Slowtrain

Well, not to put to fine a point on it, but I personally find all the "romances" I've ever seen in crpgs to be trivial insipid drivel. The lauding of the BG2 "romances" as some sort of high-point boggles my mind. I'm not saying a story woven about the development of some sort of relationship between characters could not work in a crpg. It probably would and could be quite compelling. But I ain't never seen that yet. These "notches in the belt" things that comprise the "romances" in current crpgs are really a low point of current crpg design. The only thing I choose to romance in current crpgs is my claymore. No offense.

ok. I think I peed myself. Forums aren't up yet though.

That's a really good point, and I agree. Not that I am opposed to subtitles since I always turn them on cause half the time I can never understand what the npcs are saying anyway. Especially when they're speakign either made or esoteric words or some bizarre name like Viodrgerir or something. I've now totally changed my mind. Text should always be an option, but I do think that the bulk of gameplay shoudl be spent trying to create a game experience that doesn't need text to work. If you want to add in subtitles for a variety of reasons no problem. Much like a film really, which is made to be heard, but often has subtitles avaliable for those who want it.

Well, it would ceertainly give playing around with the toilets in Duke 3d a whole new level of realism.

Just kidding! Well, I don't think it will be possible to totally eliminate text in games until we have some kind of neural interface that allows to think ourselves directly into the game. Since games rely so heavily on the primary sense of sight, some text will continue to be neccessary in order for gamers to interact with the game. But I would like to see a greater focus on the secondary sense of hearing, which should be able to bypass the need for much of the text we've been used to for all theser years. Those text-heavy games were required because the technology had no way of reproducing much of that information, but now it powerful enough that games can now be that much more immersive. What's the old adage in writing: show, don't tell. Games should focus on showing more and telling less. Somday perhaps smell, touch, and taste will also be able to be used in games, but for now sight and hearing is our limits.

lol. That's better writing than any crpg I've ever played. Hell, I'm all for removing as much text as possible from video games. WIth the exception of street signs and EXIT and NO SMOKING and stuff like that. But dialogue, ideally, should be spoken and heard without ever becoming text. Its needless and distracting. Now that technology is advanced enough to give games options that make text conversations unneccessary, let's toss it. Change is always hard for people though. SO resistance is to be expected. I think.

No, you just gotta say the right things, even if you don't believe them. My Wood Elf is an assassinm but still got the quest, I just wasn't expecting her to get turned down at first. However, I don't believe you can have any infamy. You don't however need a lot of fame. My wood elf had like a 4 or something.

Knights of the Nine is the best of the faction quest sets, too. At least so far, haven't finished it yet. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Can KotN be baught seperately without the add-ons? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't believe so. Its pretty good, but I don't know if its worth the full price of the retail box all by itself. Not the $20 US is too terribly much. But still. If you really like the idea of playing a Paladin type pc and building your own knightly order complete with Knights who will kick your enemies teeth in for you, then it might be worth it. My wood elf had trouble getting the quest at first cause she was too arrogant. Humble is the key!

Knights of the Nine is the best of the faction quest sets, too. At least so far, haven't finished it yet.

I agree that most gamers suffer from nostalgia when remembering how great older games were. However, when people are STILL actively playing games that were released many years ago, then I think we can safely say not only are they good enough to withstand the test of time, but they are so good that nothing better has come along to replace them. Despite technological advances out the wazoo. so.

I think FO2 is very different from FO1. FO2 is still good, but I think FO more focused and refined than FO2. It's also shorter. Considerably.

When your name is somewhat famous and you've been making millions of dollars a year for the last 20 years, you've got a good head start on most of the competion. I've got 30 dollars and some pocket lint. I just need a garage and I'm good to go!

http://sports.espn.go.com/videogames/news/story?id=2694457 Its a longish article but there's a lot of info about the state of the game industry in there as well. I think its pretty cool that Schilling wants to make games instead of open a barbecue joint.

