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tajerio

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Everything posted by tajerio

  1. tajerio
    I wouldn't say that's quite fair--the decrying publishers thing has mostly been from the standpoint of independent development and free contact with the fan/customer base. And that hasn't changed.
  2. tajerio
    I have actually enjoyed Obsidian's games, so I think comparing them to Kubrick does them a terrible disservice.
  3. tajerio
    DLC is one the thing that has me a little uneasy about the partnership with Paradox. Only because they have taken to the nickel and diming DLC marketing/additional content strategy for some of their titles in the last couple of years (which has diminished my opinion of them), notably in their Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings franchises. Another strike against Paradox is that they also forced some of their Crusader Kings 2 customers to go to Steam, something they assured their fan base would not happen. I very much hope Obsidian doesn't go that route. However you assess Paradox's practices in regards to postrelease content, they won't have anything to do with how Obsidian decides to go about it. That's not within the scope of this partnership.
  4. tajerio
    That's a fantastic list of spells. And Paradox is my other favorite gaming company!
  5. tajerio
    I second this. Though I imagine Obsidian made the call that splitting some profits with Paradox would result in more return than trying to market and distribute on their own dime.
  6. tajerio
    I wasn't trying to troll so much as be tongue in cheek. But it did prompt a very interesting list, so now my incentives are all screwed up.
  7. tajerio
    I have no idea what you're saying here. They were: 1) prominent cRPGs at the time? Check. 2)they used their own rule system? Check. 3) Their existence goes counter to the claim that there was nothing else out there but AD&D and the IE games? Check. I was merely pointing out that for complexity of gameplay and intelligent/interesting options for the player, 15 years ago the IE games didn't really have rivals in the wRPG space. I didn't know that was a hugely contentious point.
  8. tajerio
    A big part of that reason wasn't so much the inherent quality as the fact that there wasn't anything else out there. Sure there was. Everquest's system was prominent at the time. As was Diablo/Diablo2's system. And the Elder Scrolls's system. Oh, that's true for sure. But those don't scratch nearly the same itch, which is my point.
  9. tajerio
    My counterexamples on behalf of wRPGs: Combat, writing, dialogue, characters, graphics, music, sound, character systems, freedom, etc., etc. A list of elements of games =/= examples.
  10. tajerio
    A big part of that reason wasn't so much the inherent quality as the fact that there wasn't anything else out there.
  11. tajerio
    I wouldn't say diametrically opposed. As a story suggestion it's fine, Duncan could do it and he would do it if the circumstances were right. The objection I'd have is that it replaces one railroad with another one, and you still wouldn't have any motivation to follow Duncan's wishes once he's dead- rather the reverse if he's basically kidnapped you. If we really want to fix that issue we need a story suggestion that may not necessarily fix the railroading, as that is asking too much, but at least gives you a good and compelling reason to follow Duncan's instructions post Ostagar. But since I cannot come up with a suggestion that fixes it without basically rewriting the game or having equal logic flaws I also have to admit that I cannot really blame Bioware for not coming up with one either. Makes sense. My guess is that after everything went to hell in a handbasket at Ostagar, most PCs would have a pretty solid motivation to try to do what Duncan wanted, but definitely some still wouldn't and BioWare didn't solve that. And you can definitely criticize BioWare for not coming up with a good railroading fix, since they're professional game developers who worked on this thing for five years.
  12. tajerio
    I like Duncan too, for that same reason. I think a solution they could easily have come up with is to have Duncan kidnap an unwilling player--the guy solos an ogre at Ostagar, it's not like he couldn't beat down your lvl 3 ass. Now *that* would have been cool. But it would also have required the writers to provide the player some leeway in interpreting NPC characters, which has not been a strength of the Dragon Age games, and is something I hope DA:I will turn around. Edit: I see Zoraptor and I have diametrically opposed views on this. Well, I don't mind a bit of literal railroading if I have some choices based on that happening later on.
  13. tajerio
    A more apt word for the thread title might be "heretical."
  14. tajerio
    Smoking crack is probably the only way to deal with all the bizarre crap going down in the Forgotten Realms.
