Drowsy Emperor

... I don't know what you're trying to get across. Pausing makes it tactical. Lol. Pausing makes it tactical? What? Having various, legitimate options to use in combat makes it tactical, because they allow you to approach the same situation in a different manner. That's tactics. He's pointing out the obvious - the MMO combat isn't tactical, because its shallow in the number of things you can do and almost everything you do in it will allow you to win. This is exemplified in DAI videos where players routinely leave 3 party members under AI control, while their own input boils down to spamming one ability after the other until all of them are under cooldown. Using a potion from a limited supply before a party member dies seems to be the height of DAI "tactics". So, it makes sense to ditch such a simplistic sistem, that is neither real action nor real tactical, in favor of either of those two.

Chainmail bikinis are a kitsch fantasy art staple, derivative from oriental motifs (like a Turkish harem) in classic art. There's a place for that too, what's silly is the judgmental attitude towards them. That would be like pretending several decades of Conan comics, Frazzetta's art, to mention but a few, never happened. No one seemed to care at the time, when it was an underground thing, but now its suddenly a hanging offense. Its ****ing fantasy for the XXth century, the way scenes from a harem in a classical painting were for a XIX century city gentleman who would go to a gallery to see them and would raise less of a fuss at exposed boobage than what the xhamster generation is raising now. All it does is show what a potent mix a lacking education and ideology driven thinking are. Let me drive my point across. Its fantasy, thus it doesn't have to conform to reality. Its obvious intent is to convey an atmosphere, not to offend somebody, thus while they can still choose to be offended, its really a malicious choice on their part.

I dunno, I never get bored of curry or beer or vanilla flavor ice cream. I don't need a different variety each time. /poor excuse. One thing often missed out by those who talk of 'generic' and 'cliches' is that a story (imho) stands 5% on what it's about (synopsis) and 95% on how it is told (delivery). In the latter area DA:O does very well. Outstandingly well by game standards. Another thing often missed out is that DA:O was probably not about the big evil orc and dragon invasion, but the much more sinister Morrigan angle. Flemeth planned the whole thing by Morrigan's own words, and they care little for the Blight. They want the soul of the Old God. That's why your PC refusing the request and therefore dying at the end is a huge ending with vast cutscenes and epilogues. If it were not for the rape and pillage of the DA franchise in rencent comics and cartoons, this could have been one of the biggest plot twists/reveals in recent gaming history. Sadly I suspect Morrigan will make some silly cameo and kiss the inquisitor for old times' sake, but that lovely plot hook will never see the developement it hinted at and which - if my reading is correct - the franchise would so desperately deserve. My perspective was different. At the time they were looking for a way out of restrictive and expensive intellectual IP rights (restrictive they may have been, but they still made Baldur's Gate 2 with them... so whatever). That's fine. They had their own money to do with as they pleased within the other limits of game development. And they went out of their way to make the setting as generic an epic fantasy as possible. That was the first letdown. Now I wasn't expecting something as alienating (to the masses, or so the money people say) as Torment but honestly, there are a lot of possibilities in between. The second letdown was the story. Not only was the setting basically Greyhawk, the story they came up with was as archetypal fantasy as you can possibly get. Individual segments of it had some flavor but overall it was pretty underwhelming. This was Bioware playing it safe to the absolute maximum.* It stunk of the money people calling all the shots, railroading everything into a product that would be all things to all people. Another Peter Jackson's LOTR. I know that as game developers they read fantasy RPG books, pnp systems and settings, watch movies for inspiration etc. etc. I know they know what a wealth of ideas begging for in game adaptation are available. There's 30+ years of material just waiting to be used. DnD and LOTR, to name the basic influences behind DA are the most vapid, most abused and most deserving of the trash heap of history of them all. And I hoped, and keep on hoping that we could move beyond them. Bioware seemed like the company that could do that. There were even moments of that materializing (regardless of the outcome) like Jade Empire, or the potential Mass Effect had. But Dragon Age never moved beyond that point and they don't seem to have an idea of what to do with the series, it just keeps on plodding along in the shadow of ME which at least knows what it is, even if at times, that isn't very much at all. *Its still Shakespeare compared to the likes of Elder Scrolls, Gothic and other "there's a story there?" type games, that's not even a comparison worth making.

