Gorth

*Sigh* I did make myself a second home at Winterwind, but I sure as hell will miss this place, even without being part of any particular group of "buddies". Where do we go watch Volourn defend the virtues of NWN OC now ?!?

3071! (w00t)

I'll join the club of those who thought the idea in VMBL was good (execution was lacking a bit, too many xp towards the end, but still). Getting "xp" for accomplishments within the game, whether it be solving something, avoiding something, finding something, whatever. If killing a "boss" is necessary for the story, by all means, give a few xp for that too. That you could actually use the "xp" as a currency to "buy" improvements for your character was a nice touch. It was nice not having to run around and kill every single killable bystander and rat just to maximise your xp in an incredible boring way (ok, there were ways to maximise xp, but killing sprees, may they rest in peace, were not it).

That might have more to do with the Kotor (1&2) engine being a modified NWN engine (squeezed a bit, so it will fit more or less in an xbox). Not because the Kotor(s) as games are playable in multiplayer mode (nor with a DM).

Yeah, the poor trolls might end up like the Dodo if you remove their natural habitat... Save the Trolls!

[conspicracy] [/conspiracy]

What Batman said (execept, that this was the first forum I ever bothered to register on)

I sort of remembered few more things... The aliens made a better attempt at not being *too* repetitive in their speech. K1 Could really make me racist, wanting to exterminate all non-basic speaking species. My partymembers actually noticed that my PC look a bit tired and worn out (like, with red glowing eyes and veins standing out in my face). Pazaak was slightly more varied (and the Pazaak Den and The Champ was a nice touch) I would have sworn after the first game, that trying to give T3 any kind of personality was a lost cause...

YES!! I swear I didn't notice where's Activision's Logo on my CD's package!!! (Yeah. wherever it is. I can't see it.) I did see such Lucas Arts' Logo!!!! Do you hear me!?!?!? LUCAS ARTS LOGO!!!! Ahem Oh. I lost my nerves. That's good they remind me of Activision. So I could buy Call of Duty Expansion today. Where I live, the game is distributed by EA and has there fingerprints all over the place, even the backsleeve of the "manual" :ph34r:

Yeah, I still haven't figured out why an automated gun turrent was wearing meditation gloves... Technical stuff: I could actually play through the entire game in 1280x1024 (that crashed a couple of cutscenes in K1) The interface was just soooooo much nicer to look at when searching for something in your inventory. Weapon switching. Datapads. No more overlooking them because you "just grab the loot" No more wasting time searching empty containers. Animations were nicer. Faces seemed to be higher resolution/better quality on pc/npc's (It might have been my imagination, but it really looked that way when you got the scenes with Bastilas face for comparison) The workbench(es). Only niggling point was that you couldn't switch directly from upgrade to create/breakdown. The different character slots for save games. Gameplay Interesting new feats, perhaps just too many feats (as in you get too many, not that there was too many to choose from) ? You could actually use guns to kill people/droids. Lost interesting loot. Probably also too much (in my first game, I hoarded like 27 different interesting medium/heavy armours, gloves, robes etc., but never got around to use them) ? (Note: like the above mention spiritual equipment for gun turrets. I also got a good laugh from the "Princess Leia" costume, +2 to persuade and the "Grey Jedi robes +2 to Charisma", I sort of pictured Gandalf running around in of those for some reason >_ It made sense to have skills (for dialogue, getting stat boosts, for opening locks without destroying content etc.) Something that was great fun (for me at least) was the screentime given to your NPC's, doing their own thing away from the protagonist. A lot more of that please ? I would have loved to mention the influence system here, but the "ending" sort of removed the entire point of having it It did look interesting what was there of it though. Visuals Generally decent looking. If only they had added some big rotating fans, some flashing bright ligts and I would have sworn that Nar Shaddaa was something from Bladerunner. The engine generated cutscenes were mostly superior to the FMV (or whatever they were) scenes... next time do all of them "in-game" ? Already mentioned the characters and animations. The new critters where quite decent looking too. I almost felt sorry for the poor Cannouks (Sp?) when I ran around and butchered them just for sport. Nice to see slightly different world "themes", jungle, arctic, plains, mining facility etc (I would still like a Dagobah type swamp world though, there wasn't enough sewers in the game. I like sewers). Minor niggling point, there was so much more that could have been done with the surface of Telos... I'm thinking of the wasted (you did have a space suit after all) and the arctic parts. Other stuff I liked the NPC's. Found them way more interesting than the first batch (K1) The darker theme in the story was definitely there ('nuff said, other very popular threads deal with story and conclusions) Despite the darker theme, I actually found more humour in K2 (Bastially force tripping Mission being the only funny thing I can remember from K1). Both in the party dialogues, the extras, the way you could abuse force persuade, lots and lots of little detail. The dialogue between the two droids in the Czerka mainframe room was hilarious as was T3's dialogue options in the store room (1. Lie/Persuade Dwoot tweep, 1. Persuade Dweeep tweeep deet, 3. Zweet tweep dooo) The game had plenty of these nice little touches. Meh, I could probably continue for a long time yet. I think I'll go back and continue my current game...

