Enoch

This. Also, every 'learn by doing' character progression system I've played has been awful. Game systems that encourage doing the same damn thing over and over and over again are pretty much the antithesis of fun. My breaking point with Oblivion was a moment of clarity when I realized that I had just spent 20 minutes doing nothing but summoning skeletons and punching them to death.

Sten, Lel, Zev, Wynne, and Dog can be killed by the PC, or by PC inaction; Shale is DLC that not everyone has; Al and Loghain can be sacraficed; and Morrigan always ends the game by getting the hell out of Ferelden. Thus, Oghren is the only character who always finishes DA:O alive, aware, and not off on some voluntary exile. With fewer companion options in the expansion, they wanted to make sure that people who made the 'wrong' decisions in DA:O don't get shafted out of one of their options in DA:O:A.

And, as a bonus, you get to watch the "Alistair becomes a drunken loser" epilogue!

I should amend my comment to say "... the best unintentional comedy in the series, besides the LOL-tastic sex scenes, ..."

Sad. Chewie reduced to stripping. At least Boba Fett found something more dignified to do. (With bonus Zelda reference.)

I dunno to me They're a transparent obstacle put there for plot reasons, made annoying so that we, the players, can take pleasure in their eventual comeuppance. They're basically the tweedy police captain who is always hassling the hero cop into doing his paperwork and not embarrassing whichever corrupt politician happens to be mixed up with the villainous drug lords. Also, the best unintentional comedy in the series was the ME1 was Shep and Anderson insisting that the Council was crazy for not basing galactic policy on a 50,000-year-old unconfirmable psychic message experienced by exactly one person.

I think Chris is talking about playing the game without metaknowledge of where to get the bobbles, etc., to boost ability scores. Which is the best way to assess a game's design, as most players don't replay the game or read up on internet guides/forums.

Maybe Sega didn't appreciate the snide "release the damn game" subtext behind a lot of the tweets. Or maybe MCA is just busy.

Vodka is gin for people with no taste. Also, on topic, Alpha Protocol, F:NV, Civ 5, Portal 2. I suppose ME3 could go on there, too, but that's too far off for me to put much energy into anticipating. I'm in 'wait and see' mode on the DA:O expansion (and the likely sequel-to-come).

MCA's more in-depth reaction to Fallout 3 has been on the record for a while now, so the few sentences he offered to Eurogamer are nothing new. (Although the haterz can still pretend that he was just being polite to Bethesda-- as an Obsidz co-owner, it would be bad form for him to publicly blast the very popular Bethsoft product for which Obsidian has contracted to develop a spinoff.)

Isnt that the case with all meat? Beef, pork, fowl...not a carnivore in the bunch. A lot of the seafood that people eat are either carnivorous (larger fish like Tuna, Swordfish, Flounder, Sole, Cod, etc.) or omnivorous (Lobster, Crabs). I'd probably consider filter-feeders like shrimp and shellfish omnivorous, too.

Back to the orignal thread topic, from a Eurogamer interview with MCA:

You missed one of the most crucial and involving points around NPC interaction in the game. I just used the enchanting altar to create a 1-second-duration 100-strength charm spell. And then another spell that combined that effect with a 1-second self-targeting +100 Barter skill boost, for use when talking to shopkeepers. There were soooo many broken mechanics in that game.

My doctorate is of the "Juris" variety, so I don't have much experience with dissertations. Colleges usually have faculty publications listed on each professor's profile on the school website, and the first major publication a prof has is usually their dissertation. If I wanted to see some dissertations in the field I'm looking at, I'd go to that department's website at the school I'm thinking about, and see what their professors wrote. Once you have the titles, check SSRN or some other website for the text-- this may only work with the younger professors, but it should net you a few. Alternately, college libraries will often hold copies of dissertations done by that school's doctoral students. Also: (Source)

I think he means meat from herbivores. Herbivore meat. Vegetarian meat. And this is probably true-- of the animal flesh I eat, the only stuff that was carnivorous when it was whole is some (most) of the fish.

Eurogamer review.

Sometimes, I can't help but have some sympathy for characters like Howe where the game/book/film authors have gone so far out of their way to make the player hate him. It's just so ham-handed: They do everything short of showing a 5-minute cutscene of Howe simultaneously drowning puppies and raping orphans. The end result (to me, anyway) is that he's funny rather than being reprehensible or scary.

From Foreign Policy, of all places, a series of anecdotes on the intersection of seduction and spying: The History of the Honey Trap (The bit about the Stasi "Romeo Spies" was particularly entertaining.)

I never bothered to download the bonus that came with my amazon order of ME2. Games are balanced to be played without bonus items-- if anything, they tend to mess up the intended challenge that a game provides. (Example: the "The Edge" dagger that DL'ed automatically to all DA:O players who bought by a certain date-- design a rogue who can use it at an early level, and the early phases become remarkable easy.)

That's ... an interesting screenshot. That woman has incredible balance.

Tremendomeatatarianism

Doesn't seem bad to me, given that it's still a couple months off, it's not a sequel, and the PR blitz hasn't really gotten off the ground yet. I haven't pre-ordered the game yet, but once we get a little closer, I'll probably place an Amazon order for delivery either on the release date or shortly thereafter, depending on how busy I am at the time.

I never finished Deus Ex. Around the point where the progression of ability gains was pretty much topped out, the game shifted from being about the brilliant level design (if a little too dependent on the trope of human-sized air ducts) making the player feel clever in coming up with alternate paths to complete objectives and into being mostly about resource management-- starting somewhere around the cargo ship, getting by all the obstacles either consumed ammo/health or depleted your charge through power use, and the chief challenge was in minimizing these costs. Early on in the Paris hub my motivation to keep playing waned, and I moved on to something else. So, I suppose my hope for AP isn't that it follows in Deus Ex's footsteps. I hope that it takes some points from the DE's level design in its early stages. But I also hope that it has more even pacing of RPG ability improvement, and that it builds on DE's light RPG elements and its fairly limited opportunities for player choice.