AGX-17

There is literally no chance that PE will be Borderlands 2.5 (for the record, Borderlands 2 is my GOTY.) Easter eggs have been in games for decades, you can't stop them, and there's no risk of anything ham-fisted or forced from Obsidian.

If I didn't have to spend all my money on school and essentials, I'd buy that and a PS3. Well, I'd buy a PS3 and preorder the 2nd Super Robot Wars OGs and THEN buy that after scraping together enough money to buy it. I still own both the US and Japanese versions of ZOE2, and yes, Normal mode in the US version is Easy mode in the Japanese version.

Narratively they didn't just drop the ball with ME2, they lost the original ball and had to buy a new one. Of lesser quality. The gameplay and companion characters were done well, but the shift of narrative focus from the Reapers to Cerberus was an obvious (and misguided,) attempt to buy time to actually think of a conclusion (all the alliance-building stuff you do in ME3 is what ME2 should have been about, ME3's plot revolves around a literal Deus Ex Machina that flies in the face of ME's established lore, and they don't even bother to explain or justify it in any way.) ME3's plot is so full of Shepard doing menial chores and unrelated tasks when the Reapers are currently Reaping the entire Galaxy that it's almost impossible to take seriously at times, especially with a DLC like Omega, which Bioware themselves had previously said wouldn't fit due to the urgency of the Reaper threat, yet here they are making it pre-endgame DLC. The races are a mixed bag. The Turians, Krogans, Salarians, Hanar and Elcor were all done well to some degree or another, the Asari and Volus are just dime-novel tripe. Asari are a juvenile fantasy for lonely virgins of the sort you saw in B-movies and pulp sci-fi novels in the 50s and 60s (albeit with the more liberal sexual standards of the new millennium applied,) and the Volus are literally Space Jews, in the worst sense of the word. The monoculturality of all the alien races is another glaring flaw, but excusable with a race like the Turians with their 100% mandatory military service. As is the new standard for Bioware, it's companion relationships (be they platonic or sexual,) that are done best. ME3's multiplayer aspect is surprisingly well done, and it makes me wish all the new content they're putting out for it were made available for the single player game.

Just nitpicking, but the current thread title is a little confusing. Because, well. It's kinda obvious there is *some real science* in Wasteland 2. Because, well. That's not really hard. No, it is not obvious that a game with giant rainbow colored robot scorpions (with laser tails,) has real science in it. "SCIENCE!" is not science. It's a fictional trope. And where? Provide evidence of this claim. The burden of proof is on the claimant, not the respondent. There's humans, right? There's the concept of gravity, right? The history is based on the real world right? There was an america, right? There are social structures right? There is an englisch language right? There's my proof. *Science* is an INCREDIBLE broad term. What I meant is just a more specific title. *contain* sounds just, well..... Like: Wasteland 2 to lay focus on realistic/plausible science/science-fiction. And as I said it's nitpicking on an internet forum. See, now you're just making deliberately, overly broad claims because you had no foundational claim to begin with. "There are humans in this game" does not mean "there is realistic science in this game." By your fallacious standards, every fantasy game with humans is a game rooted in real world science, when in fact the truth is quite to the contrary. Will you follow this up with claims that magic is a scientifically confirmed phenomenon?

