anameforobsidian

Every single character I played Baldur's Gate with was blue-skinned. Don't ask me why, I couldn't tell you.

Don't forget that NWN games had two expansions, and NWN2 was a game with two expansions (and most likely a substantially larger budget). I don't think it's quite fair to compare the two; the original Baldur's Gate is a better example.

It would make more sense to have big shield that takes both hands than dual wielding two shields. Shield-bearers actually existed and dual-wielding shields would probably look really freaking dumb.

Good lord, all this talk about the beta has had me trying to install BG from the 3 cd edition. I've given up on all the normal options, and am going to try just creating a windows 98 virtual pc.

Personally I thought Might and Intellect should have switched names anyways, because nothing says unfettered power like increased AoE's, but small precise shots that really hurt require intelligence. But yes, Might != Strength. A mighty king is not the same as a strong king.

If they can still benefit your playstyle, and you can upgrade armor and weapons without upgrading an entire type. It's not like in the IE games you upgraded from clubs to maces and never used clubs again. Furthermore, systems with DT can and to some extent do favor at least carrying heavy weapons, because the difference on bosses is vast. Sure, the most damaging weapon in the game is a dagger that does 5 attacks in five seconds for 50 damage each, for 250 total. But when an enemy's armor negates 35 damage per strike, that greataxe that does a massive 200 damage strike every five seconds looks a hell of a lot better. Every option is not as good as the next, Pistol wielding Barbarians who all focus Con are not going to do as well as an appropriately designed character. I hesitate to think that systems should be built buggy and exploitable as possible just because its fun to break them.

It's worth point out the similarities in heritage. Bioware was originally making an RTS when it made the Infinity engine, but instead turned it to a D&D campaign by focusing on just a few characters. Mobas started by taking an RTS engine, and modding it so that it focused on few characters. Hell, D&D itself started by scaling a strategy game down to a few roles. Also, many of the mechanics are shared between Mobas and the IE games. I don't think it's too far fetched.

Consoles didn't kill meaningful RPGs. The epic mismanagement of Interplay, increasing development costs, risk-focused publishers, and most importantly Diablo ****ing II did that. Yes, we might have gotten Fallout 3 from Interplay instead of a dreadful X-box game without consoles, but the overall trends would have been the same on console and computer, the need for mass market appeal to cover the very expensive costs of technology. Consoles certainly didn't drive Troika in the ground. Yes, the technical limitations of consoles have games for the last two or three years of their lifespan, but the new consoles are out and we have quite a bit of time until old console tech starts to drag performance again. Besides that, I've welcomed the technological stability consoles have provided; now you don't have to upgrade your pc every five ****ing seconds and wade through pages of epeen fencing to know if your pc will run a game. That's a good thing. Finally, it's not like the Witcher was an RPG designed by mensa in the first place. Your gameplay varied from chaining clicks to switching swords and chaining clicks. The decision to move potion drinking before the fight was not really necessitated by consoles, it was a bad design decision. The combat was hardly complex enough that they couldn't spare a button to go to a wheel for hotkeyed potions. It would be a slight annoyance, but a slight annoyance doesn't translate into bad design. And this is coming from someone who mildly dislikes the idea of a console port. But either way, you don't change History to fit your viewpoints. On the subject of whether they should make the port itself, I remember how much it sucked when the PC was passed over by **** devs who assumed that games couldn't be played without gamepads (most games can with the ability to configure keysettings, and tutorials that read those settings). So, if I didn't like something, why would I wish it on someone else? Of course, all that relies on the fact that the game would stay PC-centric.

