Drowsy Emperor

Except it doesn't bother to devote even 5 minutes to explaining any of those, instead leaving it all up to the player to piece everything together. Unless a game is intentionally ambiguous, which Morrowind is not, there's only one way to describe a game where a player has to go out of his way to experience the story and that's - lazy.

Yeah, the King Kong thing made the game really embarrassing if you were trying to sell ME2 to some bystanders as an example of maturity in video games.

Oh DEAR. NURSE!

I do the same thing! I tend to enjoy those first 15-20 too, but then I'm just done. Happens with every Elder Scrolls game, Fallout was the first game they made that I actually finished. I think it has more to do with enjoying the setting for me, I just lose interest in the enter world after awhile. I may have finished Fallout 3 as well but that was probably due to the main quest being so quick and easy. Although I don't remember anything about it so, yeah... I really need a reason to play a game through be it a compelling storyline, playing with friends or some other reason. The sandbox thing runs out of interesting diversions quickly. Considering that the stats show that most games are never finished by players, the sandbox thing is tailor made for people that are going to play for a short while and move on. I think that's why so many people have a great impression of Bethesda's games, because they've never really sat down and played for dozens of hours through the whole mind numbing experience. If they did I doubt we'd hear so much of the "GREATEST RPG EVER" chant.

And just when I thought you finally got your act together. Tsk tsk.

I don't know, I gave up on every Bethesda game about 15-20 hours in, as a rule, when it became obvious that the next xy hours are going to be pretty much the same thing as those 15.

Wiki says its Nintendo DS. Do you have one to lend me? :D

Weird, I don't recall any slowdowns on the PS2. Its sad if they screwed up a simple upgrade

I don't know what's wrong with SMT designers. Every game I played in the series has an obscene encounter rate. Persona 3 has a 250 floor randomly generated dungeon FFS. Don't know whose bright idea that was in this day and age.

JRPG's are all very similar in some respects so burn out is expected if you play them constantly. Years have passed since I last took up the genre and by the time I'm through with the next few I have planned it will probably be years again before I pick it up.

This influx of codexians with the start of Project Eternity makes us old Obsidianites look like nice people. Even Volo's got his **** together.

JRPG's often have great premises, a nice opening to suck you in, more experimentation with settings than western RPGs. All too often they fail at resolving the storylines or resort to cliches, shallow characters and rely on far too much grind to add more length to gameplay. I've played: Final Fantasy IV (finished it. shallow, simple and a waste of time) Final Fantasy VII (finished it. rather unimpressed with the game in every respect) Final Fantasy VIII (quit a few hours in, dunno why) Final Fantasy X (finished it. Great game) Final Fantasy X-2 (finished it. Too girly for my tastes) Final Fantasy XII (top notch graphical design. in progress) Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (excellent visual design and setting. quit due to boredom with shallow and sparse story) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (finished it. Great premise, some fine parts, poor story outcome, too grind heavy) Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (in progress. Interesting premise, boring dungeons and gameplay) Suikoden III (quit due to boredom) Odin's Sphere (quit due to being too repetitive and boring) Dragon Quest VIII (plan on playing it through) Septerra Core (never finished it) ...can't remember if there was anything else Overall the two I liked best so far are FFX and FFXII. Persona 3 made a great impression and subsequently did everything to ruin it.

Games were always about making money, but I don't remember it ever being so obvious while actually playing the game. While playing certain AAA titles you can almost point out the individual parts the game is made of, which target audience its made for, the projected reaction on the player - and through these things, literally see the way it was intended that the game make money and sell itself as it were. Its a stifling, hollow experience without anything whimsical, random, without seeing that there were people actually involved in making the game. For all you know it could have been made in a factory according to a template. Worst of all it lacks the joy of the people working on it, the sort of thing you can see in wacky Fallout dialog or Baldur's Gate's side quests, the Witcher's crude humor, Shadow of the Colossus's artistic unity etc. That someone actually liked making the game and had a vision they followed through and through.

I haven't, my graphics card is half dead so I'm not likely to play it any time soon.

I feel Morrowind is a poor game too (after 25+ hours spent in it). The story was weak and painfully slow to start, the aren't any characters (even through the game is full of people), the quests are mostly trivial, the dungeons are similar and visually, the game is just ugly. Also, many of the mechanics are broken - its too easy to become too powerful and rich quickly. Its a make your own adventure type of game, without a compelling hook in it, just miles and miles of muddy brown terrain.. It was much the same experience I've gotten from Oblivion except Oblivion was mostly pretty to look at. Although it had the annoying level scaling, and somehow felt even deader than Morrowind. Fallout 3 felt even worse, a jumbled mess of poorly related ideas and concepts thrown into the game world. Of all their games that I've played, Morrowind was the best and considering how I feel of Morrowind that just says it all.

Strange. One would think that after finally getting it right (sorta) with Blood Money, they'd at least be able to copy/paste that level of quality.

