Raithe

Heh, it could just represent that while you are off with your "team" killing things and looting the dead.. ahem. I mean.. adventuring... the party memberss who are back at base camp are also going off and doing stuff and thus earning xp equivalent... after all in times of war and near dark magic apocalypse I suppose it makes sense to kick back in a camp and eat and drink and do bugger all... It might not be much.. but it could be the "kinda story idea" behind why those members will level up to the same level as those who have been off with you...

The major point I missed was the end sequence. You had no real feel for how you'd affected the surrounding communities/groups by the end of the game. At least, not beyond the "oo I was good and purified the water" or "oo I was evil and put in the anti-mutant goop". The slow but brief picture montage gave a few hints, but one of the key points to FO1 & 2 (at least to me) was the run off of the various groups, and how they developed in the years after the game due to what I did. I felt like there were serious consequences from my actions within game (and I could replay the game and make different choices, and it would be apparent in how groups survived/grew/became extinct). And that was what really seemed lacking from FO3. Maybe it was just that I played through the game, and was expecting to hear things like what happened with the Republic of Dave after you interfered with the election.. or how the former slaves you helped (or hindered) with the Lincoln monument turned out. Whether by running rampage through Paradise Falls changed the slavers/raiders in the area or not.. and then at the end.. boom.. or lack of boom. Even if you add the Broken Steel DLC, you don't have any real feeling of consequences from your actions. To an extent it was interesting to roll along with the central storyline, some of the side quests were fun in their way, and some amusing game time. A helluva lot better then Oblivion. But yeah, was lacking a certain something.

Hm, a black ops organisation... using the shady reasoning of : "Well, it's not the government spending money.. its someone who has no official connection to the government.. therefore we don't have to make note. After all, we don't know how he's making his money, or exactly what he's spending it on... It's not like he's filing it on his tax returns...."

Smile when you type that...

It was that whole mix of.. you could be impressed by the technical excellence of it.. but lacking in gameplay that actually pulled you in and made you invest in the story. At least that's how it came across to me. Although yes, Far Cry did have a touch more soul then Crysis and Oblivion both. But not enough to keep me plowing through.

Borderlands looks like it has the humour in it that should have been in Fallout 3.... but I think it's one I'm going to give a miss for now. Maybe when it's more of a budget friendly thing.. but from what I've seen and read about it, it's a lot of grind 'n shoot. And I really need some serious story to keep me interested in a grind 'n shoot game.

Dark fantasy... add in a touch of Cthulhu... Hm, roll up a character. Go mad, die horribly. Roll up a new character. Suffer tragedy , dark and brooding past. then go mad.

Far Cry is one of the few games I never completed. I think it kind of ran into the same territory as Crysis and Oblivion. Technically nice.. but no soul.

I'd just wrapped up Batman Arkham.. good game and atmosphere, if a tad short. And way too easy to run around with Detective Mode on most of the time and miss out on the visuals.... Had been expecting to be getting into Alpha Protocol around now but c'est la vie.. a bit more patience to wait for that.. Been balancing a mix of dabbling with Kotor 2 again, a touch of Deus Ex re-run, and enjoying the glowing lights of Tron 2.0... Not serious gaming, just idle moments here and there.

If it's going to be a lengthy delay.. do you think there's going to be another 3-5 months worth of interesting and amusing twitter from Thorton? Or can we expect to start finding Yancy and others twitting away as well...

conspiracy theories are just a plot to make you paranoid...

It's business... when has business ever had to make sense?

What, it's not all about the ice pick delivery in south america?

The pirates don't really complain about it because they're bypassing it... Those of us who legitamately buy the games complain because it irritates us.

Heh, this means my pre-order from back in February with Amazon will roll over to make it a year long pre-order.... It's already stopped showing up on my "recent orders" list Ah well. I guess I shall endeavour to stoke a touch more patience..

"Che - You can spend your whole life combatting the forces of capitalism, you still might wind up on a t-shirt sold in a store owned by the Gap..."

The only question becomes... Who pays for the Vodka?

Trotskyism.. Glasnost.. Who cares, just as long as someone remembers to bring the vodka..

It was bound to happen sooner or later... After all, we got to watch communism break once already...

Now you've done it.. You realise we'll all be holding you to that?

Hm, well it's not really a Sega statement.. just that Feargus Urquhart made a generic statement that really didn't provide any actual details. It comes across as that rather bland comment to convey that there aren't any problems between Obsidian and Sega... without actually saying that But still, news is news..

So you log into it the moment you boot up your machine and leave it running in the background.. that's fine for you. I don't switch on my pc.. play one game for a bit, then play another game for a bit.. and keep changing games. I log into a game, and that's what starts up GfWL. I don't want it running when I'm playing a game I've bought, why the hell should I have to put up with it running in the background when I'm not even playing games? Also, screw the idea of telling it to keep my login name and password so it can do it all automatically. Maybe that's just a small level of paranoia, or just that family are just as likely to sit down at my pc. But if software on my computer is going to connect to something over the internet, I want to know that it's happening and not pilot it on blind automatic. And 10 minutes for update, yes, that first patch for Batman took about that long to run before GfWL would let you play the game. That's the download and the update time. and that's with an 8 meg net connection and a quad core pc with 4 gig of ram. Part of the annoyance factor is the amount of people that don't like the sheer _concept_ of what GfWL is. That's above and beyond the technical aspect. Frankly, we've all seen that GfWL and a whole heap of DRM related ideas don't work, they just seem to penalise the people who buy the games legitimately by making them jump through hoops. You're perfectly happy to feel the way you do about GfWL, so is everyone else. If the forum thread offends you.. don't read it.

What we need are suitable Alpha Protocol related Motivational posters...

I think part of it comes down to the annoyance factor.. I've paid for a game to enjoy hours of single-player strory/gameplay.. and you have to jump through a few hoops and tell something that "no, I don't want to be online" before playing a game. Sure, it's only a couple of mouse clicks extra really, and another minute having it run through the sequence before you can escape to the game.. And that it comes up every single time you try running a game... If it was something that didn't try running on it's own, and I could tell it to only open up and ask me for login details when I _wanted_ it to. If I felt "hey, yeah, I want it to access the net while I play and I'm curious to see how my gameplay talents match up to complete strangers", that would be one thing. But there are games that won't let you play until you download and install games for windows live. Even if you're not going to be using it. Sure, when it does run you can tell it no. But I want the option of having it only run when I actually want it. Not every fracking tme I feel like getting some single-player game time on. As it is, I put up with it. But it is background irritation. I don't like being forced to download and install a third-party piece of software to play a game I've bought. I mean GTAIV is a pain in the keister where you have to jump through rockstar social club and games for windows before you can even get into the game.

Hey, if things aren't handled carefully... people might need to develop a support group... .. although Alpha Protocol Anonymous..