I look forward to being totally owned in the beta. I think I can maybe do a little better than Adam even on a first try, but if I don't get party wiped a few times before getting the hang of it I'll be disappointed. Upon even more review I wonder if they will want to revisit that whole healing spells don't heal actual life idea. It looked as though you can't get very far without taking a significant amount of real hp damage.(The way attacks work in this lead to way more hits) There were clearly a lot more enemies to fight in that zone and he was taking damage at pretty high clip.(real hp damage) It would be something like heal 1 real hp healed per 4 or whatever stamina healed with a spell. I think something like that would be on par but I guess the backer beta will tell us more. Or the 1:4 (is it?) real hp to stamina damage taken could be upped to 1:5 etc. To be honest it looks like he played extremely poorly, and by contrast this was a very poor example of the difficulty of the game. I wouldn't say extremely poorly, but not great either. I thought I saw some unnecessary disengagement attacks, and the AoE's weren't always the most efficient. Either way, the game itself looks great and I wouldn't want people analyzing my every move. Also, I highly doubt they'll change the health rule. If anything, they would probably lower the overall damage first.

Man, that reviewer was really annoying. The game looks great though. Wish I could have seen the ogre.

Is there any way to go back and watch it from the beginning?

They portrayed obviously Black people as inherently good at athletics and dumber than average. In America, Black people have been portrayed this way for a long time, because it helped salve the conscience of people keeping them in chains. They were just doing what they were naturally good at. Don't just believe me. Here is an actual quote from an actual American president in the last half century. When the first wave of studies were published purporting to show that blacks have lower IQs than whites, Nixon, in a conversation with domestic aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said he “couldn’t agree more” with the findings. The president was quite generous on the subject of what black people were good at: “Athletics isn’t a bad achievement. You look at the World Series. What would Pittsburgh be without a hell of a lot of blacks?” But he was far less charitable when it came to black talent in other areas: “… when you get to some of the more shall we say profound, rigid disciplines, basically, they have a hell of a time makin’ it. … It was a mistake that had quite a racist tone, and they corrected it. As they should have. That's all. Ignoring the fact that it was profoundly racist doesn't do any good; neither does getting angry at Bethesda for an unconscious mistake they made that they've rectified. But that's all I'm going to say about that. Anyways, about orcs. I still haven't seen a good counter for the point that there are better stand-ins for the social and historical rolls they've played in the past. I don't see anything in the setting that orcs could do better than either Orlans and Aumua. They're unnecessary, and removing the unnecessary is an incredibly important part of creation. I've yet to see what good orcs could do.

There are a few, but I'd also look at, say, the Amish in America for example. Its a parallel society that has decided for itself what it needs within the confines of a much larger culture. The Amish are a perfect example of a low-tech sub culture that don't need to told how to live. I personally know a few Amish people and they seem perfectly happy to me. I say live and let live. No need to "uplift" people. Heck, that's how the European conquest of Africa started. Let's not encourage the mindset of, "Our way of life is better than theirs; so they should become like us." It leads to trouble. Just set a good example. If others want what you have; they'll emulate you. Well, personally know a few Amish people may be an exaggeration. We're acquaintances really; not friends or anything. On the subject of paternalism: There's a thin line between not being told how to live and breaking the law because the law benefits the wider society. The Amish are still subject to many rules; they have to build their houses to code and they're not allowed to habitually defecate near a river any more than anyone else. There are many behaviors that can have negative impacts on outside groups like vaccination, sanitation, and fire-safety. The outside group has a moral imperative to protect itself against these dangers in the least restrictive way possible. How this relates to orcs: It doesn't have to. Orcs are frequently used as a stand in for marginalized cultures (usually more negatively than positively), but there's no reason they have to. Indeed, to make the whole argument circular, using Orcs drags in a whole lot of the negative stereotypes about marginalized groups. As such, it's far less racist and more boldfaced xenophobic. It's not uncommon to describe outsiders and less industrialized cultures as stupider, stronger, brutish, athletic, violent, fierce, warlike, etc. Orcs happen to embody a lot of these stereotypes in virtually every setting, and then a large number of them make them universal evil. So, to go all the way back the beginning, the basic argument is still why do we need orcs? They have a lot of negatives, and few positives they bring with them. Why not use a marginalized group that more accurately portrays the situation of a marginalized group without all the ethnocentric baggage attached? And the answer is, they are. That's exactly what they're doing with Orlans. There's no thematic place for orcs, and frankly they sound far more interesting than what orcs could bring.

They said they would be doing updates more infrequently for the next few weeks. Its the run up to Beta.

