Althernai

Have you actually played the Infinity Engine games? I ask because if you have, then I don't understand why you would use NWN as your counterexample. NWN was great because of all of the mods, but party-based tactical game play was definitely not its strong suite. The original only allowed you to directly control one character. The sequel allowed full party control, but it was awkward. Dragon Age: Origins also allowed full party control, but it was also awkward. I cannot think of any such game where the combat came anywhere close to Baldur's Gate 2 or Temple of Elemental Evil. It might be possible, but the reason the isometric perspective is being used here is probably that nobody has ever made anything else work half as well.

This question actually points out an interesting ambiguity. The $65 option says "Previous reward tier + BOX VERSION OF PROJECT ETERNITY." The previous reward tier is now clearly the $50 one which includes the map and other digital goodies so people who don't scroll down will be expecting them. On the other hand, the graphics for the $65 tier don't have the "digital fun pack" picture. I would assume the text is correct, mostly because adding the extra digital content to the $65 tier costs them nothing and they probably don't want people who would otherwise pay $65 to vacillate between that and the $50 option. However, this could definitely use some clarification.

Actually, under the hood, Mac OS X is a variant of BSD UNIX. Therefore, once they have the game working in OS X, it should not be immensely difficult to port it to Linux (not that easy, either, but not as bad as is usually the case with Windows). Also, from the Humble Bundle sales, it appears that if allowed to set their own price (as is also the case with Kickstarter), Linux users are willing to pay more than Mac users who in turn are willing to pay more than Windows users. I think Linux makes sense as a higher stretch goal.

I had no idea anyone believed Temple of Elemental Evil to be such a paragon of combat. From my (admittedly mostly forgotten) memories, it was OK... but compared to something like Baldur's Gate 2? It's not even close -- BG2 was way better. I could have lived with turn-based, but I prefer real time with pause, especially if they implement the "Pause on Condition X" mechanic from the Infinity Engine.

There was no co-op at all in Planescape: Torment and it was OK (though far from brilliant) in Baldur's Gate II. The reason it's not very popular here is that it would require a significant amount of resources that are probably better spent elsewhere. Co-op is not like the other features people generally ask for (e.g. more races or classes or whatever). The game engine either has to be written from the ground up to support it or modified in a massive way. Then, after you've got the "bare-bones" multiplayer working, you have to go through the entire game and make sure that it doesn't break anything. This is exponentially more difficult than with a purely single player game because various players can do things in different order and you can no longer rely on a whole bunch of assumptions. It would be nice to have it, but there is a reason even blockbuster type RPGs tend to avoid it (e.g. Dragon Age: Origins for which BioWare initially intended to do it, but decided it was too difficult). If money is tight -- and I can't see how money won't be tight with $1M to $3M -- there are a lot of other features which would make the game better and are much easier to implement.

Approximating by the rate Naruto was going at when I last watched it, it will remain that way well into the new millenium... It is a fairly amusing series, though somewhat more oriented towards children than most. The scenes where stuff actually happens are awesome; the filler is barely tolerable and the flashbacks are simply intolerable (I suppose they'd be better for people who actually watch it as it is released, but when you're watching 10 episodes in a row, they're really bad). It's amazing what people are willing to do for these cartoons. My someone in my college used to download them and he said there were translations for half a dozen languages (at least).

Methinks you forgot Chrono Trigger. I can sit back and enjoy a story. However, if that's all I'm going to be doing, then what's the point of making this an RPG rather than a movie or an anime series? Last spring, my roommate was playing the latest Xeno-something game (Xenosaga 2? I remember the plot, but not the name). It was not a bad story as far as such stories go, but neither I nor he nor any of our other roommates saw why it was a game rather than an anime. IIRC, the hope was that somebody would just take all of the cutscenes and paste them together (and somebody had done that for the previous one). For me, an RPG must include at least some choices, some point where what my character (as opposed to someone else's character) does matters. They don't have to be very important, but they should be there or else the game was better off as something else. Thus, even though I like quite a few anime series and I don't mind the peculiar looking protagonists, I don't own any Japanese RPGs.

Your own fault for choosing those topics. That was pretty sad -- Judge_Hades, I take it? There had to be something better than beating dead horses. You've provoked a few of them, but I expected something a little more original. EDIT: I went to look at the Mass Effect forum, and you did much better there. Nice touch with the overheating X-Box.

