~Di

Best Game Music of All Time (so far!) is, IMHO, the original Icewind Dale. Hauntingly beautiful. I love it. Second favorite, the magnificent music of the original Baldurs Gate. BG2 music was excellent as well, but just couldn't quite compete with the mood-setting brilliance of the original's theme.

Might & Magic 9 truly did kill the M&M franchise. What a horrible, horrible disappointment to a series that I had utterly adored up until then. No, I don't think that hack n' slash necessarily lacks a story. IWD sure didn't lack a story, and it was a true-blue hack n' slash... one of the best, if not THE best, ever made, IMHO. But a good hack n' slash needs more than story; it needs a variety of battle tactics. The story in a good hack n' slash simply provides the backdrop for the battle tactics. The battle tactics, if any, in a solid RPG provide the backdrop for propelling the story forward. If that makes any sense... which my posts so rarely do nowadays. :D

I couldn't really be bothered to finish Diablo or Diablo 2 (both were gifts). I do not really know why, since I enjoy a fun, light-hearted action-RPG type romp... IWD, IWD2 to a much lesser extent, Wizardry 8 (sue me! I love it, okay? Love. It!), and such guilty pleasures as Divine Divinity, Sacred and even Dungeon Siege (Cool loot, dammit. I'm a sucker for pretty graphics and cool loot!). Didn't do Bloodlines... I hate Vampires... but have loved excellent RPG/FPS hybrids like Deus Ex and the Gothic series. I adore Baldurs Gate 2, my second favorite game of all time. And yes, since combat and combat tactics is THE major component of BG2, I guess it qualifies as a hack n slash, despite the fact that there is a very strong story/role-playing component. I also love turn-based strategy classics like Civilization, the magnificent Alpha Centauri, and that ilk. My favorite game of all time is... Jagged Alliance 2. A true kill-'em-all hack-n-slash with guns instead of swords! But with the unfettered freedom and unlimited tactical potential that is a squad-based tactical game lovers' dream! I think I've come to the conclusion that gaming addicts like myself can love several different types of games based on our moods and for varying reasons. There are games that touch my heart, that have deep stories that keep me playing hour after hour the same way a great novel keeps me turning pages. Planescape:Torment, Deus Ex and the KoTOR games are an example of what I call "interactive novel" games. Deep, richly satisfying, magnificent... with limited replayability, because the story IS the major component. Then there are games like my Turn-based strategy epics and JA2, where tactics are the major component. No story at all, really. The point of the game is to test your strategy, your tactics, your weapons... your luck and skill... against the AI of the computer-created enemy. These games have unlimited replayability for me, since there is no story to tire of, and infinite tactics that can be tested and enjoyed. The best hack-n-slash games, IWD 1 for example, have a semblance of story, and a semblance of tactical freedom one finds in a wonderful strategy game. Games like Dungeon Siege... well... cripes... sometimes you're just in the mood for gorgeous graphics and cool loot, y'know? We all need our guilty pleasures. Unless, of course, you're one of that rare, some would say nonexistant, breed that really does buy Playboy for the articles!!

Not at all, I am all in favour of scientific research. Morals are definitely required to temper the implementation of our discoveries into our societies, but they play no part in scientific research. (I was just playing a little Devil's advocado ) And you played it much too well, I fear! Confused heck outta me. Not the first time I've been confused, mind you. I am blonde, after all! :D Thanks for the clarification!

