Nepenthe

Well, I caved in and bought the PS3 version. I buy almost all my games this way, I try to keep up to date on what games could be interesting, and then just one day I get a massive craving to do some gaming and go pick it up. A time-honoured tradition that's netted me Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Uncharted 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company over the years. Come to think of it, I've made less purchases that I regret this way than via the careful planning route (*cough* GTA IV *cough*). So, when I get back from work, I'll know what the overheating situation is.

It's the Steve Jobs reality-distorting aura at work.

The doctors really don't seem to care much anymore. Muzyka is more interested in poker, and Zeschuk has always played second fiddle. Greg's now apparently (mostly) the Austin studio chief, so that would make him a lot less involved with the other studios' projects...

Yes, he said that, which was why everybody was expecting MP from ME3. Which there isn't going to be. So let's relax a bit, eh?

This was my general take and impression, as well.

IMO Not regarding individual bugs etc. It seems like they have one QA guy specifically tasked to talk to communicate between the forums and the team, which is a major step forward. Sure, they talked a lot about different aspects of the game, but the support forums languished.

Well, that assumes that you lose your internet connection more often than your discs. I've had 10 minutes of noticeable downtime in the past year, so that reverses the situation for me.

Gorth, I have a new avatar for you:

I don't think so, at least not from a business model point of view. Blizzard's always been about releasing things when they are good and ready, Bio has opposite traditions going at least as far back as Throne of Bhaal... Blizzard's also been historically very good about providing support for their products and releasing things like Mac executables back in the days before hipsters found mac and it was only used by the 1.3 % who valued a good gui. At least that's my take, I don't think I've ever played a Blizzard game. But as in having significant independence in a large publisher? Yeah, I think that might be a good comparison. I also think Riccitiello is less crazy than Bobby Kotick, as in he understands he's running a gaming company and not a dairy farm.

Well, I've had a few Saturday mornings that felt kind of like that.

I dunno, I guess I'd find that funnier if my take on the situation wasn't the opposite: the Bio/EA fusion actually pretty much removed the "publisher" from the equation due to the position the old Bio studio leadership has within EA. They are now actually running the show on their own terms (well, as in having a direct responsibility to the investors), and the results are, well, open for anyone to see and interpret in different ways.

This should fix the import bugs, which are kind of nasty if you care about the story aspects. I have to say, Bio have REALLY stepped up the customer interaction on their support forums for DA2, I hope it's not just damage control for a messed-up release but actually something that they will keep going with in the future. Because, they kind of need it, and have needed it since BG2, at least. Edit: the fact that they are hiring environment artists after DA2 is absolutely hilarious. :D

It's funny, games crash a lot less for me these days than they used (of course, I play fewer PC games, but still). I think DA2 is the only post-DOS PC game I've beaten (twice) that didn't crash on me once. Maybe I just have one of those hardware setups that every QA department has?

Edit: my witticism was lost due to different google priorisation. Anterior cruciate ligament.

Which is why I had "at the latest" there. I'm a bit hesitant to give accolades to studios based on one game (see Ion Storm). Of course, I haven't still played either one of these games (well, i did boot Witcher 1 twice), so I'm still going of second hand info. Still, people who's opinions I generally value are quite ecstatic about these, certainly the second one, though I can't help but feel a part of it is related to these rather conservative, married gentlemen in legal professions getting to bang medieval women of loose morale while their uptight wives are planning the next dinner party.

In before "20-30 hours? And they pretend to be an RPG?". Or does that apply only to developers west of the Paris Meridian? More seriously though, looks like CD Projekt really barged into the top-echelon RPG studios with this release, at the latest. It's not like it's been very crowded, with 1-3 studios there for the past, what, 10 years?

While a wise approach on the PC side, less so when dealing with consoles.

Well, a couple of days ago I got a tweet from an independent game journalist (which is kind of putting it charitably, but yeah) who said that she's refused to review Rockstar games, since they, ahem, put considerable pressure on the reviewers. That's when I first started to consider not buying it, tbh. The fact that I'm 1/4 for liking the Rockstar games I've bought always makes me a bit leery, too, and now this. Maybe going to pick it up in the bargain bin after a couple of patches, I guess... :/

http://support.rockstargames.com/entries/2...ng-in-l-a-noire Looking at the feedback there, everybody might be better off waiting for a while, no matter the system you are on. Now seriously considering not picking up my preorder.

That's the bg2 UI...

Do you work for fox news?

Better part of valor!

No, online gaming, friends and trophies should be still up. The store is till down, and they'd let a total retard set up their lost password reclamation page, which is now gone. At least that's my take on the situation in the sony soap opera.

Still on a break after ramming through Battlefield: Bad Company last week. I've got LA Noire preordered for PS3 (releases tomorrow here), but due to the lack of PSN and everything, I'm probably not going to rush into buying it. My preorder's staying reserved for another week at least, so I might grab it before it expires, but not sure at the moment. Not really feeling it, so to speak.

Oh, ok, hitting on a new guy two days after your husband is dead. Completely different thing. And that's where you are wrong. Sure, there's a bit of IMO here, but frankly the problems with DA2 had absolutely nothing to do with pandering to the masses or making the games idiot proof. Those parts, like the combat, were the ones that actually worked well. The real issues were in the borderline insane cost-cutting measures (meet the new dungeon, same as the old dungeon), the corridor structure and the severely limited pc camera (which still made the game play better than DAO on consoles). Both of these are either simply bad design, or a desperate attempt to make a good game without the budget required for it. The cognitive dissonance here is that due to their initial bias of "it's now popular, so it must suck" people call the game out for the wrong things, especially when they aren't going into the details. I think there's more than one trap to fall into, here, and a lot of old school rpg elitists have fallen into the pit of not being able to tell where the problems are. Bioware have pulled themselves out of slumps before (abovementioned NWN will be agreed by most, if not Volo), and the extra 3-6 months given to ME3 is certainly a sign that they've realised they need time to deliver the quality product for which they (still for the moment) are known.