Well, expansions and sequels are an obvious and generally effective way to build on the familiarity of a name. But sequels and expansions fail all the time if they happen to suck. Nothing flattens response like bad word of mouth.

...that right there be what's wrong wit' the gamin' community today an' where the "dumbed-down" effect comes inta play...noone wants ta play a well written, well designed 40+ hour cRPG anymmores...theys want gore, eye candy, an' li'l else matters...more's the pity...a FO or PS:T style game will'na sell, an' that truly be a sad thing... :'( ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There are also a lot of people that just don't have the time for 40+ hour cRPG. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But there are obviosuly a lot of people who do. Nothing is going to sell to everyone.

...that right there be what's wrong wit' the gamin' community today an' where the "dumbed-down" effect comes inta play...noone wants ta play a well written, well designed 40+ hour cRPG anymmores...theys want gore, eye candy, an' li'l else matters...more's the pity...a FO or PS:T style game will'na sell, an' that truly be a sad thing... :'( ...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fallout had more gore than you could shake a stick at, Sargy. Plus it was generally rude and offensive in places. What more could you ask for?

As regards stupid hero plots, I would say that you have to careful tampering with your archetypes. Stupid hero plots have nurtured the creative minds of humanity for thousands of years. I think the point is that hero plots don't have to be stupid or trite or empty. But people like being heros. I'd rather be a hero than a rubbish collector.

Yet millions of people spend hundres of hours mindlessly WoWing. People will play what they find attractive and fun. I'm not saying that by defintion FO-type games are attractive and fun, but if you made a FO-type game that was attractive and fun, then there is as much of a chance of people playing it as anything else. People learn how to do complex things every day. Learning the ins and outs of a crpg, just isn't that complicated enough to be a barrier in and of itself.

That sounds prewtty absolute, josh. There are degrees of choices. Large ones that that might change the overall story-arc complete and then smaller ones like which skill you choose for your pc. It would be pretty difficult to put a lot of large choices in a crpg withotu spoending years in development witha team of thousands, but you can put in a lot of little choices. And while little choices may be meaingingless in the context of how the story plays out, they can p[rovide a lot of fun and involvement with the polayer and their character.

Fallout doesn't have that much text. Anyway, with dvds and such you can do voice work for much of the dialogue with the addtional space. Ideally, I think games should be moving toward a text free environment when dealign with realtime npc interaction. We don't walk around our world reading what we have to see to all the people we encounter on a daily basis.

Yes, well, having non-complex character action possibilties has nothing to do with the mainstream market, it has to do with developers spending their time developing ludicrous things like a spinning wheel to raise your rep with npcs.

I don't understand why everyone is so convinced a Fo-style crpg wouldn't sell to the mainstream gamer crowd. Yes, I agree you'd probably have to lose the turn-based combat or at least make it less static-feeling in some way. But other than that Fo is a pretty straightforward game. I don't think too many people would have trouble getting the hang of it. I think if some development company were to make a Fallouty game that looked good and played well, it would have just as much chance as selling as any other game. Other than maybe licensed properties that have their own built-in fan base. The publishers would have to get behind it and push the game of course. People aren't goign to buy a game they don't know about.

ohhhh. That looks nice. I love that town screenie. Can you walk around in that town? Is it as big as it looks?

A return of blood thirsty sentient machines is hardly a scintillating story concept, btw. I think an attack of giant killer rabbits from Beyond Space would be more interesting than another story about machines bent on exterminating the universe. Once again, computer developers show that their ability to dream up interesting and original story concepts is truely non-existent. Compared to ME's story concept, Bioshock appears postiviely exotic and madly brilliant.

I just saw 20 copies or so of Gothic 3 in the game store yesterday. Walked right by them without stopping. Sad. And I remember just some months ago I was thinking Gothic 3 could be crpg of the year. The bargain bin awaits. Cause that's where all those 20 copies are going to end up.