TrashMan

The players (or the PC) choose the risk, of course they can be blamed! Most of the people od Redcliffe would blame the PC. After all, he/she had the opportunity to fix the problem and end the threat right there and then. Insted he gambled with the lives and safety of the village to save one child. While I'm sure there are some people who's apprecite his effort to save everyone and sacrifice no one, he can and will be blamed. HE CHOOSE UNCERTANTY. When you do that you accept both outcomes. Otherwise you shouldn't be accepting the positive outcome either. ***** B.t.w. - since you people seem happy to jump to conclusions, let me make one thing clear: THIS IS ONLY FOR SOME QUESTS, FOR HIGH-RISK OPTIONS AND WHERE IT MAKES SENSE.

I don't see how. Where is the branching storyline here? In the Redcliffe example, no matter what, you still end up with Earl Eamon and the story goes on. The damage to the town, the number of dead NPC's changes. Maybe even Teeghaaan kicks the bucket. But overall, the plot continues as normal. That is not the purpose. The purpose is to have actual risk in risky decisions. Heavy Risk..but the priiize. Basicly, if you don't want to risk, you have 2 sure-fire options given to you (Kill Connor, sacrifice Isolde). They are both risk-proof. Then you have a "risky" option that can result in both great rewards and horrible consequences. Except there is no risk. The player knows it.

Well, "bad stuff" was a bit non-descriptive from me. You can do this in many ways. For example, there's 50% chance Conor will flip out. You have NO control over that. so it's: A) Connor flips out B) Connor behaves However, you have control over the state of Redcliffes defenses. So regardless if A or B happens, you can have damage migation and some buffer. So let's say Connor does flip out. If you posted guards, equipped the milita, made every preparations before departing - Connor gets contained and only a few soldiers die. And the worse you prepared the worse the bodycount becomes. If you didn't prepare at all, half of Redcliffe lies in ruins.

Only if the game is designed as such. You can design unwinnable combats that the player can only survive by runnign away (or using non-combat options). Say you run into a noble on the road with his bodyguard. You decide to try to rob him and attack. Suddenly the reast of his men (who were camping nearby) join in the fight. You party find itself fighting off LITERALY 100 trained soldiers - something that you can't survive even at max level.

Not even in D&D are all orcs truly evil. "But wait" - you say. It sez CHAOTIC EVIL in the monsters handbook. Yea? Well so does the entry for DROW. And we have plenty of non-evil drow running around, now don't we? Aligment is a guideline. It shows a specific leaning of a race.

As long as your other party members kill you because they think you've gone crazy.

You are always going ot be limited when you introduce 100 weapons. I don't mind some simialr weapons having practicly the same stats and being diffeerent in appearance. There's a limit to how fine you can simulate stuff with small numbers. And if you put in bigger numbers, the difference just ceases to be statisticly significant.

Do you know what makes great quests and decisions less great? Predictability. Peeking at the guide and doing a second playtrough and all the mistery is gone. What I propose is to have consequences be somewhat random (when appropriate of course). Let me give an example: REDCLIFFE from DA:O You got 3 choices of which one (getting help from mages) is superior because there is no danger in it. You KNOW nothing bad will happen when you leave. Something that is a risk, a chance, ceases to be. But what if you didn't know? What if - no matter how many guides you read, how many times you play - you can never be certain that everything will be OK once you get back? Basicly, when approprite - usually when events are outside of player character control - have the outcome randomized to a point. Now, if you had a great victory at Redcliffe and prepared everyone, chance of something bad happening is 33% If you had a good victory, chances are 50% If you did bad, chances are 77% If the bad consequence happens, even the extent can be randomized. If all knigts survived - high chances of Teagen being alive, but some knights died protecting him (for example) This makes unpredictable things unpredictable. Taking a risk is always a risk - you can increase your chances, you can take some precautions to reduce the fallout - but you will never KNOW. You will enver be sure. *** Now the question is - what is stopping the player from reloading? That depends on whow it's done. When is the roll determined? Once rolled, does it become static? So let's say the roll is made the second you head out towards the Circle Tower. Let's also say it's not static. You'll have to re-do the Broken Circle quest (unless you did that already) and travel there and back for a CHANCE to change the outcome. Let's say it is static. Roll sez Teagan dies. Too bad. No re-loading will help you now, Teagan dies. Unless maybe, you load an even older save and change some of the other variables (like how well the Redcliffe milita is equipped). In this case, a roll would be static UNLESS some variables change. In which case it would be rolled again an then become static again. Which would make it both fair and at the same time incredibly frustrating to save-scum.

*gasp* Oh no! Atheists?! ...I personally find it more offensive that you consider the existence of atheists, even in a fictional fantasy setting, to be offensive on its own. Generally speaking it has been widely agreed upon that other philosophies existing alongside yours is a good thing, and that at best treating them as though they don't exist is kind of mean. Ofensive? No. Silly in the setting/context? Sometimes. After all if I said I liked Optimus Prime in PE, would you be agaisnt that? If so, do you find the existence of robots offensive?

I could argue that religion "haters" might have some ground to stand on, but really I'll side with saying tolerance (to all beliefs) should be the watchword. Don't start this bro. Just...don't. Spec Ops: The Line

Incorrect Greatswords actaully were used in duels. Actually you could carry them on the back. But not in a scabbard. You could hook them at the crossguard. MEh.

