Helz

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.

Little Lamplight? I wouldn't really know. One of the first mods I installed was "killable children".

Baldur's Gate was superior to BG2. Fallout 3 captured the atmosphere of the Fallout universe perfectly, and paved the way for the best CRPG in years. Unarmed monks should be limited to praying and begging. Samurai armor/swords/warriors are not cool/superior/badass. DA:O was a worthy spiritual successor to BG2. Cooldowns and aggro mechanics are superior to memorized spells.

I just want to chime in that I hope they rethink adding variable body types. Height and weight differences add a lot of variety to the way characters look. I always notice when games feature NPCs wih variable heights, it adds something to the world. They've already got the tech for morphing clothing to the different sized races anyway, so I'd hope they'd be able to apply it to variations within the same race. Most of the strongest people in the world are fat. This isn't a new development, its always been this way. I've always thought it'd be cool for an RPG to make it so if you max out your strength, your character's weight would increase. Increasing stamina would make you leaner.

For some reason I thought I was the only one who had trouble with those ****ing things. Seriously, I hate them.

I think the WoW hunter pet gathering mechanic is pretty cool, and similar to what other people here have suggested (nevermind that its WoW, hear me out). There are multiple classes of pets (canine, feline, serpents, insects, birds, etc.) that each have their own attributes and skill trees. Its up to the player which type of pet you pick; you can tame any animal you want by soloing it in combat (so your ranger would have to do it alone). Once he's tamed, he'll start a level or 2 below you, fight at your side and level up along with you. Over time he gains loyalty as well, which might unlock new abilities or behavior. Unique animals have special talents (or just look cool) so you might be tempted to switch your leveled, loyal pet with something new down the line. You can have a few pets in your stronghold (or wherever) so that you can also switch between them depending on whatever skills you currently need. I advocate this system because it allows for your pet to be pretty unique, you can choose any animal in the game you want.

Stamina Damage is converted to Health Damage at a ratio of 4:1. [snip] This is assuming that there will be no abilities in the game that change that ratio, or even bypass stamina completely. I strongly doubt that's the case, because there are all sorts of interesting possibilities for attacks/spells that Obsidian would be overlooking. I voted for the first option, because otherwise you're just going to be waiting around for it to charge up anyway. If the developers want to throw in multiple encounters to force you to conserve your stamina, they can have them trigger in succession. FInally, to the OP, I can't say I like your idea for a hardcore mode that makes stamina scarce for low level characters, but bountiful for higher levels. I feel that higher levels should have more options for burning their stamina, but still be limited by it. Otherwise you've just trivialized combat for higher level characters in a big way.

I guess the one thing I'd want most of all if for my real life to improve as I level up in the game. Make it happen, Obsidian!

I felt like using my first post to quote you, because you took the words right out of my mouth.