AGX-17

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDjttWsVtdg Got my panties all tied up in a knot now.

There's a lot of nostalgia for the Soviet Union amongst Russian youths who didn't live in the Soviet era. It's more a matter the picture being paranoid anti-American propaganda. Of course, I'm sure there's no irony relating to the status of Chechnya involved in that image, either. Not joking.

Civilization V: Gods & Kings. Weird that Boudica/Celts are a faith oriented civ. But whatever, they're my ancestors so I'm honorbound to conquer Rome with them. Also playing Carthage for further anti-Roman sentiment. The free harbors in every city from the start thing doesn't hurt either. Basically this whole thing for me is about giving the Romans the bloody end they deserved at the end of a Celtic or Carthaginian blade. And don't think you're weaseling out of this, Eastern Rome. I'm coming for Constantinople next! Can't imagine what kind of nightmare scenario I can create playing Egypt and taking both Culture and Faith-based bonuses to Wonder construction.

Whatever's out and good. I don't see any need to risk burning yourself out on RTw/P combat by playing only IE games for the next two years,

This, so this. I wouldn't have a problem with a voiced main character if there were a multitude of voice options, which would be extremely expensive and hit-or-miss so it's not a viable option. You had a choice of voices in Dragon Age Origins and I didn't particularly like any of the male ones and loved one of the female ones and hated the rest, and that was it. It was only for combat barks, anyway. It was worth a try at least.

Alright, you got me, I genuinely laughed out loud. Uproariously. "Fine art" he says. Thank you for brightening my day.

Brazil. Terry Gilliam masterpiece. Obviously 11/10. It's "goes," not "go's." "Go's" is not even a viable word/term in English unless you are referring to someone named Go, as the apostrophe makes it a conjunction of "Go is," which is a wildly different context. You're welcome for the English lesson, free of charge. Yes I am one of THOSE PEOPLE. I shouldn't need to address the post misspelling "girl." That sort of poster is not going to learn, I only teach those who want to be taught.

The devs obviously know more about the costs than you do, and if they say it's cost prohibitive to re-record dialogue for the sake of editing the script, I'll believe MCA over you. And for the record, Ron Perlman is a film and TV "real actor." Not a "voice actor." His primary work is in the film industry. Lots of "real actors" do voicework on the side because it's a quick and easy buck in between or even during major projects like TV shows or movies. Ron Perlman obviously commands a much higher fee than your Jennifer Hales and Phill Lamarrs. I mean, have you seen the City of Lost Children? Ron Perlman is no mere Steven Blum or Mark Meer. And Bethesda likely shells out tens or even hundreds of thousands when they get people like Liam Neeson, Christopher Lee or Patrick Stewart for their games.

Lazy work for hastily assembled concept art? The very nerve! They should have spent weeks and a big chunk of the budget getting the image just so. You should be an art critical; you at least know what a color wheel is. LOL. Where did you get this information? Which developer personally told you this? Since you're implicitly claiming to be privy to the inner workings of the game's development. If this was hastily done "concept" art everyone in the industry should be in a bidding war over the artist responsible. The image is obviously not hasitly done, nor is it concept art, it's promotional art. It is a finished high quality image, not some storyboard sketch scrawled out in pencil. Yet that doesn't mean the use of an orange/blue contrast is not lazy and overdone. http://www.slashfilm...-movie-posters/ http://en.wikipedia....ki/Color_theory I'd hope they'd just make torches more available and last longer in the easier modes, perhaps have more of them in chests. Like I said in an earlier post, you're not going to go into every pitch black dungeon carrying 2-3 torches, you're going to have an ox cart laden with wood, dirty rags and flammable liquid that you're going to haul to the bottom of every dungeon if you're a well-prepared team, which seems rather excessive.

There is no logical scenario in which this idea would work with the idea of a "mature themed cRPG." The ideas you're espousing are as close to Skyrim as they are to Minecraft, it's well outside the scope of the project. You should not have a player character becoming king of the proverbial mountain in a few in-game days (if there's a day/night cycle,) thanks to crafting and harvesting and other meta/powergaming concepts like that. Furthermore, you don't attain noble titles by making a suit of armor a day, every day. That's not even possible before mechanization and mass production, and those preclude the use of armor because it's a given that gunpowder weapons exist and there's no call for mass-produced armor if mass-produced guns will always defeat that mass produced armor.

