Azure79

For the animations, I think a lot of it had to do with how slow animations were in DAO, not how it affected gameplay. It looked ridiculous when warriors slowly pulled back then slowly struck out at enemies with their weapons. Dual wield warriors with haste on was the only attack animation that looked like a seasoned warrior was fighting. I am all for the animations being faster and the gameplay being tweaked to compensate for it. I did think it was too fast at first, but I watching the latest videos, they look good to me. I'm all for a good RPG with combat mechanics like Severance. However, how will that work in a party based game?

Man, what's with all the negativity? I think the combat looks much improved over DAO, with faster/better animations. I perused the skill trees and the potential for cross class combos is great. It looks like you can make the combat as tactical as you want it to be, with states like staggered, dazed and brittle leaving enemies open to devastating damage from other party members' skills. The new skills are better laid out as well. I don't think I'll be button mashing my way through this game at all. And from the opening cutscene, it looks like the main story will be something like Hawke destroying or significantly weakening the Chantry. I think that will make for some good storytelling.

Impulse had a sale on Dead Rising 2 so I'm playing that. Stupidly fun game, though I dislike the fact that there is no separate auto-save slot. Sometimes I'm wandering around and run into a boss battle that I'm not prepared for. It's annoying when you've been having fun killing zombies, collecting fun weapons for a while then lose it all. Still, fun game.

Thats always made me wonder, why dont the developers ever take a step back and say "whoa, that just wrong"? Its like nothing is taboo to them anymore. Their forums are a mess of preteen spankery, with developer responses, that Im often surprised dont violate the T&C of their parent company rules. I sometimes try to read the Bio boards. Then I see the all the 100+ page threads and give up. I thank all the folks who sift through it to bring us interesting tidbits. Felicia Day looks hot to me.

Cool, thanks for the info Maria. If the combat is more intricate yet faster than DAO, I'll be satisfied overall. I enjoyed most of the DAO combat except for the slow animations and sometimes ponderous movement.

Is there a reason RPGs can't have action-oriented combat while still delivering a satisfactory experience? I'm looking forward to faster, more responsive combat built on top of DAO's system in DA2.

When I was a youngster I mostly watched horror movies to get a glimpse of female nudity. So I was more disappointed than scared most of the time. I was a freaked out by the Exorcist, but that was more of a morbid fascination that scared silly. Scariest movie I've seen in recent years is probably the Japanese version of 'The Grudge'. Scoff all you want, but you try watching it all alone in a small confined basement room at night with all the lights out.

Surely not Boo too!

The plot in MotB is completely standalone, there are a few references to OC but since you played until Act 3 that's no issue. Never played NWN 2 with a monk class, I finished MotB with Spirit Shaman and Rogue. You will miss the quality ending of original campaign though.

I enjoyed it for the same reasons as well. It was long and grueling and I didn't go back to Orzammar to resupply. It had some good mini-bosses like the spider queen and the darkspawn forgemaster and a lot of the encounters were fun for me.

Good job with the LP. Enjoyed it very much. I thought Greyhawk was another campaign setting separate from FR, but guess not. Looking forward to your NWN playthrough. I haven't played that one in years, and all I remember is a bunch of extinct lizard people traveling through time or something.

Good stuff. I like Gromnir's blue lightning sword.

http://twitter.com/thedesslock/status/33649935459028992 Who is this guy?

Ugh, sounds horrible. I hope it doesn't make you rage quit, I'm quite enjoying this LP. I think I'll try ToEE. It's been a while since I got a D&D fix.

They only had 1 guy developing the dungeons in Oblivion? Well, that explains a lot of what I experienced. Still, I'll probably try the game like I did with Oblivion and Morrowind. I did like Fallout 3, so hope it moves more in that direction.

Nope. Drats. Time to move on to something else then.

Played some Mafia 2 I got from the Steam sale. It's mostly watch cut-scene, drive here, watch cutscene, shoot/kill/steal, drive somewhere else, drive home, sleep. So yeah, I'm pretty bored. Does it get any better? The shooting/cover mechanics are pretty good.

Yeah, it looks really fun. I skipped it when it first came out because I read about all the horrible bugs, but if it's in a playable state now, I think I'll give it a try. I know GOG is selling it. What's that thing on the left side of the screen that looks like an elongated hourglass?

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. I dunno, do fans of Dead Space and DA2 overlap much? I can't imagine buying Dead Space 2 full price to get some armor.

Leliana's Song was the best of the bunch, I don't have much to complain about other than I would have preferred it happened in Orlais with new areas and better content. It was a little boring going through the Denerim Marketplace, Arl of Denerim Estate and Dungeon yet again. It was ok, but not worth the money. I did like Sketch and Tug. As for Shadow Broker, I liked how they tried new things with it. The car chase was nicely done. It controlled and played a lot better than I thought it would. I loved the following battle on the hotel/building balcony. It was nicely designed with a great view of the surrounding city as a background. Then the entire Shadow Broker ship sequence was great. The presentation throughout was excellent and it didn't feel like they rehashed anything to make a quick buck, but actually spent the time and energy to give players a satisfactory experience.

My first foray into DLC was with DAO and ME2. DAO's DLC was pretty bad and I will not be purchasing any post day one DA2 DLC. The only DLC I really enjoyed was the Shadow Broker for ME2. If they're charging me $5-$7 I better see some newly made areas, new enemies, 3-4 hours of gameplay and some meaningful story development, not recycled areas and a few simple items.

Leliana rocks

Good start! I'm looking forward to the mighty exploits of Gromnir.

Default female Hawke is hot. Can we remove that blood stain though? I don't understand why you would want to smear blood across your face. I pre-ordered from Impulse to try our their service and because they were still selling the signature edition at $49.99. Pre-order goodies look good. I was hoping for another Mabari companion. I'll name him/her Woof this time, because I'm so original. Definitely like the new skill trees. I hope different builds within the same character class are possible and are equally fun to play.

Was that part of the actual marketing campaign for DAO? How did I miss that?