Zoraptor

When it comes to listening to fans that is- almost- always damned if you do, damned if you don't. Do listen and you're in danger of falling captive to a vocal minority, don't listen and you're in danger of becoming detached from the very people who are your biggest fans and do a lot of free PR and word of mouth for you. Look at Project Eternity, you have one group who is all for romance and another that hates it with a passion. One group is going to be disappointed and given the nature of the internet they will be vocally disappointed- it's inevitable. I imagine that striking a balance between doing the stuff you want to do, appealing to the right demographics and the people in the community ('fans') is a very difficult balancing act in almost all respects. Probably the only people immune from it are the real niche developers making proper wargames or simulators and the like- groups that have a very narrow fan base and target audience with very specific expectations. I actually think consumers do need to have a look at themselves. I watched and generally enjoyed genre equivalents like TNG and Babyon 5, and when it comes right down to it there was a lot of outright bad storytelling in both of those. Wesley/ Geordi's frequent treknobabble day saving, Bruce Boxleitner winning a war by shouting at super advanced aliens etc. ME2 didn't have the most coherent plot either, what with an imminent threat to earth being destroyed by a single pocket cruiser. The big problem with ME3 was the lack of foreshadowing more than anything, Deus Ex showed that a similar ending can be satisfactory, and there was plenty of closure and pay off for long term story elements in Tuchanka and Rannock. The ending was never going to be Breaking Bad class, yet it seems that many expected something of that quality, set themselves up for it then got angry when their expectations weren't met.

Funny, if I had to find two words to describe Saudi tyrannical and dictatorial would be two of the first, along with terrorist exporting religious zealot nutbars. Let's be frank here, the Swedish case against him is an outright joke. They've leaked immensely from day one which is close to unheard of, and with impunity, and have leaked amongst other things the victim statements of two women they believe- at least in theory- have been the victims of a serious sexual assault. They've cancelled the case, then reinstated it with a more militant prosecutor- so at least one prosecutor thought there was no case to answer. The person who did the police interview with Assange (that got leaked, of course) knew one of the complainants well. The condom he allegedly ripped- the single most crucial bit of impartial and objective evidence- does not contain his DNA. Looking at the Kim Dotcom case we've got going on here, and the Pirate Bay case in Sweden, there isn't much doubt that people will try and do anything including stuff outside the law to cuddle up to the US. We had our police using illegal warrants, transferring stuff to the FBI against judges orders and suborning our equivalent of the NSA/ GCHQ to illegally monitor a bunch of people they shouldn't (ultimately the GCSB and Prime Minister's responsibility, not the police's though). Fortunately we still have an independent judiciary- as opposed to Sweden's largely politically appointed one- so all this has been revealed and the tsunami or media invective has rather reversed its direction.

I don't really know if it's 'provable' in a classic sense, but it is certainly what happened and I suspect pretty much anyone over 20 outside the US will have had similar experiences of releases being arbitrarily delayed to fulfil some obscure schedule. It is, for obvious reasons, not something someone in the US would really notice or be aware of.

Outpost and Big Rigs as being genuinely dreadful/ so buggy they could not be played/ completed, Daggerfall v1 and Descent to Undermountain being a bit better and a few recent examples like Elemental/ Demigod/ Sword of the Stars 2; though of course and to their credit (or our credit really, ohoho) Stardock did offer refunds for their two. Outpost at least had genuinely atrocious and inaccurate claims both in promotional material and theoretically 'impartial' info like reviews, and SOTS2 was barely barely better in terms of offering features that actually existed let alone worked properly, and most of the pre release info from Kerberus and Paradox was if not outright dishonest about as close as possible to it. Mind you, I don't tend to see that as being reason to actually pirate, I'd just refuse to buy anything further from those involved. Didn't actually end up buying SOTS2 though; for once much genuine thanks to Paradox for afflicting it with Valve's Software Console as that saved me 40USD.

Since someone has apparently released a significant patch for System Shock 2 (and Thief 2!) yesterday I'm giving that a try to see what changes have been made. Otherwise have been playing The Witcher 2 again. I think I've got the exact same criticisms as last time I played; it goes for Batman:AA style gameplay but doesn't have the responsiveness required for that which results in boss fights being finicky and thus artificially hard. And I still think it looks far too much like Roche turns up specifically to rescue Letho at one point.