No, voiceovers cost money, and like Avellone pointed out, once the dialogue is recorded, you can't go back and change the script because of the cost and time and logistical problems implicit in re-doing a recorded dialogue. I have no problem with few/no voices in PE.

Well, it's obviously not a torch. Aside from the elf mage's hand glowing rather obviously with magical power, It's highly likely just an artistic element meant to emphasize "these guys are who you should focus on." The orange end of the color wheel for the bad guys' blue (lazy work, Obsidian artist, btw.)

I'm going to assume you never played Diablo 1 as a kid. I'm also going to assume you never played Tibia in it's early days of extreme darkness. Even Diablo 2 used light radius to great effect, but was never as scary as Diablo 1 due to more exterior areas and less reliance on it for survival. Actually, I did. Whenever my friends and I had LAN parties they usually wanted to just play Diablo-type games (Diablo, Diablo II, Dungeon Siege, etc.) I could humor them for about an hour tops but the whole thing was just mind-numbingly boring. And when you said tibia, I thought "what does a human leg bone have to do with this" so I looked up "Tibia not the bone," and have this to say: I don't play muhmorpuhguhs, never have, and I cannot control my laughter at the idea of someone being afraid of one, no offense. Not being able to see a long distance in Diablo is not scary, it's just irritating at worst because of the nature of the game and the perspective. I was a big player of Warcraft II and Starcraft in the heady days of my youth in the mid-to-late 90s (it's going to take a game like Silent Hill to scare me,) so it was no different from Fog of War to me. Your apparently very low threshold for terror doesn't automatically apply to everyone else. The most terrifying thing about Diablo is the fear of getting carpal tunnel syndrome from rapidly clicking M1 for 12 hours straight.

How timers and time limits should work depend not merely on what kind of story, but on what particular story is being told. Every detail demands a timer of some sort, some more significant or worthwhile to implement than others. It's been mentioned several times in this thread that timers' effects and the way they function should vary according to the demands of the setting/story. A "set, unchanging pace" is only the simplest way a timer can function. It is appropriate to have timers and time limits on "personal" stuff as well. In fact these sorts of timers would probably be much easier to implement (see my example in this post). And it sure as hell will not be only "personal" stuff that happens in the game's story. Unless by "personal" stuff, you mean everything that just "waits" around forever for the player to come mess with it? I mean a more philosophical, introspective narrative a la P:T. The only possible time limit you could conceive for that is the player character's lifespan (which would be no time limit in that example.) I'm not saying there shouldn't be time-limited quests, I'm saying the main quest/the game itself should not have a time limit unless the story clearly and believably justifies it.

Why not just use whatever weapon mechanics are already in? Treat the torch as a one-handed flaming club -2 with a timeout. You could wield it with your off-hand instead of a shield, or with your main hand as a weapon (see Rings, Lord of, encounter on Weathertop.) What torches do imply is a dynamic lighting system. That's a lot more than torches: it means modifiers to skills depending on light levels, creatures that function better in the dark or by daylight, and all manner of other fun stuff. If that's in, torches and other light sources are an obvious part of it. I think that woudl be cool, although by no means indispensable, of course. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff they could do instead. It's ludicrous enough that torches can be used to block in Skyrim, being made of generic wood that can be cleaved with a simple iron or steel woodcutter's axe, yet they can't be destroyed or damaged by Daedric greatswords once they've become "Torch." What good is a torch going to be against a guy with +2 Steel Plate Armor or a vengeful wandering spirit? Like Archmage Silver said, this is a game with an isometric view focused on tactics, not visceral thrills like being scared of the dark or mashing M1 until the guy in front of you dies. And Torches don't "imply a dynamic lighting system," dynamic lighting implies a dynamic lighting system. There were torches in games long before dynamic lighting systems. At the very earliest it was increasing the distance at which the black Z-buffer depth fog around the player's first person viewpoint began.

