HoonDing

The Renaissance was an era of great scientific & cultural upheaval in spite of the Church, that nearly ruined it with the Inquisition, the 80-years war & 30-years war. Basically there was nearly 200 years of non-stop war during the Renaissance caused by the Church's fanatism. Before the Renaissance, the only big war was the Hundred years war, which was solely political. Yet the Church left a mark with the Crusades that exists until this day... without the Crusades, mayhap the Christian west & Muslim world would've been not so much apart as they are today. Also do not forget how the Church destroyed a fledgling new religion in the Languedoc, by instigating the genocide of the Cathars. If this religion could've spread more through Europe before it was snuffed out, it might've changed the entire history.

It's probably easy to include combos & special moves like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within & Severance, but then it would be even harder to pretend that they're still RPGs.

It wasn't better in Risen or Gothic. It's unrealistic fighting generic animals that will dodge almost all your incoming blows and if you do manage to get a hit in, taking about 1% from their health while the animal (regardless whether it's a vulture, hedgehog or a giant gorilla) will kill you in one hit. Melee combat is terrible in almost all action RPGs, which is why I usually go for archery/magic. I only enjoy it in the Witcher & Two Worlds. Oblivion ruined it with the level scaling.

I'm going to give The Old Republic a try, and also definitely the Secret World. I'm curious to see what was so important for Ragnar T

When Pete himself takes the wheel, you know this game will be serious business, indeed.

I have the impression that most stuff rather happened in the DLCs (which I all skipped). DA:O has nothing significant happening that's not restricted to Ferelden, which is just a backwater that nobody in the rest of Thedas cares about. My Warden(s) merely killed a dragon and may have rattled some kettles on the political scene. And that's about it. I don't think the imported saves will lead to anything more significant than in ME2, where occasionally one bumped into some old friends and/or foes and had bit of a chit-chat.

The game seems CPU bound. I have a quad-core Phenom 9500 2.2 Ghz and it runs on about ~30 fps on high settings. Changing video settings barely does anything to the framerate. I think sub-par writing & voice acting actually work in games like this, where most people you talk to are peasants, soldiers & other mercenaries... they should sound awkward & boorish rather than talk Shakespeare. The same goes for Two Worlds & the Gothic games. Though I heard that the German voice-over in Two Worlds & Arcania is actually pretty good.

Civilization IV? Sid Meier's Pirates?

One of the screenies might spoil the game for those that did not play yet.

It's just a chase sequence. BG&E 1 had a couple of those. And you can't really stick one label on BG&E's gameplay, anyway. The only other game I think of that offers the same amount of varied (and fun) gameplay, is Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

It seems BioWare zenimaxed the leaked trailer.

So how about that sequel, Ubisoft?

Good lord. That was the game that made Witchaven look like a work of genius. Battlespire was awesome. You played as friggin Divayth Fyr himself.

Our universe may have well been created by another LHC 13.7 billion years ago.

She wasn't at the beaches, she was dropped in behind the lines to basically wreak havoc with her team (which included a guy who could talk to the dead, a guy who could control bees... and spit them out of his mouth as bullets, a guy with a jetpack and an ancient guy who literally would sleep as much as he could to preserve his life as long as he could). ... So there are people that take this series seriously? Japan cannot into European history.

Wait... what were women doing on the beaches of Normandy?

She's "The" commando in the games history. She created Close Quarters Combat, basically created all the special forces techniques, and was a soldier her entire life. Jack Churchill is rolling in his grave.

Why does the guy on the left have breasts? That's a guy? Remember, this is Japan.

The DA developers seem like a bunch of laid-back people with a good sense of humour. From the few ME dev posts I've read, they seemed quite a bit different, rage-quitting in topics, etc.

Literally Drakensang in name only. Only cRPG with DSA license left, is Demonicon (whose development has been secured as of late).

The only hope for those games is that Bethesda releases them for free on their website, like with Arena & Daggerfall. Redguard was awesome, the only Bethesda game with good melee combat.

I'm still playing Two Worlds. Game is pretty fun but alchemy skill is ridiculous; I had to quit playing and restart because I had broken the game with permanent effect potions previously, raising my character's protection & attributes to god-like level (leading to clearing out entire Orc war camps naked with barely taking any damage). Without alchemy, my level 50 character still gets one-shotted by certain enemies if he's not careful. Only gripe about the game is the need to scour merchants periodically in order to upgrade one's weapons & equipment. It gets tedious very fast. The same goes for the magic cards, not to mention that pure damage spells are very much inferior compared to the power of summoned creatures & archery/melee, making a nuke mage pretty redundant; melee combat has good animations, but it is a bit too much the same click & dodge-fest as Gothic 3 (but at least it's not the clunky mess as in Risen). I'm curious how these issues will be dealt with in the sequel.

It's the Final Fantasy 7 of the West.