Slowtrain

That''s true. I tried waiting for people to give me orders on where to go, but there wasn't as much of that as I hoped and i eventually just went off on my own. Then I felt tthat that kind of lost the point of the thread in the first place, and so I might as well start a new game and do what I wanted from the start. Does that make sense? I tend not to be very good at explaining things.

I started a new game. SO no. Not yet. :/ What happened? The Drassen Counter attack? lol. No. tbch, there really wasn't all the participation that I had hoped for in the thread. Doing an LP thread is a lot of work and at least some of it is for the interest and amusement of fellow posters, so I just kinda stopped taking screenies and then eventually got an itch to start a new game. If people are interested I can post screenies and talk about the current game as I go along, but I'm not going to go for the audience participation thing I was hoping for originally.

When I reserved my copy at he store a few weeks ago I asked if there was a CE coming out. AT the time, Gamestop had no record of such.

*stares over his shoulder in paranoia* Back to Serious Land, I just wanted to say hi and let you guys know that a lot of us here watch the forums, and love hearing what you have to say Awesome. You guys are the best!

Hi Jason! Does Josh watch you like a hawk when you are posting?

Wat? Where? AS with any human creative endeavor, the potential for art is there, but atm games = corporate product.

Hi Josh! I have a question: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? *sigh* is that an African swallow or a European swallow? the fact that Gromnir recognizes is personally shameful. HA! Good Fun! It was SUPPOSED to be an easy question. I'm trying to draw Josh out of his shell. Ooops. I let the cat out of the bag, didn't I?

hot chicks are rapidly becoming passe.

Hi Josh! I have a question: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

wat? I must have been asleep that day. Sorry I meant "game making." Like, even 10 years ago I would argue that a higher proportion of games tried new things, and were more inventive and different then one other. In the last 2-3 years especially, it seems like many big games are just sticking to genre conventions, and many games just copy the principle core design of the most commercially successful games of the prior year. Maybe the most evident example of this Gears of War. There are tons of games that just copied the game exactly, with new art assets. This leads to many games that are just second-rate versions of last year's hit. Which sucks. Ok. Yeah, I pretty much agree. Games cost so much money now, it's hard to stray too much from convention. Anything that sells is going to be copied. But you could make the argument that copy-cat is the norm in pretty much any industry where large amounts of money are at risk. Not that I like it. Copy-cat design may lead to stability and solvency but it doesn't lead to greatness or immortality.

wat? I must have been asleep that day.

Josh answers more questions in the Alpha Protocol forum than he does here.

Thank you.

I started a new game. SO no. Not yet. :/

Fenster means Window in German. From the Latin Fenestra, -ae F iirc. Yes, I'm an American but not all of us are unschooled heathens.

I owned Chaos Theory but never played it and eventually gave it away to someone at work. That was sole brush with anything Splinter Cell

fenster == crate?

No, I don't. True. But there is a subjective qualty to enjoyment of art. For example, I do think Fallout 1's 2-d 256 color graphics are "better" than FO3's nextgen 3d stuff. Are they as realistic or detailed as FO3's graphics? NO, of course not. SO if one gets enjoyment from realism and detail, of course one will find FO3's graphics far superior. But realism and detail are only 2 of many possible values art may hold.

I can see defending "lesser" graphics as stylized vs realistic. Somestimes sytlized is a lot more interesting. If stylized art didn't have a place cartoons and comics wouldn't be so popular.

Those graphics look totally playable to me. OF course, I still play XCOM and I think Fallout 1 looks great, so obviously my eyes are broken. edit: I don't think the writing is all that great though. I mean its way better than Fallout 3's 80 characters max per line drivel, but its pretty much far below any bad fantasy novel you can find in the bookstore. Let's face it: video games and writing isn't a match made in heaven.

Go Bill Shatner GO! He is still totally awesome.

Captain Kirk solved most problems with a loaded phasor and had sex with most of the females(of various species) on the show. If that doesn't sound like the makings of an awesome crpg with Mass appeal, I don't know what is.

Captain Kirk was never a tight-shirted goody-two shoes anyway. He was far more Han Solo than Luke SKywalker.

The BG2 plate mail armored human looks like he ate too many marshmellows. The BG1/IWD plate mail lhuman looked much better.

Is it good that developers release tools so that the fan community can improve games? Or is it bad that developers release games that require the user community to improve the game?