BobSmith101

Not sure what form it takes but your ending apparently depends on preparedness level. One way to get it is via Mult-player (don't ask me I don't know the logic behind it) the other is to do side quests. Again I don't know how many or what sort of quests they are. Logically it should be something that helps with the war effort rather than rescuing cats from trees.

As long as it's not driving across random coloured oblong planets.

That was a good read.

I do miss Laras butt. I ended up getting more into the Drake series though.

28 Reviews 5 star: (6) 4 star: (9) 3 star: (6) 2 star: (3) 1 star: (4) Just dragged it of Amazon. This review pretty much sums it up When I first started playing this game, I have to say I was not very impressed. The graphics were average when compared to other PS3 titles such as Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain, the story moved along quite slowly for me in the first chapter and the shooting mechanics seemed absolutely awful. I rented this title and even though I was tempted to return it after playing for an hour or so, my advice is to persevere with it because I actually became really engaged by this game after playing a couple of levels. I totally understand why some people have given this game such poor reviews, but I think they made their minds up in the first hour of gameplay and haven't perhaps given this game a chance. If not for the Obsidian logo I'd have probably slung it during the "tutorial". For people who are not aware of the quality of Obsidians character/writing they probably did just that in droves.

I just can't get the snowspeeder AT-AT image out of my head.

I don't think there was much wrong with KOTOR2 for a game it's time (but again it was built on KOTOR) except that they never got to finish it. The backlash was from its state of completion and that overshadowed any other problems.

There is all sorts of stuff. Weapon packs, armour packs , character packs probably cost more for the DLC than it does for the game if you wanted everything. I never really got DLC myself since it's only good as long as my interest in the game lasts. I did get the free stuff with the PS3 ME2 but that either made the game a joke difficulty wise, or was ok , just not worth paying for.

You mean derived from the first two games' system? Because Beth didn't come up with GURPS. The only thing they added was WATS, and even that was based off of the targeting system in 1-2. Well if you want to get technical yes. But FO1/2 have nothing to do with how things worked in FO3 where as NV was based on FO3.

I'm going to be straight and say I really don't care enough to argue it. That's not the purpose of the post anyway. The purpose is to highlight Obsidians weakness in gameplay design. If you feel FO:NV has better gameplay design than FO I don't really mind either. But it was based on a system created by Bethesda, which is pretty much what I was getting at when I said they should team up with a studio with more talent in that area.

What was so good with FO3's mechanics? It didn't even have factions not to mention it had the "water for beggars to undo all your bad actions" karma system in it... I'm not sure what factions or water beggers have to do with it ? By mechanics I just mean the game system taken in isolation.Factions I would place under character/story.

Well that kind of sums up Obsidian for me. I don't mean this as an insult only an observation. HR was everything AP should have been as far as game mechanics go. The story/character side of things were better in AP. Snowblind did a much better job mechanically of a "dungeon crawl" but Obsidian wrote a story characters for DS3 that almost went to the level of being wasted on that kind of game. Mechanically FO3 was better than NV , but again the character and story elements were superior in NV. I'm sure you see the pattern here. Maybe Obsidian need to team up with another studio to overcome that weakeness which has been in every release.

From the view of the character being most important its not. But if the world is most important having people change just because you talked to them is kind of silly when it's a running theme through the game unless your attribute an almost mystical quality to the speech skill. Speech is an excellent addition to a well rounded character, but I don't think it should be a meta skill.

If you read the FO:NV strat guide it gives a list of different character concepts or archtypes you could make using the special system. I'm not taking about character concept with regards to personality etc. Purely mechanically as to what skills you pick. It's a bit like the player saying "I'm going to be a pure mage" and then expecting the expecting the game to make that happen. Another way of looking at it would be how much people complained that FO2/3 could not be completed as a pacifist. Even though such a thing in my opinion is a completely unrealistic and nonsensical expectation in the first place.

Actually as a source it's probably more correct because its before the game starts. It's addressing the player of the game directly. If it's wrong then its a god awful ****-up to be so wrong with the very first thing the player sees in the game. Then again you have the VS not long after who can't seem to tell the difference between a Dread and a Cruiser (that on is a confirmed mistake). It's a one sentence abbreviation of the backstory, I think it's allowed to be a little hyperbolical to convince new players of the direness of the situation. I'm sure they've accepted that somebody willing to pay $ 5 for the game will moan about it for weeks beforehand, before making the conscious decision. You kind of missed the point. Everything that we know about the Reapers once the game starts we only know as Shepard it may be wrong and the Protheans may have lied. It may just be that the Reapers are very bad at cleansing the Galaxy despite having been doing it for who knows however many years. An RPG exists on the integrity of it's world. If they can't even get something so basic right (as in it's a mistake not as in Shepard does not know real story yet) then it merely reinforces that only paying

Or since they equated Element zero to dark matter they are going for "The reapers are trying to create black holes into Dark Space so they can cross into ours" I smell a plot hole in the making, maybe BW is trying to cross somewhere. Well, actually, the term Tali used was 'Dark Energy'.. I guess BioWare was toying with a return of the Dark side of Force, erm, Biotics, Tech, whatever, who knows.. I have a faint memory of another reference.. Maybe it was Gianni Parsini or some Asari merchant or other referring to research into Dark Energy mods. I believe "dark energy" is a by product of Ezo much the same way as you get nuclear waste material. Maybe we will see the ME equivilent of Depleted Uranium used to take down Reapers.Shooting something with that sort of mass with a rail gun should make a hole in pretty much anything.

