Niten_Ryu

Other then that roar animation, I think this video was really nice. Email system is great, it reminds me of Jagged Alliance 2.

Seem to have a high production values but at some point even World of Warcraft will start to lose the momentum and it might happen around the time when movie is ready. At that point movie would have to be "Lord of the Rings" quality and I just don't think Warcraft in it's campy setting can offer that. Then again, Spiderman is ultimate campy hero and Sam Raimi made that work. Guy also made Evil Dead... hmm... I dont think they could have chosen the better director, no matter if movie works or not

IMO Bioware is just doing that. I mean it might have been more cost effective for EA to have 10 hour game with little or no choices. Unknown in that case would be the older Bioware game fans, who might turn into army of disgrunded fanboys and then word of the mouth could kill that game no matter how good it would be otherwise. Call of Duty is allowed to be short and fast game but none has really tested the grounds with CRPGs. Both Baldur's Gate games sold really good. Actually when looking how much average AAA game cost to develop back then, sales were absolutely monsterious. I just read today that 2009 have had horrible game sale numbers. Gamasutra writes only few games over all three consoles have managed to top million sold games. PC numbers are really hard to track these days as many are sold on Steam or similar system or are MMOGs. Back to Baldur's Gate. Some sources estimate that both games sold over two million copies (I only found references on various messageboards, not actual data or news articles). Those kind of numbers would be damn nice even today. Highest selling PS3 game this year, Killzone 2, is said to have only sold 750.000 units. Question is - How many players who bought Baldur's Gate back in the day still play and have roughly the same taste in games? And how many new potential players could enjoy Baldur's Gate (ie not require actual game to be dumbed down or significantly changed). Dragon Age might be ok litmus test but being true in all ways to Baldur's Gate would have been even better.

I just finished another NWN2 and MotB run. I used really gimpy Bard 2 / Arcane Archer 10 / Ranger 18 ranged spec as main character. I wanted to test how AI would work when I wouldn't be in front lines or controlling each character (other then change AI option or in case of total wipe, take over manually). I also didn't want to cheese with crafting items nor to buy anything from vendors. Mages or all healers were just about useless. It's not that they don't cast but their choice or timing to use certain spell was really bad. Sometimes so bad that it ended up killing party. Meteor Swarm vs. 1 opponent when it's in middle of our guys is not a good idea (at scaled casting level no less). Nor is to use cure light wounds, run past army of enemies in the way... while character to be healed have 300 max health. Or to use Summon wand and get low lvl badger to attack lvl 25 opponents. Armored melee performed ok. Sometimes they didn't reacted right away when I attacked ranged but no matter, actually they probably could have killed all opponents alone anyway. Even Casavir was beast as opponents often wanted to kill my ranged character first. In MotB I just gave bows to everyone except Okku (street fighting bear). It just annihilated everything and our ranged attacks were just tiny fraction of total damage done. By the time my character got to Fugue Plane, my damage started to look better. Not as good as bears melee, but competative. Long story short, game is easy enough to be beaten by NPCs alone. You will wipe few times as sometimes AI attacks wrong opponents but I didnt have to load too many times (some solo scenes were difficult for my gimpy character). Dragon age will probably have two options. Either game is so easy to even stupid AI will beat it by brute force alone. Or game requires user to take over from time to time. I'm really suprised if magic is used correctly by AI (either healing or AoE).

LAN parties were fun in last millenium with games like Doom, Warcraft 2 and Quake. After Quakeworld and Team Fortress I never looked back and LAN was just about useless as null cable. LAN still have it's place if you and your friends have about equal skill but otherwise humiliating your friends get old fast. In internet you'll always find someone better to challenge you.

It's natural de-evolution The higher budgets get, the wider the potential audience have to be. Years ago designer could get away with gameplay choices that would be just about impossible today. Thus only those who could figure out how to have fun in that kind of game continued to play. I'd say players were smarter out of necessity back then. Actual quality of games back then is debatable as they were not suitable for everyone. Now we're at the point where players really need to be protected from themselfs. 20+ million budgets for AAA games in this generation and 60+ million in next. I'm really scared what kind of design choices that kind of budget requires. Maybe 2-3 hour quicktime event filled action extravaganza!

I like how times have changed. It's now safe to assume that game will be played by braindead douchebags who make just about every mistake in character creation and leveling, come whine about it in offical boards and NOT get flogged by community. More automation is the answer! We're on our way to semi-interactive movies.

Right... Because clearly explorers enjoy randomly generated content. As much as archivers love Progressquest

"hard" scifi ? Probably some of Arthur C. Clarke's stuff and so on. I read Michio Kaku's "Physics of the Impossible" and if he's correct, some of the "soft" scifi elements might be reality in near future.

