Monte Carlo

I figured I

Why? If we accept that games are / have becoming / become a valid cultural phenomenon (which I do, gaming culture and memes are now firmly part of the cultural mainstream), not unlike books or movies, then they all build on what went before. Then the wheel turns, and what went before actually becomes fashionable again. This is why marketing people always invoke the spirit of the classics (in literature, music, art and just about everything else). A couple of years ago trendy London restaurants went mad about 1970's food. Oasis think they're The Beatles. Quentin Tarantino is making a movie that sounds like the Dirty Dozen (made in 1969). Everybody is loving Marvel comics superheroes. And so on. It is inevitable that a ridiculously old-school RPG will eventually be released at the mainstream market, polished a bit, but aimed at grognard gamers ("see what the fuss was about in 1997 d00ds!"). Look at hex-based wargames. Cottage industry, loved by a tiny but loyal minority who remember the SPI games of yesteryear. I'd be happy with a low-tech, high-content CRPG version of that developing one day, which it will. I know there's that cliche about those forgetting their past not deserving a future (yadda yadda) but there's an element of truth to it. Sometimes less is more, and games are no different. Cheers MC

Honestly, am I the only bloke who couldn't care less about extensive VO? The odd BG1-style comment is enough for me: give me content, tangible, playable, interactive content. That's far more immersive than a voice actor doing every line. And, on a more serious note, it's hugely time consuming. DA might well be 100 hours after you've sat through every bloody cutscene and piece of Fakespeare VO. I've said it before - Devs, if you want to make movies, make movies. Not games. If I want a cinematic experience I'll go to the cinema, thanks. Cheers MC

I think the word 'some', italicized for emphasis, was the clue there. I'm not expecting 100 hours from DA. OTOH, I'd like to think that there is are developers out there who would still give it a go. I'll be generous and include replayability - I've had several hundred hours out of MTW2 and probably a few months from BG2 over the years. DA is suitable for modding so who knows?

:: Shrugs :: BG1 & BG2 had sandbox elements in that you could wander around and explore within certain constraints. It gave an illusion of freedom. I liked it, so did about a hundred thousand plus other gamers, it resurrected the genre and is one of the reasons we are still talking about Bioware. Furthermore, if we are to believe (and let's give them the benefit of the doubt) the Bio hype, this is their 'spiritual successor' to Baldur's Gate (although the combat still looks a bit NWN to me) why not hope for a less restrictive critical path? And saying "nobody wants to play 100 hour games any more" might be true of some console-addicted twitch gamers, but it certainly isn't true of the sizeable numbers of grown-up gamers who like strategy and RPG titles. We actually look for replayability, content, difficulty and, yes, the length of the game. After all, I'm only buying four or five a year now and I'm getting pickier. If I'm putting down almost UK

I'm constantly surprised how RPG developers consistently fail to hit the happy medium between sandbox game and critical path force-feeding. Even BG2 got this wrong (but in a good way ). To be fair, MotB was a lot better (I've still not picked up SoZ). It's not difficult: point me in the right direction but give me stuff to do inbetween if I like. Balance it so that I don't hit 30th level prior to getting back onto the critical path. I'm hoping DA gets this right, but let's be frank, Bio loves to spoon-feed and Bio fans appear to love being spoon-fed. Cheers MC

Had a bit of a sinking feeling looking at the official DA website. The Jedi Grey Wardens (etc) are just so... meh. Then again, as per the earlier conversation, BG1 had the lamest plot and bad guys imaginable and was still a great game. So I cheered up a bit. Then I read that gushing "I took the game home for Xmas" stuff from a Bio person. And I had a sinking feeling again. I know, waiting for DA is a real rollercoaster ride, the top-down Touchmaster labyrinth game on my DS Lite will have to do for now. Cheers MC

Surely that should be ballast?

Wow, so they've actually gone and used SPECIAL to make what looks to me like a Command & Conquer FPS.

