Helz

There were multiple types of every enemy you listed. Also humans, elves, dwarves, animals, spirits, undead, liches, and werewolves just off the top of my head. I'd be happy if the combat is as good as DA:O's. I think it has a good chance to be better thanks to a greater variety of classes and a superior spell list. I'd love for the game to have really good AI, which I felt was a weak point of DA:O.

The idea of a close childhood friend of the opposite sex is unbelievable to you? Its hardly impossible, and in my experience not even that uncommon. The PC is raised as an orphan in a library/monastery type setting under the protection of a powerful mage. If you want to RP him to be troubled by that upbringing, then he's troubled. If you accept that there are many well-balanced orphans around the world, than he's well-balanced. Either scenario is equally believable, and its up to the gamer to decide which you want to follow. The only intuitive understanding of humanity I acknowledge is that humanity is a tangled knot of contradiction and misunderstanding. I finally read the Song of Fire and Ice books a while back. I enjoyed them well enough, although the meandering plot where nothing ever really happens is irritating. They suffer from some filler, but nowhere near as much as the Wheel of Time series. Nothing contains as much inane filler as the Wheel of Time series. For anyone interested in epic fantasy, I strongly recommend the Malazan: Books of the Fallen. As complex and arcane as a WoT fan could want, as bloody and grim as the Fire and Ice books, and amazingly light on cliffhangers and unfinished plotlines. Its also the only series mentioned that's actually complete.

I have an idea for Obsidian. Offer to trade your in-house dialogue writing tool to Bethesda in exchange for the rights to do another Fallout game. You get to make another great Fallout and they can potentially improve the weakest point in every game they make. Win-win.

I guess this would be one way to stop the player from being able to pull units one at a time, although I'd much prefer if enemies within "earshot" of combat would assist their comrades. And no leashing; they either die or run away, but don't just reset like nothing happened.

I think the whole "female dwarves have beards" concept pretty much killed their appeal.

This is exactly what the unlimited stash mechanic is supposed to prevent. Tedious trips back and forth to a merchant to clear your inventory. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people will actually miss that, but wow. It makes plenty of sense to me anyway, even without a bag of holding. Its not like you'd carry all of your extra crap into a dungeon with you, you'd leave everything but the gear you need at your base camp. Like soldiers who march with 100lbs worth of gear, but only carry ~35lbs in combat.

Neverwinter Nights. I hated everything about it. Because this was the start of the era where suddenly everthing had to be rendered in 3D, the visuals were god-awful ugly, and the story was a joke. The fact that this was Bioware's followup to BG2 only made it that much more of a disappointment for me. Oblivion. I really bought into the pre-release hype for that game. "The dynamic AI is incredible, villagers go about their lives like real people!" I bragged to my friends as they rolled their eyes. Too bad the whole game was simplified to the point of stupidity. I mean Morrowind's leveling system was ridiculously obtuse, but after spending hours reading help guides and tutorials, I eventually discovered a system with pretty much infinite flexibility. I played about an hour of Oblivion and was just confused how they could have gone from the most complicated system to the most basic. I also got burned twice by this game. I bought it for PC at release, but it was pretty much a slideshow on my old system, so I paid another $50 for the Xbox version : /

I guess I'm a WoW fan, even though it has been years since I played it. I just wanted to point out that the multi specialized class system of PoE that you seem to favor is far more similar to the WoW design than it is to the IE games. Bashing games you've obviously never/barely played might be fun, but it was undermining your whole argument.

I fail to see how you could believe that the class roles in the IE games were more flexible than the ones in WoW. In WoW several of the classes (druid, paladin, shaman) can specialize as any role - healer, tank, or DPS. Most others can fulfill at least 2 roles, and even the "pure DPSers" (mage and rogue) can also be the best at crowd control. There are plenty of hybrid builds as well. Everything I've seen in regards to class flexibility in PoE actually strikes me as pretty similar to WoW. In other words, your character's role is determined more by the skills you pick than the class you chose. And since I'm already defending WoW anyway, few encounters are impossible without a specific party makeup. Extra DPS can reduce the need for a healer, and good crowd control can substitute for a tank. Hybrid characters can fill in when you need them too. 5 mage runs used to be some of my favorites, btw.

Depends a lot on which class I decide to go with first. If a fighter, probably a mountain dwarf. If a wizard then a human or maybe a Godlike. Definitely not an elf.

I've been shuffling between my Mount and Blade addictions. I prefer Warband the most, but I can't get a server with a decent ping where I live, so I've been playing a lot of With Fire and Sword Captain Co-op, and Napoleonic Wars Captain and DM modes. I occasionally still play singleplayer as well. Also I bought The Banner Saga on GoG a while back and I've been dabbling with it. I've been toying with the idea of another Baldur's Gate playthrough. I'd like to go through the entire campaign with the sequal and xpacs with one character, but realistically I doubt I possess the attention span.

On trannies in GTA5: "These women are wearing ridiculous clothing. The artists spent time drawing visible bulges in their skirts and underwear, and their occupation is that of a prostitute, which we are led to believe is degrading." Obvious satire. Everyone knows that a career in transexual prostitution is the ultimate path to self worth and empowerment in our society.

Exactly. There's just something really satisfying about re-rolling for an hour and finally getting the stats you wanted. That and rubbing them in Sarevok's face. You want rolling because its more realistic, but then you just roll for an hour until you get the stats you want anyway. A perfect illustration of why rolling is pointless. I do hope that your beginning stats remain pretty much unchanged for the whole game though. That makes character creation a lot more meaningful.