I really don't think EA has that much to do with it. You can maybe blame them for DA2's truncated dev time but that's about it- Bioware has done plenty of 'questionable' and equivalent stuff beforehand, when it was run outright by the Good Doctors. The NWN OC is quite possibly the worst, most cliche and unoriginal story that I've ever experienced 3/4 of -and makes DA2/ ME3 etc look like comparative masterpieces- yet it still had grandiose claims of quality on the box, they claimed you could load your BG2 character into it at one point, it was unstable at release and had dlc before it was called dlc; Jade Empire (and KOTOR, really) ushered in consoles as the primary focus with JE streamlining out almost all the (already limited) charm KOTOR's combat had, and Mass Effect was an RPG lite with sub Gears of War popamole 3rd person gunplay and DA2 style repeating dungeons- all before EA happened on the scene. I actually had a far lower opinion of Bioware over the NWN-KOTOR-JE period than now. I thought DAO was pretty good if a bit bland, ME2 OK and ME3 wildly uneven but decent enough overall (cut that clown *** **** and the end game slogathon and it'd approach good; albeit I never expected a great deal from the ending so was not overly disappointed) while of the earlier three the only one I found above tolerable was KOTOR. Then again I don't hate EA on principle, don't care much about Origin as long as there isn't 3rd party Originworks and- generally- see little point in slagging games or companies off as you just end up sounding like a hater who's gonna hate. There's plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made but the EA-hate/ Bioware have sold out type thing is a bit lazy and does get a bit boring.

Simplicity is best so I'd suggest going for "The Watcher". Then you could have the sequel be "The Watcher 2: Slaughterers of Souls".

I don't care even slightly if there are romances in principle- gay, straight, casual, deep whatever- so long as they're handled well. A properly done, mature relationship- or even just going two people going at it like rabbits in a stressful situation- is fine by me, so long as it's optional. But I'm no fan of 'romances' as currently implemented because they tend far too often to be checkbox lists, both in terms of performing a series of tests to get the nookie reward at the end, and as a tick on a list of fanservice items. Basically, what I definitely don't want to see is the typical Romance Flow Chart of chat x3, deal with (daddy/ trust) issues, fade to black just before end of game; nor the feeling that any character is primarily an excuse to have (a) romance(s) in the game. Opportunities for 'gratuitous' sex as done in something like Fallout/2 fine. Opportunities for development of a 'proper' relationship, fine too. But please, no codependency, no daddy/ trust issues (well, unless they're uniquely handled) and absolutely no pandering just for the sake of it.

That is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If they'd taken the easier option (in retrospect probably the sensible option too) and just done an expandalone style sequel they'd be accused of being stale and derivative and charging full price for Dragon Age 1.1, if they change stuff then they're dumbing down etc. I tend to think that there were two problems, some hubris- the presumption that Changes Were Good and an assumption that they knew what their customers really wanted- and quite a lot of not having enough time. Certainly I could see some of the more egregious story problems and Duplicate Dungeon syndrome being fixed with more time and having a short development cycle makes fixing stuff that goes wrong properly a lot more difficult. I'm not really trying to defend DA2; though it did have some potential improvements they were all too often one step forward, two steps backward in implementation. It was a disappointing game overall for most, though it has its fans. DA3 will tell if they've learned from the experience.

I haven't played TOR personally, but that isn't my experience of the reaction at all. The main relevant criticism I've seen (ie not stuff like "I hate mmos and it should have been KOTOR3", which is fine but is stating a preference rather than being criticism) is that it was good, but not good at the things MMOs need to do to keep subscribers, ie not much for high level peoples/ not enough replayability etc. I've seen a lot of people saying they played through two storylines then cancelled their subscription, from Bioware/ EA's point of view that is definitely bad, but it isn't the sign of a bad game just a 'bad'- well, inappropriate is probably fairer, a whole lot of people thought it was a fine model a few years ago- business model attached to the game. Unethical? I think everyone has a good idea as to the ultimate reason why it was rushed (Mass Effect and Dragon Age productions were overlapping too much, so one or the other had to be either rushed or delayed, no surprise which was chosen) but I'll save unethical for those who outright lie about the stuff they're making, not just the typical PR overegging that goes on for pretty much every game ever made. Ultimately it's a business not an artists' collective, and businesses gonna business; it's what they do.

I'm hardly a volo style fan of Bioware, but it's a bit off describing ME3 as a failure since it did very well sales wise. 'Fan reaction' does not necessarily describe the overall reaction and I imagine a lot of people (Michael Bay, Todd Howard) simply point to their sales as a buffer against criticism- they did have Bioware's two best selling games in their last four releases. I feel a bit sorry for them over TOR though, as that really seems to have fallen into a hole in the MMO market that no one was predicting when it was started*, when everyone seemed to think MMOs were the way of the future, and it didn't do as badly as most make out either. *Which is why I won't have much sympathy for Zenimax if TES: O tanks.

... Tariq Aziz, Iraq's foreign minister under Saddam was christian, the president of Lebanon is christian and whatever else you can say about Syria they've had plenty of christian ministers as well. And that's just off the top of my head. Why anybody cares about religion specifically is quite beyond me. So long as religious people aren't trying to institute ludicrous religion based laws (eg christians who ignore what Jesus actually said because he was a hippy and Leviticus and Saul are more to their liking, as well as sharia touting muslims) I see no reason to care about their religion.