While I don't like Star Trek nor know details about the setting, it kinda of made sense for high ranking officers to take part of adventures. World is communist utopia and everyone are more or less equal, so it kinda make sense that elite would chase glory or bragging rights. At least in Star Trek high ranking officers got their hands dirty, unlike in Leonid Brezhnev era Soviet-Union. Leo himself was very keen for glory and medals... hehe... "Hero of the Soviet Union" award for his 70th birthday present Shepard's Spectre status outrank just about everything in ME (including Council if you chose Renegade ending with full human Council). One of the great moments in ME was the meeting with human admiral who wanted to check Shepard's ship. Renegade Shepard didn't salute, give any info and even denied access to ship. All the admiral could say "I'm going to write a report about this"

Developers might be more adept but they are also restricted by the realities of modern game industry. Technology might allow better games but budgets and schedules give limits what developers can and cannot do. None is going to bother with AI. It's roughly the same as it's been since Baldur's Gate. There's just no way that Bioware would do cutting edge AI research when 15 year old tech is more then enough to challenge majority of the casual players. Pathfinding is another forgotten issue. I find it hard to belive that modern games (various genres) still have really bad pathfinding in general. I was recently playing the Sims 3 and almost hit my monitor with sledgehammer when 4 sims got trapped in narrow hallway. Dragon Age is original IP so combat mechanics are free of crappy D&D rules. In theory Dragon Age should have much better and tactical combat but it's really hard to say from released videos and trailers. Chances are that it still has issues that are similar to D&D legacy issues. Something as simple as failing to keep melee attacks in-sych with animations might be one of those issues. Combat mechanics design should always match with animations. Not sure what you mean with complexity ? I think focus is to the opposite. To keep everything as simple as possible. In UI design it's a very good thing as it's rare to hear requests from more complex UI. From challenge point of view it's not as simple but casual majority want easy content and only few of us hardcore old timers like a difficult fights. Money is where the casual players are so I wouldn't expect much complexity.

Right. Number of people who try several origins > Number of people who will complete the game. But that doesn't support his next sentence: "It's wasted development time in todays casual market." By his logic, having only one origin and more content in the middle is the wasted development time. For example, say we have a BioWare title with 80 hours of gameplay, of which 5 of those are the beginning with the rest of the game being 75 hours. Max installs, plays through 30 hours and then quits half way though. Now we have a BioWare tite with six origins at 5 hours each (30 hours), with the rest of the game being 50 hours. Max tries three origins but still finished somewhere in the middle. Max plays more of the game this way. Unless you're suggesting that Max will only play 30 hours altogether, then it doesn't matter if BioWare does it one way or the other. Yeah, I mean shorter games in general. This has been a trend in game industry for awhile now. With stupidly high developement budgets and studies done how high (or low) % of the players finish games, it just don't make sense to develop 80 hour games. It's wasted development time no matter if extra content is in the beggining, middle or the end. Thus 6 origins don't make sense nowdays (but like I said, I'm glad that it's there and that DA is a long game).

6 origins is a weird design choice. I've always assumed that it's because of long development time and things have changed a lot in 5 years. I'd bet more players don't even finish first run compared to those who try two or more origins. It's wasted development time in todays casual market. While 6 origins don't make sense for the majority of players, it's great for me. Unless the game is truely horrible, I most likely have at least 2-3 runs with it.

Well, Michael Thorton is based on James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer. Those characters are extremely popular and it's very good choice to use 'em as inspiration. Bond got so popular that even the real world spies dream to be more like Bond. I've seen interviews in TV where solders say they want to be more like Jack Bauer (he was to Bush Jr administration same as Clint Eastwoods Dirty Harry was to Reagan administration). Obsidian made all the right moves but it does make Michael Thorton to seem bit generic (again, not a bad thing per se). What if Obsidian went for some obscure way and used following characters as inspiration ? NKVD Chief Executioner Major-General Vasili Blokhin who killed tens of thousands of prisoners with pistol. Or perhaps Chuck Barris, a gameshow host who clamed to be CIA hitman. Or Klaus Fuchs, a scientist who sold nuclear secrets to russians. Maybe some gamers are jaded enough that they wouldn't be suprised to see spy game start at the settings on game show but I'd certainly enjoy it

Nope, generic or cliche don't make it bad. I'd rather see Planescape or some weird Final Fantasy world (note, just world as characters and plot in JRPGs are very generic) rahter then another ye olde semi medieval tolkienesque world. This don't mean that setting is nothing but carbon copy of Tolkien's Middle earth (or some other famous setting) and it can have some good features. Generic sells as majory of games want something familar. They are happy that elfs don't have beards or that Dwarfs mine "exotic" minerals in DA. They are more then happy to fight against orcs (or hurlocks as they are called in DA) and enjoy their "exotic beauty, who has come to hold rest of mankind in contempt". I'd prefer some other type of setting then generic fantasy, but it's not the key factor if the game is good or not. I really liked BG, BG2, NWN 3rd expansion and MotB even when they were set in generic fantasy (FR) and used horrible rule system (AD&D). Dragon Age use custom rule system so in theory it has chance to work better then AD&D rules. IMO of course as many love AD&D rules in PnP and in computer games.

