Monte Carlo

A quick question for J.E. if he returns to the thread re. console games development. I finally bought an Xbox (they are very cheap in the UK at the moment) before Xmas. I enjoyed games like Full Spectrum Warrior (the graphics are incredible, BTW), the wife likes The Sims crossovers etc but why are there no decent strategy or RTS titles on the Xbox? Along with RPGs these are my favourite types of games, and the fact that there are none (not even a Command & Conquer title) means that I'm using the thing less and less. Is it an Xbox performance issue or do these games simply not shift enough units? Cheers MC

Bioware's job is to sell games. End of story. They are good at it, too so kudos to them. I'm not a big fan of the community and/ or culture they've developed ("love us or go away") but I simply make the choice not to involve myself in it. Easy, really. I also choose to be extremely discerning about what games I buy and take every online gaming site I read with a massive pinch of salt. I also tend to be healthily sceptical of the claims of developers... all of 'em. In fact, the only developer I'd trust if they said "this game'll knock your socks off" at the moment is the Creative Assembly. And even they're going console. In fact, I trust grognards like the RPGCodex crew and the people on forums like this one over any gaming site, especially the likes of Gamespy and IGN. Cheers MC

I've always enjoyed playing fighter/thief characters who can create havoc then just slip off into the shadows. That or straight-forward meatshield melee fighters; my favourite game of BG1 was with a single-classed half-elf fighter...totally vanilla longsword-and-shield kind of bloke. I also quite like the warrior-cleric (but not a paladin) kind of character concept. 3E D&D made fighter/clerics sick. Really powerful. I never play pure magic-using characters. Ever. I don't like standing at the back casting spells. Cheers MC

Hey, did Bio finally fix dual-wielding for thieves? Cheers MC

SPOILERS AHOY: Baldur's Gate: Your character is an orphan of mysterious provenance brought up by a man called Gorion. You live in a large castle-library complex called Candlekeep. One day Gorion tells you that you have to go on a journey, but won't tell you why. As you leave a large armoured man and his evil minions ambush you and murder Gorion. You are on your own, until your perky co-orphan and surrogate sister Imoen shows up. I usually take the opportunity to bury a melee weapon in her head at this point, but that's not important right now. Anyway, you are instructed to meet some friends of Gorion at an inn whereby you discover that all the local iron supplies are de-grading for some mysterious reason; the answer lies in the Nashkel Mines off to the south. After much wandering around the blissfully unbalanced wilderness areas you make it there and discover a conspiracy involving a trading coster from Baldur's Gate called The Iron Throne. Eventually, and after many adventures, you discover that the Iron Throne wants to de-stabilize the region to start a war (no doubt a parable about US oil hegemony in the Middle East). Why? Well, the war will enable your evil half-brother Sarevok (boss of The Iron Throne) to ascend as a scion of Bhaal, Lord of Murder!!! Mwuhahahahhaaa!!! And, yes, you too are one of his mortal progeny, destined to a similar fate? So you hand Sarevok his ass in an epic battle and win. Huzzah! The expansion pack Tales of the Sword Coast rather bafflingly ignores this and makes you do it all over again, but on the plus side it does add Durlag's Tower to the map, being a superlative Dungeon Crawler and one of the best labyrinth adventures in any IE game. Baldur's Gate 2: Evil elven mage Joneleth Irenicus captures you and tries to use your "Bhaal Essence" (yuck, is it me or does that sound a bit rude?) to restore his soul and elven-ness. You see, he was hitched to an Elven queen but his insatiable lust for power meant he was expelled from the tree-hugging heaven of the Elf City (etc). You escape because the Shadow Thieves attack his dungeon complex where you are being held. Imoen and Irenicus (yes, it's her again) have been taken by the neo-fascist Cowled Wizards who enforce the anti-magic laws of the city: Athkatla (imagine Byzantium crossed with late-era Rome with a dash of Shakespeare's Verona) only to discover that there is a war going on between two rival thieves guilds. Yadda yadda. You have many adventures which end up with you following Imoen's trail to Spellhold, where "deviants" (i.e. magic-users) are held by the regime (obviously a prescient, nay psychic comment on Camp X-Ray). Irenicus flees to the Underdark as your elite NPC munchkin strike team beats the snot out of everyone!!! Huzzah. You pursue him, kill everybody, forge +5 superweapons and have a mammoth battle in hell with Irenicus which, after several re-loads, you win! The game ends with mysterious hooded men muttering about how powerful you are becoming and Irenicus getting rugby tackled off of a cliff in hell by a demon that's a dead ringer for one of the aliens from Alien. BG2: The Throne of Bhaal: This expansion pack finishes off the trilogy. A war breaks out as the various Bhaalspawn start kicking off to decide who will ascend to godhood. You have a series of uber-battles with various Bhaal-spawn (a fire giant, a dragon, a drow etc) until you get to fight the last massive battle with Melissan (a pretender to the throne). You win and get the chance to decide whether to become a god or not. --- I'm sure I've missed something. Nonetheless, the BG series has lots of side-quests, humour, epic scale, massive monty haul battles and oodles of side quests and exploration. This is what people loved about it rather than the plot I've outlined above. Cheers MC