Indeed. I was confused myself. I think I should have more appropriately written, "...or about how very young, immature females who experiment with sex and find themselves pregnant should be forced to reap the physical, emotional and permanent consequence of their deed ( OR the "childbirth is God's punishment for slutty women" defense)...", which would have more appropriately conveyed what I was trying to say without making anyone who was against abortion defensive. I actually didn't give my stance regarding abortion. My primary reason for that initial post was to correct misinformation offered as fact in the post I quoted, and to request that folks not fall into the trap of believing that pregnancy and childbirth is nothing more than an inconvenience. People can believe what they wish about the abortion issue; however, passing along distortions and misinformation, or denigrating women in their zeal to support their position (on either side, mind you) is not okay with me. Dear God no, abortion must be one of the cruelest decisions on earth for the female and her family to make. So many issues must be taken into consideration. The very notion that abortion would routinely be used in lieu of contraception is ludicrous to me. Abortion is a serious, painful (both emotionally and physically) medical procedure. Not as serious and painful as childbirth to be sure, particularly for females with certain medical conditions like diabetes, etc. But it is NOT a pleasant process. It hurts my heart to see so many abortion discussions (not this one yet, knock wood) turn to disrespecting females in general by insisting that legal abortions will cause them to ignore birth control methods and gleefully head to the abortionist instead. I mean, good grief. We are all judgmental! Making judgements is what humans do to sort out their own personal moral compass, after all. I find "casual abortions" distasteful too. Thing is, for all the reasons I've outlined already, I seriously doubt many females beyond the rare and sad case exception would ever, and I mean EVER, consider an abortion to be "casual." My problem is when exaggerations, distortions, utter fabrications, and blatant disrespect of females as a whole get mixed up in the discussion brew. As far as I know, you have not exhibited any of these tendencies, and those are the kinds of posts to which I was taking exception!

Hmm. Talk about shoving words into a person's mouth! :D I never used either the word "religious" or "zealot" in my post. I simply paraphrased a generalized argument that I have heard often around various forums over the years. Odd that everything else I said on the topic was basically ignored, while that one line was singled out in an effort, apparently, to presume I was saying that anyone who was against abortion was a religious zealot. My entire post in context makes that presumption quite obviously false. @metadigital: I hardly see the slippery slope you imply that embryonic stem cell research will lead to the murder of folks to harvest their organs. Then again, perhaps I am one of those "stupid people" you refer to that should be sacrificed for mass extinctions? Seriously, in your zeal to be clever I think your message got lost. I presume, however, that you are not in favor of stem cell research. Certainly you have a right to that opinion, if my presumption is correct. And I have a right to respectfully disagree!

Another subject touched upon here, and a fascinating topic indeed. Embryonic stem cell research, or whether a microscopic cluster of cells the size of a pin-point has more rights than the potential of a fully-developed human to be cured of spinal cord injury, diabetes, parkinson's, or any number of potential life-threatening diseases and injuries. I'll confess, I find it difficult to understand the other side of the equasion on those who would make research into this incredibly exciting potential illegal based upon the moral belief that said pinpoint-sized cluster of cells, potential human life to be sure, should be of more value than the millions, and eventually perhaps billions, of fully-formed humans who could potentially be saved. Embryonic stem cells, as opposed to adult stem cells, have proven to possess the potential of cellular repair on a near miraculous level. To shut the research down for "moral" reasons astounds and saddens me.

I can't let this kind of misinformation go uncorrected. First, I've given birth to two children and can say from first-hand experience that pregnancy and childbirth can indeed fall into the category of torture! :D Seriously, those who pretend that pregnancy and childbirth is little more than a slight inconvenience are revealing serious ignorance on the matter. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women still die in childbirth annually, including women in "civilized" nations. Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death of women around the world. The average abortion is NOT more damaging to a woman's body than giving birth (the exception being a late-term abortion, a miniscule percentage of those performed because of the danger, and nearly always done because of a life-threatening condition, dispite what extremists would have folks believe). An early abortion is definitely a safer alternative, physically, than carrying a child to term. Ask any physician (at least one who doesn't have anti-abortion protest signs stored in the garage!). I don't want to get into a link war, or big argument about how females aren't entitled to have sex unless they are willing to bear children as a consequence, or about how very young, immature females who experiment with sex and find themselves pregnant should be forced to reap the physical, emotional and permanent consequence of their deed (the "childbirth is God's punishment for slutty women" defense), but this dismissive attitude as if pregnancy and childbirth is little more than a headcold or a hangnail that I see in so many of these kind of threads truly irks me. No matter what one's personal views on the matter happen to be, please have some respect for women, and do not deliberately distort and dismiss the reproductive process simply to bolster your own personal beliefs. Anyway, sorry to have diverted the conversation. Carry on!

LOL @ the LA figuring out how to install the patch! I check in weekly to see if the patch is out yet, but truth be told I'm losing interest and moving on. Still, KoTOR 2 was a wonderful game in my book, even though I wish there had been a few less bugs. I still got my money's worth out of it, patch or no patch.

