Luridis

Oh please. Let's stop this immature, petty, kindergarten crap. I'll be honest and say I've fallen into that trap myself, many times. Sometimes, I think it's just a way of venting frustration with the current landscape. That said, I think most people can handle complexity in RPGs just fine. What seems to make complex games unpopular is when you first load it up and that complexity hits the player like a brick.

While I don't like most JRPGs, and that doesn't make me think they're invalid; it's just a matter of personal taste. Some of the best selling titles of all time, i.e. FF VII, are not first-person. What will wake up publishers? Whatever will wake up people... Someone needs to do a stellar isometric, party based game where managing combat and action queues isn't annoying, is intuitive, also complex, but easy to learn. That's essentially what made WoW take over a decade ago, learning to play didn't require getting over the massive hump of a learning curve, yet a lot of "i think I'll give this a try" types went on to do things like 40 man raids.

Do you think that maybe it could just be personal taste? Personally, I've seen complex and even well done games I didn't like simply because it was not to my personal taste. Look at Volourn, clearly hard to please on all counts: mechanics, story, writing, etc. But, there's nothing really wrong with that. If you're going to invest a lot of your time in something, why not do with something you really like? I'm still waiting for a 4x game as good as Master of Orion 2, and it has been nearly 20 years since that was released. Personally, I'm not saying let's ditch console development, or stop making casual focused games, just that it would be nice to see something further out on the edge. My hope is that development is just in an expensive place at the moment. Perhaps as better tools and engines come out, it will reduce the need to focus on mass appeal. Imagine if a whole new generation of 3D modeling tools came out that allowed game artists to produce models 8x faster.

What I don't understand is why everyone says games that use a type of axonometric projection are dead. D3 used it and sold well, and RPGs have been using that kind of thing all the way back to the first Zelda, etc. Top down, 3rd person, isometric, etc. views are completely doable for console systems. No one playing RTS games seems to think that kind of view is on its way out, but RPG's seem to be focusing more and more on FPS style interfaces. I'd love to see D3's graphics quality and engine smoothness combined with mechanics on the order of KoTR, NWN1, NWN2, etc. Heck, I wouldn't mind if they left out the parts that just really wouldn't work on a console. You can make a game for console and PC where the RPG mechanics aren't reduced to remedial levels.

I don't dislike him per se, but I do think he could have been written a little better. On the note of his interactions with women, I stopped pursuing them in the first game because they were trite and meaningless encounters. How can you sleep with someone who is essentially invisible to you? He didn't know them, at all... Not even at the level of an hours worth of conversation to be had at a bar. How can you jump in bed with someone you in which you have found nothing noteworthy? There has to be something, their eyes, candor, smile, way they speak... He wasn't around any of them long enough to remember their hair color in a lot of cases. They might as well have been an illusion he could hump, or a robot.

Sometimes, and often in the same way a politician might be...

Yeah, wondered about that. Hang on, let me get my updated 2014 contemporary dictionary for words which we don't really understand anymore: "Forum: noun \ˈfȯr-əm\, place where people fight over which opinion is the most common one, and therefore the only relevant one". Hm. Well, crap. Yea, I don't understand that either. I have friends with whom I disagree about a great many things. But, my disagreement does not imply that I think their opinions are invalid or stupid. Any person can put fourth a well-considered argument, and while I may disagree, that doesn't mean I don't see intelligence in their response.