Best combat: Temple of Elemental Evil Best Old Skool Title: Eye of the Beholder (PC), Warriors of the Eternal Sun (console) Best epic adventure: BG/BG2/ToB Best dungeon crawler: IWD Best necrophiliac use of dead engine for one last SLAM DUNK!: IWD2 Cheers MC

Hmmm. I know not the veracity of this news (especially given that it was posted on April 1st) but it doesn't seem like a hoax to me. Wizards are notoriously capricious. Courtesy of D&D CRPG fansite Sorcerer's Place. Sounds familiar? Cheers MC

The Volourn Cycle: 1. Identify thread where a small, not-worth-dying-in-a-ditch for point has been made with which he disagrees. 2. Wade in with grossly opinionated, rude, semi-coherent and invariably misspelt rant. State that your opinion is fact. 3. Wait for reply (this, ladies and gentlemen, is apparently known as Trolling). 4. At some point insert the word "R00fles"!!! 5. Back to point 2, rinse and repeat. Ad nauseum. 6. Thread gets locked, back to general forum and repeat point 1. Seriously, Vol, you are the new Visceris. It's really, really, stale. Please report me to various moderators and link to this particular post of mine as Exhibit "A" Cheers MC

Volourn, as usual, is speaking out of his fundament.

LOL! That's like saying Gran Turismo has too much.... driving. Cheers MC

I would rather play a well-considered dungeon crawler with a deep backstory, interesting magic items and a plot rather than a CRPG with all-singing all-dancing graphics, features and loot but no soul. IWD definitely has soul. As Ellester said, all the areas were given a little bit of thought. Dragon's Eye and Dorn's Deep level 2 were my favourites, BTW. Cheers MC

Yes, if you download GateKeeper and go to the Bioware forums some kind soul will happily walk through altering the global variables for you. This will basically tell the game that you've completed that quest and will allow you to carry on. Couldn't you use your last autosave, or did you delete that too? I think it's very cool that people are still playing and enjoying BG1. Don't give up. When you've finished go find BGTutu and start all over again! Cheers MC

"Pointless combat" is the very stuff of war. The Somme. Pork Chop Hill. The Retreat from Moscow. The Imjin River. Dunkirk. Almost every major engagement on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945. Pointless. Large groups of heavily armed men killing each other to dominate a topographical detail decided by men hundreds of miles away. Usually totally pointless. I suggest your "political student" reads some military history if you intend to capture the "essence" of war. If your module starts with a totally unexplained and brutal, relentless assault by enemy troops for a half hour then it would be a pretty decent introduction. Think of the opening sequence of the otherwise execrable Saving Private Ryan. War (i.e. the physical act) involves groups of (usually) men killing each other to sieze and dominate terrain. Period. Turning that into a gripping adventure for a computer game is your challenge. Cheers MC

In the UK you can get IWD/HoW bundled for about UK

There are the Space Marines, Eldar (who are sort of strange space elves I guess; I'm not a Warhammer mentat), Orks (who are orcs) and Chaos Marines (demonic space marines and can summon demons and stuff). I thought it all rather hokey, but actually it's a rather enjoyable blend of camp, over-the-top science fantasy that reminds me of 2000AD's Nemesis The Warlock. The graphics, BTW, are very good. The unit models and (especially) vehicles are really well done. Cheers MC

To answer your questions: 1. There is only one race (Space Marines) in the official campaign. You can play any of the races in single-player skirmish mode, which is pretty good fun. 2. Full MP support with customizable armies. I have a Chapter of bright pink space marines. Cheers MC

