Niten_Ryu

No point to buy PC FPS at full price unless game is something like Half-Life 3. Shooters are dime in dosen and they will be sooner or later in steam holiday sales. I think I've bought most of the FPS in past 5 years (or in this console generation started from Xbox360 in 2005) for 5-10

Markets don't think it's success. Stocks are still down about that 20%. I think they are correct too as they have shipped 2,6 million units, but only have managed to sell 1 million world wide. And this is with 2nd day bargain bin price (well, just -$10 from full price). We have to remember that this game was very expensive to develop and marketing budget was sizeable too. Low metacritic score killed this game.

If that's the case, then Bioware teams don't communicate at all because same lesson was already learnt from Mass Effect and fixed in Mass Effect 2. Not only they do not communicate, but they don't even bother to follow the development of their own brands. Also it's not like this is some hidden knowledge anyway. Bethesda got same critique from Oblivion (maybe bit more understandable in sand box worlds). Blizzards original Diablo team was probably one of the first development teams who seriously wanted to avoid this. They went so far that they'd rather randomize dungeons rather then repeat 'em. And they managed to create (or at least popularize) whole new genre while doing it.

Actually in Baldur's Gate 2, Cowled Wizards send their best to stop you. First 5 groups of no names, but with increasing difficulty (some waves might have been identical, never checked their levels from the scripts). Last 6th (or was it 7th total, can't remember) battle is fun with named mob Zallanora and few others. I think she cast at least 2 time stops + other fun spells. IIRC she is the leader of the whole group. Irenicus wipes some of the Cowled Wizards in Spellhold and makes the leader of that place insane so no help could come from that place either. I guess only high level Cowled Wizards left are those in goverment building (I don't think I never tried to kill 'em too). Guards are also fun to fight (if you happen to have really low rep). The way Bioware designed even small details like this in Baldur's Gate 2 (a huge improvement from Baldur's Gate and the infinite respawn trigger Flaming fist guards) is something I'd like to see in their modern games too. Then again Bioware does it's best to distance their recent work from the Baldur's Gate 2...

And that was the part there I stopped watching "let's play" video. Even the guy who was doing the video was suprised that not only they attacked guards, but you as well at the same time. You couldn't stay neutral (like in many games where NPC group fight NPC group) nor aid the deserters against the guards and thus discover alternative entrance to the city (ie like in NWN2 where you could work with the guards or work against 'em).

Good point. I made it to boss level and tried it two times. I have no words how stupid that's from the design point of view. If there's one game where this type of boss fights don't belong, it's Raimbow 6 brand. Yeah, it was my fault to start this game with realistic difficulty because I expected something complitely different from this game. I'm not going to spend time to kill infinite respawn of mobs while combat helicopter guns me down with minigun and later with missiles. Funk that ! Game uninstalled

Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Gotta wonder why Ubi wanted this series to become yet another generic shooter. I know, I know - Consolization. Even in this game there are few objectives or levels where you can stealth, assign order to clear the room and save the hostages. And those still work just fine. I don't understand why I have to fight armies of really well geared enemies, who for some reason or the other seem to have at least 100 times advantage in numbers over my small team (or sometimes solo action). Seriously, you'd think Las Vegas / LA / SF ran totally out of special ops or SWAT teams. Not only that, but they probably ran out of army and national guard too. I'm not fighting a terrorist force here, it's bloody invastion. If I'm conterterrorist, it's goes to bizzaro world quickly when you see freaking enemies jumping from rooftops and coming thru windows in full spec ops suits, state of the art weapons and granades. I think that should be my role? Better call Duke Nukem or Doom Marine Guy next time. I can't get used to 3rd person "peek around the corner" mode. In theory it should work, but maybe I'm just too old to learn new tricks in FPS. So I don't use it. I like riot shield and pistol combo and assault rifle for those hectic fights. Silenced submachine gun would be my fav choice but game don't really support stealthy action, so in the end you'd just gimp your weapon stats. I dislike lack of quicksaving as my allies can get stuck and eat granades (normally from bullets you have timeframe to revive 'em, but granades kill 'em and cause game over screen). Sometimes you fight big group of mobs in rather large area in the map, you kill 'em and get close to next autosave point... and game throw another "suprise attack" and you get killed. Frustrating garbage.

While Shepard / reaper storyline is trilogy, Mass Effect brand is just getting started so I wouldn't bet on any storyline or at least not canon ending for Mass Effect 3 that would somehow make next games more difficult to develop. I wonder if Bioware just use KotOR angle and Shepard leaves with reapers, as best, last hope for the humanity

Yeah, me neither. It's really easy to notice and if playtesters don't report that issue, then you have to question the whole purpose of the playtesting. I mean no.1 whine in various forums about this game is - highlighted items! Playtesting is not just tracking bugs, it's also important to see how different feature work.. or in this case, don't work.

