Humodour

I agree - I much prefer the old avatars. Seems like the only way is to not install HoW. You could maybe replace the bifs in your override directory but I'm not sure if that'd make the game crash or not (probably not, since there's no dual-wielding?)

Form your point of view as a consumer, you won't even notice it. Most OEMs will ship a browser, and those that don't, you'll just be given a prompt when you first start your computer to chose and download one, taking all of, oh, 1 minute? Such as? Read the thread; I mentioned them in my first post. Volourn, little known fact, but anti-trust laws are actually designed to control monopolies, not punish the successful.

I think the reason DS9 was loved was because it wasn't mainly finding new life and making peace. the Federation got into a war with another group during several of the seasons and showed a more military side to the feds. I don't think Trek would make a very good RPG because you don't exactly have true free agents running around in the TNG era. Well you do but non in the sense of "heavily armed" agents. The standards of RPGs (western and japanese) just don't conform very well to Trek because there is no morality or rag tag group of well meaning adventerurs who save the day... everything is done for the states benefit, so it wouldn't make sense to limit a player about what equipment he could requisition, and you couldn't very well have morality play any form of role because there's only "Us" and "them" really... Agreed, that's another reason I think B5 would be better suited to an RPG. You have lots of "free agents" and mercenaries roaming around. Some sell information or drugs (dust) or weapons. Rangers could fit in the "free agent" category, especially on cover. Even Psi Cops operating similarly. Lita was a "free agent" even on B5 for most of seasons 4 and 5 as a telepath. There's lots of room in that environment to choose factions and play them to suit your character. Plus the tactics and physics are just more realistic. Tech matters, but not so much that it can't be overwhelmed by numbers. Fighters and mixed assault craft actually work and work together. The battles in B5 were always stunning displays, especially in seasons 3 and 4. Yeah, Babylon 5 would be perfect for an RPG.

Well, every enemy is easier to take down from behind than with an assault. Assuming you can get close to them without having them see you, you can perform a takedown and they die. An enemy, especially those with a lot of armor, are going to take a few bullets to the body to take out, but a knife to the throat is an instant kill on any non-boss enemy. I think, in general, a good stealthy player that manages to use his skills well is generally going to have a better chance of surviving overall than a run-n-gunner. Not being seen means not being shot, for the most part. The commando route will lead to taking a lot of damage and getting grenades thrown at you and such, which the commando will be better equipped to deal with, but which can still be deadly. If you focus on stealth, you will die more quickly in a firefight (as you're probably wearing quieter but less protective armor), but you should be able to avoid firefights more often than not. The drawback here is that a stealth playthrough is probably a bit slower than a guns-blazing playthrough, because you're going to be watching enemy patrol routes to sneak past them and moving more slowly in stealth mode overall. But if you want to be a ninja, you have to expect a tradeoff or two. We have a few systems that prevent all the enemies in a level from reacting when a single enemy is alerted to your presence, and our passive/activated abilities and gadgets are going to let you correct some of the mistakes that might be made while you're sneaking around. In general, a stealth playthrough is going to require a bit more care than a guns-blazing approach, but we're trying not to make it punishing to the point of not being fun. We also want to allow the player to make a few mistakes along the way without having to do that "oh well, might as well reload at this point" thing. So you get things like Evasion, which makes Mike temporarily undetectable to enemies when he wanders into one of their view ranges (allowing him to quickly get behind cover before they react to him), or the Radio Mimic gadget, which lets you modulate Mike's voice and call in a false alarm signal, thus canceling an alarm that you trip. (Both of these are on cooldowns, so they are not going to let you constantly correct for sloppy play.) So we're trying to ensure that playing stealthy is an appropriate challenge, but not something that is overly punishing. The end goal is, after all, a fun game. Sounds cool.

I'd prefer a Bladerunner RPG. Or a Battlestar: Galactica RPG. Or a Stargate RPG. Or a Babylon 5 RPG. All by Obsidian of course, not some random ****ty studio burdened with making a cash cow off the brand recognition.

Nobody said anything about primary weapon, though. But NOLF1 and Deus Ex 1 both managed to incorporate decent sniping options. It's a fun aspect of the game, especially if you're playing as a stealth character.

Do we really know these things? We know that Obsidian is working on a new game and that it is a fantasy game. I am not so sure, however, that it is their own IP. In fact, I suspect that the game will be BG3 (a new D&D game could be nice if it weren't 4E), since Atari has recently stated it is reviving the Baldur's Gate franchise. I'm pretty certain we do: "What we'd love to do instead is tackle something like Baldur's Gate 3 or create our own new fantasy world - or have we already been doing that? " There's no way it's BG3, because Fergus isn't about to just leak the fact that they are working on BG3 in casual conversation - even if he wanted to, he'd be under contract with Atari and hence very careful about his wording. It's far more likely he's referring to "our own new fantasy world", especially given the wording of the sentence.