Actually as a source it's probably more correct because its before the game starts. It's addressing the player of the game directly. If it's wrong then its a god awful ****-up to be so wrong with the very first thing the player sees in the game. Then again you have the VS not long after who can't seem to tell the difference between a Dread and a Cruiser (that on is a confirmed mistake).

Well I can honestly say I have no interest in South Park. But I can understand why they took the project so It's not like I harbour any ill will because it. I would like to know what else they have in pre-production though, as would everyone else on the boards I expect. I'd really like to see an AP 2 or something similiar, maybe closer to DX:HR in gameplay.

But it's also made clear in the intro of ME3 that every 50,000 years the Reapers come along to cleanse the Galaxy of all Organic life. They can't both be correct.... Even if it were limited to spacefaring races the problem is still this. To get from Hominid to present day it's taken 5 million years give or take a million. To get from Homo Sapian to space travel has taken around 200,000 years. These are just ballpark figures and likely wrong, but close enough. There are around 8 Mass Effect races if 1% of the galaxy has been explored that leaves about 792 ME class races in total as Reaper "fodder". It's simply a case of diminishing returns it takes considerably longer to "grow" a new race than it does to consume one. Unless there is something else going on the Reapers would have run out of "food" many many cycles ago. Your post did spark another theory, that goes in line with the Reapers being akin to farmers. That they are culling the advanced races to prevent the destruction of their food supply. It's very much like how human farmers will cull badgers close to their land because of the fear that those badgers will have TB and spread it to the cattle. A big galactic war with planet destroying weapons would not be in the Reapers interests at all. It's a preventative measure, just like a badger cull. Humans cull all sorts of things in self interest, so it's not too hard to attribute the same to Reapers especially if they operate purely on logic and above morality. The other option is that the Reapers ascend races that are deemed worthy (having discovered ME tech), or have reached evolutionary stagnation and leave a blank slate for something new. They may do it in a way the race does not understand at the time, but thats because they don't have the same thought process as a Reaper. The Reapers may be see the race as a whole and not care about individual elements.

Your character concept or the world ? I've just been reading Sawyers blog where he was talking about certain character concepts not working under certain designs. But does that really matter ? Certainly when playing FO I react to the world around me rather than having a concept as such. The character will have a personality , but his choices will tend to be dictacted by what works rather than by some grand vision of being a "gunslinger" or being a martial artist. Certainly a character may start out that way ,but if there comes a point where it no longer works then I will switch to something that does. Much as I do in life. That's the question I'm posing should designer pander to the players desire to be a certain something and ensure as much as possible that all skills are equal? Or should the player bow to the reason that the character although the protagonist in most cases , is still just a denizen of a world that has its own rules?

I think they are just catagorised wrongly personally. If I can fire a rifle, then I can fire one regardless of whether it uses bullets or energy. I may not be able to use it as well as the one I'm fully trained in but it's basically the same principle to aim and fire. Likewise small guns which covers pistols and rifles is too broad. There is very little in pistol training that will carry over to rifle training and vice versa, the techniques are not the same at all from weight placement to grip. I would go for a hybrid of skill points and learn by doing. Not only does that give you a basis for what you spend points on but it also stops advanced spending which is essentially meta gaming. Put simply if you pick a lock then when you level up you can add points to lock pick. If you never picked a lock , then you can't. There is no actual enforcement on how many points you can spend whether you pick one lock or 10 the choice is yours to decide how much you gained from the experience of picking locks. I'd also change the catagories for guns to something like. Handguns Medguns Longguns And add specialise energy or slug which could improve at 1.5 times the rate. Or simply give a flat bonus like critical hits etc. Big Guns should go because really they are individualistic weapons that need a lot of training learing how to fire a chain gun won't be much use when it comes to firing a flame thrower. This should of course be refelcted in their killing power.

If it's anything like the weapons that came free with the PS3 version of ME2 they will just make the game ridiculously easy. I wondered who the ape guy was in the intro as well thanks for clearing that up. Where is my Who the F*** are you dialogue choice?

Sounds a lot like Oblivion which was easier to finish at level 5 than at level 30 (or was it 20..). I'm not a big fan of scaling it hardly ever works as intended. I'm quite entranced with KOA at the moment. The combat system is all combo/action based and now I'm finally an Archmage I really feel like one. In one encounter I got attacked by about 10 guys , called down a meteor storm and killed 8 followed up with lightning and vapourised the other two. You never really get that feeling with scaling and the combat tends to get easy because you somehow broke it (or you dead end yourself via your build) rather than because you feel like you have earned that power.

2183-2186 ME-ME3. I think it's just a year. http://masseffect.wi...m/wiki/Timeline

Remember what happend when BF redid Bards Tale ? If Wasteland turns out the same it will be something similiar to FO:Brotherhood of Steel. And while Demons Forge:Hunted was worth