Ffordesoon

300 was a comic book movie; not a historical one. You wouldn't go to see Captain America for an accurate portrayal of WW2; why expect that from 300? I'm not taking a side when I say this, because I haven't actually seen 300, nor do I care to. Also, I have very mixed feelings about film adaptations of historical events in general, especially when the portrayal of the events being adapted is itself filled with errors both accidental and deliberate. So I'm not saying "300 bad, Captain America good" or anything. But I believe the flaw in your argument there is that Captain America does not purport to be a true story in any sense. 300 does. So there is a reasonable expectation on the viewer's part of some historical accuracy, even if artistic license has been taken. Whereas I don't think anyone of reasonable intelligence would assume the real World War II was won when Captain America defeated the Red Skull.

@JFSOCC: I don't know why Serious Sam is on your list. Say what you will about the gameplay, but the graphics were mainly impressive at the time because of the game's meager origins, not because they were Far Cry or Crysis-level good. @TrashMan: The three mainline Far Cry games are all great, and they are all insufferably annoying in astonishingly different ways. I haven't beaten any of them, but I had a fantastic time not beating all of them. Crysis was a confused mess of a game that took the original Far Cry and layered a bunch of tedious cruft over it. It was a very fun game at times, but the overwhelming sense I get from my memories of the game is one of pure boredom. And to say the story was predictable is an insult to predictable stories everywhere. Most of the time, when I call a story "predictable," I mean its broad strokes are predictable. Crysis was predictable almost line by line. Oh, and it's ugly. Its commitment to photorealism is so total that it forgets to actually have coherent art direction beyond simple visual noise. It's the prettiest ugly game I've ever played, but it's ugly. Never played Crysis Warhead, but I hear it was better. Crysis 2 was a better, more focused game than Crysis, with a better story. The story was still complete garbage, of course, but it was at least vaguely interesting garbage. They also fixed the overbalancing the first game was plagued with, giving you just enough time with your suit's powers to feel powerful. Haven't played Crysis 3, and don't care to. It looks beautiful and achingly dull. The best game in the whole "Cry" line of games is Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Because it strips away all the useless cruft that plagued Far Cry 3 (which had the best gameplay of the series despite its many narrative flaws and aggravating mechanics), gives you all the guns and the keys to robo-Michael Biehn, and says "Go nuts!" It's not serious, and it's not trying to be serious. It is proudly dumb as a sack of hammers. When combined with the base mechanics of Far Cry 3 and the reduced length, the result is a concatenation of most of the best parts of the other games in the series with all the bad parts removed. And it has NES cutscenes, and all the ridiculous macho swagger and gleeful stupidity of every single dumb VHS action movie ever plus every dumb Eighties cartoon ever, and the main character's name is Sergeant Rex Power Colt. It is beautiful. You are, of course, free to disagree.

Word. Torment's got the same problem.

Just gonna leave this here: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/boob-plate-armor-would-kill-you

It's worth noting that an unarmored monk is still presumably taking the damage any character with no armor would take. It's just that a monk who uses his or her Wound slots efficiently will always take (let's say) half of the damage. Once the Wound slots fill up, they're like any other unarmored chump. And half the damage to an unarmored character is probably like three quarters of the damage a lightly armored character would take, so while it's a noticeable damage reduction, it isn't an insane damage reduction. A monk who wears armor will get less of a damage reduction because they'll have less Wounds to spend, but armor that's good enough will still ultimately provide more of a damage reduction than not wearing any armor. So it's really a tradeoff; it's just not a tradeoff that could murder a Level 1 player in one hit for no reason. Also, we might not be able to "store" Wounds from fight to fight, thus creating an incentive to, you know, "smoke 'em if you got 'em."

Wuxia isn't fantasy? Why? Because it's not our fantasy?

D&D monks or GTFO, then? That's what it sounds like you're saying. Personally, I think it sounds cool.

Oops. You meant atmosphere. That'll teach me not to read the OP before I post. The atmosphere I'd like to see is a mix of the three, but I do agree that the Icewind Dale games are lovely concoctions in terms of atmosphere. Not too out there, but not too safe, either. This is going to sound weird, because this game isn't particularly well-regarded even by Obsidian fans, but I'd like to see PE mark a return to Dungeon Siege 3 in terms of tone and atmosphere. It wasn't a great game, but that's mainly due to the ARPG structure at the heart of the systems. A lot of the "fluff" bits deserved to be in a better game, because they really were very intriguing.

Gameplay-wise? Icewind Dale. Story and choice-wise? PST. Exploration and tone-wise? Baldur's Gate. I doubt most people here would say otherwise.

This is false. That's all I have to say. Turkey sandwiches are delicious. That's all I have to say.

