Heresiarch

Actually, I don't see how the points contradict each other. One side (and you, presumably) is saying that tagged lines should not be the one and only "correct" choice in a conversation, while all others lead to bad results. Another (that would be me, for instance) says that coding should stay, because it makes sense, brings flavor, and facilitates roleplaying. We are not arguing that it should always be the best result. Different to be sure, maybe, unlocking additional content like Wisdom did for memories in PST, but not the best. So the argument doesn't really exist.

Except then you will have no idea whether it is utter stupidity or an extreme insight on the character's part. So they should indicated that some answer is due to high intelligence or wisdom or spot skill or what have you either by markers or by additional narrative in the dialogue box. Same goes for bluff. You can be sincere about your threat to rip off someone's face and eat it for breakfast or you can just say it for scaring them away. PST had lots of dialogue where you could be truthful or lying/bluffing and it seemed very fitting. Eh, no. If you're not intelligent enough to figure it out on your own you shouldn't be playing at all. Can't say if trolling... Have you performed a statistical analysis, which shows that games, which did not employ tags or some sort of coding, consistently managed to do it for all players? If not, then it's merely your opinion, which does even not contradict mine. Every game I played from Fallout and BG to NWN and Dragon Age had plenty of situations where my expectations of the effect of numerous lines of dialogue were pretty far from the actual result. And that was nothing, but frustrating and annoying. In fact, the only game I remember where such an issue was non-existent is PlaneScape Torment. And it did employ tags and textual descriptions in good measure.

People are conditioned to react only the "colour coded for your convenience" responses in this cruel reality of our times. Without the tags it's probably a normal response, I mean how could you tell?! That's exactly the point. Sometimes there is no way to tell. While color or position-coding provides (ideally) clear indication of the nature and meaning of each response. Of course, PE is different from Alpha Protocol or Mass Effect or Dragon Age 2, but it does not mean that facilitating the role-playing choice in dialogues is a bad thing. Honestly, sometimes there's too much ambiguity in lines, so you can't be sure that one of them is exactly what you want to say. "Is this line ironic? It must be. Oh, the guy got mad and told me that I'm a complete monster. I guess, it was not irony after all..." BG was full of it too, by the way, so you can't blame it on bad titles. Bare words don't do much to convey the complete narrative. You either have to be verbose about the conditions like, "He says with a mad grin on his face" or do something else to convey the mood. Otherwise you're making roleplaying Nintendo-hard and making people save/load a lot for the sake of correct RP.

Tags are nothing even remotely resembling meta gaming. They only give the necessary non-verbal details. You can say "Hello, how are you?" in a way that will make the person you're talking to want to run away as fast as possible. To say nothing of ambiguous lines which can be interpreted in many ways. Since you cannot reliably guess the intention of your character (or rather the person who was writing the line), the result often comes out as a big surprise.

Except then you will have no idea whether it is utter stupidity or an extreme insight on the character's part. So they should indicated that some answer is due to high intelligence or wisdom or spot skill or what have you either by markers or by additional narrative in the dialogue box. Same goes for bluff. You can be sincere about your threat to rip off someone's face and eat it for breakfast or you can just say it for scaring them away. PST had lots of dialogue where you could be truthful or lying/bluffing and it seemed very fitting. No, I disagree. I don;t need that hand holding. I'm pretty sure that I can come to the conclusion myself that one dialogue option seems a smarter one than the other. and if I don't, why should the game be so unchallenging that I shouldn't think about what I choose to say? You still have your choice. Nothing is forcing you to select [intelligence/Spot/Bluff/Some-other-stuff] choice from the dialogue options. If I can intimidate my way out of a confrontation, but I know my character is up to some serious arse kicking, I would go with another answer. That's why I want to know precisely which version of the answer will scare enemies away and which one will provoke them and there is no other way to be sure about it without tags. Maybe in PST you could pull it off, but dialogues in NWN2, for instance, were so inadequate that [tags] were absolutely unnecessary to add at least some sense to it.

