Niten_Ryu

Bioware and EA are doing something really "special" in here. It's rare to see such agressive ad campaign (including recent videos, web site changes, music, overall tone of the setting ect ect) that work mostly against longtime DA fans. I'm not even a longtime fan and they still manage to alienate me with their rather unprofessional attitude. I'm going to buy DA but only because I think this new change of direction in marketing happened rather late in development cycle and it can't affect the whole game. Rewriting majority of the game would take too much time. About cliche setting. Personally I don't think it's bad to ripoff something if you do it with good taste. Tolkien ripped off many of the folktales, Gary Gygax ripped off Tolkien and so on. New IP, even if it's like some older IP is easier to work with. No legacy issues or fanbois of the old IP (then again, it's not good idea to announce game 5 years earlier and let new fanbois to take over).

Hmmm... a boss fight ? Is this a superhero game or something ? Boss took probably huge amount of bullets in her face and only got winded up. I don't understand why that scene had to be done like that. It's copypasta from just about any old fantasy game with superhuman opponents and monsters. She could have ducked for cover, take few shots at you and once you get successful shot in, she'd fled (or perhaps die right there).

Good apples vs. apples fight but will ultimately hurt both Splinter Cell and Alpha Protocol sales. I'd guess Splinter Cell will win in combat and stealth mechanics and Alpha Protocol will win with story and choices. I'll probably buy both as I really loved Ubi Montreal Splinter Cell games (original and Chaos Theory) but I'll still root for the underdog.

If Bioware or some other developer choose to rip off well known IPs, at least they don't have to worry about continuety issues. To able to ignore fanboys is well worth it (at least untill game is out and you'll have new breed of fanboys... who should be ignored too ).

Both Dune (too much brown) and Star Trek (communist utopia) are horrible settings for RPG. Best just to use original IPs.

Riiighht... so nothing but hard numbers from publishers work huh ? I've been playing and following MMOGs for over 10 years and even done some work in that field. Publishers don't like to announce active subscripter numbers unless they meet their target or break the new record. WoW and EVE publish data several times a year. Some companies, that are openly traded, must publish the data in their quaterly records. Like EA so I'll use EA and Mark Jacobs Warhammer Online as example. Mark Jacobs will be good example, as he gives nice critique how Age of Conan failed, only to fail himself. From this MTV multiplayer site Mark Jacobs interview

It's not worth to shut down MMOG once it's released unless operating costs or reputation damage is too high. This means that even if project was way over-budget, full of bugs and players fleeing by the masses, it's still usually worth to keep game running. That's what happend to EQ2, EVE, CoH and many more games. That makes no sense. Do you have any evidence to support your claims? My evidence is the fact that the games are still operating, I don't know a lot of companies that maintain a product unless it is making them money. Really, you just seem to be making stuff up to justify your dislike for MMO's. It's ok to dislike a successful genre. I don't enjoy most FPS games, but I'm not going to make up claims about their success. I don't know what so difficult to understand here ? Developer creates MMOG and tries to push idea for private investors and/or pulishers. They discuss long term subscriber numbers target (rather then just boxes sold and players leaving after free month). If developers are succcessful, they'll get budget near what they asked for but often they already know that they might need extra cash in later stages of the project as problems always appear. Once you've spend 3 years into project, there's SERIOUS resistance to just pull the plug and cut extra money. As rare it is, it has happend for example with EA and Ultima Online sequels (twice) and MicroSoft's Mythica. Most of the time investors and publishers will bite the bullet and find enough extra funds to get project released. Once game is released and if it fails to reach the target numbers, there's no point to just cancel it. There's still enough active subscribers who pay the monthly fee and if that total fee is higher then operating costs (servers, network, staff and support, live content team, bosses new office chair ect ect), it's worth to keep game online. You might get

EVE is really great game. I tried it few times but found out that you'd need good corporation and a lot of time to really enjoy it. While I couldn't get into it, game has found nice niche in very saturated MMOG biz.

It's not worth to shut down MMOG once it's released unless operating costs or reputation damage is too high. This means that even if project was way over-budget, full of bugs and players fleeing by the masses, it's still usually worth to keep game running. That's what happend to EQ2, EVE, CoH and many more games. EVE has managed to grow almost exponentally after very slow start. They are full success in their budget range. EQ2 or CoH never really recovered from initial subscription losses. Thru hard work by Scott Hartsman, EQ2 managed to get some players back. If game is online long enough and have enough players, it might be profitable in the near future (or might even be right now). Problem comes from the fact that it took years to reach that profit. Sony can put all their MMOGs under station pass but I bet someone inside the organization had to explain the failure after the first waves of subscribers left the game. And they left for WoW Of course MMOGs don't have to reach WoW numbers just like singleplayer games to have to reach Halo or GTA numbers. If you aim lower, you have to balance your budget lower too. Recent heavy hitters like LotR, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online targeted way too high with their big budgets. They didn't reach the goal (LotR almost got it). Success or failure is only tied to budget, not artistic merits or how good the game might be. I loved Asheron's Call but it took years and years to get profitable.

