and please stop citing'pessimism.' It's a classic left-wing debating tactic, of course (shut down the opposing argument by suggesting negativity). It only works in high school debating societies. Play the ball, not the man. Cheers MC

As long as I can make a chapter of Space Marines in hot pink power armour, I'll be happy.

^ Clearly, the whole idea of Turkey joining the European Union is geographically preposterous (which I why I support it). I also agree that Turkey is a capable regional power in it's own right. I'm a bit of a fan, actually. However, successive Turkish governments have sought EU membership as a core policy objective for some time now. The benefits for Turkey are obvious. Cheers MC