majestic

I guess the new Kickstarter update means that the (first) PoE expansion is going to be announced June 17th.

Oy, time to pull out the analyst hat! *dons* Zwiebelchen is the diminutive form of Zwiebel - which is the German word for onion. Proper article handling in the posted sentences also suggests no native language rooted in the slavic group of languages. Sentence structure on the other hand also pretty much rules out romance languages but rather a germanic one and combine all that with a somewhat excessive, but proper(,) use of commas. Conclusion: Most likely German, so no pitch accent (at least for standard or "high" German, dialects are another matter), just no sense of humor sprinkled with some bluntness. Plus Zwiebelchen posted about being German in the past so there's that. *shrug* I'm kidding with the last part lest I'm being accused of being discrepectful for using national stereotypes. Really. I promise. Honest!

if one genuine wishes to shiver... in the low-res videos, fabio kinda looks like weird al, so first time we saw this we thought it were a yankovic parody o' something we were unfamiliar with. regardless, the clip is great and terrible at the same time, much like so many christopher lee movies. HA! Good Fun! Christopher Lee was probably the only person still alive that could make even the cheesiest Rhapsody songs awesome. I had Magic of the Wizard's Dream stuck in my head the entire day after reading about his death. However, for anyone who thinks him talking in the black speech of Mordor is scary just listen to him sing Magic of a Wizard's Dream in German. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpTEfEM-hc

I do agree with you regarding the dialogues. Personally I like voice acting if it is good and doesn't interfere too much with the dialogue (or rather the writing thereof), whether it is fully voiced like DA:O or only partially like PoE or Baldur's Gate. On the other hand Bioware's specialty are hero-saves-the-nation/world/planet/galaxy games, they have always been like that, and they moved towards a more cinematic display of these stories even before they were acquired by EA. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Bio has created a bunch of hits and a bunch of misses in terms of plot quality, but they almost always were told really well and set in excellently crafted settings. Sometimes the telling of the barest thread of a storyline is so great that you almost don't notice it. Like Mass Effect 2, which is essentially DA:O in space (just without the gathering the army part, that was rehashed in the third one).

Not to mention the originals actually getting an overhaul to run a little better on modern PCs. Not sure I'd call EA fine, upstanding fellows though, even with their agreement to let backers have them for free. I guess inXile will pay for the overhaul and EA gets to sell them through Origin later on.

That dumb wheel never gave a good indication of what your char says. That was a problem from the get got when they came up with it and my biggest reason why i don´t like it. It´s even worse in the Mass Effect series but Bioware seems to love it. Though, i guess i´m lucky that the translation team did a good job on that and it´s not that missleading as in english (which i also played...for like...2 hours..) The dialogue wheel is the logical consequence of fully voiced player characters. How interesting would it be to have your character just repeat the very same sentence you just picked out of the available dialogue options?

He can't. Just like every other computer science major who happend upon the forums in the past 15 years and complained about silly things not being fixed or parts missing that would have been oh so easy to create and would have made the game that much better. Being able to fix up some minor java program for your programming course at university simply gives one no perspective on how working a complex project really is and how easily a line of code is added and several seemingly unrelated modules broken in the weirdest way imaginable. It's the lack of experience talking, doubly so when someone prefaces his post by listing his qualifications and actually lists currently studying computer science as a reason why what follows is a profund analysis and everyone better heed the conclusions. To quote the ever awesome Tywin Lannister: But the poster's been called out on it repeatedly and has apparently left the thread almost two months ago, kept alive only by good-natured fun and some trolling by even more obnoxious characters.

That is a little too simplified. We don't know enough to draw a conclusion like that, all we know is what he posted on FB and twitter - a sudden opening, a growing idea and him not being able to say anything yet. There's a number of reason why he could have left Obsidian and accepted a position at another development studio, be it a problem with the general direction (like the oft cited Amored Warfare F2P thingie), personal issues or simply not wanting to have a managerial position any more where his duties to his company interferes with what he wants to do - be creative and develop games, as opposed to being a glorified PR figure and living Kickstarter stretch goal. Or he wants to do something else completely, like travelling trough India for a while and seeking enlightenment. Stranger things have happened.

What I hated the most were those moments when you think you're back in the 80ies playing a game that aggrevates you on purpose. More doors than keys? Opening exactly the right ones to get the quest solution that is the most work, while being probably the WORST way you could pick when you look over the possible endings? Feeling the constant pressure of declining court approval that makes you run around like a headless chicken while looking everywhere for silly coings to fix the approval back up, only to realize you really wouldn't have needed them anyway? On the bright side, on any replays you could really just rush through, don't bother saving Celine and do away with the silly elf. Best ending on a silver platter and it's absolutely no work at all.