Except then you will have no idea whether it is utter stupidity or an extreme insight on the character's part. So they should indicated that some answer is due to high intelligence or wisdom or spot skill or what have you either by markers or by additional narrative in the dialogue box. Same goes for bluff. You can be sincere about your threat to rip off someone's face and eat it for breakfast or you can just say it for scaring them away. PST had lots of dialogue where you could be truthful or lying/bluffing and it seemed very fitting.

I fully agree that the dark side must have cookies. Be it more power, higher rewards, less work, whatever. Otherwise, what's the temptation to fall for it? Simple malevolence? It's not even funny anymore, Evil should not equal Stupid Evil, as it is the case in most RPG games. Evil choices must have a greater reward in most cases. I really liked the choices in Alpha Protocol and Witcher. Thornton can be a real son of a beach ball for the heck of it sometimes, but at least it is justified with his character. Most of the time he has a good reason for doing evil things, like revenge.

Well, taking into an account that a monk is a religious ascetic, while a flagellant is a guy who likes beating himself much, I'd go for a monk. A Friar should be better if you go for extra flavor. Suits the class better too, since monks aren't rally supposed to be running around too much.

I only see a point in different types of ammo: incendiary, armor piercing, jagged and so on. The damage bonus should be left for the weapon itself.

I had fallen Anomen clash with Keldron in some dungeon. Anomen used his sword-barrier, which accidentally hacked Aerie to little pieces, prompting Minsk to go into battle rage and join in a fight. Anyway, in a few moments I was left standing there with Jaheira and cooled-down Minsk, looking at three corpses, which I had no ability to resurrect, since Anomen and Keldron left the party when they started fighting and I didn't have the Wish to resurrect those tiny bits Aerie was reduced to. All the while I knew there was a crapload of beholders to go through with only three party members left. That felt... awesome.

I would prefer having no identification at all, unless you happen to stumble upon an in-game description of the exact item. Otherwise you have to actually use the item to learn about it's magic abilities. Maybe let magic-users gauge the effects somewhat or just an over-all "enchantedness" level, but no more than that.

I liked the concept in Wizardry 8. There was a riddle about the "wind of the past". While the riddle was pretty easy, answering it correctly felt more gratifying than riddles in IWD2, for instance, where you could just glance through all the answers and pick the correct one in 5 seconds.

Well, I wouldn't say a zweihander is only good for chopping off pikes. You can also swing it around wildly and scare people away. There are long two-handed swords, which can be used in a fight effectively like nodachi or claymore. Of course, they are neither as long nor as heavy. But it seems that huge weapons seem to be a must in fantasy games. I still remember DAO: those swords must have weighed around 8 kilos and those were just single handers. I would really like a realistic approach to fighting: sword is good, an off-hand for parrying is better, unless you have mad skills at fencing and legwork. A shield might not take you a long way in the firearms era though. Pikes and polearms should be unwieldy and unusable in CQC. Firearms take forever to reload. Spiked weapons and axes are prone to lodging in armor and bones. Mace and flail strikes are too heavy to be parried repeatedly... But then again we're talking about an isometric game where combat is most likely represented by small figures flailing weapons at each other. So realism would not work here anyways.

Betrayal is not a one-time thing. In fact it works best when it comes in many, many flavors. You can get betrayed when you lest expected and not betrayed when you would expect it most. Then again other NPCs can be betrayed. Say, a jealous companion shoots PC's whatever-friend in the back.

Battles in turn-based games take forever. While it can be fun sometimes (as in Fallout Tactics, Odium, Xcom Enemy Unknown), in DnD-style games it feels like a terrible waste of time. I still recall Temple of Elemental Evil and Pool of Radiance with palpable dread. It's like playing table-tops without the added value of socializing with living people. In my books it's just a hideously boring experience.

Because it doesn't work without a suit of armor, while full plate does not work with witcher fighting techniques. Taking into account that it's not feasible to carry suits of armor without having bottomless and weightless bags, looting armor and weapons (apart from those you can switch for your own) from corpses is completely pointless.