Haven't seen that, don't wanna. Terrible romance and "I like whatever you have in your pants" companions haven't been necessary to bash a Bioware game into the ground for a while now. They're usually just the final nails in the coffin.

Maybe they couldn't. It's people who write stories, not companies. AFAIK most if not all of BG2 story was written by Lukas Kristjanson. For DA:O he wrote "Leliana's Song" DLC (a nice but very short module) and he also co-authored "A Paragon of Her Kind" quest. Which is probably why Orzammar subplot is considered the strongest part of the game story-wise. P.S. Notably, almost nobody has heard of Kristjanson but everyone knows Hepler and Gaider. It seems that the ability to troll the community doesn't necessarily coincide with writing talent. Interesting about Lukas. He's senior writer now on DAI. We'll see if he's still got it soon enough

Good luck to anyone trying to defend DAO "originality". There are some aspect of that game that deserve praise but story and setting aren't among them.

That game is really pretty, a pity its another Diablo clone. The character looks exactly like Nightmare from Soul Calibur by the way.

It doesn't matter, but it is supremely ironic.

Feminism is literally the shallowest, dumbest political ideology ever devised and was ethically compromised and dead before the 21st century. It can pride itself with the most dubious achievement ever - helping support capitalist exploitation of women as a work force. In post WWII US you could raise a family of a single wage, which allowed women to actually raise their children. With feminism and post Reagan capitalism, both parents have to work to meet basic needs of a family and children are raised by hired help or their grandparents. A civilizational milestone indeed. All supposedly, in the name of allowing women to have "a career". Losing track of the fact that if everyone wants to be independent (financially and otherwise) and "the boss", then you get a society of lonesome individuals and fractured families. That's feminism as it relates to the real world. This gaming related bull is both irrelevant and ridiculous. The supposed "feminism" here is nothing but an ideological tag used to smear the supposed other "mysoginist" for some sort of private gain, usually to keep public funding and their "ism" a thing. Many women and some men have now jumped on this bandwagon and abuse this as much as they can. That's a sure sign that the "ism" is on its last legs, because they have to resort to increasingly more violent measures to elicit a response.

Storm in a teacup really I take it as a good sign regarding my mental health that I don't understand half of these ridiculous discussions

Its going to be a twitch thing with the ability to pause and issue commands and judging from the fancy spell effects and high production values the skills and abilities will be limited in number. Its certainly not going to be tactical in the old sense of the word. With Bioware every aspect of the gameplay takes a back seat to achieving movie like presentation. They started down that road with Mass Effect and it will bury them because its both very expensive and easy to botch (cue ME3 ending). Memorable storylines and characters are hard to marry with making a game that's supposed to be "all things to all people" and sell millions from Boston to Bangalore. The only way to make them fresh and interesting is to change things around and the only way to sell your multi-million dollar product to the same audience is not to change things around because that's unnecessary risk from a business perspective. When you make a good gameplay model, like Bethesda or Blizzard do its easy to replicate it, tack on a serviceable plot and make millions. No one cares, or seems to care that the actual stories are pos and the characters are non existent. Oblivion's plot seems to be fine in Oblivion (and we all know what utter soulless trash that game was) but in DAI its suddenly an offense and a bore. Rarely does anyone mention how unstable and bug ridden Elder Scrolls games are, how horrible the animations and how poor the combat is. But they'll keep cranking them out as long as gaming is a thing because they've trained their fans to appreciate those elements that are easy to improve. In ES games, that's essentially graphics and little else. Bioware has been training people to value stories and characters more than other aspects - good luck getting consistent successes with those.

I have trouble even remembering what Dragon Age: Origins was about. The good will it garnered was more due to tactical gameplay than the storyline.

I'm going to start thinking you're doctoring these screenshots

Porcavian indeed.

