Nepenthe

I agree, and yet my standard team in ME3 was Liara and Garrus, because they were the least annoying characters available for most of the game (ok, I actually sort of like Garrus, he suffers somewhat from having been hit with a major reset button between every installment, but he does make for a decent bromance, better than Jacob ever did). Yep. They actually killed Wong off-screen during the release press blitz. (She was supposed to be the voice on the official twitter feed which got *connection terminated*). Argh.

Well, they haven't even announced it officially, so... But signs (game lifespan etc.) could point towards it. I seem to have missed completely both of these aspects. *squints* Nope, still sticks out like a sore, stupid thumb. Additionally I think freddie prinze jr was horribly miscast.

While you're probably right, it still grates on me and just makes me think that Bioware were too afraid of the psychotic fans of the two mentioned characters.. Getting to pick them up for even the final rush to the Pillar of Light would've made a major difference to me. And Lt. beefcake.

Hence, it's a bug (and a reported known issue that's going to be fixed).

Yes, but they finetuned it a bit too much in the other direction. Again, been 10 years since I last played BG1, but getting attacked by a single xvart seems a bit... easy.

No.

Yep, haven't played BG1 since 2001-2002.

I'm sure this is obvious, but they clearly talk about the "open-world" wilderness areas BG2 (happily) lacks.

*insert trend bucking here* I was ok with Mordin. He went out well, and we'd gotten to know him fairly well. However LEGION I was kind of pissed about. Not because he died, but because we basically didn't get to interact with him all that much. He shows up on one mission, then you have just enough time to get his loyalty up and do that before you end the game in ME2. And ME3 has him pop up only as a non-squaddie who WILL die (in one form or another). Legion is, overall, my favorite character, and showing my bias I am annoyed that he gets so little screen time... especially in comparison to Tali. I don't mind that he went out overall... it's just that in comparison to MANY of the other characters in 2 and 3, he wasn't allowed to visit with the players nearly as much as any other squad member in the game. You can insert pretty much any ME2 squaddie here, really. Thane is very similar, and the Jacob fangirls were fairly royally pissed, too. Then there's the "we really don't have a good reason for not giving them to you even as temporary squaddies for the final climax, but we still won't do it, haha" crowd of Miranda, Jack, Wrex, Grunt etc.

I can't compare to all the other outcomes the story might've had, but sure, it's possible to make an ending that isn't "happy" yet is fulfilling. Press "a" to kill your friends, "b" to destroy your identity and become a dictator of the universe or "c" to enact the crazy machine's fantasy is neither. If you can't have a quality ending, better to make it "happy" and leave at least some people content.

Admittedly, it's a case of both for me. But it's really a major can of worms, about how games are a different medium, characters as player avatars, etc that I really can't be bothered to get into, as many have said it better than me before, to no avail. It's hard to separate the contrived execution of the endings from the actual content (the knowles quote above touches on the nature of the medium aspect, I've seen some pretty good longer analysis on it, too). I actually prefer the ambiguity of the original ending in this regard. I can understand why EDI would die with destroy (impartial energy beam that doesn't discriminate), but liked the idea of the Catalyst being imperfect which was validated with the differences between low EMS ending and high EMS ending consequences on Earth, as well as Shepard's capability to still survive. I would have preferred they left that ambiguity in. Yes. Especially as the DLC seems to have reinforced this idea of the Catalyst's fallibility. Really, it's a multitude of small things that come together to make Neppy a very unhappy boy, some of which we've touched on here, some of which are really trivial and some that I probably can't even vocalise properly.