Actually, I'm finding the game quite hard. Don't get me wrong, I like it, but the scarcity of ammo and resources (although probably agreeably hardcore for many) is getting tiresome. Also, the lockpicking mini-game? What is that all about? Personally, I'm waiting for Fallout 3: Tactics. I've stopped playing until a decent patch comes out, the instability is a pain. In the final analysis, though, I just can't enjoy first-person perspective games as much as ones with a 'top down' view. Cheers MC

Alternatively, you could make a really good game in the first place that ships with an editor and watch the community create content. This fuels interest in further titles in the franchise. I'd personally never subscribe to premium content as you describe it. It should ship with the original product. As for TOEE, hey I loved the old-skool combat but the rest of the game was poor, with the disdain for customer opinion that has made Troika the thriving production house it is today. I know the odd Troika defender will blame Atari, but yadda yadda. Cheers MC

Is this likely to be comprehensively patched anytime soon? I'm picking it up in a week or so. Cheers MC

Was he as garishly colored as everything else in that movie? I mean Ultraviolet the short-lived UK TV series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_AAdFmm84A Wow, someone else saw it too? To call it niche is an over statement. Being repeated on satellite TV here in the UK at the moment, it was genuinely a bit hammy and a bit creepy at the same time. Recommended.

^ Actually, I was just thinking about Angelina Jolie in a wetsuit and will concede that her posh Lara Croft accent is really quite good. I agree with Clint Eastwood, who argues that her looks kind of detract from the fact that she's clearly a talented actress.

Maybe I'm just an old-fashioned curmudgeon, but my basic requirement is that the game I pay my hard-earned cash for is in a language I understand. If that means that the chainmail-clad vikings talk like Bill & Ted then, hey, that's life. I'm sure if I were Latvian and I bought a game designed for English-speaking markets then I'd accept that the Latvian version might not be as polished from a VO perspective. I certainly accept that when I play CDV titles (for example) which have some pretty dodgy English (both written and spoken). Their games are good though, on the whole, and I can understand them. Voila! I do, however, echo the sentiments regarding American VO talent trying to sound English, and in fact Irish, Welsh and Scottish. This is an important issue because like it or not, a lot of vanilla fantasy has UK and Irish-written stuff as source material. And, like it or not (again), the most culturally important market in the world also speaks English, albeit obviously the new-fangled Merriam-Webster version. This led to the worst ever piece of American - English VO in the history of gaming, that is the person who did Saemon Havarian in BG2. Honestly, I wretch just thinking about it. Perhaps it explains why Americans often mistake London accents as Australian. Curiously, lots of British actors do really good American accents (think about it - most of the cast of Band of Brothers was actually British, for example, or what about Dominic West as McNulty in The Wire? My favourite bit was West playing an Irish American cop trying to do an English accent - the bordello scene from Season 2. Hilarious, as West actually went to a top English private school and has a cut-glass upper class accent in R/L). American actors who can do a convincing English accent? Hmmm. I'm struggling. The one that immediately springs to mind is Gwyneth Paltrow, who has clearly worked very hard and almost pulls it off. So does Renee Zelwegger (Bridget Jones), again I suspect a lot of hard work went into that given that she's Texan. So, for me, is this issue worth the cost? No. I sympathise that getting a Portguese VO artist might be tough, but that's why we pay VO artists - to mimic and imitate. Hey, Obsidian is in LA - I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll find someone from every corner of the planet who wants to act! Cheers MC

As for Newc's point, valid as it is, are you seriously telling me that Atari won't indulge in a bit of tomb-raiding by plundering these old franchises? Look at the evidence as old favourites are disinterred and, er, ruined time and time again.

Off topic, but I saw that Newc could edit his posts. For some reason I can't. Why's that? There's no edit icon.

Why did so many people love Baldur's Gate? Was it the setting? Not really. The FR is campy, generic high fantasy. I hate campy, generic high fantasy but I love Baldur's Gate. and Baldur's gate itself is a campy, generic high fantasy city. Was it the fact that it was a D&D game? Probably not. Over the years I've discussed the series with hundreds of fans on different forums, many of whom never played D&D before. And let it not be forgotten that BG is 2nd Edition, the worst iteration of the game until 4E came along, making 2nd Ed look like a Van Gogh of game design. Funnily enough, many D&D newcomers actually liked the restrictive race / class choice rules and dual-classing and THACO. Dunno why, but they did. Was it the story? Er, no. The 'Chosen One'-orphan meme, hunted by a myriad of evil foes is hackneyed and dull. So, what was it, sport fans? It's not difficult: It was a good game. Expansive, humorous, exciting combat, lovely to look at, NPCs that somebody had thought about, lots of fighting and loot. A whole lot of effort and love had been put into it and it showed. It was also over-developed, an Alladin's cave of things to do, see and choose. In a word, superlative. You could recreate that with any setting, genre and style of CRPG. That not many have achieved it since is, indeed, a MYSTARY but you don't in my humble need to call it Baldur's Gate. Cheers MC

