Keyrock

Fire Emblem: Awakening is fantastic. You're in for a treat, Labadal.

Yeah, that's straight up insanity. Those are just not reasonable expectations. The Witcher 2 likely sold less copies than Tomb Raider in its lifetime (it's 5 million for the whole series, I don't know what the split is), and that's a 2 year old game, and those figures are good enough that the folks at CD Projekt RED were high fivin' and expanded their studio enough so they can tackle multiple projects at once. Funny, that game didn't have any lack of graphics. CDPR must have gotten a discount on graphics. Maybe price per pixel is cheaper in Poland? Black market? Did they steal their pixels?

I can't help you on Tales games, I haven't played any either, I have heard positive things, though. For me, handhelds is where it's a for jRPGs these days. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 1 & 2 are my two favorite jRPGs of the last half decade or so. Also, The World Ends With You, but that's not really a traditional jRPG, or a traditional anything for that matter.

I get that Final Fantasy is a traditional cash cow for Squeenix, so I understand them pumping out game after game after game after... I'm honestly really burned out on the series. What I want to see is The Worlds Ends With You 2.

2 Numenera 2 Torment Then Torment: Numenera Drift I play my game a quarter mile at a time.

That's a definite possibility. It may well have been that problems and expenses had already mounted enough where someone's head would likely have to go on the chopping block, and Tomb Raider was a last ditch effort at avoiding that. They needed it to hit it out of the park. When it only hit a wall ball double, that wasn't enough to save the job.

SPLOSHUNS!

Followed by Torment with a Vengeance, Play Free or Torment, and A Good Day to Torment. If nothing else, the visuals would be spectacular... and THREEDEE!

Icescape Gate Down the line: Icescape Gate: Retribution Icescape Gate: Underworld Icescape Gate: Forgotten Chronicles And the inevitable reboot: Icescape Gate: Rebirth

More GRID for me. I've fallen in love with the Nissan Skyline. That car is a blast to drive, and my favorite of the ones I've been able to afford so far. It has pretty much the perfect handling characteristics for my preferred driving style. Of course, I haven't been able to afford anything ridiculously fast like the Koenigsegg CCX yet.

Awesome. This should make it to at least Talents & Traits at 650k. I'm still hoping Henchmen Become Companions at 800k happens, that's the stretch goal I want the most. I've already pledged, so the most I can do now is keep beating the drum. LordCrash is pretty much the drum master, but I'll do my best to spread the word best I can.

The best solution is to make the game and the story malleable enough to still allow you to continue after going completely against the grain. Say, for example, your character is supposed to do some work for a wealthy and well connected noble, in exchange, this noble will then grant you passage across a sea. There is a naval blockade in effect, and no ships can get through, but his ship can because he has connections with the admiral's family and can get passage. Well, being the murderer that you are, you instead decide to savagely murder him in cold blood (he looked at you wrong). Now the game isn't over, but you just made things significantly harder for yourself. Not only have you been branded as a murderer and will be hunted, the one person that could get you passage across the sea is dead, so that's out. What do you do? Try to steal a ship and attempt to break through the blockade anyway? Good luck getting a ship in a land where you're branded a murderer. Even if you get one, good luck getting through the blockade. Go around the sea on land through dangerous and inhospitable lands? Not only will that be a much longer journey, force you to spend money on months of supplies, but you'll be trudging through areas that even well armed companies are deathly afraid to travel through. Please excuse the poor example, I'm just spitballing off the top of my head here. Of course, making a game that's extremely breakable and still able to be completed while still maintaining a deep and focused story is an incredibly difficult feat. First, just being able to account for all the different ways players could break the game is difficult enough, then you have to program in all the different branching scenarios that arise from that.

Why is this still a discussion, seeing as it's been definitively answered by Monte Cook himself already?

The only fight I really had trouble with on Normal difficulty was the Daeva Statue fight in Treasures of the Sun. Everything in the main game was moderate at worst. As already stated, whenever you run into a point where you get stuck, you can just turn down the difficulty for that fight, then turn it back up afterward.

Sometimes less is more, even in terms of graphics. Look at a game like World of Goo or Machinarium. I'm willing to bet it didn't cost a bajillion dollars to do those graphics, yet the games are very pleasing to the eye. I'd go so far as to say, they look better than some of the mega budget polygon fests. There's more to making a game look good than just how many triangles and post processing effects you can cram into it. Finding a good simple aesthetic can do wonders.

I definitely agree with the OP, especially about Elanee. I don't know if I can think of a single companion I detest more than Elanee.

Why are the graphics so important to you? Don't get me wrong, I thought the game looked lackluster too, but because it looked like it played just like most of the billion other MMOs out there, except with an Elder Scrolls coat of paint on it.

I didn't vote due to the lack of a pet rat option. I'd settle for a miniature giant space hamster, though.

The crazy thing is that Tomb Raider sold 3.4 million copies and that's considered a failure. Or better yet, basically what Zoraptor wrote.

I'm not against buying games with good graphics, there are good games with good graphics, I just don't base my purchasing decision on graphics.

I saw the leaked TES Online video, which has since been removed, but I wasn't really paying much attention to graphics. Obviously 20 minutes is far too short to make any sort of definitive judgement on any game, much less an MMO, but from that brief glimpse I thought it looked like a very standard, paint by numbers, run of the mill MMO.

And thus, Skynet was born. Hopefully it doesn't become self aware before Project Eternity comes out.

I'm a bit bitter they didn't go with Torment 2: The Tormenting.

That's true. This will only end when people stop buying shiny, shallow games. Vote with your wallet.

Rome is burning, I say let it burn. The AAA studios will continue to commit suicide and I'll continue to support smaller independent devs who put out games focused on depth of content and narrative rather than bling. I'll gladly drive the modest looking sedan with a solid, well built, fuel efficient engine, rather than the gaudy luxury car with gold trim, spinners, and underglow, that's leaking oil and stalls occasionally.