Pidesco

Actually, the real time should be Total War like. Maybe Total War meets Alpha Centauri, for example.

I'm also interested to see if it can be done. Eve has a collaborative narrative. Soul Caliber has visible numbers on weapon upgrades, and does have a narrative. Gran Turismo has a lot of visible numbers. Battlefield 2 has a loose narrative, but it is a strictly multiplayer game. You cannot see your weapon damage numbers in quake, but you can get temporary upgrades to your armor and health that are displayed numerically. It also has a narrative. And I'm totally serious about the reward- I'll even see if I can't get someone else to judge so that it's fair. Soul Calibur, Quake and most if not all action games don't have directional stat growth in the same way Final Fantasy or BG have. I think my definition of an RPG as a game where there is directional, visible stat growth for the player avatar, and where the game has a narrative includes all games in the RPG list, and excludes all games in the second list except for Warcraft 3. However, it could be argued that the units controlled by the player inWarcraft 3 are not player avatars, and as such I'm going to exclude it on that basis.

So does Warcraft 3 and Gran Truismo. Arguably most of the other games on the list do as well, if you include weapon stats. Are the stats visible in all the other games? Meaning, can you see the numbers for weapon damage in Quake, for example? Also there isn't any RPG-like directional stat growth in most if not all of those not-RPG games. Also, I'd like to add this: There has to be a narrative(I'm assuming Gran Turismo doesn't have one). Reegarding Warcraft 3, it is most definitely an RPG, at least the single player part. It was even touted as an RPG/RTS hybrid by Blizzard. Edi: Battlefield 2 sounds like an RPG, then. Does it have a narrative? Is Gran Truismo a game that's self evidently awesome? @Redfield: I'm not missing the point, I'm just having a go at the challenge. Personally, I think labeling a game in a specific way to establish a personal preference is silly.

All those games include visible stat growth, I think. So there's your definition. I'm guessing EVE Online's stats are tied to your ship, though. What do I win?

I like how Gharik is mindlessly grinning while facing his own oblivion.

People have always been obsessed with graphics. Even in the Spectrum days.

I'm thinkink that if the game has real time lighting, and enemies aware of their environment, as in Thief, then a Stealth skill is more or less superfluous. Stealth will completely depend on player skill if this is true.

Final Fantasy games, pre-XI, had no visible enemies on the world map, instead doing random encounters (with "invisible triggers" as you might call it). They've only had one title that wasn't an MMO that featured the world map behavior you speak of. The only console games I remember with visible enemies before encounters were Lufia and Chrono Trigger. And those weren't on the world map.

I was under the impression the Lemmink

What guy on G4?

Are all shades of grey equal? This all or nothing approach seems close minded and a bit pedantic to me.

First, I'd like to echo MC's post. Do that. Also, if your looking for bombastic stuff, do a search for "Dies Irae" or "Requiem" on youtube, and you might find some stuff you'd like. Verdi's and Mozart's are particularly famous. Personnally, I have a special liking for Berlioz's Dies Irae, from the Fantastical Symphony. Anyway, everyone and their mother has done a Requiem, including your own Sibelius, so you just have to pick and choose.

I wasn't saying ME wasn't good, just that I think its success depended a lot more on marketing than on the game's inherent qualities.

Is the music in that video from the game?

Years of expert marketing and brand recognition?

It helps that you are wrong in this particular case. As for the "dreaded" Oblivion combat, no, we do not have clumsy first-person melee. We do, however, have guns that generally tend to put bullets where you point them. How can I be "wrong" in my preference for stat resolved combat? The problem with Oblivion's combat is not that its clumsy. Its that the character's stats don't determine the outcomes, so its more of an action game (albeit a terrible one) than an RPG. All the previews of AP are saying the game is an action rpg that skews more for action fans, and I'm just hoping they're reading too far into this. System Shock 2 and Deus Ex have nice hybrid systems. Hell, even morrowind's combat had a to hit roll. And while this poll only has 4 responses, everyone has said they prefer stat resolved combat. And bullets going where I put them is exactly what I don't want I want the guns to "put the bullets" where my character points them. If he's a better shot with his gun than I am with a mouse, I want to hit. If I'm a better shot with my mouse than he is with his gun, then I want him to miss. I don't want to just put on the main character's face as a mask. Let me put it this way. When I want to play an RPG, I expect stat resolved combat, where the character does things I tell him to. When I want to play a FPS I expect to point and shoot things. If the RPG is going to have FPS combat, then it had better be as good as a top end FPS. Otherwise, you're just suffering through combat that isn't good enough for a real FPS to get to the RPG elements. I've done that in games like bloodlines, but it really hurts the overall experience. I'm fairly sure that stats in System Shock 2 only affected damage, not the chance to hit. Same goes for Deus Ex where the stats afected the unsteadiness of the crosshair and, perhaps(I'm not really sure), damage instead of the chance to hit. So if you liked combat in these games I really don't see what you're complaining about.

I liked her too. I thought she was a great character even if her tagging along felt a bit contrived.

Some people haven't lost their gaming culture... *toot toot* :own horn:

Huh? I didn't know I had such a hatred? Feel free to point me to where I wrote that.. I just generally feel that the controls are being compromised whenever there's a "body" attached to a first person viewed game. "Like fighting evil through maple syrup"... Besides, I think Dark Messiah was one of those games that were sent to me for review purposes. And I hated how dumb it was, in everything from level design to how mind-numbingly obvious everything was laid out for you. It annoyed the hell out of me. Well, hate is probably too strong a word but this is what I could find: And I agree about the level design. It's just that if you ignore the level design and use the kick sparingly, the gameplay goes into the awesome zone. And everything is so delightfully chunky.

Clearly, you are not normal. Sorry. Cry if it makes you feel better.

So did the trailer to 300.

Both of those questions are answered (although the second only partially) in the pdf. Under Game Structure. you're right about the first question(sorry about that...) but not the second one. In the second one I'm basically asking for elaboration on what's said in the PDF.

I have a couple of questions that weren't covered by this roundtable. First how do the locations work? I assume there's a hub for each city you go to, so how do things work to get from the hub to a mission location? Is there an area to walk around in for each city apart from the mission areas or does the player just jump from mission to hub and vice-versa? Another thing is about the ways in which playing one mission affects other missions. Does it mean you could get a piece of intelligence in one mission that makes another mission easier, like providing character info on a contact or finding a detailed map of the location where another mission will be set? With this in mind, is there a lot of optional intelligence gathering in the game? I mean like info the player can use to better prepare missions, and also to flesh out and add depth to the plot.

I was going to complain about all the ME comparisons, but the fact is a lot of people commenting on the kotaku article say they'll buy AP just based on the supposed similarities to Mass Effect.

The world map seems really cool.