Will they please, for the love of god, just leave Baldur's Gate alone? Having said that, I suppose the success of re-vamping another long-dead, cult-status franchise (Fallout) has got someone thinking about a Q4 2010 release... As for NWN. Meh. I suppose there will be a 4th Ed Pokemon-style, button mashing cross-platform game for people with attention-deficit issues, which I shall happily ignore. Cheers MC

I'm still looking forward to the game, although I suspect I'll enjoy it more when a mod that nerfs cut-scenes is released.

How do you think a party without any arcane spell-casters would do? I find mages, sorcerers (etc) rather boring and would rather slash / bludgeon / karate chop my way through the game. I know D&D usually forces you to do this, but given that this is NWN maybe there's scope for a party sans wizards. Cheers MC

It depends on the weapon (of course), but the more advanced a weapon is, the more likely you're going to have a problem with it. For example, most American made weapons are very advanced and accurate. But as soon as they're dirty they start malfunctioning. The complete opposite, the AK-47, which consists of something like 15-20 parts (!) basically never malfunctions and is so leaky you can even fire it under water (or so the myth says)! But accuracy at 100+ meters is useless. Sorry to be a gun nerd but a few corrections. Firstly, American weapons don't start malfunctioning as soon as they're dirty. In fact, the M16 was deliberately designed to address maintenance issues in tropical climates. It's not a jam-prone weapon, it's got relatively few parts, opens like a shotgun and is made of composite materials. The M4 is better. The peripherals that American soldiers favour (optics, laser sights, grenade launchers etc), that sit on Picatinny rails, are another story. On that one you're mistaken. Although the legendary AK47 is indeed one of the most durable firearms on earth, it's also accurate at ranges well over 100 metres. I find it difficult to slot the receiver back on the rear of the weapon after stripping (yes, it is ludicrously easy to field strip) but then again I'm cack-handed. Technically, most firearms should fire underwater until of course the ammunition is compromised by moisture. As for Fallout, like Walsingham said, a well-preserved firearm should last indefinitely. It's quite simple technology and the most degradable part of the whole deal is the ammunition. That would be the problem - finding ammo thats not home-brewed and likely to explode in the breech. In 2077 soldiers would be better off fighting with a Museum preserved Lee-Enfield .303 SMLE than a laser rifle. Cheers MC

You see, there are reasonable Fallout fans! I don't think Bethseda could ask for anything else from the old-skool fans of the series, but it's still rare praise indeed. Cheers MC

Personally, the fact that: 1. I found all previous Bethseda games extremely unrewarding 2. I prefer party-based games 3. I don't like FPS-style games 4. Fallout (except Tactics) was a bit "Meh" for me Makes FO3 remarkable. Because I think it's an extremely enjoyable, replayable labour of love by developers who clearly thought carefully about what they were doing. They deserve their success, and other developers who were giving up on Western RPGs might want to consider the plaudits given to FO3 and ponder how they might use it to their advantage. OK, there have been a few moments where I thought I might have been playing Grand Theft Auto's Mad Max expansion pack, but thankfully they've stayed on the right side of that particular line. The next phase for me, to cement Bethseda in my mind as a developer I'll start to get behind and buy stuff from is (a) future content and modes and (b) crucially, technical support and patching. Cheers MC

What are you talking about? Are you Trying to play with keyboard+mouse and gamepad at the same time? I'm left handed. My left hand is using the mouse to aim, direct the character. My right hand is for the keyboard, you know walking and picking stuff up and accessing the PIPboy. I've only got two hands, not enough radiation exposure I'm afraid. I'm thinking of buying a five litre refrigerated Camelbak with a drinking tube and filling it with Peroni to add to the wastelands / survivalist vibe. Cheers MC