Gorth

More from Gorth's Big Pile of Questions... Will mouselook be improved, as in not having to keep the right mousebutton down to release the pointer for point-and-click operations (make it toggle the release instead?)? Will it be possible to get even a slightly larger field of view in the y-axis? I cannot count the number of times I moved the mouse back and forth in vain attempts to look up from the ground, or down from the streets of Taris. I can do it when watching from first person perspective. Doing it from third person perspective would have been nice. Will people ever get scared in combat and run away when their side is getting a good stomping? Speaking of which, will there be "sniper" type opponents who will try to keep out of reach of your melee attacks while taking pot-shots at you? Will opponents figure out how to use stealth devices? Will there be unarmed fighting styles (like DnD monks)? Will there be mixed dual wield options, like a blaster pistol in one hand and a vibro blade in the other? My (anti-)hero really missed his usual approach to combat with gun blazing and brandishing a blade Some &^%$ cheated me out of 20 bucks for a backstage pass to the band. Will there be npc's who use persuade, intimidate etc. against me, whether I want it or not? Could be sort of fun... Back to thinking mode... B)

Yes and no. Falling is a big theme, so is temptation. Redemption less so, unless acknowledging a lot of the godawful paperback books. Having not seen Episode III, the only redemption that I can remember from top of my head was Vader/Anakin in Episode VI, and that was post-mortem. As for Kotor, the game gave you free hands without suffering any real consequences before the "endgame" starts. Normally you would expect people to have a personality that slowly moves in one or the other direction on the LS/DS scale, not doing acrobatic stunts. It appeared as if the designers were afraid of forcing the player to take a stand and face the consequences of moral decisions too early in the game (nobody ever blamed Kotor of being a hard/difficult game). They could have done it a bit more elegantly, simply by removing that silly choice on the temple top. Only thing you really should have been able to decide at that point was whether you wanted Bastila as an ally or an enemy... Your party members would (should) have observed your previous actions and made their stand against or approval of (Mission, Carth, Jolee etc.) you long before the temple, and acted upon it. As it is, it simply feels artificial. The game had a decent story, but was definitely more about reaching the Starforge and confronting Malak than about complex ethics and moral behaviour.

Why ?

What??? NOoo...? Never B) (Shhh!!!...) Thanks. Makes sense. A lot of conspiracy theories down the drain...

"Best" would be subjective/oppinion... Sarevok was so stereotypical it hurts, NWN was too boring to ever figure out who the villain was, Melissan? Melissan who? And Malak was more funny than scary. A true comic book villain (which might have been a deliberate design decision, being SW and all). Jon Irenicus on the other, yes, that was a well done villain. You could actually understand what made him tick and you could dislike him for what he did to you. The problem with games like PS:T and FO, is that they are way more "open" games. Most players focus singlemindedly on the "end-boss" (an awful concept in crpg's) that they overlook all the petty villains along the way, some of them more interesting than the main villain. I for one found small fish like the Skullz gang leader or the guy from the Maltese Falcon more interesting persons than The Master in Fallout. Even with very little or no backstory, theirs was evil you could relate to. Same thing goes for Trias the Betrayer in PS:T, shees, wish that guy had had a bigger part than he did. Bioware is just not very good at being evil. Wonder how they would tackle a game where you are not up against a villain, but a phenomena like a plague or a disaster ?

Sitting here and looking at the Fallout Mapper (), I sort of wondered about the reasons for why, more games never get the toolsets, or even just the documention for the datastructure released. Its perfectly understandable, that new games are sort of shrouded a bit in mystery as to not give themselves unnecessary competion from 3rd parties. But a couple of older engines, like the Infinity Engine, never had as much as a data documention released (to the best of my knowledge), even after the point where it couldn't really hurt sales. Is it because it gives too much away about the design that went into an engine? Is it vanity () because the tools etc. might not stand up to scrutiny by the public? Is it because a lot work went into these things and it feels wrong to just "give it away"? Is it fear of 3rd party violating the IP (like the jokes about "Twi'lek Porn")? All of the above? B) Just curious about why some information and some tools are guarded so well, even after a games primetime... Edit: Yes, I know most multiplayer FPS and strategy games comes with level editors etc. I was having crpg's in mind...

I was actually wondering about that one, the people on Taris (the "aliens") gave me the impression through dialogue, that the Sith did not like non-humans, as in being discriminating. Yet on Korriban you run into somebody like Yuthura (spelling?) Two different story/level designers ?

