Zoma

The new guy's Alexander Brandon. His role in Obsidian is Audio director. Apparently he is also tasked in overseeing the VA in MotB as well. Alexander Brandon is quite well-known for his Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex soundtracks apparently.

We'll find out won't we after the first combat video is released.

Back to the topic. As a Chinese even though I am not born from China, I admit I am feeling very proud of China's achievement. Heck, I'm even cheering for all of the Chinese team in the Olympics even though I have no reason to.

meh, boring What I ment with this I don't see anything cool with the goddamn heroic bravado and sad violin arrangements that are so prevalent in film and game world. They're so calculated and predictable it is depressing. (I'M LOOKING AT YOU JEREMY SOULE!) If EPIC GRAWWR is wanted I'd go and license Verdi's Dies Irae or something. 100xbetter than thousands of its movie world imitators with stupid chants etc. More MotB and PS:T approach, maybe something Morriconesque. K2 soundtrack was also great, Jedi Enclave theme was first time in a long while when brass hornz + violin actually sounded very heartfelt and deeply sad. You must include TonyK's AI It doesn't have to be Jeremy's style you know. I'm personally curious of what Alexander could do with an ochestra since I'm not aware of his any previous works involving with one at all. In addition, do remember that SoZ is returning back to old adventuring roots. Thus we are certainly heading back to the days in comparison to BG's soundtrack in similarity at least. So as much as it sounds cliche, I don't think music style like 'Morriconesque' would fit a typical story for a typical adventuring party for a typical setting. It has to be a cliche, a well done and executed cliche and an ochestra would help much in bringing back the good old adventuring vibes.

Nothing wrong with the actual animations of NWN2 IMO. The problem is simply the restrictions involved in creating a fluid awesome series of chain attack execution limited by the clunky combat engine. To prove the point, the combat animations in KOTOR2 is nothing short of stunning back then. Most of the moves were clearly inspired from martial arts shows. Back to your concern for AP, rest assure from what we know so far for AP's combat animation they are mostly taken from motion capture to be implemented in the game.

Ever since UN failed to stop the US from invading Iraq after deeming the war itself illegal, its role of stopping other super powers from invading other small nations is pretty much useless. So the UN we have now is simply a figurehead.

Live OCHESTRA soundtrack for Storm of Zehir according to the blog! About time!

And if you thought bunny hopping in CS is the lamest exploit ever, you have yet to see dolphin jumps in Battlefield 2.

The reason behind the stabbing is not influenced by video games, rather his stressful background and poor parental support who provided him poor emotional support but extreme expections. It was when his parents began to dot and pay attention to his younger brother and perceive him as a figurehead than a son (Because he done poorly for his school results) that set the timer of the time bomb in him. The tragedy occured when the time simply ran out and there was no one to help him to deal with the stress. It was simply his way of 'commiting suicide' as he has no courage to do so by his own hands, thus he would rather the authorities do so on his behalf instead. The Thailand incident on the other hand is due to the claims by the perpetuater, stating the game itself motivated him to commit the atrocity. That statement itself brings a heavy weight in terms of confession that could be used as 'evidence'. Thus any conservative government who empahsis on their cultural values in Asia would remove the game from the shelves immediately.

You folks got to understand Asia's still conservative culture that the society operates with a collective mindset. Hence the ban of the game.

Its the only way for Bethesda to be part of a "Legend" in the PC RPG game franchise history that will be likely to remain classic for many more years to come. Oblivion on the other hand? I think everyone's forgotten about it by now.

Bruce Campbell did the voice over of third person sci-fi shooter game by Konami called "BrokenHelix" for the PS1 game. I recalled the game being super hard but hilarious as well in some part due to Bruce's over the top voice acting.