HERESY!!!! There are no greater worrirs in the universe than the Emperors Angels of Death! For such heresy you msut be purged!

in order to have them challenged Meh. The people I see don't seem to want that. I've seen a rising trend of atheist and religion-haters to demand that fantasy games give them option to kill gods, burn down churches/temples and basicly tell religious folk how they suck. And personally, Im fed up with the mathaphyiscal mumbo-jumo. I had enough soul-searching and exploring the afterlife/soul/death with PS:T and MoTB to last me a lifetime. I never re-played those games because they left me...drained. Bored in a way.

That is your uninformed, ignorant oppinion. Weapons are made to kill, not to make you "look cool". Which, b.t.w. - they do, but you can't reconginze it. Real weapons have great distinction ebtween them. You want to push it to a redicolous degree. You said it yourself - given how smal lthe characters will be on the screen, nothing short of humongous differences (to the point of not even looking like memer of a same weapons family) will be really visible. And that doesnt' make weapons or you look cool, it makes you look like you escaped from a circus or an anime convention. ToEE did it nicely enough. From a distance weapons from the same weapon family really will look similar - becasue it makes sense. That's what defines them as belonging to a weapon family in the first place.

Why is it that people always demand to bring with them their prejudices in games?

The begining of Berserk can be confusing and misleading (it basicly starts near the end, goes back to tell the story then picks off). While it is a dark - VERY dark - fantasy world with lots of violence and gore, it does make quite a lot of sense the deeper you go in. Without knowing why Guts wields that huge sword (and how can he possibly wield it in the first place..interestingly enough, for the majority of the anime he actually wields a far more normal two-hander), why he lost his arm, his eyes and everything...it like jumping in the middle of a moive, watching 5 minutes and then making conclusions. Personally I'm not a huge fan of Berserk, but it is a rather interesting and unique mange/anime.

Don't like it personally.

Actually no. I've been mening to look it up when I get some time.

Enemies should drop everything. The restriction would be you own (very) limited carry capacity and the fact that the armor the enemy drops will often be damaged/unusable (since you killed him and he was wearing the armor)

My personal mummary: Good, fun game, if a bit overpriced. Xenonauts look like it will diliver on the X-Com sucessor fully That's because the internets is driven by hate and frail egos, and not by objective thinking. I know poeple who yelled that "JA:BiA is garbage and betrayl" the second they heard it won't be turn-based. On the internets, people take everything personally. Expectation managment is important for a company, lest they suffer the wrath of the playerbase. To some, if the game dissapoints them in some manner - even beefore they play it - it is a betrayl. A personal insult. The game and developer exist only to be hated from there on. The itenstiy, the fanatiscm can be mind-boggling sometimes. I've seen ammounts of bile and hate towards products and developers that would make baby Jesus cry. Personally, I think JA2 is the best tacticall squad based game ever. I played every turn-based game worthy of note and I LOVE the turn-based system. But I'm objective enough to know it has weakneses and cheap exploits. A real-time with pause system works great too and is in may ways more realistic, and looses none of tactical planing. It's basicly infinite TU's and everyone takes turns at the same time. In fact, it requires more beforehand preparation and positioning. The time chart JA:BiA has is a great thing, as it lets you plan and coordiante. The developer dropped hte ball in other things. It's still a good game, but JA2's shoes are really BIG shoes to fill. The above story repeats everywhere. Just take a look at all the games that got redicolous amount of hate recently. Duke Nukem Forever - average shooter. Good humor. Yet on metacritic it bombed as people gave it 1's and 0'. Dragon Age 2 - dissapointing, many bad mechanics and decisions, but still average. Etc.. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average should be 5. Yet everything is skewed. When people give these rating they don't THINK. They don't compare it to the average game of that genre, they don't compare it's mechanics to the the mechanics used in other similar games. The same applies for rating of 10/10, which si the other extreeme - fanbosy that see no wrong in their favorite game.

I don't se the DA3 thing as a problem. There is a limit to rolepalying options a developers gives you. Always. They may be technical in nature, because of resources, or simply because there's little point in adding them or they mesh with the setting.

They talk the talk. Unfortunately trying the 'alpha' demo is only an option if you pre-order the game. Sort of a catch 22 Recent violence against X-Com and Jagged Alliance has left me with very little expectations. If the Carmageddon Reincarnation project fizzles, then it is indeed time to build a mausoleum for great games Given that I am in the Alpha (soon to be Beta), I can tell you that they indeed do more than just talk. The game flows and ffeels really really good. It's a true seuqel to the old X-Com in all aspects. Except it has better air combat and graphics Speaking of which, the nex XCOM is a good game, but it lacks freeomd and depth. The AI also cheats like hell and the dificulty is artificial as hell. JA: BiA is a good game too, altough it too lacks the depth - altough in this case it's simply due to being rushed and lacking some features and polish. Also the leveling/repair mechanics has been changed to a far, far worse one. With a few changes and a bit more polish, it would be a worthy sucessor. And no, the real-time tactical planing system is not a problem at all. It works well.

Sez who?