I agree with you in part, but not entirely... Being an open world, or sandbox game, Skyrim is a different kind of RPG. The difference being between that of a story driven character and a character driven story. Classical RPGs were often story driven characters, meaning you participated in a story as the protagonist and made choices from a narrow field about his or her overall destiny. This destiny was usually good or evil, but not always necessarily so. Jade Empire is a good example, you could go Open Palm or Closed Fist, or even stay somewhat neutral, but rather than good vs evil it appeared to be more along the lines of careful contemplation vs decisive action. Something to note is that this type of game usually follows a linear game area progression. You can't go anywhere until you've made choices in the story line that open up the associated areas. Skyrim is an example of a character driven story. You choose from a wide range of options regarding story lines, including the choice to not participate at all. Like all TES games, you start as a prisoner, which allows you as the player to define your own backstory: Were you wrongly accused? Were you a convicted fugitive hell bent on escape and continuing your criminal path, or are you perhaps looking for redemption? TES games allow you to choose the destiny of protagonist, or villain, in many more ways. You essentially write the story with the actions you take. Most of the story lines are self-contained, meaning you can choose to do them or not. (There are some issues with that, I'll mention later.) You can even choose to partially complete them. Don't like the Stormcloaks or Imperials? You can opt to stay out of it and setup a peace treaty, which I thought was well done, but not done for nearly enough of the quest lines that exist. Heck, you don't even ever need to find out your dragonborn if you stay away from the starting hooks. All that said, Skyrim is far from perfect. I see it as a game that could have been 3x as good with a little more care placed into the mechanics, AI, as well as other things. Elimination of Classes: A lot of people herald this as a good thing. But, I'll give you one really good, and defining reason it is not. In order to reach maximum level, in the vanilla game, you must level all skills to 100. Not only that, you're not likely to get more than about 50 or so perks unless you branch out and start leveling skills you A: don't care about, and B: never intend to actually use. Skyrim has turned leveling into a chore onto itself. In order to reach level cap a barbarian must practice pickpocketing, not just a little, but a whole damn lot. And, because of the mechanics involved in it, the only sane way to level pickpocket as a non-thief is to save-scrub like mad. Skyrim has you leveling skills completely unrelated to the character you're playing for the sake of your character being able to progress. That is a bad thing, and I don't care what justification anyone else makes for the sake of a more "organic" character. Removal of Notoriety: I personally believe that this created issues on multiple levels. And, while I cannot prove what I am about to write, I consider it to be the most plausible of the possibilities that exist. During development... First, someone thought removing notoriety was a good idea and it was given the green light. (Possibly to save money on voice acting.) Later, during play testing it was discovered that this made the world feel very static, as if the players actions within it are largely unknown. As a result, other types of NPC reactions were created to lessen the static feeling, but their design and execution was so bad that they became the brunt of many jokes. That's right... I believe something character-driven and meaningful was replaced by something arbitrary and annoying. I have a friend who cannot play Skyrim without a mod that prevents NPCs from speaking unless you actually touch them and I completely understand why... This decision is the jar-jar binks of The Elder Scrolls series: solid function replaced by stupidity. Bethesda, please stop this with Skyrim, it sucks and makes the game feel terribly shallow. No Exclusivity in Guilds & Leadership: Mary Sue to the rescue! Way to make us dislike our own characters Bethesda. While I can see being a member of the Dark Brotherhood and any other guild, as The Brotherhood is fairly secretive. (Ill-considered guard commentary aside.) Being in more than two guilds feels wrong, being the leader of more than one feels downright fake. At the very least, where's the option to pass on leadership and allow the next in line to take the helm? Bad design, period. I could go on quite a bit further: Quests forced on people and the lack of ability to fail... at anything. Locking word-walls behind guild membership, whosoever idea this was: you're an ass. But, I'll stop and say, in spite of all this Skyrim is a good game, it's just not a great one. The freedom and ability to choose your own path that are iconic to the series are thankfully unmolested in Skyrim. Note: Sandbox to me means "free form" not "legos or erector set" as it has come to be known with the advent of more recent games like Minecraft.

I'm about to start Dreamfall Chapters, I'm a backer, but wanted to wait for at least 2 episodes to be released before starting it.

If you're using Windows 7+ then you need to install DX9 for Windows 7, as it does not come with version 9 out of the box. Some people don't run into the issue if they use the Steam platform because a lot of older games prompt Steam to install it when their game launches the first time.

Hooks? Do a google image search for "hook suspension" and have a look. Just be aware that it's not for the squeamish.

I'm talking about the KIND of action. If you'd like to read Gizmo's post on the first page (#17) ...that would explain exactly what I'm talking about, pretty much. Story[--------]s gonna story[--------] Volly, you know that. And I love me some RPGs like Planescape, Bloodlines, Betrayal at Krondor, Fallout 1/2/NV....but story is NOT the be all end all when it comes to RPGs, as it's a pretty short list of ones that can stand up on that aspect alone. Story[--------]? You homophobic or something? What's next, you high-fiveing people on the forums and exclaiming "Nohomo!"

Edit: Sorry, don't know how that double-posted.