I'd say Codex are fans of the game design that died about 10 years ago so no wonder why they attack against just everything with extreme hostility. I find it very relaxing to read the Codex, don't know if it's fun to see relics argue about obscure things of the by-gone era or if my IQ is just slowing dropping close to zero because retardism overdose. Can't really blame the poor guys over there. Each and everyone of 'em know that they'll never see the game they like so it's kinda understandable that they are angry. I think I'd be angry too if I'd be a fan of very narrow design and none would make games for that niche. I guess I'm fortunate that I'm able to enjoy different genres of games and most importantly - to be able enjoy less then PERFECT games. Dragon Age will probably be good example of this - Boring generic fantasy setting, utterly stupid ad campaign, cliche characters, ugly graphics and animations. Still I think there's enough good features that I'll probably buy the game if reviews are at least ok.

Getting banned from Bio boards seem to be easy as it' the only board I've been banned since 99. Something about the foul language. I was stupid enough to quote Deadwood and assumed that board would censor too harsh words. It didn't and just gave me temp ban

I know only him, ol' doc twins and Stormwaltz. I've always assumed it's the docs who guard the Bioware quality but I could be wrong. It might be similar to Blizzard where none outside the company really know who calls the most important shots and tell developers to change something (even if it means long development times). Then again in Bioware's case, I don't know who allowed NWN original campaign to get past the alpha stage...

Neocolonialism is good source for adventure, at least from western point of view. Puppet dictators, aiding revolutions or stopping 'em, stealing natural resources or joining the resistance forces. It does reek bit of Cold War-ish (and basically whole 80's actions movie genre) but it does work on modern day too.

I liked ME combat mechanics but I certainly wouldn't like to see 'em copy/pasta into modern spy RPG like Alpha Protocol. ME had energy shields and all that scifi stuff to justify some design issues but to see Mikey to upgrade his toughness in order to absorb more damage is bit hard to accept. Or to see blond merc take several clips worth of assault rifle ammo into her face and live to tell about it. Obsidian should trust their abilty to write interesting story, characters and choices. Those features don't need scifi/fantasy combat mechanics. There's no need to re-intent the wheel either. Splinter Cell perfected combat (and stealth) mechanics for the spy game several years ago. Splinter Cell did fell short on storyline and choices and that's where Obsidian should strike with Alpha Protocol IP.

I hope you never get a CEO yourself! "Fire them all!!!" Heh.. that is true. I'd fire 'em all But honestly, Paul Barnett, the Creative Director at Mythic Entertainment, wanted to recruit three-star ability with five-star drive. Well, if you want to crash and burn in modern MMOG biz, you can do just that

Good news is that Mark Jacobs got booted. Bad news - Just about everything else in this merger. Mythic is nothing but group of hacks with bad IPs. They should have just closed the entire studio, move few good people to KotOR Online and call it a day.

I love it. Zak McKraken allowed me to play multiple characters and I've been fan of this feature ever since that game.

Kratos is most definately evil. Let's see... Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2. Syndicate and Syndicate Wars. Warcraft 2 Orc campaign. Warcraft 3 Illidan, Arthas, Burning Legion and Undead campaigns. Overlord 1 and 2. Lara Croft in original Tomb Raider was probably evil as she killed tons of endangered animals and robbed ancent treasures for herself. Every GTA main character were evil in their own way. Maybe Tommy Vercetti from Vice City was the worst.

Some content will get cut no matter what but it's nothing like complitely rewriting the entire game. From story to the combat mechanics to individual dialogue trees and everything in-between. Sure Bioware could do somekind of hack job in few months but then game wouldn't be bad just for traditional Bioware fans but bad for just about everyone. Singleplayer games generally don't get this kind of treatment but it's way too common in MMOG biz. Star Wars Galaxies got changed several times and even got total redesign done years after the release. Vanguard - Saga of Heroes went originally complitely different way then WoW but near the release it started to copy some of the more popular WoW features. Too bad game machanics didn't support 'em (well, that was the least of their problems). Warhammer Online changed the way expo was counted just before the release and it caused huge problems for months and cost thousands of subscribers. I call it "shoot in the dark" design.