I thought the biggest FU was making sure that EDI dies in destroy, which she didn't in the original

Meh. If I had creative control I likely wouldn't change them either. And I say this as a gamer. People already get into irrational frenzies regarding DLC being "essential." For all the people on the BSN and beyond that stated they would be perfectly fine paying for a DLC that significantly changed the ending into something they wanted, I think it'd be stepping into a minefield. Imagine if you needed all 3 of the DLC to get some significantly better ending. People already crap on us for Javik (an NPC I do not consider essential, though he is an interesting one). Imagine if the DLC actually was required for something better/more thorough for the endings. IMO the challenges that the game is incomplete without the DLC would actually be accurate, and I think it'd be much, much worse for gaming if big publishers went "Hmmmmm, this popular franchise would probably be better if we gave them an emotionally frustrating ending, but we then strung them along to pick up our DLCs in order to get the real ending." Tale answered you better than I ever could. I CBA to retread the old arguments about everything (and that's why the irrational internet whiners will always win, they have nothing else to do), I'm just saying that when people like me, long-term fans with a fairly significant amount of cash to spend on your product and an actual real life stop caring about what you deliver because of your inability to deliver an ending to your story that doesn't make me feel royally ****ed, you should actually be worried; as opposed to listening to the guys who froth at mouth about more games than I've heard of, yet never buy anything outside a steam sale. Sorry for using Bioware = you here, but really, in view of your quote, nothing else I can do.

I don't think any amount of stuff that leads to the three (four) bad/worse star child choices is really gonna save it. I was, and still to a degree am, a massive ME1-2 fanboy. I've played ME2 more times than any other game (exceeding past record holders BG2 and Deus Ex). I lapped up a disturbing amount of ME merch. And now... I just don't really care. It's kind of sad that I liked a game franchise so much I had to psychologically alienate myself from it after the way the endings (both new and old) were done. And yes, the fact that my favourite characters (ok, it's mostly miranda, and I could've taken 10x more wrex) were cut into bit parts (and that's putting it charitably) while I got knucklehead mcbeefcake etc. didn't exactly help.

Last chance to un**** the game, I'd say. Don't expect the endings to change. Chance dropped then, I guess.

Last chance to un**** the game, I'd say.

So, in case it wasn't obvious (either from the get go or from my not mentioning it), my rebuttal for the grading criteria used on my dissertation wasn't accepted and it remained **** laude. So ~25 years of school ends kind of with a fizzle, having never received anything that wasn't one of the two top latin honors. Meh. I'm now a) glad the whole thing's over so I can really move on with my life b) feeling a bit vindictive and planning on making sure that nothing I write in the future will be of any use to the Uni c) happily going to concentrate on a career on the more practical side of things d) getting ready for a 4 day weekend. Probably need to start the grown-up stuff by cutting all the frat boy look from my flat. Tomorrow.

Hmmm.. Well consider it bought, as soon as the release it on GoG. (*But I wonder if GoG would want to release it? It directly competes with them selling the standard versions.) It doesn't matter whether GoG wants it or not, Overhaul's deal with Atari allows them to sell it on one store/platform, in this case, their own. You realise you can get the game without their client?

I'd say it's too early to think about it, and I hope that BGEE will do well enough for them to be able to fund their BG2EE project better. Obviously this one was run pretty shoe-string. But, yes, a lot depends on what happens with BGEE in the few following months.

Yeah, if I had a perfectly functional Mac OS version of BG, my enthusiasm would probably be significantly lower, too. CBA to edit this time, sorry.

Aww, look who's all morally affronted by it. I do reserve a particular dislike here, because when someone makes a bad game, at least they were trying to make a good game, and perhaps could have. This was a largely pointless endeavour that's resulted in an all too predictably poor product that never needed to be made. Modded BG - even if one restricts oneself to easy to install mods - provide an amazing experience and this is just a bunch of dudes who are making $ on something decidedly inferior. Not even the fact that you're 100 % agreeing with Volourn makes you question your opinion? I mean, it's often done that to me.

Aww, look who's all morally affronted by it.

You're lucky to have such young parents. I'm two years younger than you and my dad is 74.

Actually, the only good "delayed sequel" I can think of is DXHR. Which, funnily, was way better than the sequel they did close to the original.

I also tend to agree with this sentiment. Why link it with the Torment IP if you can't have any association to it? As much as I wish I'd say something that smart occasionally, I think you're misquoting me there