ShadowPaladin V1.0

Never played it. Do you mean that each action has it's own "time cost" ? For example a fireball spell taking 3 real seconds to complete rather than to cram everything into 6 second turns or the like ?

Again entirely subjective. If you dont think and plan in real time game you die. You just think and plan faster. Less to do with reactions than you might think . Diablo dosnt take much in the way of reactions, but it does take competant skill seclection for the situation at hand. Which is the most succesful genre ? TB wargams or RTS ?

The same is true if the focus is on the turn based combat and not the story. How is it a face ? A combat system that takes priority over the story is the same be it TB or RT. What about TOEE combat was ok but the story and the roleplaying were not. So while your statement may be true in a sense. It applies to all combat not just real time.

Revan was biowares character not Obsidians. Aside from fanfic writers. Writers prefer their own characters rather than to write someone elses. They could still use the Exile, but the characters are just not playable at that sort of level in the same way. And starting them off at level 1 again would just be pathetic. By choosing a canon ending your basically saying nothing you did was important since there will be a fixed outcome anyway. It's also completely weird if a character you played a the incarnation of evil pops up as Jedi. At least by killing off the characters you are treating everyone equally as well as giving them a chance at one last glorious battle. But most important you are removing some of the obstacles that contributed to KOTOR II being "incomplete". Command and Conquer isnt an RPG so attachment isnt there.

Hades tried the same thing. Never works. You cant hide from yourself. What gave it away ? No one else can be arsed to post like that.

The GC had a lot of problems keeping up a steady supply of titles. Most likely I think down to the odd choice of media and it's lack of capacity (something that may well bite MS in the butt a couple of years from now). Nintendo could do some serious damage to both Sony and MS even if they dont "win" simply by pricing the console so low. Nintendo btw dont sell hardware at a loss like the others do (as a rule) if they did they could probably stick revolutions on the market for

Whether or not it worked is debatable. If messing around trying to make everything fit into the KOTOR continuity meant that the droid planet was scrapped and the ending wasnt as good as it should be, then I'd say it definately didnt work. We are approaching this from two different angles I think. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But your looking for your "ideal" KOTORIII ending. Where as I am looking for minimal need to worry about continuity and for maximum focus on the game at hand, not the games and characters that have gone before. Giving the writers and designers a chance to write a story unencumered by the first two games. I think that train of thought is flawed. First off it alienates people new to the series since they dont feel the same connection to those characters. These characters are getting older and older and I for one dont want to see KOTOR XII with any of them. It also means that writers and designers dont get to put their own mark on the series, but rather recycle other peoples work. Look at it like this. KOTOR II had to incorporate continuity from KOTOR which in turn meant less time to focus on KOTOR II in it's own right. Now if you repeat that pattern KOTOR III will have to focus on continuity not only from KOTOR , but also KOTOR II. Which again means even less focus on KOTOR III. If you followed that on , you would end up with a mess of continuity and very little actual game (which is why comic series go through those reinventions every so often). KOTOR III is going to be on a new platform which is the ideal time to cut the strings since it means that you will get more new people playing.

It sounds nice in theory and as a story it would work fine since you would be in control of every outcome. However as a games designer you are not in control of every single outcome so you would have to allow a branch off for every possible eventuality. Especailly if you intend to recycle old NPC's. Even if you take something basic like speech. For every line you gave Revan you would need to record two versions (unless you did a gobledegook voice). Ok dosnt sound too bad, but thats space and time you could be using to for something else. Both Carth and Bastila could be dead (since you could kill them in KOTOR) which again means you need to do that entire sequence again in another way. I'm sure whoever is writing would much rather write their own characters than simply recycle someone elses. Although I think you would probably need T-3 (he's easy anyway) and HK-47 since the are the R2D2 and 3PO of the series.

Dont think so. Came about about 6 months after the Xbox version.

No doubt although I would think they would wait for the next gen machines to saturate in sufficient quantity first.

Yes thats a very good point. Nine times out of ten it's trivial stuff which you already know the outcome of and have already planned a counter for. The only things that will generally throw a spanner in the works is a time limit (which sort of goes against the whole TB thing) or something some extreme chance event. I was playing the Hammer & Sickle demo recently (think I mentioned it earlier) but the tactics havnt really changed since Xcom.

Since Lucas owns the property outright it's always possible from their perspective. Whether or not Obsidian wants to make it or LA wants them to make it is another matter.

I agree with this. Not only that I also think it's important. A young character with no "baggage" and some family (like the saying goes you can choose your friends but not your family). Dosnt have to be their real family of course

Yes. They are only there for closure and to link the old games to the new one (through the dream the new character is having). Both of those things are important I think.

No need to, you had two games to develop them if you played the previous games. If you didnt play the previous games , then there is even less reason to do so since to actually clue someone in the backgrounds would take away from what you could be using in the new story. It's not as lame as just saying they died for two reasons. 1. You get a kick ass battle where you get to toss around high level force powers and abilities. As well as preveiw of the bad guys. 2. Its actually part of the new character (since it's their nightmare) so even if you have no clue who those two were it still has some relevence to you.

Some waiting is inevitable, but in Wiz it was way over the top. My phase would take 30 seconds and theirs would take several minutes. But your more than likely at the crux of why games went real time. Or at least RWP (real time with pause).