I played Dungeon Siege for awhile, and your character got better, in terms of bonuses etc., with different skills based on how often they were used. For example, if you always charged into combat with sword or axe swinging, you became a better melee fighter more quickly than you improved in your other skills. If you stayed back and shot the enemies full of holes with arrows for as long as you could, resorting to melee combat only when the enemy got too close, you became a better ranged fighter much more quickly than you did a melee fighter. Same goes for magic use, combat vs non-combat magic. It wasn't that bad a system, in my opinion. A similar system is implemented in Wizardry 8 which I think is executed much better and complex. The system is also expanded to other branching skills that may be related to the action performed in combat as well. For example using melee combat often will increase your PC's Close combat skill, the skill of the weapon he uses be it dagger, axe or sword, exclusive skills such as Critical hit skills for Samurais, Ninjas ect, the increasing of shield skills and so on. Basically, all of the skills(Which is ALOT of them) in the game including magic will increase based on the degree of use. Thus providing the addictive factor in the game knowing that after every single combat, some of your party members will have their skills improved, watching them grow stronger with every baby steps they take. The only stats that are dependant on pumping points given per level up would be the basic attributes like strength, intelligence ect. Heck, if you max out one of the attributes, it opens up a new skill for your character to pour more skill points into.

When Aeris died. . . Hey, I was only 14!

No offence to Obsidian, but the previewer seems to be over hyping the game by simply describing how 'awesome' it is without citing examples or details. Solid in the sound effects it gives? The power of the weapon? The targetting responsiveness? So it shoots like Gears of War or Rainbow Six? How does stats come into play? Will a pistol with max points makes it an equivelant to a sniper rifle? Is it customisable in the middle of a mission/combat? Removing silencer when your position is compromised, switching from AGOG scope to a reflex one in CQC and vice versa for LQC? This is important since the player is incapable of salvaging enemies' weapons in the combat zone to swap weapons and is pretty much dependable for providing a degree of variety in gun gameplay. What features exactly? More info. and examples. And lastly, That is a pretty bold assumption on the bolded word in the statement. We will see. This simply sounds like an Oblivion hype from a PS3 flagger to me. So I will have to take this previewer's words with a spoonful of salt.

Your character carries three different kinds of weapons at anytime. So it could be very similar to Mass Effect's system.

Depends on the replay value. It could be simply 20 hours on the first try but manages to get alot higher than that if it succeeds in providing replay values. Afterall, in one interview it was stated AP has lots of endings.

Gay love? Pffft. I demand TENTACLES

-Tobal 2 -Front Mission 2, best combat presentation and deepest strategic gameplay from all of the Front Mission series. But the bloody games take about 5 minutes to load a saved game since PS1 is a slow beast. On its own, the story and its setting is unique because the protagonist is a South East Asian nationality, a Bangladesh.

If I'm not mistaken, the activation limit is also performed when you switch internal hardwares of your PC. eg. Change your video card, sound card and such, it will detect if there are new hardwares in your PC and use up one activation. This is to ensure the game doesn't get transferred around to other computers like in a LAN shop for instance.

Third new class is semi-revealed in the new interview with NWN vault with Tony Evans:

Only Feargus was involved as the producer if I am not mistaken. Hence you see Bioware poking fun at Feargus by putting his name inside as one of the NPCs in both games.

And here I was hoping, Obsidian could achieve Squaresoft's once Golden age years. The days when Square finally branch out from RPGs into awesome games like Tobal 2(Best dungeon RPG fighting game eva), Bushido blade, Einhander, Parasite Eve, Front Mission 2 (I still find its combat presentation the best amongst all Front Mission series, the Wanzers played out like they are truly in combat instead of standing still). Oh well, next time.

Just get the PC at most in the state of teary eyed. Jason Bourne did so when he confessed the killing of the girl's parents in one of his first missions in front of her. Otherwise a camera trick showing the PC sitting down wearily on a chair with his back hunched with the camera zooming out while the PC makes suggestive gestures of wiping his eyes/forehead. I'm sure no players would enjoy watching their character wailing like a ten year old kid who dropped his ice cream, but at the same time also like to relate that a super spy Thorton may be, he is still a person with emotions. You gotta to humanise Thorton Obsidian in the area of expressing Thornton's depression and despair.

In this case I am correct, because I actually understand how the underlying code that governs combat and states works in the IE and Aurora. Responsiveness, in this context defined as how quickly the game updates states after player input is given, is consistently faster and more reliable in IE than Aurora. OMGWTFBBQ!