I think Reapers attack directly to earth because of valuable resource material (like ME2 showed us). If they attack such way just to purge earth, then I agree that it's rather stupid. They should go KotOR or Warhammer 40k and nuke everything from the orbit.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die." I've always loved that. Sci-fi babble and adlibbing mixed into emotional climax. Oscar worthy scene for sure. Back to the topic. Is there some bulletproof definition what "writing" means in context of games? Sometimes people confuse "writing" with "storyline" or are those two inseparable. Or is the "writing" same thing as question - What is a RPG? You get 100 different answers from 100 different people.

Apologies for OT posts. Moving back to ME3. In one of my Mass Effect 2 runs Shepard died in the end. If I understand this correctly, in Mass Effect 3 that means it never happend (or that Many-worlds interpretation possibility ain't covered by the Mass Effect 3 game). One interesting storyline machanic would be to allow choices from previous game matter, even if your main character would be someone else then default character from the previous game. Financially this is probably bit too risky nowadays as extra VO cost a lot (I don't see extra writing to be too big of a deal). One could argue that Bioware did something like this in Dragon Age 2 or Obsidian in KotOR, but those games didn't offer a chance to continue playing with old character.

Increased options are always good, but in context of the development time and budget, sometimes it's better to reduce options and number of choices and consequences (or diminish their effects). A, B, C and D options are not needed. Game could be complitely linear. But if we speak about consequences, success or failure would have been perfectly fine options for me and tier above forced sacrifice (generally I dislike it in all games, like in Dragon Age 2 where you choose mage and NPC mage is killed because of that). Failure don't have to happen only at the end of the game or to end the game prematurely, but it can be mission or event based. In the case of Alpha Protocol, mission structure was extemely clear so mission based failure could have been relatively easy to design into greater storyline. In strategy games it's common to fail in objectives. You lost a battle, you didn't (necessarily) lose the war. It has consequences but you can bounce back.. or maybe it's first step on the long road to your defeat. I only have one Alpha Protocol run recorded for the Youtube but in that run I generally play like a douche (hard / veteran difficulty). Make as stupid choices as I can, don't upgrade my weapons or armor, often melee when I could be shooting, don't read emails or chat any longer then bare minium and get negative rep. But that run is about the same as any other run I've done. I'm not punished or rewarded. Like I said in earlier post, from RPG (and financial) point of view this is totally fine. I make choices, but consequences are rather diluted.

Let's take one of the more known missions from Alpha Protocol. The museum. The way it's build now is just your basic forced sacrifice. By that I mean no matter what you do, some are saved or killed. There ain't no option for failure, nor option for success. There's just 2 choices - Do you go left or do you go right. What I'm after is that based on your actions, there would be both the left and the right option, but also success and failure. You play your cards right and you might have a tiny chance to save everyone. Or if you totally mess up, whole museum is blown to dust. Bonus option would be of course that you blow up the museum and thus kill all the terrorist inside (I call it Chotic Stupid option, my all time fav).

Because choices and consequences. We talk a lot of crap about mass Effect 2 but it allowed you to fail to certain degree. Based how you play, you might get all your squadmates killed (except Joker, unfortunately) and in the end, even get yourself killed. I absolutely loved that ending. I made a mess and now I pay for it. Harsh, but fair In Bloodlines you can fail more then one way. One of my all time fav endings is when you get submerged into ocean because poor choices you made. In Torment, my character was doomed to fight in Blood Wars... well, untill 4th edition but at the time it felt more dramtic and final (Blood War never ends yadda yadda). In Fallout I got dipped in secret sauce because I played like idiot. Choices and consequences, it don't get much better then that. I'm not criticizing Obsidian for what direction they took in Alpha Protocols storyline. Studies and sales show that players generally absolutely love positive reinforcement. The more the better like Modern Warfare has shown the gaming industry. But at the same time it really do diminish the effects of the choices and consequences.

It's all in my video (check sig). No matter what I did or didn't do, failure just ain't option. I've done total of 6 runs and tried various combos (if available) in different runs.

I'm not sure if I agree that Alpha Protocol had good choices and consequences. It did have both choices and consequences, but because you couldn't actually fail, all those development hours were mostly wasted. IIRC Obsidian designed game that way - There's no one right way to play the game or something like that. From pure RPG point of view it was fun that certain character reacted differently or there were minor changes in dialogue, locations and missions. Maybe that was Obsidians goal, I don't know.

I don't like auto highlight on objects, but hopefully there's toggle or mod (in the future) that remove it. I'm not against highlight objects in general, but in stealth type of games part of the fun is to find the solutions to problems without aid. Other then that minor issue, game looks great and gameplay seem to be very close to DeusEx.

