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Hmm. Perhaps you forgot that you can pause the game at any time by hitting the SPACE BAR or left clicking on the clock face? Looks great. I'll have to get around to using the widescreen mod myself, one of these days... edit: I take it you finally managed to solve your install problems?

Invisible characters and shadows have concealment, so you can roll a natural 20 and still get a miss. True Seeing and other divinations do nothing against characters that are simply hidden. I hated the mansion the OP is talking about, too. I had the suspicion that the rogues weren't there at all, until the very moment they backstab you.

And I guess I'll just take your word for it. You look like such an informed fellow!

I don't see where the sense of wounded national pride comes from. In DX, HK may not be portrayed very favourably, but neither are NYC or Paris, for that matter. And I have never seen complaints about this, as people understand that the portions of the cities presented are not necessarily representative of the state of affairs of those locales as a whole. They are merely the parts of those cities that the developers considered they needed to use in their story... and then they gave everything a bit of a "down" feel to account for the ongoing world crisis of the story. So please, let's keep the chauvinism to a minimum. This is a spy RPG we are talking about, not a tourism slideshow. edit: it just occured to me that you may be referring to the same tired Asian stereotypes we always see applied to characters. If so, yeah. That needs to go.

And blanket statements are only as good as the figures that support them. Oh, right. You don't care whether what you post is true or not.

I suppose it should be obvious that neither approach is inherently superior. Execution. Tastes.

Err... has it? Can you give a few examples so we know what you're referring to specifically, and what standards are you measuring against? There were parts of Fallout 3 that really stood out to this DC-area resident. The Metro stations, the Capitol, Dupont Circle, and the National Archives were particularly impressive. I was on the lookout for ghouls on my commute for weeks. Edit: Just noticed that alaschu pre-empted this particular comment. Fair enough. Never been to DC myself, so it's good to hear an informed opinion.

Where did this question come from? It came from my sick, twisted and sleep-deprived mind, if you must know. I guess I should have been more clear and asked which RPGs was he comparing against. But the examples folks have put forth so far aren't RPGs, but games where free-roaming is, if not the central force behind the game, at least a very important part. How about I go asking around the Paradox boards for characters and writing in the level of MotB? Do you think that's sensible? edit: Argh, ninja'd!

So, um, we want huge, mostly empty maps so we can roam freely doing nothing much? Isn't this supposed to be a story-driven RPG?

Good points, good points. I do hope some of the improvements in AI accomplished in FPSs are taken advantage of in other genres, though. By complexity I mean a system that allows for a reasonable variety of problems presented, and an amount of possible solutions to match, with different chances for success. No win buttons, no leaving fights on auto-pilot, no single strategy to dominate the game. But what I want above all is the re-introduction of mechanics that punish player error. Think a checkmate you see coming, but fail (or choose not) to prevent. I'm sick of games where you watch rather than game.

Oops. Little misunderstanding back there, I thought you were trying to be clever. Sorry. The game must have a narrative (not to be confused with a plot), obviously, since, regardless of format, it's a work of fiction. You are being told what's going on in a world somebody made up, who are the good guys, the bad guys, their motives and whatnot - the form in which this information reaches you is not important. But if you thought there's no narrative proper, that's a good indication of how different that is from the very central role the characters and story plays in FO3. Less room for freestyling, but in exchange for a more involved story and characters.

Whether you are being sarcastic or not, I can't tell. I'm going to grant you the benefit of doubt though, and simply recommend that you practice some more.

Which results in (or perhaps stems from) a much weaker and less cohesive narrative, with possibly less involvement from the player, both explicitly and motivation wise. Which is, if I understood correctly, the point Gromnir was making. Tastes.

Err... has it? Can you give a few examples so we know what you're referring to specifically, and what standards are you measuring against?

That's assuming that some of the consequences foreseen by our awfully incomplete and poorly understood cosmological theories prove true in the end. Which is about as likely as tossing a coin and getting heads, tails, and nothing at all, simultaneously. Or the Old Ones awakening.

Can you say LAME? Yeah, I think you can. :suckage:

I tell you one thing: if sentient life does exist it had better have more important things to do than fly a bajillion miles here and stick objects up people's behinds. If not then frankly I don't WANT to make contact. I don't know. Aside from the goofy UFO stories, maybe 'flying a bajillion miles' for them is as trivial as taking the car on a trip to the supermarket. And maybe they're observing us as we would observe a colony of ants. I'm not very comfortable with that analogy. I used to boil ants with big kettles of water. For all we know, "aliens" could be n-dimensional beings not more concerned about (or aware of) 3-dimensional affairs than we are about the wonderfully tiny things going on in the universe of quantum chromodynamics. Better not to think about it. Old Ones? Heh...

Co-op. That game just begged to be played co-op. No really, it did. I remember it telling me quite clearly.

Yeah, isn't that one of FO3's worse aspects, though? In the "just out of the vault" scene, I don't even remember if any special sound effects or music are played. And despite having an awesome idea (listening to radio stations), they ended up with a half-assed Black Courier-jukebox hybrid. Funny, because some of the stations you can pick up, and the areas/sidequests they are associated with are very good and contribute a lot to the atmosphere; incidentally, they are also a good example of how you don't need a textbox to set the mood. But the freaking MAIN radio station of the wasteland gets repetitive after about twenty minutes. But man, how can you feel anything BUT love for Qui-Gon Jinn?

And I thought I was hardcore...

On the other hand, the PC is dazzled by the sunlight when they first emerge from the Vault which, with the appropriate sound cues, can convey the significance of the moment just as well. Pretty bloody impossible to miss, too. I also hate being told what my character "feels".

The mid-level content is well balanced and fun to play solo, but if you have a level cap in place, you'll be hitting it pretty soon. And then parts of the endgame can be hairy, especially those involving mages. In BG2, solo FMT/FMCs are so ridiculously overpowered that the only thing one needs to worry about is getting mazed or imprisoned - but then there's the Slayer. I think solo'ing is the most boring way of playing these games, not least because of the increased force-reload factor. But if you've tried everything else... Atrocious. But the really awesome detail about this dungeon is the fact that there's absolutely no good reason to clear it unless you absolutely, positively need every XP point in the game. <3

Stopped reading.

I'd expect DA to be an improvement over BG because devs are supposed to have more experience and be more adept at their trade, but mainly because the technology allows for better games today. Graphics notwithstanding, the core of the game (gameplay) should be better, more complex, more engaging, and with superior AI. The same for quest design. Unfortunately, since BG, and with the exception of the interface and camera-terrible NWN, Bio has chosen to downgrade gameplay for their games, possibly to make them viable for consoles. So, how is gameplay compared to BG?

I think it's Empire: TW.