WorstUsernameEver

Well, it technically hasn't been announced yet, so he's just using what, so far, has been the official name. Nothing wrong with that.

Finished Risen 2. I enjoyed it, but man that game had problems. I'm hoping they keep the pirate setting for the inevitable sequel, now that they have a framework they should hopefully be able to improve on it, fix balance and combat, provide more opportunities for skill usage, reintegrate some elements from Risen 1 and Gothic (swimming, killing people you've incapacitated, etc.) and maybe sculpt character models that have proportions resembling human beings. I have faith in you, Piranha Bytes, don't disappoint me! EDIT: Also man, that boss fight was anticlimatic as all hell. There's a problem when your final boss is weaker than a side quest monster.. or heck, weaker than most monsters too.

DSIII was shipped though, not sold. And I'm not sure if I agree that North America is the biggest market for this kind of game. Either way, Reckoning really can't be the reason they're tanking, it's pretty much a title that had nothing to do with the loan. And honestly, 100 people on it? What were they working on? The game has some pretty cheap assets, 90% of the quests are of the fetch variety, and the loot is random generated for the most part. Seriously, I.. I don't understand.

Reckoning had nothing to do with the loan, to be honest, Big Huge Games is set in Maryland, and the game is basically their THQ action-RPG which was canceled with the Amalur lore tacked on. NPD talked about 410,000 too, which summed with digital sales and rest of the world, could easily rank up to a million. If they lost money with that, then eh... mismanagement? That said, I absolutely have no idea how Rhode Island could possibly think such a big loan was a good idea, especially considering how risky Schilling's venture was. The MMO was a doomed prospect from the beginning, and, if I remember the articles I've read recently correctly, even analysts pointed out to them that it was extremely risky. Tax payers have all the right to be angry.

Modern or fantasy?

A few reviews for the Game of Thrones RPG are out and, unsurprisingly, they mention a distinct lack of polish and gameplay problems.

New blog post on Marburg's villa. Most important snippet (imo): We already kinda knew about QTEs and no-stealth, but as far as I recall, this is the closest we got to an actual description of the early iteration's gameplay.

Yeah, I have it.

Not a fan of his character artwork to be honest. Environments and props look good, if maybe a tad too over-designed when it comes to props and weapons, but then again, a lot of those come from Hunted and I think the direction was pretty much that. We'll see, I guess. Good that at least they hired another art director after Cherry left, if nothing else, hope they'll manage to sign a contract soon. Curious that he came from inXile.

Still playing Risen 2.. it gets a lot better once you get your own ship.

They haven't just chosen the engine, they have just announced it. They were doing art tests and checking functionality even before the Kickstarter was finished. EDIT: They also more likely than not be first passes to show the camera perspective, ask feedback etc. Not the PR-doctored screenshots we usually see during marketing.

Speaking about WASTELAND TWO, they're working with Unity and apparently will have the first screens to show in a few weeks. EDIT: Oh I see, it was actually already said but completely ignored.

Well, not confirmed, the page obviously wasn't meant to go up that early so it still might have been a mistake. But it seems likely.

Offline/local. Couch co-op is shorthand for that kind of experience you used to get rather often with PlayStation 2/Xbox and earlier generation console titles (even on PC, but it was a bit more difficult to organize ) where you could play the same game with a couple of controllers that has been getting increasingly rare with the exception of a few genres.

Difficult to say something about the mechanics from there but it looks a bit like Arkham City but with additional weapons, floaty animation and violence that makes me feel uncomfortable in the stomach? So far from what I've seen it can really go both ways with this title.

Little aside, but I imagine that at Blizzard you don't have to worry about this kind of calculations about your project's success, or do you think that even a company that big and prestigious is tied down in that sense? (Forgive the wording, it's the headache, I swear.)

Voted for Berlin. Can't really remember non-WWII/cold war titles that have it, and the Shadowrun Berlin sounds an interesting place.

Lololololol gimmicky boss with QTE. What happened to you Piranha Bytes? You used to be cool..

They updated the mod so that it works with the latest patch. And yeah, it's cool that they actually optimized the game and added dodging to the combat. Not really sure why it wasn't there in the first place, but better late than never!

Lescanzi Witch, Katarina's sister.

Yeah, and you also need to be located in the US if I recall correctly. The Double Fine videos actually mentioned the approval process in passing. I don't think PR has anything to do with it by the wya, Kickstarter had plenty of failed projects in the past, and a lot that already were successful and worked out well before Double Fine. It just became "mainstream" afterwards.

Scott Lawlor left Obsidian for Blizzard (last month, apparently) Sad to hear that, I thought he did a great job on New Vegas' sound design and I appreciated getting the insight of how much changed with Alpha Protocol's sound during the dev cycle from his blog. I don't know if Funcroc already posted about it, but I didn't see it on the forums.

B-But I did a ghoul because I thought we were making a Fallout campaign

The game's optimization sucks. The engine is full of quirks. Risen was much better tech-wise I'd say, even if a lot of the art was worse and it wasn't as nice-looking. EDIT: By the way, RPGWatch says there's a mod to fix the "shrinking and growing" problem with plants.

What the hell is going on with the colors there?