Death Machine Miyagi

I don't know. That 'idealist against corrupt authority' setting has been used a lot in entertainment industry and it doesn't have the same appeal for me anymore. It's pretty much cliché nowdays, but if they have some new ideas for it, then why not? Though, usually those plots tend to become kind of preachy and simplistic from moral side. (I haven't watched The Wire, so I don't know how they handled the subject) Its less the 'idealist against corrupt authority' and more the 'idealist against corrupt reality.' That is, the idealist gets chewed up and eaten alive unless he's willing to compromise and yet in making compromises he slowly loses his ideals. On the fantasy side of things, George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books would also be an example of this. Want to survive and be successful? Then know when doing the noble thing isn't necessarily doing the right thing, and be willing to do something cold-blooded every now and then with the long-term good in mind. Or refuse to abandon your ideals and pay the penalties for it. Just don't make the noble thing always the most rewarding thing, either for the character personally or for the world he inhabits.

Didn't MCA once say he wanted to make an RPG out of The Wire? That would be a good example of a show where doing the right thing can actually completely ruin you. Why? Because doing the right thing is often equivalent to 'rocking the boat', and when you rock the boat a lot of people stand to lose a great deal. Every once in awhile, I'd like to see the 'best' choice, the most noble, kind and honorable decision absolutely blow up in your face as it results in stepping on too many toes and making enemies out of powerful people.

Neither good nor evil should be rewarded or punished just for being good or evil. Rather, rewards should be determined by intelligence vs. stupidity. Do the smart thing and the game gives you a better reward. Do the stupid thing and your potential reward suffers for it. Stupid Evil behavior should be punished. Not because it's evil but because it's stupid. If you go around killing and ruining the lives of everyone you meet, you should find yourself ostracized and friendless, earning few to no rewards and hunted everywhere you go. This makes perfect sense and I think most people would agree with it. What isn't as acknowledged is that Stupid Good behavior should also get you some blow-back. That psychopathic bandit leader who has raped and murdered his way across the region is at your mercy, begging that if you let him go he'll make amends? Have him go right back to raping and murdering if you choose to just take him at his word and set him free. Need to decide between helping to crown the rightful heir of a kingdom, who happens to be a kind and well intentioned drooling imbecile, or his scheming uncle, a brilliant but amoral fellow who intends to set the kingdom back on the right track no matter the cost? Have the former run the kingdom into the ground and the latter usher in a new era of greatness. Have a quest where the player can choose, despite risking his life at every turn, to refuse the reward at the end? Have everyone around town thereafter assume the character is a complete sap from then on, with corresponding loss of respect. This shouldn't be the case with every quest, of course. That would be predictable and boring. But yes, it would be a nice change from being able to assume that a plus on the (in the case of P:E entirely imaginary) karma meter means a better reward and more satisfying outcome while a minus means losing something cool and ostracizing people. The world isn't that clear-cut.

Unique speech patterns that lend color to different regions or cultures are nice and I support them, but I really can't abide being subjected to more atrociously weak attempts at early modern English. I say avoid that, at least, like ye olde plague.

I actually agree, that whole storyline is something that should only be concluded if they ever want to end the blood wars, which is never. The Blood War has ended. Yeah, I heard about that. Given how much it was driven home in the past that the Blood War was integral to the very structure of the planes, and how it had been going on since basically the beginning of everything and was fully expected to go on until the end of everything, I have to assume the new writer who decided that took a big crap on established canon and should be ignored.

As noted, they really, really shouldn't be calling this a 'Torment sequel.' They can't use the Planescape setting, and Torment's story wrapped up pretty neatly even if they could. It makes them come across as dishonest. What they SHOULD be saying is 'we want to make another game like Torment, with a cool setting and a primary focus on producing the best storyline and characters we can within that setting.' That's what I'd prefer to hear.

Is there somewhere they're listing the money they've taken in? And yes, $3000+ and no Kickstarter, which means that they've got no funding goal to meet, can keep the money no matter what happens and they aren't obligated to use it for a damn thing. I'm not sure whether its comforting or depressing to realize how easy it is to trick some people out of their money.

One thing I can't figure out: this new Black Isle does actually have people who worked on the original Fallout, namely Chris Taylor and Mark O'Green. As people who were associated with the original Black Isle, what in god's name would motivate them to get involved with Herve Caen again? They must be aware of the whole sordid history behind his management of Interplay, and even the slightest bit of common sense should have been enough for them to understand how a Herve Caen-associated fundraiser would go down with the CRPG community. Its not like Interplay even has any money to bribe them, so what exactly are they thinking?

This whole fund-raising will be fun to watch, in a slow motion train wreck kind of way. Especially since we know Herve is the conductor. Incidentally, I suspect that is a response to this.