I would not cry if Off Topic was totally eliminated, frankly. If history proves anything, it's that sooner or later this part of the forum will become a political maelstrom of hatred, divisiveness, insult and name-calling. Unless, of course, it is ruthlessly pruned when such obviously incidiary topics come up. Which will annoy those who enjoy political maelstroms of hatred, divisiveness, insult and name-calling! But heck, there are certainly enough other forums where we can post America is teh Sux! I think we should take a clue from what happened on the old BIS/Interplay boards, and let Obsidian keep their boards relatively clean of such stuff. :D

I'd be in favor of having posts edited/deleted to remove material that violates rules rather than closing down entire threads. At the moment, a single individual can run from thread to thread posting offensive garbage and personal attack, thereby effectively shutting down legitimate discussion and having the power trip of controlling the forum. Meanwhile, the nastiness remains on the screen for all to see, even though the thread has been shut down. So the troll wins on all counts.

Different people like different kinds of games. I enjoyed Sacred; I hated Diablo and Diablo 2. Furthermore, when the mood strikes me I like to play Dungeon Siege, if for no other reason than to goggle the gorgeous scenery and gather cool loot! Flinging adolescent insults at any game we personally don't like reflects more on the mental age of the insulter than it does on the quality of the games in question.

You quit BG2.... which is probably the best party-based RPG on earth... after 15 minutes?? ... ... In that case, I don't know what to tell you. BG2 gave me over 100 hours (per game) of the most intense, emotional and exhilarating gameplay ever. I felt as if I truly knew my companions as friends. I laughed with them, I cried with them, and got so annoyed with some of them that I had to stop myself from gutting them on the spot. My suggestion is that you download one of the many BG2 walkthroughs if you were so confused that you couldn't even find your way out of the first dungeon (which takes considerably longer than 15 minutes), then give it another try. Or take up another hobby.

I had great fun with it, particularly once I realized the joy of an elven archer with multi-split arrow feat! Horses, bah, not for me. I prefer to run like the wind! Sacred was truly a fun hack-n-slash, loot-grubbing, massive world exploring good time! I enjoyed heck out of it, and will no doubt load it up and play it again sometime soon.

Er... much as I appreciate the fix, I'm much too technologically ignorant to start rooting around in code files. Telos will simply have to live without fuel unless the patch fixes it.

Gawk. I just went into my game in progress, upped all my skills to the maximum via the cheat console, then strode purposefully into the starboard dormitory and went directly to where the hidden compartment should be. It was not there. It was not there with every single skill maxxed out. It simply was not there. I am finally going to stop looking for it. I confess defeat. Yes, I revel in my defeat. There is no hidden compartment for me, because I am not worthy! *wanders off, giggling manically* (I really do take this stuff too seriously.)

Wow. Aurie, I am impressed! I'd love to see those scenes. *sigh* God, y'all are brilliant to have found them. I'm so technologically illiterate that I run around the room screaming in delight whenever I get a cheat code to work...

I did! And as I've explained three times, I did so because I didn't believe that my opinion would mean anything to you otherwise. Also because I wanted to show you that bragging about your credentials and implying that they gave your opinion some kind of special ability was... well... rude. You accuse me of hypocrisy for doing the same thing, when I was doing the same thing merely to illustrate the lesson, and pretty clearly told you so. Looks like the message was received! Ah, but there you go again. "Those of us who are skilled in storytelling more than others..." Maybe the message wasn't received after all! Which brings us full circle. Your arrogance... and yes, I do say arrogance since you've turned around and continued to insist you have some kind of special talent to dissect and criticize that mere gaming peons cannot hope to share... is the reason I laid out my credentials before I posted in the first place. My credentials are at least equal to your own, kind sir... and I disagree with you. In a novel, you can draw your reader in by telling not what they want to know, but what they must know in order to want to know more... to turn that next page. The story will evolve exactly as the writer wishes it to. The reader is merely along for the ride. In a game, where the story will twist and turn or totally stop depending upon whether the player chooses this line of dialogue or that one, whether the player chooses to be dark or light, whether the player chooses to hit Nar Shaddaar after Telos or go straight to Korriban, there is no way on earth the writers can promise every player the exact same story experience. NOR DO THEY WISH TO. Because the story will evolve as the player directs it, not as the "writer" directs it. And because if the player wishes the story to go in a different direction, the player can controll that by playing through the game again and making different choices. Comparing a video game with a fiction novel is like comparing an onion with a Lexus. One requires careful peeling to reach the pungent core; the other gives you a choice of color or accessories, then takes you for a wonderful ride. But criticizing a Lexus because it doesn't smell like an onion and you cannot peel it makes about as much sense as the comments I have seen from you thus far. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. Neither of us will endear ourselves by tut-tutting our own linguistic superiorty, even as we are saddled with those pesky writer credentials, and know nothing at all about making a video game! With that, I give you something to either think about for your future interactions, or ignore totally. The structure you give to your own story is, of course, totally up to you!

