Diogo Ribeiro

But the problem with third person is that you get an unfair advantage. Instead of relying on your perception, you can just activate third person and do some mouse movement to rotate the camera and see what's ahead, as opposed to sticking to a wall and leaning over the sides to see who's coming in first person. You have other senses in real life, but none that equals a chase cam with an ample view of your surroundings.

They killed Easter.

Speaking of which, I approached the Codex people with the same query. I picked up on a short story I did recently, and did a quick translation of it as best as I could. You can go here to check the english translation, or here to read the portuguese one I wrote originally (among other stuff). At

I don't think it's that good, really. A mildly humorous romp? Likely, but that's where it stays.

Yes, we definetely need more of the kind of idiots that believe simultaneous actions are the same as individual, sequential actions. No. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Probably not garbage, but not that good either. I only needed to have all the members of the party in overwatch mode and move them along the map, they'd terminate their targets nearly automatically. There wasn't a real need for tactics. The poor AI, contrary to several statements made here, was poor regardless of the system you played it on. It showed its flaws both in realtime and turnbased. As for the whole realtime vs turnbased, one of the good things about turnbased combat, in comparison to pure realtime, is that given it's admitedly slower nature and lack of time constrains for accessing options, the interface can be indepth, and so can the number of combat options. A pure realtime game generally cannot present that many options to a player, and there has to be a compromise between the interface's levels of complexity and simplicity, and the combat model's depth. In a turnbased game, you're not under any pressure to issue commands, so the interface can be deeper and combat options can be immense. In realtime, options are usually reduced for the sake of giving the player a set of commands which are quick to operate. However, what realtime with pause (not pure realtime) basically manages right is to give players a faster combat model while still allowing for the same depth of combat options to be there, along with an interface that isn't streamlined for the sake of realtime combat. If you can pause then you have all the time to access the interface and to plan your attacks, just as you would in turnbased. The problem is that adding a pause feature is basically adding an improvement while inserting a drawback, the most obvious one being the need to access the interface repeatedly in short amounts of time due to realtime itself. In order to adapt to certain situations in combat, the player has to repeatedly access the interface, more precisely, the pause function. Granted, he can use hotkeys and neglect the pause function, but that's neglecting the main aspect of the system. The other aspect is that once unpaused, you're still left with realtime, which has a tendency to be chaotic at best. Ranged combat in particular doesn't go very well with realtime. Turnbased minimizes that discrepancy a bit, at least. Infinity Engine and Neverwinter Nights combat also had to contend with another problem, which was to take into account the conversion of combat rules into realtime. Pausing to quickly issue commands was often times nullified or not as efficient as it could be because all characters had to obey the six second rule and their animations had to be played out in order to reflect this. With this kind of constrain (ie, using a realtime with pause system which is not trying to adapt any rules which would conflict with its design), the realtime with pause system of those games was a bit compromised, and not as good as it could have been. As for a system being outdated, that's got more to do with gamers' general appreciation of the system in a given time, not with anything inherent to the system. Realtime had been considered outdated in the past, then it came back and became widely accepted again, while turnbased was on the other side of that. Both realtime and turnbased's perceived flaws can, and have been, dealt with in several games in the past. They aren't improved more often because there is a tendency to imitate rather than inovate, the blatant example being clones of successful games or game formulas. And Happy Easter or somesuch.

Merry Bunny of Eggs Season!

Why, of course it is. Aren't they always?

But... Wasn't this supposed to be God's gift to CRPG players? Eh?... Oh. Gosh darn it.

The Sims 2 = yes. The Singles = hell no.

Not sure about this. I dislike an excess of flashbacks, but what if the story overall progresses but in certain points regresses? Consider... The movie Memento. The story basically progresses, but is sometimes interposed by flashbacks. I think it worked well.

Actually I only write in portuguese. Whatever I wrote in english is long gone and trashed. I haven't tried it in a while... Theoretically I can still do it, but I'm trying to learn all the intrincancies of portuguese first. Writing is a hobby, and I feel I should get a hang of it first in my main language before I invest into secondary ones.

I have to admit I did get a kick out of torturing them. " My uneducated guess:

I'd like to ask a question to the folks here regarding their story preferences. By this I mean to ask what kind of story do you prefer reading through? Slow, methodical, all patience and detail? Or fast, zapping around everything, focusing more on lightning action wire-fu? Or just your average balance of both? By comparison, what game turned into an accurate novel (as much as possible) would you prefer reading - Planescape: Torment (slower, more descriptive), Fallout (faster, edgier), or Baldur's Gate (sometimes slower, sometimes faster)? As to I'm asking this, it's because since I've stopped throwing away every single short story I've ever written and actually begun letting them reside on my HD, and ocasionally showing them to people, I've heard the usual stuff. "It's too slow", "It's great, I love reading the details", "This part isn't bad, but this one seems too dense while this one seems too quick". I have a tendency to focus a lot on descriptions of character's feelings, experiences and perceptions, but I'm still trying to find a storytelling approach that works well enough, where I feel confortable in... Not that I'm not ok with what I'm doing, but I think I can improve it (a whole lot).

Being good isn't mandatory to have an

I'm giving them a 50-50 chance actually. Some are great, some are terrble.

No thanks.

Portuguese women are a bit like Daikatana. They suck and blow, in more ways than one >_>

It basically feels like Sim Earth meets EVO - The Search for Eden. 'Meh' for now. Not that I didn't like both those games, but I'll believe it when I play it.

True. Note that I didn't question the possible reasons behind it, I'm sure they were good or even out of necessity. Just saying what in there feels rushed to me.

And because roleplaying takes a hit. And because most, if not all, subesequent areas are inflated with mostly unecessary combat. This isn't rushed in the "glitch" and "unfinished content showing up where it shouldn't" sense, it's rushed in the "ok, it's near the end, let's just make the player kill a couple of hundreds of things so it gets labelled as epic and challenging". Different perspectives. It's your prerogative to have that one, and it's mine to have a different one. To me, if a game who averages a healthy dose of combat and roleplaying suddenly drops most of its roleplaying and focuses much more on combat towards its end, it's a signal of not enough balanced development. The focus becomes uneven, and the way to end feels much more less developed and rushed.

My point is basically that. Towards the ending we're treated to either a much lesser focus on story or a growing focus on combat areas which serve no purpose other than to delay progress and give an artificial challenge to players. Sometimes both. In BIS titles, or titles made by former BIS devs, like Fallout 2, Planescape, Vampire Bloodlines, and KoTOR2, its there. On differing levels, but there nonetheless.

That's development, not creation.

Is it a BIS curse? Who can tell? Stay tuned with us as we unravel another part of the mystery in our next episode of the bone-chilling terror series "Their Games Felt Rushed Towards Their Endings". :ph34r:

Black and white violence perpetrated by a bulky man of small words but big feelings.

Saw the trailer some time ago. Looks nifty. Am eagerly waiting for it. Or for any comic book-based movie that doesn't suck, for that matter.