$10 for the right to post on a forum. Except not. 5. For purposes of clarity and the avoidance of doubt, in consideration of Interplay's good faith efforts to develop, produce, and launch the forum with the funds raised, You agree that any deposit amounts applied against the Game Cost as described above shall be non-refundable regardless of whether or not Interplay is able to launch the forum, complete the prototype, or complete and deliver the Game. They not only are under zero obligation to produce a game, they don't even have to make any forums for you to have access to. Seriously, it's Christmas time. I'm sure there are better charities for people to donate to.

There was already a book that did that, though. The awfulness is in the details. Basically, you've got a Star Control situation: there has been a 'canon' sequel to KOTOR and KOTOR2, both in the book Revan and the game TOR, but that canon is pretty bad and in an ideal world would do well with being replaced with an Obsidian-made KOTOR3. It won't be, though, because TOR is ongoing and its canon stands. In short, a KOTOR3 that continues the Revan-Exile storyline is a lost cause. Better to accept that and move on, I think.

Even if they do a 'invest skill points to learn language' approach, I think there should be a single ironclad rule: a player should never be forced to learn some new language to experience the game properly. So, for example, it would be an awful idea to turn one of the two 'big cities' into a place where you couldn't get anything done without either taking on an NPC who speaks the local language or putting points in it yourself. A new language opening up a ton of cool optional content, on the other hand? Definitely.

One thought of my own for now: The first expansion pack for the original NWN, Shadows of Undrentide, had something I remember very fondly in the very beginning: if you were playing as a ranger/druid, you could speak to the local wildlife and they would tell you about the attack on the town that started the game. Basically, there was druid/ranger specific dialogue hidden away. It was completely unexpected for me when I found it, and made playing my ranger a great deal of fun...well, before the whole expansion pack fell to pieces after the start, anyway. I would definitely like to see language used in some way in that vein. A normally surly or unresponsive NPC who suddenly brightens up or starts giving you information because, hey, you speak his language! A wandering traveler from some far distant land, who speaks the local language poorly and is usually not much help at all, who suddenly becomes a valuable source of information because you're the first person he's met in who-knows-how-long who actually knows how to communicate with him in his own tongue. Why do you speak the language? Perhaps because you share a common background, or race, or you just invested skill points in that language. Whatever the case, things like that really personalize both the world and the characters, and give that P:T feel that there is a ton of stuff to be seen through multiple playthroughs.

The German interview mentioned that language would play an important role in the game So let's talk language. I've actually always wanted to see language approached in an interesting way in a CRPG, so this is good news for me. However, the questions are: how much, where, and how? In regards to 'how much', would it be more fun or more annoying to...say, enter a major quest hub only to find out you need to either speak the local language yourself or have an NPC with you who does before you can meaningfully interact with anyone? Would it be better to have only a small number of languages, making it easier to get around, or a whole bunch, maybe livening up the environment but also making communication a pain at times? Perhaps all of the above is just too much of a hassle and language should primarily be there for flavor? In regards to 'where', would it be better to have certain areas of the map that all speak a certain language, or just confine it to (as kinda implied in the article) uncommon dialects and forgotten languages that only come up in very specific circumstances, like Planescape: Torment and its 'language of Uyo'? Maybe there could be a group, akin to real life medieval Romani or Jews, who share a common culture/language but are spread out all over the place, as well. And in regards to 'how', would language skill proficiency points and the like be worth pursuing? Or would it, again, be best to confine it primarily to flavor?

I think the worst kind of failure wouldn't be if the game was bad. The worst kind of failure would be if the game ends up being completely awesome, a true classic ala Torment or BG2, but then fails to be financially successful enough to warrant further games of its kind. Mostly because this scenario would force me to murder a good portion of the gaming population.

Hopefully not. He hasn't spammed the board or otherwise done anything wrong. He's proposed a what-if, albeit one most of us wouldn't want to contemplate. My answer: shrug and find something else to do. I'll be disappointed, certainly, but in the end it's just a game and all I've lost is my pledged money. I've wasted a lot more on hopes unfulfilled during my life than that.

The problem with Dany is that they were trying to adapt her story from Book Two when Dany barely even HAD a story in Book Two. She shows up in a few chapters, but not a whole lot happens to her, and what does happen to her would make for boring viewing up until So what they did instead was make up a whole bunch of stuff and use that instead. And unfortunately, what they came up with made her look absolutely ridiculous. Dany comes across as an utter fool in Season 2, making threats and blustering over how everyone should be doing what she says because of her dragons. My recollection of her in Book Two was that she was a great deal more diplomatic and fully aware of her precarious situation, certainly aware enough not to pointlessly antagonize the leaders of a city whose help she is seeking just because they aren't giving her what she wants right now. Book!Dany is 14 or 15 and yet acts quite a bit more like an adult than the 20-something playing her in the HBO series. They've done this with a few other characters, too. That scene with Littlefinger and Cersei early in the season made the former look like a complete fool, the absolute last thing we should be thinking of that character, while we've been given precious few opportunities to see Jon Snow as anything but a bungling twit fit only to be yelled at by the Lord Commander.