You can tell they're reasonable by the way they target a random sailor rather than their government which allows the sailor to be there. Its mob mentality. But they are representative of the prevailing (and probably deserved, but that's besides the point) attitude towards the US in the region. All the while the US is antagonizing Russia with Ukraine even though respecting Russian interests would lead to a better relationship than the US can ever have with any Islamic state, particularly now when fundamentalism has all but replaced secularism in muslim states. And yet, the US is hell bent on destroying one of the last, if not the last, secular state in the region - Syria. 'tis madness

The air strikes don't do squat. They're just PR. Using a 100000$ missile to whack a 10000$ truck every other day isn't going to do anything except pull more money out of american taxpayer pockets when a new batch of missiles is ordered. It is literally throwing away a country's wealth for show, to give the appearance of doing something. Its impossible to win a war with airpower alone anyway, which I'm sure everyone here is well aware of. Any remotely competent army in the world would exterminate ISIS in a ground campaign in three months. Vast swaths of the territory they control is nothing more than desert, and bottom line is that they're just a bunch of bandits regardless of the gear they've pilfered. The fact that the badly armed, untrained and poorly supported Kurds could give them a run for their money tells you everything you need to know about ISIS.

I love 'em I just don't have to love all of them

That was my 10 minute impression of Asscreed II. At that point I realized its a game for when you're about thirteen and admire pimped up heroes staring moodily into space from whatever highest vantage point is available. If I could roll my eyes any further at the parkour gameplay they'd fall out of my sockets and roll across the floor. Basically everything in the environment is programmed to be a ledge, so no matter how inept at platforming you are, you'll catch on something and look as if you know what you're doing.

The Eurogamer review is utterly crushing. The end grade is good, but if you actually read the text its mostly negative

I played approx 20 hours of Skyrim, which is about my limit before I notice that the Elder Scroll's emperor has no pants and move off to something else. At its best it can be wonderfully atmospheric, at its worst, its a norse theme park slog where all you do is watch your avatar's ass as he/she runs from one landmark to another.

Well it is tedious but they wanted to be the emperor of a globe spanning empire... it can't be whores and eating until you puke all of the time I do wonder what they'll do with Civ VI. Civ V is already so simplified, if they wanted to make it even more so they'd kill the game. And a return to more complexity isn't likely either.

Hearing that the story isn't terribly good from the people who gave Skyrim 90+ and called it one of the best games of all time (lololololo) gives me an ulcer. And what of Mass Effect's basic plot and terrible twists? I'm not defending Bioware, but if they're going to slam them for unoriginal storytelling I wonder what BW games they've been playing for the past decade. Maybe the Bioware shiny is wearing off for the critics after all these years and the Inquisiton is just the game where they start to "notice" it. Makes me want to try it just to see what the real deal is

Of course you know, if the US wanted ISIS gone they could have told their financiers and supporters a.k.a Saudi Arabia & Qatar to back off. The whole media thing is a charade, oil from ISIS controlled refineries is still flowing through Turkey (a NATO country) and Israel, undercutting the price of oil in the world market (most damaging to Russia incidentally due to heavy economic dependence on oil prices). Armies out of "thin air" indeed. Both Turkey and the US want ISIS to keep doing what its doing in a bid to topple Assad. Turkey's prime minister even said so openly, as if Turkish inaction on the border conflict at Kobane isn't telling enough (and that Turkish airports and intentionally lax border controls made it THE place for international jihadists to go to join ISIS). So chopping off the heads of western journalists, mass destruction of holy sites (both muslim and christian), extermination of christian and minority populations of Iraq - its all tolerable so as not to offend the Saudis and keep Assad under pressure. Really short-sighted.

With allies like these, how could you lose? The man even speaks in passable English, just in case you don't get the message. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLtwdaB6EMs

Something fishy is going on here, the critic reviews are in the 80-90 segment. Even the utterly compromised IGN gave the game "only" 88. And yet, none of them point out anything significant to drag the game down, barring some crashing and texture issues.