Not asking me to write the entire plot are you ? It dosnt really matter if the dream happens when they die, or if the dream is prophetic really. It's only there for closure purposes. You could take the plot in many directions from that. Your character could be a sensitive with particularly strong precognative powers and be the only one aware of the threat. He/she would then have to convince others. If you wanted to get totally whacky your character could be a clone created from the DNA of Revan and the Exile in order to create the "perfect Jedi" as a weapon to fight the Sith. Of course your character would be blisfully unaware of that for most of the game and may not be overly thrilled when they find out. As far as design goes you need a few things. 1. A character that belongs to the player (with a few designer implanted story hooks) The amnesiac , or even partially amnesiac Jedi isnt going to fly this time since no one is going to be in the least bit suprised.(not like I was anyway in KOTOR but thats another story). 2. The freedom for that character to explore both dark and light possibilies but at the same time not having to write two entirely different stories. Choices that may appear good, but have an undesired outcome in the future. Or a short term evil that leads to a long term good. It should not simply be about clicking the DS or LS response like Pavlovs dog. 3. An ending where the actions of the character through out the game are summed up. I'm much more in favour of a Fallout type ending where your actions are judged on a more local level in addition to an overall "galactic" cinematic.

With the exception of the early ones and X FF was never turn based. The clock ticks along whether or not you act so if you dont act you die. What does happen if if you open a menu the clock will stop so you dont have to rush your menu selections. Although thats otional too you can have the clock carry on while your in the menus. Makes the game a lot harder especialy when your trying to time something intricate.

It's not really a desire to rush. It's a desire to actually be playing and not watching. When it's story thats a different matter , but when its gameplay I want to play the game and not be watching it.

Dying is the only way you can have them both in the game and out of the game (if that makes sense) Yes lots of Drizzt syndrome going around. Although I thought the origin books were excellent . After he became the uber shadow of death he became very boring to anyone who wasnt a teen.

No not like in II. No playing 20 questions with the NPCs, that was obviously too complex for some people to comprehend. Choose a head and gender , or an "outfit" I'm sure the developers wouldnt mind sticking them in. Then play your prologue or dream sequence. The dream sequence is basically akin to the helms deep battle only Gandalf wont be showing up to bail them out. These guys are not going to down easy, but they are going down. It also gives you a sense of foreshadowing. Getting both of the old characters out of the way gives then a clean slate. Where as in KOTOR II they had to try to piece together possible outcomes from KOTOR. For example LS/DS ,male/female, did Carth live or die etc. Without those burdens you would have got your droid planet and your ending. Which would have added immesurably more to KII dont you think? You could, but then it's still going to fall into the same trap. It's more difficult with the Exile too. It was irrelevent for example what alignment Revan was in KOTOR since that wasnt actually Revan just the fake personality. The Exile dosnt have a fake personality he or she has the one the player gave them. Therefore you cant just simply say and the Exile will turn out like this and trying to write in a DS and LS and a male female exile into the story means more messing around with continuity and less story. Leveling up is at the core of any RPG it's not something you eliminate without some serious thought. There are many implications in that , not least of which KOTOR uses a derivative of the D20 rules.

For me it's about two things. 1. Workload - how much do I have to accomplish in a given time. 2. Waiting - how long do I have to wait while the other side does the same thing. Obviously if I have one character with few options lets use SW:BG as an example. Then thats not giving me a great deal I can easily handle that in real time. Now lets say I have a squad of troopers (6) now I could not handle those six in the same time period. Which is why SW:BG gives AI control to your squads. Waiting-Again SW:BG. There are a lot of units active in that game and most of the time your outnumbered by a significant ammount. Therefore you would spend more time waiting around than actually doing anything. For example I read an entire novel in the time it took for enemies to take turns in Wiz 8 both due to a general slowness and an overall poor design which inflicted lots of "allies" on you. Allies in TB games just mean more waiting around. Much like a henchmen would in a game like Fallout. I was playing Battalion Wars earlier today. Despite what people will claim it's quite simliar to Advance Wars in basic principle. Big difference is the learning curve. Took me about half an hour to get comfortable with the controls in real time and another half hour to be able to handle them under the pressure of combat. However having done that the game offers things that AW (it's a good game) could never offer.

Exactly. Sometimes one is the best solution, sometimes the other. A turnbased Bloodlines would've sucked, while a realtime Final Fantasy wouldn't have been fun. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Someones not played FFXII

Lets see if it's clear that neither character is playable ? It is right ? Then it's no better taking someones LS Revan and Exile and twisting them into evil abomonations than it is to kill them off. Turning them into "bosses" throws up all sorts of issues where as killing them off solves them all at a stroke (or two). People really have to understand one thing there Revan wasnt yours , never was. What you were playing was an implanted idea of what you thought he would be. Without a memory that no longer applies. Less so with the Exile, the Exile, would certainly still be playable. Albeit at a ridiculous level. However I'm willing to sacrifice my Exile for the sake a story that dosnt have to try to cobble together two games into a third.

Actually thats good. It was used in early surgery for it's effects although in some cases it left a fully aware patient completely paralyzed but still able to feel the full effects of surgery which could not have been at all pleasent.