Did you play M&M Book 2 - Gates to Another World? Great story, well... except the ending was about being more of a unique puzzle than having to do with the story itself. By GB, do you mean Gold Box? Pool of Radiance, Champions of Krynn, Eye of the Beholder, etc.? You do realize that Pool of Radiance is the game that brought attention to places like Neverwinter, right? Also, some narratives are told through gameplay... It's an element that is always there in one way or another unless... it's just a bunch of arena style encounters in the same room with no dialogue at all.

Did you notice that your description also describes the differences between a FPS and RPG. I think that's my more or less what I am trying to explain. The guy in the videos plays TESV like he's in a First-Person-Shooter. That's not to say I don't like the first-person point-of-view in an RPG, that's fine, and has been around for a long time. But when the mechanics are watered down with each new generation to the point of... Well, TES doesn't have classes anymore. There's also no faction animosity or exclusivity, beyond the trite Stormcloaks/Imperial disagreement. And the Blades vs Greybeards "choice" is so obviously a poorly constructed contention story that it's nonsensical in its presentation. Think about that for a moment... Esbern and Delphine went to a great deal of trouble to track you down and then decide they won't have anything else to do with you unless you kill a dragon that warred against their organization more than five millennia in the past. And, he has since done thousands of years of penance for it. That part of the Skyrim story approaches SW prequel levels of not making any sense. All that said, the protagonist of Skyrim ends up a turning into a Mary Sue: Harbinger, Master Thief, Arch-Mage, Dragonborn, Chief Assassin. In short, there are no interesting hard choices to be made in Skyrim. What I'm asking is the genre destined to continue to lose depth and complexity to the point at which just about any RPG made will play like Hexen/Heretic? Because, then I'd be forced to stop buying games all together.

So basically you made a thread out of what should have been a YT comment? Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure what you hoped to accomplish, though I might be missing some context. Is that account some sort of gaming big shot whose opinion really matters or something? [Looks Around] This is called a forum, is it not? Seriously, did I miss something between the 90's and today? Forums, thoughts, discussions, etc. As for my opinions: They're mine, and they're opinions. They of course matter to me but... No one else is required to: acknowledge, ratify, agree with, exalt, deny, show disdain for, get flippant about, explain their position, etc. with regards to them, unless they actually want to have a discussion on a forum.

By story, I think she meant "narrative". That can be told a multitude of ways including things like mechanics and atmosphere. Example: Part of the original Diablo's story about the invading horrors was told through the seemingly never ending onslaught of enemies coming at you on each level.

Oh, I think I may have been misunderstood... He flies through stuff so blindingly fast that I really don't know what it is he gets out of playing. And, that could be perhaps nothing, other than his audience. I like Skyrim, and play it a lot. I love open world... But I wish the reviewers had taken off more score for some of it's problems: balance, mechanics, AI, lack of interactivity in dialogue. Though I know that's a mixed bag because studios apparently earn bonuses on score. Well, even if they didn't lower the score, I'd have liked to see a "these things are less than ideal" section. I'm still at a loss on how much of the issues the game has can be directly attributed to it being multiplatform and thus the core engine being tailored around the lowest common denominator: that disgusting piece of theorycrafted dogdoo called the Playstation 3.

Relatively speaking of course. A lot of I've seen over the last 5-7 years has, in my opinion, just been getting worse and worse. I've read lots of theories, like "graphics & voice acting eat up most of the development funds," etc. But, I've had to ask myself why I've not seen more complaints about the quality of the quests, mechanics, gameplay, etc. This has got to be one of the reasons... This is what is playing RPGs these days. http://youtu.be/zQB6ebDnXuY Seriously, go back to FPS... Watching those made me realize I was seeing something made by the Sofa King.

I hated them and Jedi/Sith is a quasi-religious-psionic system of belief and practice that is part of a fictional universe, not something I personally believe in or that I'd put down on a census. I had no expectation beyond that of more Star Wars of the same quality that was previously made. I mean, it would be silly to expect The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books to be of the same quality that The Hobbit was, right? I went to see The Phantom Joke with three of my friends, I was 25 at the time. None of us said a word coming out of the theater, I think due to shock. When we got in my car I was the first to break the silence with, "What the f___ did we just watch?!" There we lots of sighs followed by, "I'm not sure." I do remember this: I had to stop at a gas station because I needed ADVIL. Rare it is that I watch something that is so bad that actually gives me a headache, but Episode I did just that. I waited for reviews and declined to see the second movie at the theater, I didn't see the 3rd until it came out on regular TV. and only about 30% before I was fed up. It might has well have been teletubbies or some such.

