Squidget

So what - you couldn't stick a game with the dialog depth of PS: T or interesting RPG combat on console software? Funny - some of the better RPG stories I remember in recent years were on console first (KOTOR, KOTOR II, Jade Empire.) Likewise, I find the combat of the Final Fantasy series more interesting than a lot of PC RPGs released lately, Guild Wars being an obvious exception. There's nothing about consoles themselves that makes them inherently bad for single player RPGs - though I'll agree that at the moment the PC market tends to see more interesting games in that genre.

And the fact that telephone answering services do not have to produce things like tone, emphasis, and feeling. There are a lot of different ways to say a given sentence that will vary based on the message the character is attempting to get across, their mood, their feelings on the sentence's subject matter, ect. This isn't something you will easily simulate with a computer program. VO is expensive - but at the moment, the technology doesn't really exist to replace it with a computerized voice and have it sound the same.

This is what's drawn me into Guild Wars, largely. Beyond a certain point (which even a casual player can reach fairly quickly), there's really not much to grind for anymore. There's nice-looking armors with the same stats as the cheaper stuff, and perhaps an additional 1% bonus to something or other, but that's about it. You're as powerful (statwise) as everyone else. And most of this 'grind' takes place through the process of the missions with varied goals that progress the (mediocre) storyline. So you don't end up farming the same area, you're just running through various scripted missions in order to progress. It's more like a single player RPG than an MMO in that aspect, only there's other players. Of course, you don't notice the other players who aren't in your party unless your in a town, as everything else is instanced. So in the end you play the game because you want to go out with your group and have fun, not because you want to grind for something specific. The endgame is pretty impressive...I've not run out of skill combos to try, and PvP can be a lot of fun.

Guild Wars has this pretty well, through a combination of a low level cap and a skill system that allows a lot of increases in versatility. Getting to the level cap in GW is something a casual gamer can do through the course of the story. It caps out at level 20, and it probably doesn't take much longer than the length of an average single player RPG to get up to that point. However, playing after that allows you to earn more skills for your character to use. However, since you can only have 8 skills on any given mission you end up having to make choices, and the skills are balanced with one another. When you get a new skill it might open up a new strategy that makes you more effective, but the skill itself isn't more powerful than the ones you had previously - you're just using it more effectively. There are a lot of skills, so this gives the hardcore players something to do. Difficulty can continue to increase after the level cap for a couple of reasons. For one, maximum party size gradually increases throughout the PvE missions (up to , and likewise there are times when you can get upgrades which only apply to a specific area or monster type. For example, at one point you get your armor 'Infused' to resist a certain type of hex so you can fight some of the more powerful monsters, but Infusion doesn't add to the power of your character except against those particular monsters with that particular hex. Finally, there's the presence of luxury items. Armor and gear that looks nice but doesn't have any inherent stat bonuses. This gives the hardcore something to strive for while the casual player can still remain competitive and not be left in the dirt by someone with no life. Overall the system works pretty well.

Having just played the Thief 3 Demo... Uhm...that!

Fair enough if you don't enjoy GW, but I have to ask... How would you suggest 'dynamic storylines where players can shape the world they inhabit' be implemented in a massively multiplayer game from a design perspective? I don't see any method of actually doing it, short of going the NWN route and having player-run servers with non-developer GMs.

Reading through that guy's list of what he would like in an 'ideal' MMORPG, I'm rather amused to find that Guild Wars implements pretty much everything to the letter (while not being an MMORPG in the conventional sense.) I think Guild Wars is a step in a new (and right) direction for MMOs precisely because they do away with the aspects people here have complained about. It does have a coherent story and instancing is used to make the player feel like the unique hero of that story rather than the guy waiting in line behind two dozen other 'unique heros' to kill uber boss number five. Likewise with the way they handle progression, people who play for a ridiculously long time don't become more effective than casual players once both hit the relatively low cap. The level 20 cap is perfectly reachable for a casual player who plays the game 1 or 2 hours a day for a couple months, and once they have reached that point they are going to be about as powerful as someone who's played 3 times as long. For the people who want an advantage for their hours of playing, this is offset both by the learning curve (the longer you play the more skilled and effective you will be), and unlockable items which are nice, but give relatively balanced benefits and drawbacks. Likewise, there are enough skills in GW that you can keep on unlocking them for some time after you hit the cap, so while a level 20 character might stop gaining power they will gain versatility instead. Until GW came along I was never interested in the repetitive level grinding of MMOs, but its really changed my mind and represents a great step forward in the genre - IMHO, of course.