Here is a picture of some dead ones. I was wrong about the workshop, which was Duergar: Here's some living ones:

Eh, I never got racist overtones from orcs. Strong xenophobic bull**** does come from orcs, but that's not the same as racist. Goblins on the other hand (especially in WoW and MtG rather than Tolkien and earlier D&D), are short, big-nosed, money-grubbing, scientifically adept, and ruthlessly amoral. Which certainly doesn't sound like any racist caricature that I can think of....

They did put their version of orcs in, they're called the Aaumua. Why should they be discounted just because the word "orc" isn't used?

Eh. I'm not completely against a port, but the game seems extremely unsuited to it mechanically. There's a reason DA:O got much, much lower scores on console than PC. The small RTS style of combat that these games have used is extremely hard to control with a controller. Since the graphics are neither 3D nor vector based (to my knowledge), scaling to different TV sizes and resolutions could be a small problem as important details are lost. Furthermore, I wouldn't want to see Obsidian's talent, which is lean in a good way diverted from possible sequels or new IP for it. But I wouldn't be against them sending the game to Paradox, and saying "you can make this a console port and sell it, and give us x% of the profit." The problem is that they would still need to be vigilant about the quality of such a port to protect their reputation, and making a quality port would probably be pretty hard. I would have a problem with them changing development of this game and future sequels to accommodate a port.

There's a lot of orcs and goblins in Baldur's Gate. There's a metric ****ton of Hobgoblin bandits in BG I; the first inn you get to has a ton waiting outside. They're a general filler trashmob in the area between Beregost and Baldur's Gate. In BG II, Firekraag's dungeon is full of orcs. Irenicus has goblin slaves and goblin workshops. This is equally true - I would argue more true - of elves and dwarves. But Obsidian is including those, and we trust them to do a good job. There rest of your post doesn't make sense to me. You seem to praise Obsidian for doing new, creative things with the races they've chosen to include, but assume that if Obsidian were to include orcs they would not be able to do similar creative things. There's nothing inherent to orcs and goblins that would suddenly make Obsidian incapable of creativity. You're arguing from a double standard. On the other hand, you say that Obsidian seems to have done well with their creative decisions, but proceed to second guess their creative decision to not include orcs. Anyways, Orcs carry a lot more baggage than elves; elves have been written as xenophobic and decadent with fair regularity, although not as often as they are written as perfect and flawless. Orcs are almost always pure evil invaders. They're so boring that even Dragonlance stopped relying on them so heavily, switching to Minotaurs instead. The only time they were written well was Arcanum, and that was because it was a criticism of the racist undertones of Orcs.

Absolutely this. People do some of their best creative work when they have the time and interest to play as well as doing work. It means a healthier work environment, and that you really think about the problems in front of you and come up with novel solutions rather than banging your head into the wall.

Sure, that happens all the time in RPGs. It's a hilariously illogical flaw in the system. In BG2, for example, a Rogue can become a better archer by.... disarming traps. Is that your idea of an accurate representation.... of anything? The reverse is also true. In Baldur's Gate 2, your rogue becomes better at picking locks by killing ogres. How does that make sense? Either you show overriding concern for the simulationist aspects, and let each skill level up per use, like in a Bethesda game, or you accept that the process of accomplishing a major objective furthered your character's ability to function as their role. I.E. A famous (high-level) rogue could break out of a maximum security prison in a bunch of ways. In a classless system it would matter how they did it. In a class-based system the important thing is that they could do it, not how they did it. Furthermore, in party based games it's even worse. Your rogue gets better at picking locks by your mage casting a magic missile at a goblin the rogue wasn't even looking at.

Waste of resources? I dunno, seems like they're... heading in the right direction, to me. 6_u Maybe, but it will be hard to cap this achievement. Indeed. Big head mode can be quite the cerebral pleasure.

Or in love with ships, shipyards, and shipping itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_sexuality

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9547 Nicely done!

I wonder if backers will be able to hit level cap during beta. It would make sense to put in an arena kind of place with autoleveling if they couldn't, just for bug squashing.