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I think any other label that could be invented would be similarly limited in its usefulness. I also think the only way a new label would gain traction at this time would be if a game publisher decided they wanted one to help distinguish themselves from the competition and then aggressively marketed a (successful) game using that phrase. Calling a game an "RPG" is fine, but it's just a means to begin a more detailed discussion about what the game does.

You can look at the original D&D and see two major components: the storytelling and the stats/system. There are variations within D&D itself that stop you from clearly declaring one as dominant over the other. "D&D" can mean a long campaign played out over a number of sessions with a focus on roleplaying and the experience of an interactive, improvised story. "D&D" can mean a low-level OD&D dungeon crawl that's more to do with fighting monsters, collecting treasure, and dying in traps. I think the variety of different games you can get as a result of focusing on either the interactive story or stat development (or both at once) is so great that the term "RPG" is useful mostly as a very broad label. It's essential in marketing. You advertise a game as an "RPG" so that fans of games that have been called "RPGs" take notice. It's up to them to investigate further and find out if they and the developer actually have the same kind of game in mind. Fallout is an RPG. Dragon Quest is an RPG. It's not really different from saying that Super Mario Brothers and Halo are both "action" games.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/feargusurquhart2.php If this really is the unannounced title Feargus was referring to in this interview, they've been working on it since around February '09.

I know, I wanna play Gears of Dune.

I could replay games like Fallout, Fallout 2, or Arcanum several times. In fact, I already did that. I don't need to do it again.

I don't know how much they paid Chris Morgan or how long he worked for them. If they're using what he gave them, they may need someone to help adapt it into something that works as a game. It makes sense for an inexperienced game developer to license an engine like Onyx rather than building one in-house. This is going to need a lot of marketing support. Most people don't know what Wheel of Time (or any other non-Tolkien, non-Rowling fantasy series) is. Red Eagle did get Wheel of Time set up at Universal, but there's been no news about movement on that since. Speaking of Book->Film->Game adaptations, Paramount's developing a Dune remake.

Dang, I want to explore this vault but I gotta hit the gym and check on my girlfriend first.

Caesar's LegionPros: Wear cool costumes, can say things in Latin Cons: Kill, enslave people HELL YEAH

The way dialog options work in NV sounds like the way they worked in Fallout 2 (and others.) The only real differences are that skill checks are blatantly labeled and there's no minimum skill threshold that has to be met before the option appears, I think. Replays with different character builds might not yield as many surprises, but it limits the chance of quests/etc. being buried in obscure dialog trees. For example, how many people went through Fallout 2 multiple times and never found the Vault City combat implants? This talk of dialog options triggered by skills like stealth and explosives is hopefully a sign that this game is using a least a version of the Combat Boy/Stealth Boy/Speech Boy/Science Boy concept.

-Can you tell me how to get to Neo-Tokyo? -[Explosives] Neo-Tokyo is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E. -Bye bye.

Fallout 3 lacks corrals to hold my horses. Will New Vegas fix this at retail or is it planned for DLC?

"Craning" up to reveal the city is already a very Leone type of thing to do, then it re-frames on a gunslinger in an old duster. That plus the desert, the cacti, and the crosses definitely re-assert the series' Western vibe. I am happy to see that! I think anyone who liked the first games is glad to see the NCR referenced in the first big piece of marketing. Now there are many questions. The robot looks like it could be an NPC that emotes by switching faces on its TV. That would be fun idea (I'd wonder if its coincidentally similar to the Kevin Spacey-bot in Moon.) How much of the "game world" will be made of the actual city of New Vegas? It looks huge in the teaser.

Excerpt from BioWare's response to DLC complaints (from Georg Zoller:) That's amazing to me. It amazes me that BioWare's response to upset customers is "let me explain why you shouldn't be upset." How is an exchange like the one between Zoller and that site allowed to happen? I don't see why anyone chooses to discuss this in terms of what purchasers of a title are or aren't "entitled" to. BioWare and EA are in the business of attracting customers to pay for their products. If those customers are feeling angry or alienated, for any reason, they're less likely to remain customers in the future. That EA dropped SecuROM from Dragon Age means they perceived the wave of backlash against Spore (mainly in the form of its battered Amazon "star rating") as a credible threat to their business. Are EA or BioWare capable of responding to dissatisfaction expressed on a smaller scale, as with these DLC complaints?

Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition includes all the DLC and costs exactly what I paid for Fallout 3 with no DLC last year. If they have "two years of DLC" planned for Dragon Age, I'll wait two years and see what's on the shelf then. At that point, I might as well give it another year and come back when it's dropped to the $20-30 range. I get excited enough to buy a title at launch a couple times a year, tops. DLC schemes like Dragon Age's are ideal for dousing that excitement.

The best way to satisfy video game fans is to let every character have sex with every character. http://www.spellholdstudios.net/ie/sarevokromance