Morrowind was vastly superior to Oblivion in terms of writing, Fallout 3 is inferior to Morrowind but on the same level as Oblivion (strict black & white morality, with the black morality option for the main quest being a tacked-on last minute addition.) The entire endgame of F3 was a joke. The ending was just Ron Perlman making a vague appraisal as to whether you made the wasteland a better place or not, there were no ending slides for characters or locations, (one of the staples of classic Fallout.) There was no end boss, it was just a poorly armored officer guy and two goons of the same variety you'd killed dozens or hundreds of on your wasteland travels. Bethesda couldn't figure out how to make a good boss fight if they had bomb collars set to go off if they shipped a title with bad boss fights. In Fallout 2, Enclave soldiers were a relative rarity and a deadly threat to any but the highest-level, combat centric player characters equipped with the same gear as the Enclave (Advanced Power Armor, Gauss or Pulse weapons.) Even then they were a legitimate threat, especially the ones carrying Gauss weapons. In Fallout 3 they're comically numerous pushovers, little more than regularly placed loot containers. Enclave soldiers should have been rare and a terrifying thing to encounter, requiring copious use of chems and all the player's wits to take down. It gets worse with the Broken Steel DLC, where they become even more numerous and despite having vastly superior tech they drop like Orcs in Orcs Must Die before a squad of 4 BoS knights/paladins. And that's without even questioning why, narratively, the Enclave should be back at all. It was a clean cut, pure B&W moral situation in F2 and the player's only choice was to destroy the Enclave oil rig. The Enclave represents moral simplicity, Fallout started out with moral complexity. The Pitt was Fallout 3's peak in terms of writing (still not comparable to New Vegas' middle of the road "good" writing because of its myriad plot holes.) The main game was dismal for the most part. The Replicated Man was the best quest in both design and writing in the main game, and it was still pretty middle of the road. The best "found narrative" was probably the computer logs at the germantown police station. The quests that were just flat out unacceptably bad were ones like "Those!", every line of dialogue was terribly written and the writer/s made numerous continuity errors. Example: the annoying brat has no idea what a computer or a robot is, despite their being omnipresent in the wasteland, but he knows what a TV dinner is (one of his idle barks while hiding in the personal fallout shelter is "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like!") Bethesda focuses so much on world/level design that they let that world be filled with irritatingly shallow characters and quests. Do I need to mention Little Lamplight, the most intellectually offensive idea in the entire game? Sure, it's fine if you're a pedophile or Michael Jackson (no comment on whether those are the same thing,) but anyone with half a brain will start to wonder how a village of all children survives and produces more children ad infinitum for centuries while somehow forcing their physical and intellectual superiors out to die in the wasteland. Without breaking the fourth wall and saying "bethesda kids is immortal lol." I mean, what, do they go out and murder other childrens' parents and kidnap/brainwash them? How did they develop these brainwashing techniques? Where are all these wasteland random encounter mooks living? I've checked every random hole, cistern, sewer and cave on the CW map and never run into individual families eking out a living in the wastes, yet here they are in random encounters wearing their buckskins and getting murdered by the lowest level enemies at level 1 and the highest level enemies while still equipped with the same buckskins and .32 pistols while I'm level 20. Gamebryo, or rather Bethesda's franken-gamebryo version they upgraded themselves (civilization 4 and 5 are gamebryo games and I've never had any stability or memory problems with them,) is a terrible engine, yes, but it is not the root of the problems. If they changed to a different engine, i.e. Unreal Engine, that would not make their quest designers and writers better.

I liked F3 in spite of its flaws, but its flaws are many and glaring. The atmosphere and world design really carried it. The combat was... passable as an FPS (sniper rifle scope still bugs me, you have to aim high with a hitscan weapon,) but gained a lot more novelty fun through VATS, albeit in exchange for challenge. But, ME3 was an original IP in the hands of its creators, creators who had already fumbled narratively on the second outing, so it was to be expected. F3 was one company buying up another IP they had no history with and changing it irrevocably. Now, I learned from Oblivion was that whatever writing talent they had at Bethesda during the Morrowind dev cycle is long gone or suffered severe brain damage, but I was still surprised by just how bad the writing got at points in F3. I wish they would read what people say, and learn from their mistakes, because it seems as though Bethesda is an echo chamber of bad designers and writers supporting each other without criticism. That or they are flat-out delusional. They constantly hype "freedom" as the defining aspect of their games, but it's geometric freedom to proceed in any direction not blocked by mountains, cliffs or invisible walls, not freedom as in player agency and choices. See the Thieves' Guild questline in Skyrim if you want to see just how twisted their idea of "freedom" is. It's merely the freedom to not pursue a questline, the narrative within is entirely linear and the player has no say in what happens beyond whether or not to proceed, and the NPCs will wait patiently for the player's return forever. NPCs make all the major decisions for the player, and when the player actually does have some say, they're literally limited to one "BUT THOU MUST!" type of dialogue option.

Just nitpicking, but the current thread title is a little confusing. Because, well. It's kinda obvious there is *some real science* in Wasteland 2. Because, well. That's not really hard. No, it is not obvious that a game with giant rainbow colored robot scorpions (with laser tails,) has real science in it. "SCIENCE!" is not science. It's a fictional trope. And where? Provide evidence of this claim. The burden of proof is on the claimant, not the respondent. People who know about/are interested in science and how the universe really works care. Would you have noticed if they bothered to be more realistic? Your response gives me the impression that you don't care and aren't interested, so haven't you answered your own question in that case? This is a valid issue for those of us who are interested in the sciences, because the more you learn about the universe, the more obvious it is that most Sci-Fi is actually Space Fantasy, complete with Space Magic. It wouldn't be difficult for a sci-fi writer to just say "this takes place in a different universe with different laws of physics," but most sci-fi writers know so little about actual science that it would never occur to them.