There's nothing scary about an isometric overhead view and combat results determined by random number generators. Hauling around a wagon full of sticks, old soiled rags and flammable liquids to the bottom of a dungeon doesn't seem like the ideal solution unless it's the only option.

L4D's variable NPC spawning algorithm (let's call it what it really is,) isn't exactly a good fit for an RPG. The "AI Director" is just a fluff "character" meant to draw the ire of frustrated players away from the developers or the game's design.

It really, really, really depends on what kind of story is being told. What little we do know of P:E's plot doesn't sound as though it's some kind of "the Super Devil and his Super Devil Super Army™ are invading at a set, unchanging pace! Only you can stop the Super Devil Super Army™, chosen one! Hurry up before the Super Devil arrives to crush the goodly kingdom of Eternia!" It sounds like it's going to be a more personal sort of story for the PC, at least in its beginnings.

I'm cheating and making one writer per post. Plato. Queequeg should be censored too, for the sake of all the young children who are fans of Obsidian games.

I loved the first COD and its expansion, and that was where I stopped (couldn't afford a better PC for years, stuck with consoles until about '07 and MW never appealed to me because I was busy with TF2,) I recently played COD2 and was disappointed because it has the now standard cover/health regen system. The Soviet parts were definitely the best part of the original COD. And that PPSh... Of course, the now common problem of grenade spam in MP was omnipresent, too.

How much information you get about a new item should be based on your experience with the subject. Class, background and experience, basically. A fighter who has received thorough military training should be familiar with all the types of weapons that he or she is likely to encounter on the battlefield in their own region and potentially neighboring territories in case of war, but not an exotic, obscure or ancient variety of weapon. I'd also think nearly anyone would be able to detect whether or not a weapon is enchanted through use. If it's made of known materials with a known design but feels lighter or hits harder than it should based on a fighter's experience with that weapon type, they could safely assume there's some kind of buff enchantment. If enemies get burned or set ablaze, it should be clear that it has some manner of fire enchantment, but these would be vague points without detail, and it would take a magical specialist to figure out what exactly the enchantments are. Or they could just die as soon as they pick it up and everyone has just learned unequivocally that it's enchanted with "+1 die instantly on holder." Disclaimer: I do not support unavoidable instant death under any circumstance.

This forum's naughty words filter is one of the most viciously ironic things I've encountered on the internet. Especially after it was announced they'd be making a South Park game.

Neil Gaiman. Have you actually read any of the books? There is rather little sex in the books, in proportion to the amount of content present. The HBO series dramatically increases the amount of sexual impropriety. Besides, who's to say mature adults don't have sex? It doesn't take much internet searching to find mature adults engaging in excessive sexual deviance. Influence the writing of the game =/= hire this person to write the game.

How does that increase business for the innkeeper? I've seen that general idea done in multiple games. Just off the top of my head: In Oblivion on that boat-inn in the Imperial City, the boat gets hijacked because the owner/innkeeper spun some fanciful treasure ship tale. And there's a mission in Borderlands 2 where Marcus scams some nerd into buying a "legendary gun" because he's the "chosen one who will save pandora" (sending said nerd to his certain death,) and he sends you after him because he accidentally gave the nerd he sent to die $10 in change instead of $1. A merchant huckster selling a "legendary weapon" with flattery and faux-prophecies sounds more believable than an innkeeper telling people (his source of revenue,) to leave his inn (his place of business,) and go on a quest for something that doesn't exist. If the innkeep sent you off to your death, he'd lose potential repeat business. If you came back empty-handed, he would certainly not profit.

So you're just saying companions should have randomly decided classes based on their backstory? Unless the characters have possible variables in their backstory it doesn't make sense for them to have variable classes. All that really seems to do mechanically is throw additional uncertainty about what resources you'll have available into the game. It might add to replay value, but I don't like the idea of having to forego an interesting companion and create a generic Adventurer companion because the game rolled that character a class that's incompatible or redundant with my current party. There's also the small, niggling issue that all the revealed companion characters have had their classes defined already.