Gorth

I hate to say this, but I'm struggling with this game. I'm not out of the prologue (at least, thats what I think what it is) and I just can't force myself to continue. One long linear trip of simple hack and slash (and an incredibly stupid "dodge the dragon flames" interlude) and little or none of that "magic feeling" of the atmosphere and ambience of the original. Does it get any better later?

They aren't making Icewind Dale 3. They would want to make it though, but it's up to Atari who owns the license. Not to mention the dreaded current edition ruleset and setting. Do the Dales even exist anymore?

I'll have to give that one a try some day. Gamersgate occasionally has it on sale. Best buy ever for me was an old C64 game called Lords of Midnight. First sandbox/open world game I ever played (and that was in 1984). The number of hours (thousands, lots of thousands) would put any MMO game to shame Still pull it out and play on ye olde emulator every now and then. Slightly on-topic, haven't played the demo yet (yeah, member of the PC master race gamer), but the last game I bought (The Witcher 2) was shockingly bad in the English voice acting. "Triss" in particular sounds like she is sitting in a chair and reciting lines of text with all the passion of an automated announcement system. Curious to see how it compares.

You are not alone in that. I have a number of game titles myself, acquired over the last 20 years, that I wish I had never invested time and money in Some day you just wake up and you realise that it is just a recreational thing, passing some time with and not worth getting high blood pressure over. Doesn't mean that you have completely forgotten what it feels like to passionate about it, you just feel less passionate yourself about it.

if you think they are bad here you shoulda seen them at the fallout:nv forum..my god..pretty much the game was golden and anyone that said different was troll..and all the problems with the game were just lies.. When you have been around long enough, you sort of recognise a universal pattern. Doesn't really matter which forum you hang out on, whether it be Bioware, Eidos, Obsidian, Bethesda, Paradox etc. You'll have a group of people who hang out because they are part of the community and sometimes like the games and generally facepalm at the excitement and nerd rage that occasionally is on display, you'll have a group of smug trolls thinking they are clever because their insults seems to go unnoticed (usually not worth responding to), you'll have the fanbois who worship the ground the developers work and think they can do no wrong, blatantly bad releases or not, and you'll have a group of (usually underage or otherwise immature) trolls that spam the forum with negative posts because they feel personally insulted that their particular wishes weren't considered (and then point out their own flood of posts as proof of all the negative feedback). Happens just about every time a game gets released, regardless of publisher and developer A psychology/sociology student would never run out of subjects to study on a gaming forum.

EA or Lucasarts are signed up for 25+ titles to be released over the next three months. Which specifically to be revealed at E3. Lucasarts would possibly be most likely. It's been hinted that System Shock isn't included, which would seem to rule out EA. However, an EA employee was found winking on his twitter account. I like the Lucasarts idea because they've become increasingly fond of reviving old franchises lately after Sam and Max's episodic success. Monkey Island just seems more likely than Ultima. ...or x-wing, tie fighter etc.? One could always hope

Yeah, naughty Nightshape! ... What did you do now?

I knew all those ritual virgin sacrifices would pay off!!! Still, reading stuff like "the time is right to bring the game to a new audience" sends a chill down my spine though, considering how the Jagged Alliance franchise is being abused at the moment. Lets wait and see if they cast "Raise Dead" on their website, they might have more info on what their intentions are. The gaming gods knows, the later Carmageddons suffered under "time trial" missions and other stupid stuff.

wth is this black hound? a mod? my Google Fu seems to be too weak, and even Josh won't answer me The name of "Project Jefferson", AKA "Baldur's Gate III" AKA "The Black Hound". A game whose development had progressed quite a lot before being cancelled by Interplay, due to Atari wrestling the license and rights to publish it away from them (I'm sure there is a certain irony in there somewhere), Edit: J.E.Sawyer was quite heavily involved in the game. Might still be a sore subject

Playing epic music? Looked a bit like when Hells Angels and Bandidos were having a go at each other a few years back in Denmark.

Those guys have nothing on the Gurkhas

I think most companies would kill to have a money printing machine (WoW) in their backyard like Blizzard has, but that is probably Blizzards strength, yes. Few other companies can develop a game for years and toss it in the bin if it doesn't feel right. My point was whether the co-op thing was a focus or a feature (and by extension whether it is being sold "correctly")

Weren't dragons on the endangered species list in DA:O, having been hunted to extinction by Navarran dragon hunters or something to similar effect?

Haven't played the demo yet (PC user), but couldn't care less about co-op/multiplayer. Wasn't it Bioware who once actually went through the trouble of doing the market research and concluding that resources invested in multiplayer was an indulgence as the market was tiny compared to the single player base? Not really a fan of the entire hack'n slash and "arpg" genre, but quite curious about seeing the Onyx engine in action.

It's been a long time since playing Kotor2... I seem to remember some other older games having success with a few tips and tricks. Some of them involved changing core affinity (to simulate running on mono core cpus), disabling audio hardware accelleration, running the game in Windows 2000 compatibility mode (for some reason, some games like that better than Windows XP compatibility) etc. Of couse, I'm a pack rat, so I actually have an old P4 computer tucked away somewhere for playing old stuff on Edit: I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to play Kotor2 on VirtualPC?

Google images is your friend

The Black Watch was proud Scottish infantry regiment and there are no kilts in DA2. Probably just as well... Might grab this one day when at half price and all significant DLC's included. The combat in the demo really was a major turnoff

Pick up some Jaundice and you can proudly proclaim to wear your national colours I don't think people get blue feet from snakebites where I live. Got myself a new tumble dryer. It was an impulse buy while walking along a road looking for a furniture store. It's nice to have though.

Never underestimate the engineering prowess of the Germans. It's the country that brought the world things like Einstein, Werner von Braun and Bullet Proof Bra's If they want to change focus towards sustainable/renewable energy, the more power to them I say (unintended pun). It's not like they are going to go 100% windmill electricity overnight (if my Google skills were correct, it's still "only" 29% of their current energy production they are looking at alternatives for).

Man you are fast

Hmm... two years at New World Computing? I wonder what titles he worked on there (lots of great stuff coming out of NWC those years).

Use your manliness and take one of those self shots you always seen in facebook. Slightly unrelated, but Nepenthe's occupation reminded me of an amusing example of advertising/product placement. The bus stop outside the Queensland Police HQ has this big advertising poster that says something like, 'Been to court? Need a lawyer?' (with contact info etc. underneath it).

I think that has more to do with Obsidians animation department lacking in general a bit. Maybe it was a decision of priorities? I.e. focusing on a certain rendering distance, where the camera is presumably going to spend most of it's time. I remember the grotesquely oversized weapons that characters in NWN2 ran around with (their ridiculousness would have made a Games Workshop miniature green with envy), yet when zoomed out and using the isometric view, they looked "normal" and you could tell from a distance what you were wielding. There are only so many texture sizes and LoD's to go around on the various platforms. As an amusing anecdote, it wasn't until my second playthrough of NWN2 that I noticed that rooms and caves had "ceilings", always zooming out to the max distance. Same thing in DA:O

Use your avatar

Looks like the 1.1 patch from GOG fixed part of my problem. I can at least start and run the game without changing desktop resolution every time Registration and Settings screens are still fubar when useing medium or large Windows fonts. But hey, at least I can play the game itself without hassle now. Virgins and villains beware!