Slowtrain

Back to a Risen question: Does Risen have Bethesda-style level scaling (which I dislike)? How does the game populate its world with challenge and reward? Are things always scaled to your pc level?

Right. Use the difficulty slider to correct a totally flawed and unbalanced character development system. No thanks. I just play all my games on default difficulty. SO any comments on a games diffciulty can be read with that in mind. It's unfair to say the character development system is totally flawed because power gamers exploit it. It's there if you consider that fun, but you don't have to use the exploits. Not to derail the thread into Oblivion talk, but I'll just quickly respond by saying while I agree with what you are saying, it feels to me like Oblivion was balanced witht the expectation that people would metagame and powerlevel their characters. For those that don't the game is considerably more difficult. I have no problem with powergamers, but I don't feel that games should be balanced FOR them.

ANy game where you can summon Cthulu to dispatch your enemies can't be all bad

lol. That was his most brutal one in a while.

The other day I saw a woman talking her two little dogs for a walk in a baby carriage. Life is filled with things that you can't even imagine until you actually see them.

So you're just looking for somethign where people shoot a lot of guns, grunting incoherently, while stuff blows up? Cause once people start talking to each other and characters start developing and motivations appear, you've got drama. Action without drama is about as mind-numbing and drool-inducing as it gets. ALl of those are filled with drama. The good ones anyway. You're obviously a big fan of Steven Segal DTV epics.

COnsider though that most games have neither a very cool or a reaasonably cool side and simply rollercoaster between meh and bleah. So give Bioware credit for at least achieving degrees of coolness from time to time.

A bad joke, maybe.

Right. Use the difficulty slider to correct a totally flawed and unbalanced character development system. No thanks. I just play all my games on default difficulty. SO any comments on a games diffciulty can be read with that in mind. That's what I was talking about. The games leveled lists max out at level 22-23, so I never played past that. Levels 10+ is higher levels for me.

As a mage, it's the reverse... the game is only tough at lower levels. At high levels everything save liches gets one-shotted after throwing a custom-made weakness & damage spells. Ah, ok, I never played a mage-type character. I spent most of my play time as a dark elf thief and a nord fighter.

What is wrong with drama? Isn't drama the core of any watchable and worthwhile show or movie?

While no one could argue that Sega's handling of the relationship has been smooth, without knowing what the underlying issues have been, it's hard to say that they are the problem. You can't blame Sega for the recession--which may have had major impact on their business plans. You also can't blame them for possible flaws in the games (although you could ask why they didn't address them sooner!) Certainly, there's room for legitimate criticism of their processes, but I don't see that villainizing them serves any good purpose. As someone with a temper, I'd say that it's good to be cautious about closing doors. During the whole Aliens thing it was reported from seveal sources (however reliable those might be) that both AP and the Alien crpg had considerable internal development difficulties. How much of that can be laid at Sega's feet and how much is a problem with Obsidian's internal processes, we'll never know. Simply out and out blaming Sega for everything is most likely neither accurate, nor, in the end, useful. ANd until, if ever, we know why AP was pushed back, there's not much to say as assigning blame. Maybe Sega just loved AP so much that they want it made bigger abnd more expansive so they can push it harder next year.

So do you think it is a worthwhile game? Do you like it more or less than say Oblivion and/or Morrowind?

Oblivion combat could be tough at higher levels. Unless you metagamed and power-leveled your character, once you started Clannfears and stuff, it was pretty easy to get killed especially if facing multiple opponents. One of Oblivion's problems was the difference in combat difficulty between metagamed powerleveled characters that got +5 to three stats at each level up and had max weapon skills at level 2 and just regular characters played without metagaming.

No extremely fragile exploding cars?

*hurls flaming trident*

I haven't touched a console since Intellivision 2. I played my first computer game in 1977. If there is a pc mnaster race, I'm part of the elite old guard. Feels good.

I didn't even realize that Real Time with Pause had its own official acronym. My knowledge of acronyms pretty much maxes out at TB and RT. Maybe we should add RTwPdIA for Real Time with Pause during Inventory Access

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This game selling billions of copies can only mean good things for tradation-style pc gaming and for tradtional-syle crpg game design. Go DA Go!

Bethesda did a good job with the robots in general. Both in reimagining the original Fallout bots plus the new additions.

Maybe I'll wait and see how your game turns out in the end before I decide whether to buy it now or later. Too many games start out great but wear out quickly.

SHort is the name of the game these days. Can't really blame developers for taking advatnage of the fact that people are willing to pay the same amount of money for games that are 1/20th the length they were a few years ago. I'm waiting for some upcoming version of Halo that costs your standard exorbiant XBOX 360 price and has about 20 minutes of gameplay. And sells 20 million copies.

I think it's mostly because they were used in civilian environments - subways, Super Duper Mart, factories etc. hence their lasers aren't really set to kill but merely cause some burns. You do find them in military installations as well: National Guard armory and that Fort in the northwest section for example.

Vanilla F3 repair = suckage. However, there are mods that deal with that quite well: they reduce the rate at which items degrade, which is pretty ridiculous in vanilla, and expand repair lists, so you can, for example, repair a Chinese AR with a regular AR. That takes care of the idiocy that is carrying around a hundred guns just for spares. FOOK2 takes it even further, they intended to implement a system that works with generic parts to fix or sell, which you get by stripping down not just typical items, but "wasteland garbage", as well. So, for example, out of a stripped camera you may salvage a lens for use in a laser rifle. That sort of items are also included in vendor lists, so you are much more likely to find a spare servo to fix your power armor, than a whole suit for sale. Don't know how far they got it, but it sounds pretty sweet. If I play FO3 again, I'll hunt around for some repair mods. Even one that just slows item degradation would be helpful.