Jora

He's never actually said it will be awesome. He's said he hopes that it'll be a good game that people want to replay and that "there's nothing revolutionary or evolutionary about it". And a lot of games did take the easy way out when it comes to quests, even the ones that have excellent role-playing elements. Dragon Age suffers from tedious combat, 70% or so of which could've been cut from the game. The early chapters of Risen are great but the game then devolves into a hack & slash fest. I didn't play The Witcher very far but the opening chapter consist mainly of running around killing ghost dogs that manifest out of air. Etc. Etc. It's only a good thing that a developer wants to move away from that kind of design. Plus he openly admits that making a different kind of game is harder than he thought. He's constantly being asked what is taking so long to finish AoD and many people are under the impression that the team's only polishing the graphics, so that's why he's saying that the quest design takes time.

The "kill enemy x, gather n items" design can be found in many other games besides MMO's. The Witcher, Risen, Gothic, Dragon Age, Geneforge, and most other RPGs out there all suffer from it. I don't see why it's douchy to say that creating interesting quests that don't follow that simple formula is hard and time-consuming.

Just saw this thread. Never really liked Visceris' internet persona but his death is a shame. May he rest in peace.

Glad to hear that! I bought the game mostly because of Obsidian's knack for great, even epic, conversations. MotB is still fresh in my mind, and speaking with Myrkul was simply breathtaking in that game. And who doesn't remember meeting Ravel or The Practical Incarnation for the first time in PS:T?

The CRPG genre peaked with Arcanum and Torment. Hopefully the next decade will bring with it something that has as much style and atmosphere.

Come on, even you can't think the graphics are that bad!

What didn't you like about it? I heard good things about the role-playing options in it and the city setting interests me.

Risen Geneforge 5 Haven't had much time to play Dragon Age yet but the game seems promising. Want to play: Mysteries of Westgate Assassins Creed 2

Mirrors: http://depositfiles.com/files/33jtci9g8 http://www.filefront.com/15216873/AoD_demo.exe edit: people seem to be experiencing some freezes and crashing. If you have problems running it don't hesitate to tell them on their board.

It's out: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/files/AoD_demo.exe After playing go to the Iron Tower board to give your opinion.

In the latest version I played (one with a working save system), the early fights are quite easy and a chance to get to know the system, but they get very tricky later on. Yeah, all weapons and armor have their pros and cons.

Starwars: I definitely get the feeling that especially in the final game itself (with it being non-linear and all) you can't be sure you can beat the opponents in your way just because you have the best equipment to suit your skills. If the opponent is tactically build to resist the kind of character you have built, you might want to search other challenges or change your tactic completely no matter how high your skills are.

Well, in terms of tactics the combat system is better than Fallout's but being a single person RPG it's obviously nowhere near JA2 or, say, ToEE.

The combat demo will be released for public testing on Friday: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=996597#996597

The public version of the combat beta shouldn't be far off. They are fine-tuning the combat balance (right now it favors blocking over dodging) based on tester feedback and implementing sounds, AFAIK.