No worries. Well, I'd say that if a kid (by some horrible turn of events) actually saw someone being shot in the head, then they probably wouldn't think that the bodies flopped backwards anymore. The real-world visual would 'override' the opinion they had after only seeing fiction. It is certainly possible for people to be 'tricked' into believing something through watching fiction, but from what I can see it doesn't generally happen if we can see a direct real-world example to the contrary. If we see something happening in the fictional world and something else happening in the real world, we associate the second with reality and it becomes our world view. In the real world we're constantly told that things like murder and assault are morally wrong, and if a kid is in a situation where they are not being told these things than they have bigger problems than a video game (IMHO.) As such, it stands to reason that they will take their morals from the things they are told in the real world rather than Manhunt, GTA, or similarly violent games. This is pretty much the issue I always run into trying to think about the problem from the perspective of a developer. That is, short of just not producing violent material (and paying the price for it), I don't really see much a developer can do to avoid this kind of thing. There are things other people can do (stores could enforce ESRB ratings better, for example) but developers haven't got too many options. I wouldn't tie it to just games or even just our society. Why do violent video games sell? Same reason people watch violent TV shows and movies. Same reason we laugh when Elmer Fudd gets crushed with a gigantic rock. Same reason the colosseum events of Rome were attended by gigantic crowds of people. Same reason people watch Football and Boxing. Because seeing violence happen to other people is entertaining for an awful lot of humans. Instinctual, I guess.

Agreed heartily. I am strongly against all games being censored for the very tiny minority who will do serious harm with the games as inspiration (but would probably have done so anyway.) That is what I meant above when I said "Taking things to the developer's door." Censoring games is not the answer any more than we should stop producing cars because car accidents exist. I do think that there are effects on 'most people' from playing or viewing violent media, but I don't think those effects are major or particularly dangerous to society. They just are. I think it is worthwhile for gamers and developers to be made aware that these sorts of things can have effects and what forms those effects can take, and leave people responsible for making their own decision about whether or not they want to partake in that kind of media.

Undeniably, my source was fairly old. It was the result of a few minutes of googling in order to find an online study. I have sources for my other facts and can post them if people like, but they're in literature form so it would be titles rather than a link. Very true, but I don't think it makes the point you were trying to make. We tend to create our view of reality from what we see in the real world first, and fiction second. If we see mages throwing fireballs in the fictional world and no mages throwing fireballs in the real world, then we will assume that there are not actually any mages that can throw fireballs in anything but fiction. On the other hand, if we have experience with something that we nevertheless know to be reality (ie: we've never actually seen someone shot in the head with a pistol, but we know it happens) then we do tend to use fiction to fill in the gaps. We assume things happen as they do on the cop show because we have no real life events to compare it to. Moral implications in games fall into the first category. That is, children and adults are generally given a certain set of morals to follow in real life (don't hurt or kill people, ect) and when the game offers a different sort of morals ("Killing people is okay") then they will generally reject those morals in favor of what they know to be the real world. Likewise, someone who takes their real-world morals from a shoot-em-up game is no more well adjusted than someone who takes other portions of their reality from a game and actually thinks that mages exist who can throw fireballs. And in the end, it is the moral implications that are considered a danger to society. It is the idea of a person commiting murder because they saw it in a game that scares people. Thinking that someone will fly back a certain why if they are shot in the head isn't remotely dangerous to society. It is only dangerous to think that shooting people in the head is somehow 'okay.' Likewise, when people commit crimes in the real world it tends to be because they have, in whatever way, been trained in a different set of morals by their family life, drug use, ect. If real life has taught them that hurting people is okay then video games might reinforce that, but if video games send a different message than it will not end up changing their real life morals. More likely they just won't play those video games, or will play them for fun the same way non-violent people can play violent video games just for fun. And even assuming the point you are attempting to make is valid - what exactly do you suggest developers do about it, bearing in mind that heavily restricting their content to a certain audience based on a tiny minority is coming heavily out of their own pocket?