Huh, I loved Tactics and have used it every time I've done a reinstall. Thanks for the info about Stratagems, I'll give it a try. That sounds exactly how I'd want the AI in PoE to behave.

I barely played IWD, but if the Stragems mod is at all similar to the Tactics mod for BG2, than I heartily endorse it. I personally don't mind if it makes the AI feel scripted, that's better than it being too stupid to use the weapons at its disposal. One of the biggest differences is that when you enter a new area, all of the enemies activate their long term buffs, spell immunities, racials, contingency spells, etc. so that they're actually prepared to fight when you meet them. Before they'd either not use these spells at all, or waste their first turns in combat casting them while you were free to attack. The player activates all this stuff ahead of time, and so should the AI. One of the first, albeit minor, differences I encountered after installing Tactics has always stuck with me. I was struck by how the duergar (evil dwarves) in the first dungeon went from useless fodder to a legitimate threat simply because they were able to use their racial power (invisibility). I would love for PoE's AI to scale with the difficulty setting. Its so much more interesting when the game forces you to learn the intricacies of its combat because the enemy uses them against you.

I can't say I agree with you about the balancing thing. To use your DA:O example, I barely played with either Dog or Shale because Dog was far too weak after the early game, and Shale was hands down the best tank in the game. I kind of felt like Dog was more of a support character and shouldn't have even counted as a companion. I actually do like when companions have unique abilities or even quirks in their builds, but for the most part I think they should exist within the system's rules, not outside of them. I'm with you in regards to letting the companions advance through story and dialogue as well as combat, though.

Fallout 1 and 2 are probably my favorite games of all time, but I liked FO:3 (gasp) and especially New Vegas a lot as well. Personally, I don't think that being isometric or FPS can inherently make one better than the other. Both viewpoints have different strengths, and yes, an isometric New Vegas would be a different experience than the actual one is, but I'm pretty sure I'd like both. That said, I'm not a fan of making it 3D isometric. I've been of the opinion for years that 2D games are actually prettier than their 3D counterparts, because paintings look far more detailed and unique than their 3D models. 2D artwork holds up as technology changes, whereas 3D games look dated after about 2 years. Its also far cheaper to produce 2D games, making it seem like an obvious advantage to stick with 2D in an isometric game. Not to mention, the cameras in 3D isometric games are always a pain in the ass. I think Oblivion are going to prove just that when Eternity is released and blows away Wasteland 2 with their artwork (I know they've got a 2D/3D hybrid thing going, which is actually pretty cool). Mandatory voiceacting has been the bane of RPGs for a long time now. Go play Baldur's Gate if you haven't in a while, and be blown away by the myriad of responses you have for every dialogue. And even more amazing, almost every choice actually leads to a different response! Voice acting is a hugely expensive part of production that is actually detrimental to the final game. Such a waste of resources.

Yeah I realize I went a bit overboard. Sorry everyone.

I'll take my chances with you. You threaten strangers over the internet to compensate for your cowardice in the real world. There was no irony in your post. So yes, ironically, better than you. Don't lose hope. If you search long enough, I'm sure you'll come across the perfect meme to express what a badass you wish you were.

Nome, Alaska for ~7 more months. Grew up in Denver, Colorado

If by "the sequel" you mean the prequel, I'd reluctantly have to agree (crappy storyline or not, smoother gameplay is smooth). Otherwise, prepare to be purged. Human Revolution had nice graphics (if you could ignore the hideous textures) and a decent stealth system. The building you work in and the opening mission were the best parts of the game. The combat and AI were terrible. The upgrade paths were shockingly crappy. It also featured some of the most artificial feeling cities of any game I've ever played that wasn't made by Bethesda. Modulated linear rat mazes sparsely populated with plastic people stuck in front of cardboard cutout stores with painted on doors, repeating the same lines ad nauseum. When I said sequel, I was referring to Invisible War. I'll take my chances with you. You threaten strangers over the internet to compensate for your cowardice in the real world.

I prefer the paper maps over the cloth ones. The paper ones usually have cool art at least. I have a nice Baldur's Gate one that has a really detailed layout of the city. I miss old time manuals a lot more than any of the cheap memorabilia though. Another blasphemy: Deus Ex is one of the most overrated games of all time, but I liked the sequel quite a bit.

Does your graphics card use the current Nvidia/AMD driver, or did you buy your laptop from a manufacturer that requires you to use its own crappy proprietary driver? Because if its the first case, it should run any game just fine provided its powerful enough. If its the second, the fault lies with the maker of your laptop, not the game developers. No laptop manufacturer keeps their GPU drivers up to date.

You're talking up Bethesda's outstanding achievement of F3 yet you admit to downloading a mod to rectify horrible writing/design decisions which form a part of the whole which you previously praised unconditionally. I praised FO3 for capuring the atmosphere of Fallout so well, not for being a perfect game. The main plot is pretty crappy, but I can just ignore it because the game makes me feel like I'm inside the Fallout world. It also paved the way for New Vegas, which is a stellar RPG. I have no problem "admitting" that I've modded the hell out of FO3 and New Vegas. The humongous modding community is one of the greatest aspects of Bethesda's games (yes, I realize Obsidian did New Vegas). If anything, I expected I'd have to defend my claim that DA:O was a worthy successor to BG2. Judging by the amount of people in this thread who've called the Baldur's Gate games dated and unplayable, I guess I shouldn't be suprised. Now they're the real heretics.

Oh well, it would have been nice. Thanks for taking the time to let us know. I mainly commented in this thread to stick up for fat people anyway.