Just in case someone might not understand why I said, "with absolutely no foreshadowing." That is because his turn to the dark side needed to be a shocker-in-the-moment in order for it to have any emotional impact on us at all. Foreshadowing isn't necessary because the audience already knows the ultimate outcome: Anakin turns dark. The circumstances of that should have been carefully crafted to alleviate any suspicion of exactly when or how it would happen, while still providing the back-story to make it understandable and believable. My reaction to his turn to the dark side was, "well there it is, finally." When it should have been, "No effing way that just happened! This is it! This is what screws him up so bad!"

Share some love? Edit: The original post I found that on said the cat was experiencing catnip for the first time. LOL Well, actually I double checked and found the youtube the gif was created from. Apparently that's not catnip, it's the butt-scratch reaction, which is even more LOL.

Personally, I love redlettermedia's reviews of the prequels. I think they're spot on and I'll distill all three reviews down to a single paragraph of commentary from the Revenge of the Sith review. All of the other problems those films have aside, the nonsensical story we are told is simply not consistent with the character that was built as Luke's father in the first three films. Episode I can be summarized as: Political crap no one cares about. A young Obi-wan who was not what we expected. Another Jedi who almost turned out to be an interesting character, if only the story had been written in such a way to allow that. The less said about the Roger Rabbit knock-off the better. And finally, a child character that is so completely unbelievable as to make me just dislike him at every opportunity. In fact, I do not recall feeling even the slightest sympathy for that character at any point during the movie. Episode II: The backdrop is a war that makes no sense at all. The leading man a young, insolent and rebellious Jedi who apparently has as little control over his own impulsive behavior as he does his own hormones. How this punk managed to control the force when his own child failed again and again with as little as a bit of self-doubt is beyond my comprehension, or perhaps it is just nonsensical. A love story that is so hammy that it not only approaches, but achieves a completely unexpected level of comedy. Not only is it a forbidden love, but all of the leading lady's objections are, well... again nonsensical. If I didn't know otherwise, I would swear this script was written by a 12 year old. Romeo and Juliette, eat your heart out. Episode III: Oh look, the ornery, impudent and obnoxious child finally gives in, but not to become a Sith. No, instead he turns downright Charles Manson, and it was every bit expected. Not because of the lore established in the first three movies, but because he was written as a ticking time bomb the whole way through. So much for the wisdom of the Jedi, personally I can't imagine anyone on the Jedi Council not having threatened to leave the order half way through Episode II due to his continued presence. But, I guess wisdom is only revealed in hindsight in Lucas' world. If Anakin had been written true to the character laid out in episodes 4-6, then Episode III could have been one of the most well written tragedies ever to fall on the silver screen. Clearly the audience knew what Anakin was destined to become. But, that does not mean that it could not have been written much, so much, better than it was. If this character had been endeared to all of us through the prequels and then the circumstances of his turn presented as a complete shocker with absolutely no foreshadowing, the moment would have been a real tear-jerker and these movies long remembered. Instead, we got hastily written trash that is sadly all Lucas is likely to be remembered for in a hundred years. Can Disney & JJ do better? I don't see why not, as I don't think it is possible for it to be done worse. If Episodes I-III were not rock bottom, I'd be very surprised.

Some kind of visible action queue.

No apology necessary. I have ADHD you see... Not as in I'm a little scatter brained and think that's the case. More along the lines of exact same diagnosis across multiple professionals across decades. We spend our entire lives learning that we worded something poorly in retrospect and, unfortunately, the very nature of this beast prevents us from proactively preventing such things. Things often come out... so badly that it's unnerving looking back. Can't tell you the number of times I've said something and they've looked up and asked, "Asperger's?" Because they were perceptive enough to see that my expression didn't match the harsh sound of what I just delivered. On top of that, I grew up in Chicago, where casual speech is loaded with sarcasm and jokes often ride the fine edge of good taste. Someone saying, "while you're down there..." as you lean down to pick something up is just about expected.