I don't see any reason why there can't be swarms of NPCs who just don't give a **** what you're looking for. What are we talking, dozens? hundreds? thousands? The more there are, the more "alive" the city will feel, but at the same time once you get close to the hundreds you can't expect anything but a randomly chosen canned response from 90% of those NPCs. Not on a technical basis, but on the human limitations of the game's writers. If you've got your writing team devoted to complex dialogue trees for all 600 NPCs in your super city, you've got an entire writing team not writing quests, companions and the main narrative.

Why not? Aren't you bored by the fact that every single game must have a predictably happy ending? Because your poll is loaded/rigged and regardless of the results or number of voters you will present it as "100% of Obsidian forum voters don't want a happy ending, Obsidian!" Not every game has a predictable happy ending. Multiple titles from my favorite Japanese game series, Super Robot Wars, have apocalyptically bad endings available. As in the actual universe is destroyed, all of your characters die in sorrow, all of the other characters in the universe die, etc. Game over, start a new game cycle (aka new game +) and try not to make the same decisions that led you to destroy the universe. And this is a Japanese game series. Admittedly, a thinking-outside-the-box series, but if someone in Japan can do it, anyone can. But the point is, it's not mandatory. What's the point of player agency if there's only one mandatory ending? If someone wants to aim for "the bad ending," let them, If someone blunders into it, let them learn from their mistakes if they want a better outcome. But it's not really an RPG anymore when player agency no longer affects the outcome. That's why you can't be taken seriously, Obsidian has always made player agency a priority, giving you choices to make and making them feel significant and real. Where does that go with a rigged game where players can't win? Hell, now that I think about it, on the Western side, Mass Effect 3, for all its flaws, grants the option of allowing the Reapers to go on their merry way genociding all sentient life. I'd hardly call that a predictable happy ending. Would you?

That's a loaded title, because it assumes micromanagement can be fun. I guess there are managers/sadomasochists out there in the business/Korean competetive gaming world that think it is, but I also think humans (especially the ones being micromanaged by the aforementioned MBAs,) don't think micromanagement is fun or can be fun. But it also appears as though what you're really referring to is tactical positioning rather than micromanagement. In my experience, if it's a game such as an IE classic it's not really micromanagement because it's a small team tactics situation. Controlling up to a half dozen characters is decidedly different from controlling and producing hundreds of characters as well as building and maintaining the support infrastructure and resource supply lines for those hundreds of characters in realtime without pause. It's a misnomer to call RTS games Strategy games, because success hinges on reflexes and micromanagement, not actual strategy or strategic thinking.

It's too bad these guys weren't around when Bioware was starting Mass Effect. Although somehow I doubt Bioware would be interested in not including space magic in their games.

I was interested until I remembered Skyrim's boring gameplay.

very early development they were last seen getting location shots so still a long way off. As much as I preferred New Vegas to 3 I doubt Bethesda are going to let anyone make the main game of the franchise. I would think they would contract someone to do another New Vegas style game. After Obsidian got screwed by Bethesda over 1 lousy meta-critic point I don't think they will be interested without some sort of guarantee going forward. Obsidian's NV leads (Sawyer, Avellone, etc.) when asked, repeatedly, said they would love to work on another Fallout game if Bethesda would have them. Uh... But Bethesda already dumbed down/eliminated RPing systems with Fallout 3. SPECIAL attributes actually mattered in F1 and 2, skill point investment mattered, perks were strategic choices, dialogue and speech were much more robust, etc. And F3 was everything you described Skyrim as, but with better combat. Fallout 3 is designed, like all Bethesda games, for minmaxers and powergamers who want to be the best at everything and max out every statistic (despite SPECIAL being nerfed, not that any of F3's minmaxers know or care about that.)

The reason why you typically have a young protagonist is because you're starting, typically, around level 1 (and from the buzz I've heard PE is going to top out around 12?) How does a 60 year old man go through 60 years of life and gain no experience? And what's the point of an experience system if you start at the maximum level from the start?

Why would Skyrim even be an option? Skyrim is almost the polar opposite of what PE should be. Voted BG. "Resting" isn't doing nothing. Unless you're some kind of spambot program, you have to 'rest' every day or else you'll 'die' from 'exhaustion.' If you were severely wounded, you don't run around doing your morning jog and then go to work like normal, your body will make sure of it with physical pain and what little remains of your reasoning brain would reccomend against it because it will harm your long term survival chances. Every animal that has a brain and a significant lifespan has to sleep.