@TrashMan: So you're just being obstinate about this stuff for the sake of it? That's literally your whole reason for provoking people into arguments? That's your reason for turning multiple threads into frustrating debates over pointless minutiae? That's your reason for telling people their arguments are "crap" and "ludicrous" and "stupid?" Because you can? I dunno, man. That seems spectacularly uncool to me, and kind of trollish.

@TrashMan: You continue to puzzle me. If you don't care how PE does things, and you aren't bothered by visually heterogeneous characters, then why are you arguing in the first place? And why do you think I'm questioning your "appreciation of the female form?" I'm a fan of it, myself. What's your point? Where does that enter into this discussion at all?

@AGX: Fair point. I deliberately didn't go into details in that post for the sake of brevity, but it is true that unlimited time and money would ameliorate the issue. Personally, though, I think the current writing and recording process for voiced games is absurdly hostile to any game that isn't strictly linear, and RPGs especially. It's also detrimental to the quality of the writing in all games.

I agree, actually. The fact that all of the romanceable characters are after me and me alone is always tremendously grating. I feel like I'm letting them down if I don't pursue a romance, which then turns spending time with characters organically into a tedious game of "Who do I want to be the happiest?" At least actual dating sims have characters with lives outside of you. This was one of the things that Dragon Age 2 got right (well, for Dragon Age 2, anyway). The romance between Aveline and Donnic, while presented as a very obvious "Okay, how can we get the player to watch this NPC fall in love with another NPC without doing it in a cutscene?" trick, was at least an attempt to give Aveline a life outside of your character. I also loved that you could try and fail to romance her. There should be more of that, no matter what the lunatics on Bioware Social say. I'd also like to see stats tie into romance. Everyone has a "type" they're into in real life, but no matter what your stats are in a game with romance, you just have to pick the right dialogue options and you're golden. I'd rather see a game where your low-INT character can't please a girl who's into intelligent guys, but a high-INT character would have a chance. That's overly prescriptive, of course, but at least it isn't as creepily unreal as roleplaying a pheromone-emitting man-god. EDIT: Oh, and I think more games should take after the Persona series and let you advance your interactions with a certain character to the maximum level without forcing you to romance them.

I don't think that, though. I can see merit in both your arguments and Lephys'. In fact, as far as female breastplates are concerned, we're on the same side. I simply can't see any gameplay benefit to making characters look identical, whereas I can see plenty from being able to distinguish them from one another by whatever means is required - tabards, armor, portraits, what-the-eff-ever. That's also my aesthetic preference, it's true, but I literally do not understand why you feel that making all the characters look identical has any gameplay benefits at all. It seems solely to be an aesthetic benefit. I, at least, am willing to change my mind, but you first have to make it clear how your aesthetic preference would help the game in a meaningful way. By the way, you're actually wrong about the Xenonauts characters on three counts. First off, they can be customized, just as the characters in X-Com (not XCOM) could be customized. You can name them. As a player, I don't give a crap about Joe Schmoe on anything more than a tactical level, but I care deeply about the soldier I named after my dad. Secondly, if I recall correctly, character customization of some type was a stretch goal during the Xenonauts Kickstarter campaign, and many backers pledged based solely on that information. That suggests to me that this is a feature people want. My memory could easily be failing me, however. Thirdly, the most profound emotional reactions to any X-Com game I've ever heard about are the reactions to the deaths of characters in the new Firaxis game, precisely because you could sink a whole lot of time into customizing those characters. I'm not saying every decision they made in that game was a good one, but it's inarguable that the customization has been a very successful tool in getting players to invest in their characters. Are there other ways to do that? Sure. I'm not saying every game should be like that, but I am saying that mechanic served its purpose well. That's the question, really: how does the implementation of your aesthetic preference serve PE as a whole? I understand how it serves you, but that's not a compelling argument for the inclusion of a given feature in a game that over 55,000 people have already purchased on the expectation that it will satisfy their gaming needs. If I'm a dev assigned to PE, and one guy says he wants something in the game, I need to weigh that request against what I believe the majority of the backers will ultimately want in the game. In fact, let's perform a little thought experiment: say I am a dev, and that I believe most people will ultimately want to be able to differentiate between their characters. Let's assume that both options are mutually exclusive. What would you say to me to sell me on implementing your preferred style of armor?

@TrashMan: Would you say your philosophy is pretty much, "As long as I'm happy, everyone else can sit on it?" Because that's how it comes across most of the time.

@Solstis: Well, that was my reaction. If you liked it, good for you! :D

I'm pretty sure anyone who writes travel guides for a living would disagree. Funny thing is, I do agree with your basic point. I find both sides of the argument meritorious, but I personally tend to enjoy walking through a seamless city a bit more than one where I'm constantly being confronted with loading screens, even if the city feels smaller than a real city. It's always going to feel smaller, after all. Skyrim's cities didn't bother me, though I can see why they bothered a lot of people. I took them as abstractions; other people didn't. Both reactions are valid. EDIT: Misread, sorry.