Perhaps a Star Wars universe FAQ would be nice. If for no other reason, then just to get rid of the Sith misconceptions... B) Sith are not self-destructive, they are just evolution personified. They have rules for who you are allowed to challenge, to kill, order of succession etc. They are not even evil, they just use passion as their driving force (bad pun), their goal is improving the Sith, not the individual. Promoting strong and ruthless leaders is just a way to make the Sith as a whole stronger. Somebody with the background material help me out here please ?

Something with lots of complicated choices, like having to drown puppies to save an old lady, blowing up a city of innocents to save the galaxy from a genetically engineered disease, abduct kids from their parents to prevent bad guys from using them for some nefarious purpose.... take your pick. There are a few thousand years worth of interesting source material to mix'n'match in interesting ways and season with a bit of new spice. Why worry. Curiosity killed the cat right ? I will buy the game anyway to satisfy my curiosity, based on the previous accomplishments of the gentlemen (and ladies) involved

Don't let him fool you, he is working on his PhD in Dyslexia Ignore the form and focus on the content. Volourn usually makes for, if not educational, then at least interesting reading.

Thanks for the answers I didn't really expect anyone to answer all of them. I'll just keep adding questions, then I'll have numbers on my side...

Toolset ? What toolset ? Can we see it ?

Master of Orion 2 was more fun in the long run than Master of Orion, even with the annoying bugs

makes you wonder what would have happened to Yoda, if Luke had offered him his Cereal Bar (or whatever that was) after midnight on Dagobah... :ph34r:

I'm still cursing, that I played the game through the first 3 times with "Frame Buffer Effects" off... :angry: That one should really have been on by default. Made it a completely different experience and the reason I started on trip 4 and 5 through the game...

Despite his claims of the opposite, I still suspect him of being an orc

More questions to add to my list (way back on page 4 ) Will there be a "push" feature, preferably implicit? Sheesh it was frustrating getting caught in corners, because party members wanted to hug you or somehing Will there be a "safe" place to drop stuff from your inventory, including quest items (f.x. on the Ebon Hawk) to rid inventory of unsellable clutter? If combat animations are truly improved, will there be some kind of playback or save combat event for later feature. I'm a narcissist, I like to see myself in action. Would love to save some spectacular combat sequences for later perusal, after the adrenaline rush. Is Lucasarts still doing all sound and music, like stated on your webpage, or do you have a say (even a small one) after all ? Is the no violence/adult action thing a Lucasarts thing or a "rating" thing (i.e. target audience) Will we be able to "cheat" in the minigames if we have sufficient skill levels ? Like cheating in Pazaak ? B) Will there be more (and definitely better) random (not scripted) encounters in the game. Like somebody you owe money (Han Solo?) put a bounty on you, a deceived lover wants your head on a silver platter etc. Lots of stuff like that ? Will there be lethal combat, as in lethal for your party members, or do you still just have to have the last man standing on your team? I'll wait a couple of pages and then add more

A guided tour for Biowarians.... Nice idea. Bonus point for originality

I didn't ask for your advice - thanks. You'll get some unsolicited advice then (spam). Read the FAQ. B) Might keep some unnecessary threads off the boards. No hostile intent. Take it or leave it (the advice)

Ehh... Could also be a case of "You scratch my back, I scratch your back" Black Isle sort of kicked Bioware off on the path of crpg development. I don't know all the details (didn't know about forums then), but I get the impression that Bioware is returning the favour. Never mind how it came to be. Kotor1 was the most fun I've had since BG2. And I had sworn never, never to buy a Bioware game after NWN... :D I expect a serious lot of things from Obsidian

It must be a fan thing. Or the complete lack of decent crpgs since... ehh since... Since a long time ago (BG2 ?) I don't get why all the fuzz about Kotor1. It has shallow story, inconsequential npcs, horrible small maps and disastrously bad inventory system. Ok, that was the negative side. The positive side. It was a "soft" introduction to Star Wars rpg. It was fast, fun and gave the clueless like me the option to see more of Starwars than just the movies. The game was forgiving, in that you couldn't really bungle up anything, you knew what to do next. And you could complete a game in a few late nights. As a crpg Kotor1 is good (and fun, thats the most important part), not exceptional, and definitely below what both Bioware of old and especially the former Black Islanders in Obsidian are capable of. I played Kotor1 through 4 times now, loved all 4 trips. Am probably going to play through it 2-3 more times. When Obsidian releases Kotor2, I expect no less than several sleepless weeks B) Make that a month or two...

I have no faith, least of all in the game press. Lets wait another 6 month and then see what the current work in progress might turn out looking like B) Wonder what they have been doing the previous 9 months on the project ?

I would guess it's not really Obsidians decision in this particular case (unfortunately, would have loved some Mark Morgan music in Kotor)

At least, the "Lair" people had the decency to put their spam in the WoT section