I'm certainly no Republican, nor do I think in terms of greatness. I'm just speaking some truths here about the region. Europe doesn't really have much say in what's going on in the world anymore. I don't know if you're aware of economists, but the global economy is still hinging on how the Eurozone crisis pans out. Pretty much every economist of every stripe (conservative, institutionalist, marxist,) will tell you that because the EU is collectively one of the largest economies in the world, it matters now more than ever before. If the Eurozone splits into two, if countries like Greece and Spain are ejected from the Eurozone, if Germany relents on austerity and continues bailing them out, if the EU federalizes and gives its central bank real power... That's what macroeconomists are talking about these days. The BRICS countries are bound up in this, too. Remember that the EU is one of the world's major consumers, and the BRICS countries need a market for their resources and cheap manufacturing.

To be fair, if your spell opened a portal to the center of the sun then you'd all be dead.

You just gave me a PTSD flashback from a Castlevania game where one of those was the super side-quest boss stronger than the final boss. That whole nightmare dungeon was Demons'/Dark Souls caliber difficult.

Stopped reading at the second panel because they misspelled "ought." Aught means "all," not something you "should" do or have a "duty" to do. No, Morrigan was not trying to be Kreia. She was always taking a selfish/pragmatic view of the situation. She never challenged you on "morally questionable" or self-serving actions. Kreia challenged you on every choice you made and wanted you to think, learn, be insightful and be self-critical about your decisions, and to avoid thinking in terms of black & white morality.

How is your stealth CQC I didn't ask for this chokehold takedown character going to carry it all? How are you going to sneak up on them if you have enough companions to carry it all? What's to stop them from getting more? They've probably got enough sneak-thieves among them to steal more and get back to business. A gang of unarmed thugs might be less of a threat than a gang of armed thugs, but they still outnumber and outgun a typical civilian. Then why label the thread "on pacifism and the nonlethal takedown"?

A non-lethal approach is fine if it makes sense in-context, but I doubt this context is going to allow a stealth-game styled no-kill/pacifist run to be possible. How do you do a non-lethal takedown on something undead? Or something bigger than a house? This isn't a game about black & white morality (as has been stated multiple times by the devs,) so pacifism is not likely to be a valid aim. Hypothetical situation: Village is being terrorized by marauding bandit types, local lord is at war (and most of the village men are serving in his army,) and can't be bothered to do anything about it. Your "non-lethal CQC tranq-dart takedowns only" character has volunteered to solve the problem. You go sneaking into the bandit camp, you choke them into unconsciousness. Now what? When they wake up they're not going to say "well we'd better leave those villagers alone, that guy who won't kill us is bound to stay there for the rest of his life and make robbing/raping those villagers impossible for that timespan!" You can't expect them to give up their lives of pillage and slaughter because they got knocked out that one night without getting drunk. What do you do, go back to the village and tell the women and children "all is well, sleep with your doors unlocked, your salvation has been guaranteed!" and move on?

Have fun with that stupidly heavy helmet that prevents you from turning your head.

She's a sapient, not a piece of meat! That's extra true in her case. This bothered me to no end in the Mass Effect games (don't get me started on their misuse of the term "biotic,") and it bothers me here. "Sapient" does not mean "sentient." Nothing is "a Sapient" because A. sapient is not a noun, it is an adjective. and B. It means being sagacious or discerning, that is, possessing wisdom. It is not a definition of self-consciousness or sentience, because wisdom is different from those qualities. A sufficiently aged animal with any form of long-term memory could be said to have wisdom. This animal does not need to be sentient to be sagacious. And there can be sentient creatures which do not possess wisdom, as well.

You appear to be defining "selling out" as "making a game using someone else's original intellectual property under license," something which your "BIO" has been doing for over a decade. D&D games, Star Wars games, Sonic the Hedgehog (lol) and MDK2? How is that not "selling out," given that definition?

That only works/matters if you're some clever, manipulative character looking to uh... manipulate the NPC you're talking to in some way. And if I'm not mistaken, the Cipher class that Chris Avellone is extremely excited about seems to be able to effectively read minds or emotions to some degree, which should fit your niche pretty well. What if you're playing some hard-headed righteous paladin of godly justice character? He doesn't care about the "tells" and psychological quirks (as if there was psychology in the renaissance anyway,) of who he's talking to, he's interested in whether or not they believe in his God/dess and to what degree they should be punished if they're heathens.