The issue with violent/evil acts in video games is somewhat more complicated than a lot of people here seem to think. Like it or not, believe it or not, we are affected by what we see. People who play violent video games do tend to be more aggressive than those who do not (source.) If you expose children to violent games they do tend to behave more violently on the playground. The two days after a heavyweight prizefight in the United States there is a 9% great homocide rate, and after a reported suicide or suicide drama on TV more people actually take their lives. That said - Doom 3 does not make its players into murderers. While a fair percentage of murderers might play violent video games, only a tiny percentage of video game players are likewise muderers. While the evidence indicates that video games increase aggression or agressive solutions to conflicts, there is nothing inherently wrong or dangerous about aggression in our socities unless it is taken to very unusual extremes (ie: actual murder or assault). The increase in aggression games provide is not inherently dangerous to its players or to society so long as it remains just that. Naturally there are people who will commit murder and a fair portion of them will probably play violent games or even draw inspiration from them, but in the end it is the person that will commit the crime, and the other influences are their life that are at fault for their actions. Millions of people can play video games without harmful effects - thus, it stands somewhat to reason that the people who commit crimes because of video games are doing so because they are the sort of people to commit crimes, not because the video game has warped their mind. I am in full agreement with those who have posted that video games can promote or aggrivate aggressive behavior - but that conclusion should not, IMHO, provide an answer to the question originally posed. There is no sense in going to the developers of a game complaining about an insane person injuring themself with the game as inspiration than there is in going to the manufacturer of a knife and complaining because somebody commited murder with the knife. It is not the developer's responsibility of their products are misused, and neither they nor the general public should have to pay the price any more than any other artist. Concepts like rape and murder should be included or not includeded based on gameplay and whether people would enjoy them, not some hypothetical insane individual that would injure themselves or others after seeing such occur in a video game. In the end, the best we can ask the developers and publishers to do is to ensure that every individual is informed enough to make their own decisions about whether or not it is safe for them to play games. For those individuals incapable of making their own decisions we can only hope that society will have means to prevent them from making harmful decisions, whether those means consist of good parenting, psychiatrists, or mental hospitals. However, that burden falls on the shoulders of the government, and should not be brought to the game developer's door.

This is an intriguing system, but I tend to agree with what some others have said - it could only work in a single player RPG is used in conjunction with dialog rather than instead of dialog. I definitely don't want to see less dialog or story used in RPGs in favor of mechanics. The story is the primary reason I play those games, and while the mechanics are interesting and I enjoy a fun combat, I'm less likely to play a game with just that. However, I think even the strongest supporter of dialog trees will admit that there are some things they do not do well. They often falter when it comes to extremely detailed descriptions of both PC and NPC experiences, because there is only so much either can say at any one time. They are also very bad at any kind of debate, since a PC can only present arguments that the designer has thought of and presented as options, so nothing they say is really their own or representative of their character's opinion. I can see use for a system like this if it was specifically initiated by dialog. After talking to someone for a while you might get an option... [Verbal Battle] I think X, but not Y and Z because... [Verbal Battle] I think X and Y, but not Z because... [Verbal Battle] I think X, Y, and Z because... And from there, the 'diplomatic combat' would initiate and your character's stats would determine who won the argument, or whether it came out to be a tie. I'm not entirely convinced it would be ideal, but it could work okay for some situations. Another thought for improving dialog would be something along the lines of 'flashbacks'. I personally found myself more moved by the movie scene of Kreia's Fall in KOTOR2 than I was by most of the party member dialog otherwise. Being able to see these events visually really plays better on the video game medium than straight dialog in all situations, and used sparingly I think it could make these things a lot more interesting. I'd be most interested to see an RPG where, after you talk to your party members enough, you eventually get to experience what they're telling you as they experienced it. Perhaps a movie scene in some cases, but more often an actual short quest where you're playing as that character for the moment in question. In my opinion, that could be a lot more meaningful if done right.