  15. tajerio
    If you want to tell a bad story, make a cRPG--the rest of the game will lift up the bad story to a better place. If you want to tell a good story, write a book.
  16. tajerio
    Yeah, this is my single biggest problem with RPGs. The player has to do the main quest, so often devs skip on making it a thing my character would actually want to do, Because Thou Must. And taking account of different consequences, paths of accomplishment, and so forth is a lot of work on the scale of the main plot, especially since a fair number of players will never see some content if there are real choices to be made. So the narrative meat of the RPG, to me, is really the side quest. That's where the most interesting stories tend to be told. I think BioWare is risking this problem again with the Fade tear. It's a little like the Reaper invasion. "Well, it's the end of the world, so everybody who knows their arse from the sharp end of a spear needs to be working on this." OK, fair enough, but why is my guy suddenly head of Operation Let's Not Let Everything Get Completely Screwed? I don't have high hopes.
  17. tajerio
    The problem with MMOs, I've found, is that generally one has to play them with other people. I don't mind teaming up with some dudes I don't know for a little CoD. But I do mind teaming up with people I don't already know outside of the game to try and get through a dungeon or a raid. And I don't have enough gaming RL friends to do that. The other problem with MMOs is that optimization is king. I don't mind being a total munchkin powergamer from time to time--but doing it as a matter of course is anathema to me. And this relates closely to the first problem, because there's always some jerk who's got the best of everything and is using third-party programs to track his DPS and just sucks the fun right out of it.
  18. tajerio
    Hardly. I thought the romances in Origins, anyway, were pretty slapdash. Aside from Morrigan's which had some actual substance to it since it had a connection to the main thread of the plot. And DA2 they're worse. They get right in the player's face from the beginning, but redolent of a heavy time or thought investment they most certainly are not. Therein, I think, lies the problem. The squee faction, as I call them, don't really demand romances that are well-thought out or carefully crafted--they just want to bump uglies with their favorite character and have some cutesy crap along the way. The rest of us tend to recognize that the romances represent such a small chunk of the game that we can safely roll our eyes and complain about the things that really matter (cliched story, implausible character motivation, etc). I understand why you, Monte, a lovable troll under the bridge, might like to fight about romance, but for the rest of us that's already conceding half the battle to the squee faction by choosing to confront them on their home turf.
  19. tajerio
    Or you can have a century-spanning story about body-changing, immortal posthumans, and have the main character's LI be a completely different person each time we see him/her(/whatever gender you assign to a disembodied consciousness who can freely change the gender of the bodies they inhabit) Tree of Life Meets Cloud Atlas: The Game?
  20. tajerio
    How utterly moronic. Always two steps forward, one step back, isn't it?
  21. tajerio
    Thank you for being honest. I hope now you can see my point. My countries laws are basically the same as yours. We allow free speech but not if it is considered offensive or hurtful or insulting to a person. I'm not sure how you want to define examples in the UK where people have been prosecuted with using certain words on Twitter but the reality is the UK is a Democracy that believes in free speech. This is the point I have been trying to make for ages, there is no contradiction when saying " I live in a society where we believe in free speech but certain words and descriptions of people aren't acceptable for public use" I assume that when you say "offensive or hurtful or insulting" you mean "on the level of hate crime relating to creed, color, sexual orientation, or personal disability" because otherwise that's just deeply ****ed up. Anyway, that proves my point, right? Free speech has nothing whatsoever to do with the wretched faux social justice journalism of RPS.
  22. tajerio
    I'm surprised that any website can cause you to feel it's looking down on a particular group? Don't you think that you judging RPS, isn't this about the importance of free speech...shouldn't we just not have any opinions on how we feel about a particular website and there perspective? Or does ths only apply to our opinions on ..I don't know...lets say RPGCodex ( sorry Nonek I couldn't resist, you know I love you ) And what about free speech rights of the creators of the games, which RPS tramples over Unless either RPS or this forum suddenly became the government, I don't see what free speech has to do with it.
  23. tajerio
    Monte is an LI for DA:I, he just doesn't know it yet.
  24. tajerio
    Did we know this before? Because that is a really excellent touch.
  25. tajerio
    I find it more akin to a bunch of people posting **** on the internet. Ah, the fabled asterisk-posters.
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