For what it's worth, I am always vaguely annoyed by talk of "immersion." It's not that I don't think it's a real thing; I just find it so tediously subjective that it's not a useful thing to ask for. You might as well ask for "fun" or "emotions." I also think way too much value is placed on it. One time, I heard some dummy on Kotaku say that he was glad "turn-based combat" (by which he meant the menu-based combat in JRPGs) was "dead," because "nothing kill[ed his] immersion like walking up to an enemy and seeing a bunch of menus pop up." That made me so unreasonably angry that I almost signed up for a Kotaku account just to tell him off. I didn't, of course, because it's Kotaku. But man, did I want to. It wasn't that he didn't like turn-based combat; that's fair enough. My issue was his attempt to justify it by saying "immersion!" Like it was some hard truth that everyone hated menus. The point of my anecdote is this: you can argue that any vaguely game-y abstraction is an immersion-breaker, because all it means is that it takes you out of the game. However, I can see how it's become more of a concern for people as graphics have gotten more realistic. It's a less obvious consequence of the Uncanny Valley effect; as graphics inch closer to photorealism, we notice the abridgments of logic games often employ more easily. The problem with Skyrim's cities is not that they don't make perfect sense as cities; no fictional city does, especially not the ones in games. The problem is that our brains aren't processing the cities as abstractions of cities anymore. The graphics are realistic enough that we look at them and only see what's there, but what's there is inevitably absurd. It has to be; real city planners don't have to create reasonably convincing simulacra of people who walk around in their cities and say stuff and do stuff and look reasonably convincing and have unique voiced lines and blah, nor do they have to plan around one actual person who will come to the numerous cities full of simulacra and interact with them meaningfully. All of which is to say that it's a very difficult problem to solve, and certainly won't be solved to Amarok's satisfaction anytime soon. ...I feel like I had some larger point when I started this ramble. Oh, well.

The option to turn off character barks. I like hearing them a few times, but there is nothing - nothing - more annoying than hearing the same bark over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Seriously, it could be the greatest line in the history of lines. It's still going to get irritating. Especially if the character says something every time you tell them to move, Warcraft-style. The worst thing about Planescape for me, bar none, is that the characters will. not. stop. talking. Same thing with the other IE games, of course, but the protagonist having a voice makes it so much worse. A related complaint, and three related suggestions: • Is there anyone who likes hearing those dumb canned battle barks? If they only happened once every couple of hours, I could maybe see it, but they are constant. It's like an Avengers team composed entirely of Deadpools. It is so irritating to me. Especially that Imoen-style "Tee hee, I like to say cute things that show how adorably naïve I am in the middle of murdering things!" bark. Uuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhh. But someone must like these things, right? Otherwise, why are they in the games? • Don't give us a single universal on/off switch, but multiple specific sliders that can adjust the frequency of different types of barks. I don't want barks for every movement, but I'd hate to miss an exchange between two companions. • If you're going to do a bunch of potential battle barks for the PC, I'd be much happier if they were just grunts and groans, Monster Hunter-style. All the "Let me help you BLEED!" voices from NWN2 just made me choose to have no voice (which was a nice thing you should include in this games as well). I'm not exactly keen on playing as Cobra Commander. ...That's a lie, I totally am. But in a game about being Cobra Commander, not a fantasy RPG. • The option to import our own barks would open up a lot of fun and funny possibilities.

Cool is different from sexy, but I suppose I take your point.

What, they want to look sexy for the orcs they're murdering? Give me a break. That said, the idea of a character whose power in battle is directly proportionate to how sexy she (or he!) thinks she looks is kind of awesome.

Well... (I know, but I had to. )

Combat. No, seriously. It sounds weird, but how many classic cRPGs can you name that have combat you actually look forward to? And that you didn't get bored with before the end of the game? Fallout's combat was fun occasionally, but more often tedious (though that depended on your build, admittedly). The IE games were generally hamstrung by their combat mechanics and the awkward pairing of RTwP with sprites that didn't have nearly enough animations for the amount of states they were supposed to convey. Most other D&D-based games after, like, the Gold Box ones had a similar problem. Arcanum is more or less rendered unplayable by the combat. The KOTOR games are at the mercenary whims of the D20 system. Ultima's combat is just kind of there. Deus Ex had fun combat by the end of the game, and it had a ton of options, but there's a very good reason most people try to stealth their way through. Morrowind's combat had the worst visual feedback of any cRPG. System Shock 2 had a similar problem to Deus Ex. The first Witcher game's combat wasn't vaguely passable until, like, Act 4. Bloodlines had the Deus Ex problem, but way worse, seeing as how it was never properly finished. I could keep going. And the sad thing is, the ones that get combat right tend to be a bit crap at most other things. ToEE, for example.

In a good way or a bad way? There's a good way?