Yes, because it's obviously shallow for a game to be portrayed well visually. He wasn't saying that a game with good graphics is a good game (worth ooing and aahing over), but simply that the graphics help him enjoy the game. The idea of anyone who likes good graphics in their game being shallow is a silly one. And if you disagree - I challenge you to post how the Resident Evil series could be played, in its current form, with NES-style graphics (2d 8-bit sprites).

Playing the Hitchhiker's Guide Game recently had me thinking about this very thing. The conclusion I came to after recognizing what I liked and disliked about the game was that graphics weren't a big issue, but the lack of gameplay depth that tends to come with the lack of graphics. In the HHG example I found the text descriptions actually added to things, as they seemed in-keeping with the book, often made me laugh, and represented what I think of the HHG universe far better than modern graphics could have. But this came at a price - and that price was spending long periods of time trying to figure out how to get my avatar to do what I wanted through the game's text parser, rather than actually experiencing the game. I had similar issues with the Zork series, and found myself longing for graphics so that I could just click buttons and objects in the world to preform basic actions on them. Of course, the text parser would still have been needed for unorthodox actions ("Shout 'Ulysses!'"), but if I could have done most things through an easier interface then I would have enjoyed the game a lot more. Likewise with Rogue games, I don't prefer Diablo or Guild Wars to them because of the fancy graphics, I prefer them because the graphics of what the graphics contribute to the gameplay in tactical depth and fun factor. If you lowered the polys in all the Guild Wars models by half I think I'd still enjoy it just as much so long as everything was still recognizable at a glance.

So...what? *shrug* People who watch movie adaptations like this and then try to make up some opinion from the original author always baffle me. It doesn't make any sense to question whether or not the author would have liked it, and in the end it doesn't make any difference who the author was. If you thought the movie wasn't enjoyable then whether or not Douglas Adams liked it probably wouldn't change that. That said, here's my review of the thing... "The first half hour...that was the worst. And the second half hour...that was the worst too. The third half hour I didn't enjoy at all, and in the fourth half hour I went into a bit of a decline." Well okay, maybe it wasn't that bad...but it was pretty bad. I'm by no means a purist to the original Hitchhiker's Guide. Don't get me wrong, I loved both the radio show and books, but I went into the movie expecting some fairly major changes and hoping that they'd end up being for the better. I wouldn't have minded shifts in the story or cuts in the dialog, but what I do mind is a film that doesn't work - and more importantly, a film that constantly shifts gears between 'Zany look at a bizarre universe in keeping with the books' and 'Typical Hollywood story'. I actually had high hopes in the opening scenes. The credits and opening scenes seemed quite in-keeping with the spirit of Adam's original work, right up to the familiar Hitchhiker's Theme, straight out of the radio show, when the book makes its first appearance. Likewise, throughout the movie you consistently see glimpses of the sort of world the book was about. Momentary scenes and small bits of dialog, even those not directly taken from the book or radio show, manage to evoke the feel of the universe Adam's created. Unfortunately, to see those glimpses you will have to be ready to put up with long boring scenes that are at such contrast to the feel of the book you'll wonder why Douglas Adams would have ever filled the screenplay with them. This is, perhaps, why I found the movie so infuriating - one moment I would be chuckling in typical geek fashion at Alan Rickman's flawless portrayal of Marvin (who singlehandledly makes the scenes that involve him both engaging and amusing as well as a manically-depressed robot reasonably can), and the next rolling my eyes at the random idiocy expressed by Ford and Zaphod, or more frequently the movie's failed attempts to bring seriousness to what simply does not work as a serious setting. Some of the actors and scenes in the movie are worth watching out for. Stephen Fry does an impressive portrayal of the book, always combined with fitting animations that suit the movie's inherently whimsical nature. Bill Nightly is a dynamite Slartibartfast, and Richard Griffiths does an excellent job with the awful Vogan poetry. Likewise, some of the visuals are simply stunning, perfectly translated from the book or not. My suggestion on this one is to wait for the DvD - if only so you can pick and choose the scenes that are worth watching without wasting time and money on the movie as a whole, because as a whole it really isn't worth it.