If you are a girl, you don't. There are four characters in the game of which you get two. You get one of two depending on your sex and the other one of a pair is determined by your "dark/light-o-meter" when you get there. Edit: Oops, forgot to mention, if you are a guy, you can't miss her, she'll show up on her own when she decides to.

Ahmen to that! [rant] I really think that folks like Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, and David Webb Peoples deserve just as much, if not more credit for the greatness of the Star Wars Universe since they were the writers and the directors who fleshed out and crafted Lucas' Flash Gordon/Hidden Fortress rip-off into it's own solid sci-fi mythos. Nowadays it's folks like Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, the design crew at Obsidian and Bioware, and the various writers at Dark Horse that are keeping star wars alive since ole' George seems determined to kill it with asinine plots, 2 diminsional characters, and plain wretched directorial and editorial jobs. [/rant] Well ranted. The guy should stick to making Ewok movies, that's what he is best at. As for why Revan didn't stick around on the Starforge if playin DS, perhaps he realised that it was a tool he could not really control, in the end he would become a slave, "fuel" for the starforge and it's corrupting influence. Solutions had to be found elsewhere.

Personal favourites: Firefly and Lexx (I don't really like heroes) Runners up: Battlestar Galactica (the new version) and Babylon 5 (I've only seen the first two seasons, I need to work on that). Haven't seen Farscape yet

They might as well wear a black sheet for all the good it's going to do them. The problem with "invisibility" is the recreation of what is behind you without any refraction factor to simulate the effect of transparancy

That leads to the dark side you know... But yes, polls in their very nature limits discussion. Like asking, what part of a car is the most important It just begs for silly responses A more serious response (since virgins are such a rare commodity in rpgs): The ability to "immerse" yourself in that miniature world, building your character, do things you normally wouldn't do, experience places where you (the player) could never go. Everything else is just tools to facilitate it. Sound, visuals, game mechanics, everything is only of secondary importance. The trick is to get the formula right, sometimes a game succeeds, sometimes it fails. If anybody could figure the pattern out, they would have a hit (qualitywise) everytime. When you "feel" like you are "there", and your representative in the game is you and you actually "think" inside the game, then it has probably succeeded in creating a roleplaying experience.

Ritual Virgin Sacrifice

In my next game, I intend to play "evil woman" (for some reason, I always have a hard time playing a female character...) I think I'm going to keep him a soldier though, as there is already too many jedis in the game. It annoyed me endlessly in my first two games, that there is just so much interesting loot in that game, guns, armours, whatever. And since fully half the sycophants in my party turn jedi on me, very little of that stuff gets used. This time, I'm going to keep the number of jedis low and that means Hanharr instead of Mira and Disciple stays in the heavy armour and gets a nice big gun to play with.

*Tilt* This doesn't really need a comment. Sometimes actions speaks for themselves...

I don't know your soundcard, but does it have controls for hardware acceleration ? My old card did weird stuff with cinematics and cutscenes in various games (including the Fallout death scene) until I disable that in the cards control panel.

The visual style of the Fallouts, Planescape Torment and especially the Icewind Dales are among my all time favourites. Both the ingame visuals and the concept art that preceeded them. Some of the concept art for VMBL was made by the same guys, pretty good stuff too

It's probably not the good will to please fans that is lacking, but Black Isle was their own publisher and license holder (at the time) of the Icewind Dale brand. They could do pretty much anything they wanted as long as they could afford it and WotC (IIRC) didn't choke on the content. Way more interests have to be coordinated by something published by somebody else (and no idea where Microsoft fits in the equation)

And the Board said to the Post: "Go forth and multiply" >_

I didn't know what a "scouser" was, so I did a bit of searching... http://www.siliconhell.com/humour/scouse.htm o:)" Edit: I still don't quite get the Calm Down reference though. Anybody care to explain ?

The actual game is great. Whether or not you'll be able to play seems like a hit or miss chance. Some people (like myself) plays through the game twice and encounter 1 (one) crash. Other can't seem to get the game started at all. It probably depends very much on your hardware and software configuration. It might be the chipset, it might be overclocking, it might be crappy drivers that doesn't behave quite as specified in the standards, it might be... Ask yourself, was your system designed for speed, price, compatibility etc. ?

No comments on the x-box score... but the pc score seems about right for me (at least it matches my gaming experience). As for bugs, I had one freeze to death on my second game through, otherwise I just noticed the unsolvable quests that kept hanging in my quest log, even after passing the point of no return for solving them. The only real fun killer was the ending, whoever got the idea to neuter it deserves whacking with a Clue Hammer (+3 to Wisdom). The last impression of a game is just as important as the first impression. It's like finally getting that &^%$ stopper off the Champaigne bottle just to discover that it's decarbonised.