True. So I'll bite. Platoon with swords, huh? Actually, that was trite but thinking about it now, it sort of makes sense. A war story with as little combat as possible? You're losing me dude.... seriously. Band of Brothers had freakin' stacks of combat. It was one of the reasons it was so cool. Oh well. Ah, Full Metal Jacket with swords. Me like. Don't forget to have the fat guy impale himself with his longsword in the latrines, OK? Right. There are loads of issues here, aren't there? Firstly, in D&D a "simple soldier" is a zero level grunt with six hit points, a leather jerkin and a spear. Even first level fighters, it is suggested, are sort of NCO level, what with their nifty feats and high hit dice (compare and contrast with the NPC "Warrior" class). So how do we get around that? It would be very cool if you could code it so that your PC is actually a zero level warrior and has to "ascend" to level one fighter in the tutorial.... Secondly, simple soldiers are unlikely to "adapt martial philosophies on the battlefield", even today that stuff is reserved for officer training. Grunts are taught how to march to point "A", kill everybody there then defend that point until relieved. Thirdly, what is your game world's culture like? Military organisations provide mirrors of them...from the regular post-Marian Roman legions to the tribal warriors of ancient Europe to the professional Fyrd of dark ages Britain. Look at our own times.... in parts of the Third World you might find militias who are nothing more than heavily armed bandits. In Scandinavian countries you still have citizen-conscript armies. In Britain and America you find professional regular armies with high levels of technology. Are your soldiers conscripted against their will, are they specially selected or what? Something to think about. I'd definitely play a mod like this. A proper military-themed adventure would rock if done properly. I agree that you can find much to admire in old war movies, and the boot camp scenario is an old favourite (i.e. Band of Brother's "Curahee" sequence). My own favourite opening to a war movie is that of The Dirty Dozen. Lee Marvin (looking extremely cool in his jump boots and ice-cold squint) rocks up in his jeep at a military prison in England and offers twelve convicts a suicide mission in occupied France in return for commutation of their death sentences. Most of them are scum with nothing to lose. The whole thing exudes old-fashioned machismo and grit. Why not have your grunts start out in a penal battalion? They are urchins, debtors, the poor and petty criminals. Brutal "recruiting" sergeants scoop them up from the streets and throw them into ersatz military units to feed into the ever-hungry jaws of the front line. Some of these grunts develop enough skill to progress, even win their liberty back and join the regular army. Military history is littered with these sorts of stories, from the Napoleonic press gang to the Nazi and Soviet punishment battalions of WW2. When you think about it, weren't Roman gladiators also prisoner-warriors? It also gives you a nice, neat way to start your module: a disparate mixture of people (from a guy who was simply drunk and captured by a press gang through to convicted thieves or addicts) in a stockade. They meet their sergeant-instructor, a "Trusty" veteran of the penal battalions. And off we go. Does the PC choose to try to escape after a while or carve out a career in this brutal new world? Do his squad-mates bond or fight like cats in a sack? And so on. There's my tuppence. Cheers MC

There are some really, really good fanmade NWN modules. Unfotunately, they all suffer from the blocky, cartoony, generic and downright boring NWN graphics so they all look pretty much the same. I'm on dialup so I can't be doing with the increasingly massive hak paks and so on, so that's another consideration. Cheers MC

The last RTS I played was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I thought it was great fun...plays a little like a cross between Total Annihilation and Starcraft. There are no harvested resources, just extra resource points for taking tactically important areas of the map. you do get to build neat-o bases though. I've only played the single-player campaign as the Space Marines, but I imagine MP is a blast. It isn't technically a RTS, but Rome: Total War might hit the spot for you and is for me the best PC game released in the past three years. Cheers MC

Wow! The future is here. I was getting so jaded about the CRPG scene when I found this!. Courtesy of the excellent gaming blog Wonderland. Beat that, Shadowpaladin! Cheers MC

The press release actually made me angry. So, a spot of Fisking methinks: Yes, they have. Every time the Atari suits foists a hackneyed, don't-scare-Joe-Gamer cookie-cutter plot onto a developer. Again? AGAIN? AGAIN? I'm sorry, but there must be so many banners of legendary evil being rallied in the FR that I'm surprised that there's room for anything else. No doubt in the "School for Adventurers" tutorial, right? :: sigh :: I'm sorry, but why does anything to do with the Nevewinter franchise have to be so deeply studded with cliche? Nothing in this stirred my interest, just made me very, very weary. Why can't the opening pitch be different? There are so many other ways you might SAVE TEH WURLD, are there not? Cheers MC

Sorry Feargus, but comparisons between computer games and CDs or even DVDs are facile. Example: Imagine that in, say, 1996 I bought X-Com 2 for my PSX1 and Forty Licks by the Rolling Stones on CD. Guess what? I'm still listening to Forty Licks whilst X-Com and, indeed, the console I played it on are long gone and forgotten. Ditto my Lawrence of Arabia special edition DVD versus, oooh, Fallout: Tactics? You can't compare the two because one has longevity and the other manifestly does not. A CD can be a cultural investment whereas a computer game is a mere indulgence. Yst's point about the music industry is well-made, but my ancient CD from '96 was still easily and legally transferred onto my iPod. The vast majority of computer games are disposable, electonic Big Macs. Only a select, elite few have genuine longevity. So I'm sorry that production costs are booming and that the industry's business model is so broken, with second-rate and derivative products the overwhelming norm. But you are all big boys and I'm sure you'll be OK.

Like I've said, I'll be waiting for some feedback and a patch before I touch it with the proverbial bargepole. The Doohickey of Ultimate Greatness or whatever isn't in four separate parts located across the Sword Coast by any chance?

I haven't touched my XBox in over four months. This might have something to do with the release of Rome: Total War, which only highlights the restrictions on consoles for a gamer such as myself. Cheers MC

I've stopped buying games and DVDs from shops. I buy online and save a ridiculous amount of money instead. It's almost like there are two prices for electronic entertainment products: one for people with a bit of patience and/ or savvy and another for the sheep/ non-IT savvy civilians. :: shrugs :: You pays your money and you takes your pick. if I was the bloke working in Game being asked why the new Gran Turismo or whatever was five quid cheaper online I'd say "why aren't you buying it online, brainiac?" After all everything is cheaper online; just check out the difference between UK budget airline tickets for example. Financial services products are actually cheaper online. Etc. Cheers MC