Stephen Amber
-
Posts
246 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by Stephen Amber
-
-
Which 'they' are you talking about? Interplay?
No. The makers of big game hunter... Of course I'm talking about interplay.
Bethesda have done a great job - there was a time when they were a relatively small studio, but they've managed to stick to making games the way they want and I think their recent success is fantastic. Something I definitely think Obsidian can emulate and probably will just so long as the market doesn't go against them.I'd say they've been much better business people, and, ironically, with f3 being the success it is it might actually revivificate interplay if they can get mmorp fallout rolling. If such a thing is even being considered anymore, and assuming interplay is a going concern of course. With f3 now a mainstream franchise they can exploit it. yay.
-
Whatever the misteps it has to be disconcerting to see Bethesda rake in 300 million, in a week's time, when they had the fallout license and didn't do anything with it... at a time when cash was their biggest problem ironically.
-
Might have to get a DS. The DS Castle Vania looks interesting as well. They tried a 3d Vania years ago and it blew.
-
Anyway, my wallet is the only way I have of making a statement that companies will understand, and once i give them my money, that's it, I've got nothing.
And you've also posted on these boards nearly 2,000 times, hoping, I suppose, that that might make a difference.
-
Ozric Tentacles- Erpland
Gotta love the guy dancing with the flute...
-
is above approach
That's "reproach" you're looking for...
-
ooh, i got one: baddies that automatically level with the player
Think the last game I played like that was wizardry 8. The encounters would scale to the party in pretty much any dungeon. Didn't play the game long...
-
Annoying mini games that have little, or no, resemblance to the game play of the rest of the game. Like the asteroid shooting segments in KoToR, the controls of which were baffling and frustrating. It was hard, and you had to go back and watch the same cut scene every time on the re-load.
-
-
Half-life
-
To bring up another name, didn't know Bruce Nesmith was involved with Fallout 3 til a few days ago. He's old school TSR enough to have worked on Gamma World in the early 80's.
In the interview, interesting how Emil mentions that there in no creative lead, or design lead, for Fallout 3, with the executive producer being the "leader". Designers are simply designers with no such differentiation among them. As it should be.
-
implement the "pause after every round" option and you get close, but the actual execution of the round is not really "turn-based" in the same sense as pnp
You get close? Not really, since all are taking their turns simultaneously when the game isn't paused, turns aren't discrete turns per combatant as in pnp. It's not even close to close...
-
There actually was a writing contest of sorts with the "make up an item + item history and we will add it to the game" for IWD:HoW expansion.... remember it was a bit short and people complained, so they offered a free download with those community generated items included. Think there were five total. Mine was one of them. lol
-
(BTW AFAICT the only point of the new warlord class is that it's a fighter that can buff other people besides himself. For that, they had to make a new class? I don't get it.)
Seems like the warlord replaced the bard in alot of ways. And that's one class swap I think many will have a tough time swallowing from an rp standpoint. The affable, charismatic bard bolstering spirits though his music and tale telling, as opposed to a grumpy general (or other military officer) barking out orders... to his peers none the less!
-
I like the PS:T music very much as well. It's sort of exotic with the rhythmic drums which fits the unusual character of the setting. You listen to something like "Deionarra's Theme" and it's haunting, mystical, and fricking cool.
The BG and BG2 themes I had no memory of what they sounded like. I listen to them just now and they are bland... no wonder I had no melody lodged in my mind somewhere... they are not memorable at all.
The sound tracks for all of these are on youtube btw.
-
But I think the trade-off (if there is one) is worth it if they bring the community into it.
I don't care who's into it so long as it's good. David John's community stuff for NWN for instance was good, but I'd not say he was at the level of Soule.
-
so it seems like there will be quite a few different composers doing work on SoZ
Not sure I like the sound of that. With game composition, it should be one voice giving the entire game a unifying tone and setting the theme. With too many different composers with differing tastes and styles you could end up with a weird al yankovic cacophony.
But at least they are composing new music and not going totally on the cheap as before, which was an embarrassment.
-
2. D&D (the "Grey Box" set, the first D&D game many of us ever played). Again, very sketchy, the rules where all over the place. It was a niche product, and the spirit of make-it-up-as-you-go-along was very strong.
3. AD&D came along in the late 70's early 80's (1st Ed) to (as I said before) attempt to codify all these other rules. Stuff like THACO, dual-classing, multi-classing, race-based level caps, XP tables for separate classes, THACO bonus tables for different weapons versus different armour types, somatic spell components and wandering prostitute tables all came in and gave us nose bleeds). TSR took off, there was a religious furore about the game, it appeared in ET (yadda yadda) and the game became a small but deep footprint in our cultural consciousness.
There was the basic game which they wrote products for though out the 80's, and which you neglected to mention in your timeline here. Of course I speak of the colored boxed sets, starting with the red one and the famous Elmore painting, and ending with the quaint gold box and it's odd rules for immortals. This game actually was very simple with concepts like multi-classing, and other things, not existing at all. Anyways, any d&d timeline which neglects to mention these is grossly incomplete as 80's kids by the thousands got their start with the colored boxes.
-
My idea was to use armor DR and hit points only on critical hits. A critical being the most vicious of blows, perhaps some of the damage would be blocked, and absorbed by, one's armor. After all, with rules in place, why should items and armor take damage only under sunder attempts? The mechanics being damage blocked according to the armor bonus (8 for full plate, 5 for chain, etc) and subtracted from the armor hit point total ( and the damage you take of course). Material would factor into the HP total... x2 for mithril or something. With this, it's not something you have to keep track of all the time and gives some extra value to the heavier armors.
-
In 3.5, as written, the DR is very conservative with the barbarian getting 1/ at level 7 and not maxing out at 5/ til level 19. So you rain on his parade by introducing DR armor anyone can wear. But I do like the idea of armor attrition and occasional repairs, so long as it is simple mechanically and gradual... if you're chopped naked out your full plate mid way through a dungeon delve then that's not good. The sunder feat with it's item hardness and hit point numbers opens a small can of worms...
-
To make the heavy armors a bit better, in comparison with medium/light, I'd simply give half plate 1/ and full plate 2/ reduction and leave the rest alone. There are so many good dex based skills and feats that that's the real reason that medium and light armors are superior. Item hit points are another possibility... the heavy armors will prove to be much more durable in the long run, though this requires some bookkeeping of course.
-
d&d were dying a slow death. 3e were not simply a marketing ploy, but rather a desperate attempt wotc to keeps from having to abandon d&d publishing altogether.
They had just purchased d&d after TSR went bankrupt. I suppose they could have abandoned it by not making the purchase. And, ironically, wotc is responsible more than anything for d&d's '90s demise due to magic: the gathering sales. A card game TSR actually tried to compete against with inferior products like Spellfire, and even a planescape card game. TSR was publishing all sorts of junk that wasn't selling towards the end... Birthright and such.
-
Universal damage reduction(not +1/, slashing/) is extremely powerful and the 5/ you put there for full plate might be a bit much.
-
Obsidian is doing the same - look at Alpha Protocol and Aliens, which are not going to be beholden to any PnP rule set. And that is perfectly fine.
May have to do that, though again, I'm not very enthusiastic about the Aliens universe for a space rpg setting. I think back to the "star frontiers" days of my youth and how cool that was at the time. Flash Gordon, John Carter... there are several properties I'd have preferred, though everyone automatically thinks star wars, star treck, or aliens when it comes to space. Not sure how much rpg juice can be squeezed out the old, dead alien's husk...
What kind of future settings is Obsidian planning?
in Obsidian General
Posted
The forgotten realms!
What else?