He is the best game designer of all time, who no one talks about. He was the lead in System Shock, designer and programmer in Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, and had a hand in most other LGS projects from Terra Nova to Thief. His part in Deus Ex was minor, as far as I know. He's not known because his role in various games is bit unclear. He's programmer and designer, but I guess most think he's just programmer. For example in Ultima Underword: Producer: Warren Spector Director: Richard Garriott Design: Paul Neurath Doug was one of the programmers. In Ultima Underworld II he's already leading the team with important positions. Project Leader: Doug Church Lead Design: Tim Stellmach Design: Doug Church, Paul Neurath Lead Programming: Doug Church Producer: Warren Spector Director: Paul Neurath System Shock: Producer: Warren Spector Project Leader: Doug Church Lead Programmer: Doug Church Warren Spector might have been given credit that actually belong to Doug Church. From Thief onwards, Ken Levine (sort of) takes his place so quality stay high during his run all the way to System Shock 2. Only thing I can't figure out is DeusEX. Doug and Kenny are gone, Warren remains. Lead Designer is Harvey Smith. Then come DeusEx Invisible War and all bets are off. What really happend between those two games? Your basic consolization (that we see in every game nowadays) maybe? Or was the input from Doug so important for the DeusEx - credited Special Thanks (Additional Programming and Design Input) Doug Church - that he still played the key part in what made that game so great. In DeusEx Invisible War Doug didn't do anything, but got credit in Special Thanks.

Wait... you could have Anora behead Alistair!? Why did I not choose this... Too bad you can't see it being carried out. I was trying to play a good character first time through so I didn't choose the option to have him executed, tempting as it was. From my Chaotic Stupid Mage run. 48:38:28 In the end, Anora was granted the throne and Alistair was taken away to be executed. 48:38:28 To prevent further civil war, he was executed at the Landsmeet on the orders of Queen Anora, ending the Theirin line. I have to say that was one of the best Bioware game moments Alistair was complitely destroyed (Loghain, the indirect killer of the king, his mentor and countless wardens were made warden himself). I gave him numerous opportunities to marry Anora (yup, she's a total bitch but anyway) but because of max negative reputation he'd rather marry archdemon and goes into fantastic rant mode. There's also fun Alistair rant mode in middle of the game when my totally selfish Mage don't give a damn about wardens or his mentors death.

I'm not too worried about Mass Effect 3 as FPS combat mechanics are a lot harder to mess up then action adventure combat mechanics. In other end is DeusEx and Bloodlines type of FPS/RPG hybrid and in the other is the pure Modern Warfare FPS bliss. Both work in their own way, but pure (and polished) FPS combat mechanic work better for the todays gamers. Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Alpha Protocol all were flawed in different ways so if Bioware moves to some direction from those and we'll probably see improvement. Bioware would have to try really hard to step into that Resident Evil 5 pit o' doom and fail horribly. What about story, RPG elements and characters? Bioware can streamline as much as they want and still those features are probably leagues above the pure FPS. I mean seriously, it don't take a lot to beat meatheads from Gear of War More important question is - Are we gamers happy if Bioware just beats Gears of War? I'd say we set our bar rather low. We might not get next James Joyce or Leo Tolstoy, but at least they should try to beat Babylon 5 or Firefly.

Yeah and in the age of there Metacritic score of 75 can mean the death of the game, good graphics (both from technical and art direction point of view) and are absolutely vital. No matter if it's 4 hour FPS or 40 hour CRPG.

When you're almost buried 6 feet deep and dirt is flying mid-air, no wonder that we whine and try to struggle to stay alive just bit longer. But outside few RTS games, MMOGs and casual facebook / flash crap, our goose is cooked. So tolerate us just bit longer before your all-console game Shangri-La. Speaking of struggles and shifts in balance of power in games industry, mediocre Metacritic score (was it 75 or something like that) for Homefront plunge THQ's stock price down by 20%. THQ's reaction is to slash 10-20 dollars away from retail price. Dragon Age 2 Xbox360 version is just in the edge, at 80... anything bellow that will make stockholders nervous. But EA stock is already priced as such that investors don't expect massive hits (but not extreme losses either) - Stock is about same as it was in june 2000 or march 2009.

Of course. It's clear that developers buy reviews and write 'em, but the point is not to get caught In multimillion industry guerilla marketing is part of the portfolio. I mean it would be stupid not to be, as it's extrmely cheap versus traditional marketing. But it should be handled subtly and let masses remain ignorant that they're being manipulated.

Probably original source was reddit or perhaps /v or /b tards - Neogaf don't usually dig this deep