It might be obvious to you, but as someone who doesn't really follow all the talk about browsers it's not something that really comes to mind and I'd argue that it's not an obvious conclusion to the vast majority of users. Software is not my area of interest. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't assume everyone knows the ins and outs of browsers and web development. My bad. No clue. I hear about them every now and then, though admittedly I haven't for about a year now. It may be there aren't any anymore. Under what circumstances would you pay for a word processor rather than use one of the free alternatives? There are reasons, even if the biggest one is simply "my company forces me to" or something. I imagine if there are still any non-free adopters, it's companies. That's fine, but as I said, the business models of most browsers revolve around something other than upfront fees (yet is are very solid and conspicuous business models nonetheless), which is a point I notice you've avoided.

How do you know there's going to be a HL3 (assuming Ep 3 isn't it)? I actually doubt there will be, at least not for a long while (10+ years knowing Valve). The fact of the matter is, Deus Ex and Half-Life both worked because they were close to our future. Get too futuristic and into the future and you stand to lose a lot of the cultural elements that gave the games their compelling atmosphere. Deus Ex 2 failed in this regard, and Half-Life 2 was not the best it could have been but was saved by introducing fresh new dystopic elements. Half-Life 3, that would take place in the far future. There's not much for people to relate to in my mind. But hell, they could pull it off I guess. I've read some pretty decent books set in the far future, and seen some pretty decent movies.

What we know: - Black Isle is working on a new game. - It uses their own game universe (IP) - Because of this, it probably uses their own rule set - It uses their home-made Onyx game engine (which is 3D, probably best suited for 3rd person, probably squad/team-based gameplay) - The game universe is fantasy-based, though whether that's steampunk, gothic fantasy, dungeons and dragons style, etc is unknown. Given their comments in the past, dungeons and dragons style can probably be ruled out and something unique and intriguing ruled in. - They essentially started working on this new game around the time Aliens was rumoured to be cancelled, so I think it's safe to just let that game go.

By the sounds of it, Episode 3 will be more like Half-Life 3. If it was a big plot twist, then they'd talk about the engine or sexier Alyx animations or something and just avoid plot talk. But they're doing almost the opposite - avoiding engine/mechanics talk.

You mean like the free ride Microsoft got by violating anti-trust laws for years to the detriment of competing products? You wouldn't let thief keep the stolen diamonds because because they suddenly stopped robbing banks. A mini package manager? Windows Update? You can easily download Firefox on Ubuntu without having any internet browser. It's not exactly hard to figure out. At this point in the game, what advantage does a larger market share offer to people with competing browsers? I should think this is obvious, given the array of features (especially Javascript support and standards compliance) IE lacks or has poor support for. Folks like Google and other web app/cloud vendors (and just web developers in general) constantly lament IE's market dominance for this reason. Also, I think you're under the assumption that all browsers are free these days. You're wrong. Not only is that not true, but even the free browsers have a business model embedded in their product (including Microsoft, where their business is to keep IE simple in order to slow or prevent cloud applications stealing customers from their core products such as Exchange or Office - Google's is exactly the opposite with Chrome, and Firefox's is searchbar revenue to fund future development... the business there being ideological).

There's no sniper rifle? You've got to be ****ing kidding me. Will we at least see enemies using them? It's a ****ing spy game!

You mean like the free ride Microsoft got by violating anti-trust laws for years to the detriment of competing products? You wouldn't let thief keep the stolen diamonds because because they suddenly stopped robbing banks. A mini package manager? Windows Update? You can easily download Firefox on Ubuntu without having any internet browser. It's not exactly hard to figure out.

Way to look a gifthorse in the mouth and than puke in it. If anything is ridiculous it's your attitude.

Stop threatning to make a restoration project of your own and make one, dammit! You promised us to work on it already by now... guess you're word isn't worth much? Exactly my thoughts. Where's that crack commando team of professional programmers you hired? Crack overdose.

Nah.

Um, no, given the number of games I've played whose poor portage from consoles to PCs is clearly evident, it's a perfectly valid question.

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Let me guess, the PC doesn't matter enough to you guys to get a GUI that's actually meant for it?

Agreed.

Can we dual wield silenced pistols? That would be epic.

One is probably FO:NV, but "couple" implies more than one?... *initiate speculashun* He doesn't mean FO:NV (though I know they're working on that, too). Edit: or maybe he does considering the date of the interview.

So porn is not real either? It's just 1's and 0's and shouldn't get anybody excited?