WorstUsernameEver

I don't think any Obsidian game had particularly brilliant encounter design (the later ones are better than, say, Neverwinter Nights 2 or Knights of the Old Republic II, but hardly great), so I guess you could call them "grindy" in that "you fight waves of mobs over and over", but uh, ultimately I'm not sure what the adjective was supposed to mean in context. I suspect the writer didn't reflect on what it would have meant to other people.

They wanted to call it Volo's Guide but didn't get the okay It would have been such a beautiful name for the expansion

The Joystiq preview is out. EDIT: No quote because copy-pasting doesn't seem to work well for me right now.

It could be, but this is the first time I see it. More importantly, we have a release date, though there's plenty of time for it to be changed.

Tentative release date: 5 March 2013.

I know that's kind of the dominant mindset, and I'm hardly an expert myself, but from what I understand high-poly models are already generated and then simplified during production and a lot of stuff like baking lights is going to become outdated next-gen to be replaced with stuff that can be iterated faster, which could potentially bring the costs down. I say potentially because I imagine big productions will keep costing more, partly because of mismanagement and inefficiencies, partly because of marketing, partly because of the need to make blockbuster games even more like blockbuster movies.

Ultima Forever, Ultima IV free-to-play remake, website online. If you thought that Ultima IV needed discrete classes and microtransactions, a beta signup is available too.

More like the social gaming/phone industry. Though frankly, it's something that always puzzled me, but oh well.

I wasn't really sure where to post it and it doesn't really look like my cup of tea, but if anyone wants a new free-to-play trade outpost management (?) game, a bunch of devs including ex-Obsidianites Jason Fader, J.D. Cerince and Liz Fiacco have launched a Kickstarter for "Steam Bandits". The art looks pretty good, at the very least.

Tigranes gone Prosper too? Ehr, no thanks.

I was half-joking, but if I had to chose between a less or a more DMC-influenced DSIII* I would have chosen the latter. I'm well aware that moving even further from the gameplay design of the originals would have pissed the fanbase immensely and it probably wouldn't have been the right move, it's just a personal preference. * at least in terms of combat options and navigation of the environments... not sure how that would have suited a co-op friendly environment though I suspect it would have ended up fairly close to Dragon's Dogma, which I loved despite its many problems.

I must have missed the multiple-choice dialogue Portal and Bastion featured. And the voiced main characters. Uh.

Thanks, but I decided to abandon ENB completely. Good news though, if you're kinda bored with vanilla weather Project Reality for Skyrim is out. I'm not sure if it's realistic but it looks pretty, doesn't murder my eyes, and mostly matches the mood of the original.

Steady improvements.

Eh, nope, not even that ENB manages to satisfy me. I could try tweaking it until I get to a point I'm satisfied, but honestly, it's easier to just go vanilla (and performance is better).

That was a hastily put together teaser though. The Kickstarter video is the official promotional material they're pushing.

Imaginator was actually made for New Vegas first. I'm not really too interested in using it in Skyrim though, I wasted way too much time tweaking with it in F:NV By the way, this ENB configuration is the first I've found that actually looks good. It's hardly perfect (colors are too saturated in points and it's too contrast-y, though I guess people like that), but the chromatic result is pretty decent. I like Skyrim's desaturated look, but sometimes it feels just a tad too much desaturated.

Looks nice for a game with yet the same unoriginal premise. At least they tried to play with the colors a little bit.

Cutlock is the new Prosper.

Shepard is a reaper, but also destroyed all the reapers and left a human form behind to help Ashley in bed, while Tali became a brothel (no, she doesn't work there, she's literally a brothel) and the Illusive Man was resurrected as a talking car? Best Mass Effect game.

I'm not a marketer (which is doubtlessly important) but I think doing a game that plays well, is polished and receives good reviews should do the trick. Of course, that's easier said than done.

Yeah, a dialogue wheel similar to Mass Effect. There's not as much dialogue as other Obsidian titles because the game is shorter, but the density didn't feel awfully different to me. It's structured in a way that you can escape from pretty much any dialogue and get to killing and slashing though, and generally you either say "go on" or investigate other options. There are a few dialogue choices that modify influence with your companions or change the outcome of a quest, although gameplay-wise there's very little in the way of consequences for those choices. In other words, it's basically an Obsidian-lite RPG with console hack'n'slash mechanics. Both of those souls aren't really executed as well as they should be so it ends up feeling like a rather mediocre game, but since it will probably be very low in price right now it probably warrants a try. Never had the chance to play co-op (if a fellow Obsidianite is interested let me know!) so I can't say much about it, though you can read plenty of feedback on these forums and elsewhere about an allegedly bad camera and lack of importing.

No. But then again, I've seen that people seem to be okay with ENB's changes to the lighting, so I'm probably the weirdo for finding them not worthy, especially considering the performance loss.

Sure, but Alpha Protocol's dialogue stance system works because of the "cinematic" angle. Dialogue perks and the likes could still reasonably be in without the full on time-limited stance thing though (that's what you seem to be interested in judging by the second part of your message).

Considering dialogue won't be voiced, I doubt it.