Indeed. It was to make a point, which is why I added at the end of my post "It might even make you seem conceited! Just like I was to lay out my own writing credentials in order to make myself seem more important and bolster my opinion. See what I mean?" I believe that everyone on this forum has a right to an opinion... and I do not believe that claiming to be a "semi-professional writer" or a "professional writer" gives us credence to "know what good storytelling is" while implying that other gamers, and in fact the developers themselves, do not have such knowledge. If I hurt anyone's feelings, I apologize. My point, and I did have one, is that the originator of this thread had no special ability to know good storytelling because of his writing credentials, and neither did I. However, I probably didn't get that point across well. I never said I was a good writer; merely a prolific and published one!

Eh... I can't play DS. Couldn't play it in KoTOR I, and didn't even try in KoTOR II. It just makes me feel... slimey. Yes, I know it's only a game. But I play games to have fun and feel good. Being cruel, disgusting, murderous or rude isn't fun and doesn't make me feel good even in a game. Unfortunately, that gives considerably less replay value. Bummer. :D

Arrrrggghhhhhh!!! I did all that, I tell ya', and I STILL CAN'T FIND THE DANGED COMPARTMENT! *wanders off, mumbling*

Even amongst "semi-professional" fiction writers I suspect opinions of what is good writing and what is not good writing will vary. I don't actually wish to get into a point-by-point debate over the story, which I thought was actually pretty danged good despite some flaws and loose ends that I personally would have preferred to see handled differently, but I am having a bit of a problem with the concept you seem to have that somehow your opinion is more "right" than someone else's simply because you hold some magical status as a writer. Oh, and I have 32 published fiction novels, over ten million copies sold in 17 languages at last count, so I guess my disagreement should be worth as much as yours. The fact is that the opinion of folks who haven't published so much as a syllable counts as much as your opinion, and counts as much as my opinion. You are not special amongst those who "know what good storytelling is". My suggestion to you would be to discuss your feelings and opinions about a story, or the writing, or the dialogue because you have every right to do so. But please, don't preface it with the "I'm a semi-professional writer" thing to imply that your opinion is somehow better than anyone elses. Doing so does indeed make you seem "conceded," as you opined in your original post. It might even make you seem conceited! Just like I was to lay out my own writing credentials in order to make myself seem more important and bolster my opinion. See what I mean?

I have maxxed awareness, have beaten the snot out of the Red Sun, have finished one game and am halfway through another, and still cannot find that danged compartment. On the bright side, I now know that there wasn't anything that special in it. I figured it must contain the only Diathium lightsabre crystal in the game or something... :D

Bah. Twice I've told the little turkey he could have his ship back. Twice I've run to the starboard crew quarters looking for the hidden compartment he told me about. Twice I have not been able to find it, even though I have a map which shows me exactly where it's supposed to be. Bummer.

I will certainly be said. Bio-boards are too huge, too slow, too impersonal, and too controlled by humorless folks I've never heard of despite my long fangal status with BioWare for me to feel comfortable hanging out there. As for RPGcodex... well, much as I appreciate Exitum's blanket invite, we all know that some of us are excluded from said invite. Rumor says I'm one of those. Still, we've survived the death of many on-line communities, and we'll survive the death of this one. I'd rather give up the forums without a fight than give up Obsidian as a potential powerhouse game developer. If the forums are taking time and money away from Obsidian's development team, then the forums have to go, simple as that. Creating great games must always be Obsidian's main focus. IMHO, of course.