Kidnapped by aliens so they could steal his game design secrets, managed to escape but decided to go back to the aliens because they have more advanced technology and a better medical plan. On a serious note, I think the most popular theories right now are: a) Going to InXile b) Going to Bethesda c) Burnt out and taking a break from game development I don't think it is the burn out. He could simply state that he's taking a break, why the secrecy ("can't say yet", "ideas keep growing") if it isn't at least something related to game development. Well unless he really made a pact with aliens and will be the first human ever to fully develop a working perpetuum mobile.

Well he got cookies from Bioware, so he joined the Dark Side and will be developing mobile f2p games. Stay tuned for Dragon Age: Mobile and... wait. There WAS a Mass Effect mobile phone game so I'd better stop talking. Blech. =(

HULK SMASH!

Well, the Frostback Basin is by far the hardest regular area in the game. Actually, if you play on Normal difficulty I'd say even some boss fights are way easier than just the Basin (not the ruins) alone, especially those rifts can be a real pain in the backside. I'd say be as high as you possibly can get before going there, but if you're slightly masochistic you might have fun with less...

Should have clarified that. Every non-sport game is going to run Frostbite in the future, as per EA's announcement. So Frostbite becoming so popular is not only because the engine is good, but because EA actively tells their divisions to use it. Now if they're really going to Frostbite the next Sims installment, who knows? Fact is, we're going to see a lot more Frostbite and a lot less everything else that EA needs to fork over royalties for - hence ME4 going to use Frostbite instead of Unreal. The rest was pure speculation on the technical shortcomings of DA:I, not all of which are related to shoddy console porting. The entire game feels like a first installment with all the associated problems and shortcomings, or at least I'm hoping that was the case. I want my next Dragon Age to be something else than Skyrim with Darkspawn and Templars. Beh.

As for the discussion of how DA:I failed to find its own style, that's partly EA's fault. I posted it before but I'll post it again - EA decided to force ALL their divisions to use the Frostbite engine to create cross-division talent synergies (I get how that makes sense from EA's POV). Which also means that Mass Effect 4 will use Frostbite rather than Unreal. While I have no idea how much developtment went into DA:I before this engine switch came along, however, if it was in the middle of the process that might just explain a good bunch of the games engine-related shortcomings, the controls among them (not the 8 abilities limit but the unresponsiveness). So that out of the way I seem to be the only one who liked the main plot and it's massive implications on established Thedas lore, and besides you get to be the first ones since ancient Tevinter to walk through the fade in person. How's that not awesome? Solas' comments alone had me nerd-discussing things for hours upon hours. My main gripe would be that the storyline isn't very long and less verbose than I would have liked, but hey, it has Origins beat by a mile. Mostly because Origins had no plot what-so-ever (like ME2). I wonder if all the pointless filler content went into the game because the main plot was so short or if the main plot became so short because they ran out of time creating all the pointless filler content. I wished more areas were like Emprise du Lion. That didn't feel pointless, it was still fairly large but focused on a goal with tangible relations to Corypheus' plans. Unlike, say, silly Storm Coast.

I'm sure there's an anal-rentitive OCD anonymous group somewhere who would really like them to tell you their story, it's just that we certainly don't want to, in case that you missed the result of your poll entirely.

If you want them to be less annoying look for a little help online. YouTube is full of videos explaining how to kill them high dragons in 10 seconds or less. On nightmare.

System Shock 2 is 85% off currently. If you haven't played it yet, NOW is the time to get it. Respect the will of the many. Glory to the flesh. Glory to the mass.

Whatever they have planned I sure hope it isn't like combat in Anachronox.

Seems like that is what Bioware copied when they made DA:I's "tactical" mode.

Not only for them, their families stand to profit enormously as well, and they don't even need semi-well paying jobs for that. We had an indian colleague working a menial warehouse job and he sent every last unused cent back home. Every now and then he'd go back on vacation and come back showing pictures of his home and family. Yeah. Said home is a large, beautiful mansion on a huge estate, nice gardens and a really awesome pool. On the wage of a warehouse guy pushing boxes all day.

I bet all those pinko-commie leftist garbage people here will come to complain soon.

I especially liked the comment on how poorly her post was written and that Bethesda would never hire poor writers.

I was more thinking Shub-Niggurath but it could be any one of them - or worse, ALL of them.

I'd also want more and, well, more current games on GOG but only if they don't lose focus on their actual job: Getting the good old stuff to work with no DRM strings attached. Call me paranoid but there is something dark lurking in the deep recesses of Galaxy, patiently biding its time, poised to strike. Wouldn't be the first major disappointment though, there's a reason why I so stubbornly refuse to use Steam for anything after Valve began to mutate into the scary behemoth it is today.