I liked Witcher-style looting. TES is ok, since you won't be picking up everything anyway, but the way you ended up with dozens of enchanted swords and suits of armor for simple resale in BG/IWD/DA is weird to say the least. It's like you are not in a party of adventurers, but in a pack of beasts of burden.

Frankly, I would prefer Witcher-style monsters, which is based on the original myths instead of some PnP bestiary book. Just without elves and dwarfs as it is already the case it seems. D&D Orcs, trolls, gnolls, drow, kobolds and the likes have gone pretty stale by now.

I would love for once to have a game blessedly free of those transmutated humans that Victorian writers have cursed literature with. Werewolves and vampires are not a product of Victoria era. Stoker did not come up with his Dracula out of thin air. Vampires are ancient mythological beings. In slavic mythilogy, for instance, a vampire is a revenant, a corrupt soul which returned to the body to prey on the living. This is only one of many myths about blood drinking or flesh eating spirits and demons. Werewolves also come in many flavors: from cursed men to warlocks (much like native american skin-walkers) to huge wolf-like man-eating beasts. So "vampire" or "werewolf" does not mean it must be a wimpy representation of such beings for teenagers.

There is a difference between suspending disbelief for a fire-breathing dragon and doing so for a bunch of poor shacks right inside the city walls, because the second has to do with common sense. No one is going to defend some slums on the outskirts with walls. No one is going to mass produce boob plate armor just to please the male population. It is difficult and prohibitively expensive. For the last time medieval armor with grotesque codpieces and Greek or Roman heroic cuirass is purely ceremonial.

Accentuated codpiece and muscle cuirass are examples of ceremonial armor custom-made and designed to impress, not to fight in. Same goes for boobplate. No, you are trying to give me examples of videogames where women are not objectified (according to you.. Dishonored, Max Payne, really??). Just for reference: Now, what are the examples of sexual objectification in Dishonored or Max Payne? I'm talking of justified cases, which make the player think, "yeah, that's how I like them women" not fill him with rage and disgust.

I do not watch TV, but I can give plenty of examples of video games, that I've played over the last year, where I did not see any gender vilification or gloryfication: Dishonored, The Walking Dead, Prototype 2, Max Payne 3, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations...

I can hardly imagine how you can get more infamous than Interplay or Electronic Arts, but I suppose it's still possible. There's really no limit to greed, selfishness, and unscrupulousness. The only hope for consumers is making companies, using that sort of practices go out of business. So piracy is defending consumer's rights here. Quite ironic.

Well, I wonder who taught you to read, since for some reason you missed the "you need a magnifying glass to see this stuff on 800 by 600 pixel screen" part. But anyways Annah cared about her looks. You can tell if you've played the game. You mean the stereotype where men are mountains of muscles, with 140 IQ, lightning reflexes and get the chick at the end? oh.. so.. suffering.. If you put it that way, male stereotypes are no better. For one thing, not all men are that bright, that fast, that muscular or get an extremely sexy "chick" in the end. Or ever. But there are many other insulting men stereotypes. Like thinking with their privates instead of their brain and drooling over every attractive woman or falling easy prey to the seductress-type characters and so on. I really fail to see how "women as sexual fantasies" is not politically correct. Or "men as sexual fantasies" for that matter. People have sex, some of them more often than the others and they enjoy the thought of being a sexual fantasy and don't find it insulting or demeaning. And again not all women find the "sexy stereotype" offensive.

Why are you even here then? Every single game that inspired PE had boob armor or worse (better?). Hell, PS:T had pretty much every female character looking like a super model hooker. If you're actually being serious then the "experience" would have been ruined for you from the get go in each of those games and you wouldn't be a fan of the genre. You should read what people say before you start replying. I didn't say I'm against sexy, I said I'm against stupid. I couldn't care less if there was boob armor in BG or not, since you need a magnifying glass to see this stuff on 800 by 600 pixel screen. I could certainly see that there were no chainmail bikinis and that was quite enough for my exquisite taste. As for PST none of those overly sexy outfits were designed for protection. If skimpy clothing is fashionable in Sigil, I don't mind.