I don't think so. In general, when the progressors started killing the way most RPGs implemented, they were considered insane (usually correctly) and were removed for treatment. The people in charge were none too happy with the idea of letting a killer with futuristic fighting techinques loose on a medieval world.

You have to be careful with the Strugatsky brothers -- some of their works are Aesopian language at its finest and it is not always easy to figure out the meaning. Basically, just keep in mind that given the time and place where the novels were written, some elements simply had to be the way they are or the books would never be published. Many things in those books seem completely out of place if you don't consider this. For example, the future of Earth had to be some shade of communism. This doesn't really matter though since it's more a utopia that anything else. The constant references to Nazi Germany are similar (if you read it carefully, you'll see it's not just the coup). If you can, get a copy with a foreword by the editors or whomever (I've only seen one) -- pay attention to what they thought was the worthwhile part of this book. That said, I am not sure how they intend to translate this world into a video game. A major part of the "progressor's" problem on that world is that they are extremely squeamish about killing. IIRC, that's part of how one of them gets caught -- he fought 100+ duels and never killed anyone. Even the ones that are not squeamish only kill when it's absolutely necessary. Given that RPGs generally involve slaughtering hundreds if not thousands of enemies, that doesn't really work. I'd love it if they managed to get this right, but I have less hope for it than anything else related to video games.

Yes, it is really that good. At least so far: I'm up to the beginning of Chapter 4. The plot twist was excellent; I saw part of it coming... but totally missed the part which is hinted at throughout the game. As long as it (please, please, please) has an ending of quality consistent with the rest of the story, it will be that good.

I don't think they'll be worth the bother. Except one scene, the battles and such were more impressive in the original movies. Just watched Episode V again last Saturday and it looks fine. I don't get it -- in the new movies, the actors are prettier, the graphics are prettier, but the overall visual impression is worse (or maybe it's because they are worse in general?).

There are no Jedi in the game except those possibly created via the influence of the player. Once you realize this, the game makes a lot more sense.

It works. That's what I meant by "demagogue." Right. But this will only work for the very small subset of people with whom you sufficiently agree. Both of the above are true, but they do not address my problems with this system... ... and this is where I disagree. The system does not mirror real life closely; it mirrors one aspect of real life and completely ignores everything else. Yes, it is possible to gain influence with people by telling them what they want to hear. However, this is not the only way. First, with many people (I've seen experimental verification of this on message boards) if you make a sufficiently good argument and show yourself knowledgeble in the field you are discussing, people will not lose and will most likely gain respect for you even if they disagree with what you say. The second way is more important. There is a way to gain much greater influence; an influence that goes far beyond the type you gain by telling people what they want to hear. Roughly, it is the influence you gain when you change what people want to hear. People have been convinced to change religions, betray their families and/or nations, change their values altogether, etc. etc. because of the actions of extremely influential individuals. Based on the story, the Exile should be one such individual (at least if he has the right stats) and based on the in-game stats like alignment he in fact is. However, this form of influence is simply not implemented in TSL -- and I believe it is by far the more interesting one.

Dammit, why are the Bioboards down... I made a rather detailed post about this over there at some point. Oh well, here is an abridged version: While the idea behind Influence is brilliant, the implementation of it in KotOR2 is so awful that I'm actually undecided as to whether I prefer it to the simple system of the first KotOR. The worst problem with it is that Influence is practically independent of the character you are playing. Your Persuade skill is irrelevant and I can count the number of times I used Awareness, INT and WIS on one hand. The Influence system is not about having a charismatic or persuasive character. It is about the player telling the characters what they want to hear. If you say what they want to hear, they agree with you and gain Influence. If you say what they don't want to hear, you lose Influence. Regardless of your INT, WIS or CHA, there is never an option to actually change their minds, to convince them that they are wrong or to at least make them doubtful. Instead, to gain Influence you must be a demagogue and a flatterer. The issue with alignment is a corollary to this. Influence is practically independent of their alignment; in my game they supposedly shifted all the way to the Light Side, but the conversations remained exactly the same.

The game is very good... up to a point after which things become disappointing. It was good enough to keep me up much of the night on weekdays, but I have absolutely no desire to replay it.