They don't need to hire ANYONE at all. For God's sake, give me Microsoft's Sound Recorder and I'll create a bunch of wav files for the game. Make it believable and sincere, add some persistence and anyone will break into the voice over field. It simply takes desire and passion to voice a character. The problem is, most of the voice acting I've heard for mods (that is, amateur voice acting) ranges from the sub-par to the atrocious. Meant to draw me in, it instead takes (mostly) perfectly decent written text and makes it impossible to take seriously. A David Warner can do a Jon Irenicus. A Tony Jay can do a Transcendent One. They have (well, had, in poor Mr. Jay's case) the voices for it and the talent for it. Get a random schmoe off the street to try and do those characters and you don't enhance the experience. Quite often, you ruin it, and the written text alone would have been far more powerful than the hammy crap you get served instead. Quality voice actors seem surprisingly hard to come by.

I sympathize. Even though I was the one who posted the thread, I wouldn't have many good answers of my own. I mostly read history stuff.

That's not really the case. There might be more choice, as far as the devs changing the dialogue along the way and maybe writing up more options for dialogue, but I don't think you can prove that it will necessarily mean more depth. Part of what makes a line of dialogue memorable or "deep" for me is hearing the power with which it's delivered.One of my all time favourite video game lines of dialogue was the "would you kindly" speech from bio-shock (sort of a spoiler if you haven't played it) that dialogue really stuck in my mind because of the way it was delivered. If it was just a line of dialogue I probably would have just skipped through it without a second glance. Less choice in an RPG, less dialogue in an RPG, implicitly leads to less depth, or at least the much stronger possibility of it. If you want proof, witness the steady degradation of Bioware since they went to full voice acting. In a fully voiced acted game, you may have three dialogue options, each of which is a variation of the same thing and each of which leads to the exact same response from the NPC. Why? Because getting an NPC to respond to whether your character is an elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, mage, thief, fighter, evil, good, neutral, hetero, homo, trans, bi, black, white, pink, burnt umber and so on indefinitely is friggin' HARD when you have to hire someone to say it all out loud. The game usually ends up making the dialogue as generic as possible to accommodate whatever you happen to be, while simultaneously narrowing how the dialogue tree (and thus often the quest it relates to) could turn out in order to cut down on how much money they're spending on voice acting. At the same moment, you can kiss post-release mods like Ascension for BG2 goodbye. I think one of the biggest reasons Bioware games post-KOTOR have tended to have only a fraction of the mods available for NWN or BG2 is that, without voice acting, quest mods and NPC mods stick out like a sore thumb in the game proper. Writing new text is easy. Getting a professional voice actor is hard. Now, that doesn't mean you can't have strategic use of voice acting for major events; what would Jon Irenicus have been without David Warner? Nor does it mean a game like Bioshock can't have both voice acting and depth. But if you want a classic RPG, you are far better off with the P:T approach of allowing a dizzying amount of choice, and plenty of room for the game to react to that choice, than the modern Bioware approach of offering three bland choices that all lead to the same outcome. The former is infinitely easier and more cost effective in text than it is through voice acting.

Whereas I am in favor of limiting the voice acting to only very important parts of the plot, if it even needs to be there at all. The trade-off for more voice acting is less dialogue, diminished ability to change dialogue during production, a lack of modability...in short, less choice and less depth. I want more choice and more depth, not less. And if the cost of that is that less voice acting, then I'll pay it happily.

Either/or, really.

Blame HBO, not GRRM. Not saying ASoIaF doesn't have its fair share of gratuitous sex, because it does, but its really only the HBO series that takes this almost to the point of self-parody, as if some guy is standing on set demanding to see **** every five minutes.

Oh, no, I don't mean a writer who you hope they hire. That's obviously out of the question and would severely limit the choices. For example, what prompted me to post this thread was a review of Mask of the Betrayer in which the reviewer made comparisons between it and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but when I did, I could understand how someone could make that comparison. In any case, yeah, I'm a big George R.R. Martin fan, so I'll agree with this selection. Give me a world of political intrigue, a world which has a backstory which it never feels obligated to explain in every detail. Give me magic that actually feel mysterious and...well, magical. Give me a lot of people who cannot be clearly defined as 'the good guy' or 'the bad guy', though don't hesitate to also give me a fair number of people ala Ramsay Snow or Joffrey Baratheon who are so completely vicious they may Sauron look like a girl scout and make you really want to kill them. Do not make the 'good guys' win every battle just because their good. And so forth.

I'll agree that Modern RPGs don't have enough pimps, or affection for the art of pimping.