Ice9

Not sure what you're talking about. You know in the first dragon age when you cast a sustained spell there would be a little icon that shows what is going on? I didn't see any of those. So if you wanted to check the status of a different character you had to manually switch characters to do so.

Well, I just finished the demo. In general, I feel like this game is taking a step backward. In this man's e-pinion, the user interface seems to have regressed a bit. I don't like the look of the spell icons and that jazz, it doesn't really seem to fit with the world. But what concerns me more is I didn't see a buff bar anywhere. Was I just missing that? I also had some issue where I couldn't click on a portrait of a party member and level them up. I had to press escape and click level up. Thats not a huge deal, but more clicks = generally worse design. I also didn't like the male Hawke's voice; I just didn't sense the right emotional resonance for any of the lines. I'm not a huge fan of the dialog wheel, but the icons indicating intent are helpful. I miss knowing exactly what Faux Hawke was going to say but it isn't a deal breaker. I didn't particularly like the animations. A lot of the swordplay seems more at home in something like Devil May Cry. Whoever said it is like the weapons don't have any weight is exactly right. I also didn't like the run animations. The exception is the magic staff attacks. They looked cooler and more magical. The lack of a full tactical camera is noticeable. I really wanted to have a full overhead view a few times when casting fireball and that AoE fire spell. I don't remember what it was called. It isn't unplayable, and you can adjust it way more than in KOTOR. It just seems like a lot of little things are off. None of them are game breaking but they seem like nagging annoyances. As for a final verdict? It's a Bioware game. It is about the story and the NPCs. The short little demo isn't enough time to get a feel for that stuff. But it did convince me to hold off purchasing until I can get it on sale.

I grew frustrated and quit playing the original when I couldn't complete a mission. The mission? I believe it was the second stage in the tutorial. Despite my best intentions, I just couldn't make those archers of my kill that unit of infantry. I really did like Rome: Total War though. I hope this one turns out well.

Since the Rift beta ended, I decided I would go and reactivate my WoW account with the ten day free trial of Cataclysm. I somehow don't think Trion had that in mind when letting me into the beta.

I figure I can wait the two days and enjoy it in English.

I really dug Alpha Protocol. I'm willing to overlook its flaws because it is really clever. Some of my favorite missions are the talking ones. I think I played the gelato shop one about three times in a row trying to explore it. To generalize, I think when Interplay blew up, Obsidian wound up with the creativity and Bioware received the quality control staff.

I agree that I simplified things. When playing an RPG I tend to do all the sidequests first before going onto the main plot out of fear for missing stuff. My general operational assumption is that most people do that to. That could be horribly wrong. But if you're doing Virmire early there is probably an increased likelihood that you haven't spent much time with Wrex. If you haven't spent a significant part of the game learning to care about Wrex, his death will mean less. On the other hand, those players that care about him enough to rush to his aid and find that armor armor are never going to see that death scene. The tragedy is that the players most likely to be affected by his death are the least likely to see it.

My big issue with Mass Effect 2 is it took the poorly handled Wrex situation and expanded it into a full game. In ME1 if you're nice to Wrex, say the things he wants to hear, and take a time to invest in him by doing his quest, he'll live. If you don't care to take the time and do those things, he dies. So basically, if you like the character enough to invest time in him you're rewarded by keeping him alive and, at least in my mind, are robbed of the emotional impact of being forced to watch him die. ME2 simply compounds the problem by building an entire game on this mechanic. So, if you take the time to talk to your crew, invest in them by doing loyalty missions, and pay attention to pretty obvious clues on how to assign people in the suicide mission, you escape from loss again. Now I don't think that every game needs to have a meaningful character death but I am worried that Bioware is spending too much time in wish fulfillment at the expense of telling an emotionally engaging (their buzzwords) story. One thing is certain - if there was hidden meter that kept track of your relationship with Aeris that would determine if she was killed by Sephiroth, Final Fantasy 7 would have been a substantially worse game.

Gaming storytelling isn't quite sophisticated enough to pull off this yet, but I long for that day. To be fair, tragic endings aren't even all that common in big budget movies either but to grow as a medium, gaming will eventually need to do stuff like that. The indie medium can, of course, be more adventurous in this regard, but AAA gaming will eventually do it one day too.

There is a new trailer for the Alice sequel. I liked the original at the time, I'll keep an eye on this one too.

I haven't watched any of those videos yet, so I can't really comment on it. On voiced PCs in RPGs in general, I'm kind of conflicted. They generally don't bother me unless there is something about the voice actor that I find irksome. On the other hand, I don't find well voiced PCs any more compelling or immersive than mute ones. I've never been more absorbed in a game than I was with Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and its silent protagonist.

It's been a while, so my memory might be faulty. Can't you drag/assign them to number keys? I'm pretty sure you can. Though much of the interface got dumbed down for the PC sequel, I think they left that alone. But whomever decided to remove keyboard shortcuts to your codex or you quest log is an idiot.

I just started New Vegas but I'm also spending some time with the Rift beta.

I joined this board just for the pretentiousness. Now, when is that demo coming out? I want to scoff at it.