I still bet that Bioware will choose lame option and allow Shepard to come back as Geth (maybe not in ME2 but in ME3)

That's if you want to count peanuts. LotR was expect to be WoW killer. It did ok, but failed to reach target numbers. Game did kinda save Turbine, after huge failures of Asheron's Call 2 and D&D Online. EQ2 was total failure then it was released, took Scott Hartsman years to get the game any kind of decent shape but then it was way too late to save the game. City of Heroes was another failure. Game had maybe about month worth of content and potential coustomers saw that. FF XI and Lineage 1 and 2 are mostly Asian MMOGs and their subscribers (or internet cafe account holders) accept ultra grinds as content. I don't think western IP like NWN3 is developed for very saturated Asian market. For last generation games, EverQuest peaked highest, for about 450k active subscribtions. That's only about 25 times less then WoW have now. Ok, it was great success based on it's relatively low, mid 90's budget but there's no way to develop anything like that with such low budget nowadays.

I love how just about every developer and publisher look at WoW and how much money they make. They want a piece of the pie but compared to singleplayer (or free multiplayer) games, MMOGs are extremely harsh business environment. There's WoW and EVE and then there's tons of barely profitable (or total failures) MMOGs.

I think this way too. This don't mean I wouldn't defend myself or my family but it'd still be wrong. Every soldier has a choice not to kill but in some cases it might cost their own life. Takes a lot of guts stand in front of the firing squad, just because you refused to kill someone. Self-sacrifice is interesting thing - games should explore that idea bit more. About this german censorship law. If you'd ask me about this 20 or even 10 years ago, I would have been strongly against it but now I'm not so sure. Minors playing all kind of violent games and surfing whatever recent *shock* website do make me bit nervous. Parents or teachers rarely have any idea or means to stop it. I'd damn glad there weren't internet or camera phones back in my youth.

Oh uh... "an epic tale of violence, lust, and betrayal". Riiight... Their creative director must be coked up 80's style YUP go-getter. "Hey babe, I redesign million dollar webpages for breakfast. I think I can handle this RPGtrash."

I'm not sure why Obsidian went with "invisibility cloak" rather then light meter like in Thief or Splinter Cell series.

Now that I've seen combat for the first time, I wonder if the "hit points" system is the correct way to go in modern spy game. Mike takes shotgun blast point plank range and then some nasty hits but is not even slowed. Later he just about empty his silenced pistol clip on some grunt and then he has to melee him down. It just look silly compared to Splinter Cell or even Bloodlines system.

Yup, it's looking good. Ability to chain events like shooting lights and then killing opponents will make game easier for casual players but nowadays it's probably good thing. I think you can skip it just like autoaim and stuff like that. Game is said to be released around the same time with Alpha Protocol and unfortunately it'll end up hurting both games.

Probably main problem is that sequel was announced too soon. We have to wait better part of decade for Half-Life sequels so EA style yearly update for anohter Valve game might feel bit rip-off. Then again, I have no interest for Left 4 Dead or it's sequel so what do I know

Gonna be good year for spy games. New Splinter Cell, Alpha Protocol and perhaps even Sony's The Agency (have to beta that first).

Very nice trailer. It perfectly captures various styles of recent spy/agent movies or series.

I'd say you expect way too much. You want somone from top 2% of the Gauss curve, who has years of experience of different kind of computer games (as well as other media) and is excellent wordsmith. And can't be bought with piles of cash from pulishers. Now what are the chances of that happening Then again, review from such person would probably miss the mark anyway as he'd be so far ahead general gaming audience.

Oblivion (and Morrowind) are great games for those who enjoy sandboxy or singleplayer part of MMOGs. Those who dislike 'em by default, no so much. I didn't like either game but if I'd review game based on first 10 hours of gameplay, flaws of the game wouldn't be as obivious as they are after 50 hours.

I barely know anything about DA lore so I have no idea what Gray Wardens should be. Their whole idea of organization feel bit daft. Maybe I'm missing something but once they were many of 'em and now, because lack of darkspawns, there's barely any of 'em. Why would anyone join 'em ? It's like joining Papal States army nowadays. Let more recent organizations and nations handle Darkspawn Liberation Army

Space Hulk was fine 40k Warhammer game

I don't see any reason why developers should listen our chitchat before more info is released. We all have our own bias what we'd like to see and unless developers are really desperate, they shouldn't look these threads for "fresh" ideas. Even after we have more info, singal to noise ratio will reach such heights that developers have real hard time finding out who is worth listening. For singleplayer games it might be less of a problem but in MMOG biz you can see it in every alpha / beta. It's always "fun" to see complite lists what should be fixed or changed in early alpha only to get lost in the sea of useless posts. Then 6 months after the release (sometimes 2 years later in total) to see developers to make the changes and say that they didn't know that certain problem existed