I'm sold. Odds are I'll be getting it tomorrow. I might type up a review of my own once I've played it for a bit.

I have to say, after seeing that I can never picture Elijah Wood as a hobbit again. Overall I enjoyed it and thought it was quite well done in just about every respect. I'm in agreement with Rhomal here.

Though I doubt the game store will let him return a game he's played through because he was unwilling to wait for the patch. He might get some cash for it, but it would be the equivilant of selling them a used copy, not a return. It's not like they can repackage and resell the game new at that stage.

True - but on the other hand, if you don't have choice then how does the player relate to the story? The biggest problem with JRPGs is that they don't. The player's control is restricted entirely to combat and item selection, and they watch the story sequences in-between. This tends to make those games pretty decent strategy combat simulators, but the lack of choice in the story also hurts their connection to the player overall. It's like switching back and forth between Soul Caliber and a good movie, basically. The story and gameplay aren't at all connected. In a western CRPG you might not be able to tell as good a story and the story might have to be split into more paths, but the player's actions can also have consequences, and determine how the story goes. You can get a great story by reading a book or watching a movie, but only in a western CRPG can you get a story that changes according to what you as the player want to occur, or make occur through your character's actions. It's essentially a sliding scale between choice and story depth. Something like Morrowind might be on one end (all choice, little story to speak of) and Final Fantasy on the other, with most linear CRPGs of the type Obsidian and Bioware make falling somewhere in the middle.

Because we all remember how deep that was... Campbell: This is a direct request from The Professor. Snake: The Professor? The same one who invented the monkey helmet?! Campbell: No, that was the guy who sat next to him in class.

A friend of mine, known only as the Doorman, wrote a description of this game that I pretty much agree with entirely.

You know what else? The other day, I went to the supermarket to ask for money back on the groceries I'd bought yesterday, and they wouldn't give it to me! I was outraged! You see, I go to the supermarket every day and I buy a bag of chips. The number of chips in the bag tends to average at around 70, and this bag only had 62 chips in it! Of course, I wasn't about to stand for that, so I went back to the story and demanded they give me my money back. What made it worse was that the cashier pointed out that I had already eaten the chips - what, did he expect me to not eat the few chips they gave me?! I argued with him for a while, and he finally said that perhaps I should be more careful in my product selection, because there was always a risk that I might have expected something from the product that wasn't going to be there, and that that sort of error was a fact of consumerism. That's when I slapped him for his impertinence.

Exile: [Force Persuade] Give me all your credits and jump into the central pit. Thug: My head...oh...the pit...it's a faster way to the ground! *jump* Something like that.

For some bizarre reason I could never discern, every single lightsaber that I found on my first run through the game, completely without fail, was Purple. But we were the best party of purple jedi you'll ever have met.

I dunno...I found that KOTOR2 allowed both to a degree. The 'stupid bully' responses in KOTOR1 were pretty much all there were for DS, and there it was a serious issue. However, in KOTOR2 you can be pretty polite and not make yourself sound stupid while still acting the part of evil. At least, in a lot of cases. Likewise, the ability to manipulate your companions was a huge addition to the evil side of the game, and allowed very 'Palapatine-style' manipulation. The first thing to remember is not to choose the obvious evil option; instead, choose the option you think a dark side manipulator trying to gain influence would say. Lie, flatter, and do whatever else is necessary to make yourself look good: KOTOR2 actually handles it pretty decently. My biggest issue was that often the 'polite' responses got LS points. I'd have preferred to see more things like this... 1. I like fluffy bunnies! 2. [Lie] I like fluffy bunnies! This would have helped a lot, IMHO.