There are Bioware stories and then there are Bioware stories. I played KotOR 3 times (and feel no urge to replay it), but I played BG2 + ToB well over a dozen times (probably closer to 20). I played TSL once and I feel no urge to replay it (please note that I also saw my 2 room-mates play through it with different characters, so between us we probably got most of it). In fact, unless there is a patch that introduces some massive differences between the X-Box and the PC or some cool fan-made mods, I don't intend to buy the PC version. Aside on mods: Part of the reason why I replayed BG2 so many times was that there were many decent and even a few great mods for it. As usual, many were trash -- but that is inevitable; the point is, there were some good ones. Note that BG2 had absolutely no built in toolset (unlike NWN and later games). The only mods for TSL so far seem to be the kind that nerfs some class or other and the like. That's not what I mean by a mod; the BG2 mods had characters, story and sub-quests that were integrated into the core story (with various degrees of success). If someone were to do that for other games, I'm sure they would become more replayable as well. A pity that BG2 seems to be one of the rare few that inspired this.

It only makes sense if you have been around these boards for a while. There have been many, many, many threads on this topic and the consensus is that the game could have used a bit more development time.

It is in this very thread and fairly obvious. Here: http://www.griskey.com/

All computer game forums (and many others as well) have posts that include some or all of these. There is also some merit and substance, both positive and negative. Here is my view of the problem. These boards (or at least the KotOR2) section of them suffer from what I would call a nasty application of the Kangaxx Principle. If you recall the BG2 boards, you'll remember that no matter how many times it was discussed, no matter how many Tactics stickies were posted, regardless of the song -- there would always be someone who came to the boards to start a new thread about Kangaxx. The moral is this: if there is something genuinely confusing or frustrating in a game, people will come to talk about it. Unfortunately, whereas in the case of BG2 the confusion arose from a difficult to discover and completely optional mini-quest, in the case if TSL the source of the confusion is the ending. I don't know about other people, but the ending left me with a lot of questions I wanted to discuss. Furthermore (and also unfortunately), whereas with Kangaxx the newbie would walk off with half a dozen foolproof tactics that spelled the doom of the Demi-Lich, in the case of TSL's ending, nobody can provide answers people agree on. Worse, the discussion usually turns to something like "Ah, but did you know that they cut x, y and z and it would have made a lot more sense with them?" And then, almost inevitably: "Oh yes, this would be great, too bad this game just wasn't finished" followed by completely inevitable assignments of blame to the publisher, the developer, the industry as a whole and/or miscellaneous others. Occasionally, the more self-righteous will demand that the ending of the game be redone or something of the sort (take no offense here, these are not my sentiments; they are a summary of what you've no doubt seen for yourself in many such threads). Like Kangaxx, these threads will not go away on their own. Last time I checked the BG2 boards at Bioware, there were still fairly recent Kangaxx threads around. You just have to recognize that you have something confusing in your game and as new players encounter it, they will bring it up over and over and over again. There has to be some way of dealing with it. Either get rid of these threads (bad idea... it's not the newbie's fault that you don't like the discussion that arises and they will not be happy) or steer the discussion away from the nasty lines mentioned above. Surely there is something developers can say about the ending or on some other subject. If you are actually there in person, people will defend you. On the other hand, when developers' posts on the matter have to be quoted from other boards, people get upset.

I haven't played FFX-2, but I have absolutely no problem with happy endings that one has to work for. In fact, I believe the reason such things aren't done often is because it makes the other endings less relevant -- you either have to trick the player into choosing an unhappy ending or most people will just do the extra work and get the happy one.

So true, so true. I hate what TSL did with Revan. Send him/her off to an unknown place god with an unknown reason without any of his/her companions (nevermind that there was practically zero difference whether Revan was LS or DS -- mind you, in the first game the destruction of an artifact of cosmic power depends on it). The main thing I was afraid of regarding KotOR and TSL is that this is basically the story of one set of writers continued by a completely different set (and I know that the second set has a record of much darker stories). Those fears proved well founded. :angry: After what they've done, I don't even know what kind of an fate I want for Revan for KotOR3. The only things that are easy to think of are nasty -- death, return to the Dark Side, etc. etc. To come up with a happy yet meaningful ending to Revan's tale after TSL would require considerable effort and skill at writing. Combined with the fact that the folks at Obsidian are not known for happy endings to begin with, I expect nothing good to come from KotOR3 as far as Revan is concerned. Then again, maybe they'll surprise me just this once.

OK, most people probably won't understand why it's funny, but it really is. He is saying this on Bioware's boards where for every game every developer has answered countless "When's the release date?" and "When will the game be done?" questions with "It'll be done when it's done." This is old news, but I didn't pay attention to that phrase before. Thanks for bringing it up again.

Those are pretty good. Keep it up.