Boring. At least Dawn of War 2 was, after the great DoW. The prospect of getting Homeworld 3 however, trumps any and all Warhammer games for me.

I feel sorry for Relic - they always deliver a good product. On the other hand, this might mean they can finally stop making Warhammer games.

NO, MORROWIND IS BETTER FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I think you're very insecure in your orientation. Not really, I just can't find a better word to describe anime or anything resembling it. Man I don't like anime either, but all it does is trade in one set of issues for another. Btw there are some rather good shows, films etc. Give Vision of Escaflowne a go, you won't regret it.

Okay, I'm delusional then.

That's highly delusional and dishonest of you. Here's what Final Fantasy X looks like close to its native resolution, without an emulator adding filters, AF, AA: Also, holy ****, is that screenshot from an emulator a cut scene? That's even more dishonest.How is it that your FFX is double the resolution of what it would be on the PS2, but Morrowind is less than its max resolution? Yeah, if Bethesda decided to take control away from a player I'm sure they could dedicate all the polygons to the characters (while still managing to look really bad in the background) Morrowind could have looked as good. In the end you should care how much freedom of movement and control you are given, because a game completely on rails consisting of quick time events will look better than any other game, but it will be a ****ty game to play. Yeah, Morrowind looks way better. What is even happening in FFX? I don't want this to turn into some sort of war, the whole point was to give some credit where its due, namely Japanese designers. The fact that you're insisting on FFX native resolution as its supposed disadvantage is strange to say the least considering that its made for television sets which operate on those resolutions. Only when you take a screenshot directly from the PS2's signal and paste it on a PC screen (your screenshot) do those issues you describe show up. No one is going to do that anyway, you're either going to play it on the TV or with an emulator and in both cases its going to look far better than what you claim because: a) TV smooths out all those errors, or b)because the emulator features take care of them It simply does not look like what you claim it does, (especially the contrast and the edges) and I should know because I had it in my PS2 yesterday to show my gf what the game looks like. I also played morrowind just last month. Btw, the fact that you can upscale FFX's graphics 10 years later with appropriate software (but no mods) and the game still looks good is a testament to sound design choices during its making. It uses the resources at its disposal extremely well and that's an achievement in itself. PS I don't know what quick time events you're talking about, there aren't any in FFX.

Both sides are being defensive. That someone states there isn't enough motivation to pick up a console, however, they shouldn't have to riposte statements of the obvious that there are probably some games on the system that they would like. It's like it's completely unfathomable for someone to have different tastes. The difference here, is those defending themselves for being primarily PC gamers were demonstrating how they personally are not interested. He, on the other hand, is going around telling other people that they're wrong. One of these perspectives is non-confrontational and even perfectly okay with other people having different preferences. The other less so, and by doing so keeps the discussion going when otherwise it should probably have just died some time ago. I started out on the Apple II and the Mac, got myself a Nintendo, then a Super Nintendo, while also using the PC. Then focused heavily on the PSX and N64, until Half-Life converted me to full on PC gamer. I was indifferent to the PS2/XBox, and the only reason why I picked up a 360 was because my friends and I were on a Rock Band kick. Having owned the console, there are games I picked up that I definitely wouldn't have otherwise (since the 360 cost was sunk), I still preferred the games on the PC and in general found myself with absolutely no shortage of games to play in spite of this restriction. I have zero beef if people prefer to play on any of the consoles, and despite jokingly referring to myself as part of the "PC Master Race" you'll still see me commenting against PC gamers that talk down to console gamers too. And you are looking too much into it. I was telling them that its possible they could be wrong without even knowing it. From the perspective of the end user the technology and its limitations are irrelevant. FFX looks better on my TV than Morrowind on my PC (without even going into the world design comparison, effects, use of colors etc). Incidentally, this is FFX, emulated on PC, released year 2001: Morrowind 2003: Yeah, it would be unreasonable to expect that an open world game would look better than a linear one filled with pre rendered scenes, and few on screen characters, but in the end,as a gamer - I shouldn't have to care about that. I can play FFX today, and there's no way around the fact that Morrowind is ugly as hell, badly animated and well, brown.

I think everyone should play Final Fantasy, and at least give the Shin Megami Tensei series a go. If you don't like any of those the chances are you aren't going to like anything else. I dislike many of the conventions of JRPG's (which are really just obsolete conventions of western RPGs), and I find many anime characters quite irritating, but there is no denying that japanese do some aspects of their games extremely well. Really thinking back, when FFX was released it was graphically so far beyond anything released in the west at the time that its not even worth comparing. A few years later everyone was going bonkers over Morrowind's "photorealism" and that game looks, even today, like crap in comparison to FFX.

Every system ever made likely has some games on it that I like. You're awfully defensive, and for what purpose? Because someone doesn't typically like the games on a console so it's not an issue for them to not get one? I'm just giving some advice I could have used at the time. I'm not a great fan of console gaming myself, but getting one certainly opened me up to some new experiences.