Yeah, most publishers make games as well, Activision, EA, 2k, THQ, Sega, Paradox, Bethesda etc. They may have parallel structures like Take2 and 2kgames, or Zenimax and BethesdaGS, and subsidiary game studios but it's still the same company. The two EA examples Bos_hybrid named (especially a Roberts helmed Wing Commander/ Privateer) would do pretty well I would think, though I'd think something like Baldurs Gate would be more likely. It'd tweak the noses of the Kickstarter Purity Brigade- and there are obvious reasons why a developer might not want to do it that way- but I could certainly see those examples working out.

I said it when he was looking at being confirmed, but Romney (named after a breed of sheep, always a bad sign) reminds me of a Republican version of John Kerry- the least offensive candidate of a not very inspiring bunch, and one that pretty much nobody is actually enthusiastic about in any way except for "not being the other guy". He's certainly not got the charisma of a Reagan or Clinton necessary to unseat a sitting President.

To be fair, EA actually does offer distribution (as opposed to publishing) and hybrid deals through EA Partners- think Crysis, Kingdoms of Amalur etc- where the developers still own the IP, and they do have the "ninety free days on Origin" deal as well. They probably offer more flexibility than most. Bethesda/ Zenimax is certainly not big three though, by any stretch. They've hardly had any decently successful titles outside their core franchises- even iD's game published through them was disappointing sales wise. If it weren't for TES/ Fallout every two years they'd barely be bigger than Paradox.

I'm a bit surprised by the implication that it was for Eternity that an offer was made, but that's all. Someone like WOTC looking to get a BG3 or similar done would make perfect sense, for them, as it would be effectively risk free venture capital- and at least a bit of sense from Obsidian's point of view as they'd get, for example, the publicity due from and fans of Baldur's Gate. There will also be some who will not contribute to kickstarter on principle (yes, such people do exist) who will contribute if there's a more known property behind the project. I also rather doubt that publishers spend time worrying about kickstarter as a competitor, their biggest threat is increasing costs vs decreasing returns in their traditional fields. The three biggest funded games in kickstarter history don't come close to adding up to the funding for a single AAA game. All the evidence is that publishers simply do not care about kickstarter size projects, as there's no way for them to make money- or enough money- off projects that size that they fund themselves. Of course if kickstarters provide that scope of funding to the publishers then that would be a different story, as it's "free", and more or less risk free, funding.

Gamersgate was for a long time the only place to have NWN2 as a DD, being smaller than Steam they're generally more flexible. Some of the D&D stuff definitely disappeared from there when the roll over of the rights happened. All they've done now is change the listed publisher from Atari to WOTC, even the copyright and disclaimer text is the same as previous. The only place that kept all games (that they had) available throughout was GOG, albeit they simply do not have NWN2 at all.

You can try Ultima IV for free if you want- it (and a couple of other fringe Ultimas) is one of the free games you get for signing up at GOG. Its graphics are just a tad dated to be sure, but there's no way to know whether you'd like a game more than trying the game.

Achievements per se are (usually) rubbish as they're (usually) trite make work for obsessive compulsives and epeen wavers. On the other hand gaining traits/ reputations/ whatever from your actions in game are good, if handled well.

Pretty surprised at this- I'd have thought licencing might be a reason for not having a tool kit/ SDK but not for not using Onyx at all. Presumably DS3 has some of the middleware it uses listed in its EULA/ splash screens, so that would give an idea of some of the 3rd party stuff that is being used.

It seems likely that it will be sold at a lot of places, no real reason not to. Don't know if Origin would allow key registration or similar though so it's probably not usable as a kickstarter specific distribution option- the presumption would be that if steam/ gog/ whoever were used for the kickstarter copy you'd just get a key you could enter to register the game then download from there, saving Obsidian download and admin costs. Personally I think the ideal situation would be a universal key that could be registered at the DD store of your choice so all options and preferences are catered for, but that has obvious practical problems.

That's not true at all. Oh, it's true. One of the earlier threads in this forum even had a picture of the Kuldahar area from IWD as a 3d wireframe mesh (dunno where they got it from, since Google Images can't seem to find it).

I'd quite like to see what Obsidian would come up with in collaboration with Warren Spector or Ken Levine*, but that's a pipe dream and likely a case of too many cooks/ chiefs as well. *

Carmageddon Reincarnation kickstarter, you got a voucher for the original game from GOG is you contributed $25 or more- though it hasn't been released yet.

If it's 2d as the gamebanshee interview suggests then a likely camera style is similar to other isometric 2d games; Baldurs Gate/ IE, Fallout/ Jagged Alliance etc as you really need 3d to have an adjustable camera (except for zooming, though that would still have a fixed angle/ aspect).