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Aegeri

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Everything posted by Aegeri

  1. I am interested in this game, but I hope that Bioware use the facial expressions and such during dialogue to enhance the dialogue and back up well written speech options. IE: No mass effect "GRAB HIS COLLAR" and "I NEED MORE BODYBAGS!".
  2. Oh man, I can't wait until this comes out. Looks to be incredibly awesome! That first boss is really nice! I love the way it grates its hand across the stone (sparks everywhere!).
  3. Fair enough, you act as if I demand this from you (I realise I should not have used 'you' earlier in fact, which was a mistake) when I don't. It's the companies image and not mine afterall, I have no dog in the show at all. I just find it interesting that Bethsoft chose to ban a site they gave a lot of media attention to, interviews and such pre-release, then after release a sudden stonewalling and blacklisting - a blacklisting that occurs on the timeframe the site becomes increasingly critical of Bethesda. That takes some explaining. However, I'll believe any position that is supported by evidence and factual statements. You're endearing yourself to me nicely at the moment, by trying to imply I have some hidden agenda and similar. Absurd levels of paranoia? In any event, from what I have read at the moment Bethsoft acted in an entirely unfair and arbitary manner in response to a site that was increasingly critical of the poor state of the PC release of Star Trek legacy. The complete 'blacklist' of the site from the company I view as both immature and poor for fostering any sort of communication. Disinformation how? Is it disinformation because it doesn't fit with the account you would like people to believe? Again, one side of the argument has supported their position. That's good actually, because as it stands with the information I have read it doesn't reflect well upon Bethsoft. Edit: Also, just so we're clear, nobody is demanding you to engage in this discussion if you are not wanting to elaborate incidentally I just like the analogy of following around the compass to victory actually, not really any allusions to communist Russia Edit: I also love how you ignored the major points there that most quests bombard you with huge amounts of information (making sure you know Every. Individual. Step. Regardless) and even when doing them, have distinctly simplistic designs to begin with. It's one of the bonus quests, Mehrunes Razor, which is in the KotN mini-expansion that was released earlier in the year. It's on a stool in fact next to the door, not a chair Which raises a very interesting question, why is there a puzzle door guarding something if the answer is just easily available to any thief right next to it? Edit2: Even a screenshot for clarity! Edit: This again, is one of the problems I have with the way that quests were designed in oblivion, where the answer was always easy to find. There was another quest where you had to decipher heiroglyphs or similar to open a door in a dungeon or something. Unfortunately, all this involved was taking a book back to an NPC who then subsequently tells you the precise order of the answers and what you need to cast/do. Even more conviently for you, there is even a chest that has the four spells required to boot. :D I still think that Daggerfall is one of the best RPGs I've played. It was very deep, had a lot of hidden complexity and a pretty deep skill tree as well. I still prefer Morrowind to Oblivion as well.
  4. I'm not doing anything of the sort. Asking someone to support their statements factually is not assaulting them. After all, it's not like Bethsoft are prone to being, shall we say, a little lose with what the game is actually like. I would hope as well. I much prefer Daggerfall to either Morrowind or Oblivion.
  5. HAHAHAHHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH. That's all the hillarity I can handle for one day. Considering that Bethsoft were talking to sites like star trek gamers and after a critical review of the game they were involved with comes out, suddenly stonewalling and then subsequently blacklisting the site, I find that a little hard to swallow. So let me get this straight, a website is "blackball'd" by a company, and you immediately assume they did nothing wrong? Well, you (that is Bethesda, not you literally) have produced utterly no evidence of any sort supporting the blacklisting and the evidence from the other side is highly convincing. Others who have attempted to contact Bethesda about the blacklisting, such as Vic (the admin of Star Trek Gamers) have had no satisfactory answers as to why they were blacklisted. However, I have no reason to assume that they did anything wrong until you (Bethesda) prove that to be so. They have established their side of the argument and Bethesda has not. Why should I believe Bethsoft acted ethically and correctly when they have not even provided a solid case for doing so? Others (directly involved) already have done so and received no answer, why would I? (especially as I am not affiliated with the blacklisted site in question or the bethsoft forums) There are none to my knowledge (or that I can think of off the top of my head). Perhaps you would like to cite an example? Do you mean quests with no QT? There are stages throughout several quests where the player is not given a specific QT. During the main quest, when the player must figure out where the Mythic Dawn hangout, there is no QT during a part of it. If you advance into the questline the QT returns, but again, I don't see the big deal. Don't like it, don't use it. Indeed, I fail to remember any quests that didn't have any quest markers, follow comrade green arrow to victory etc. As for "don't use it", it's not just that it's there it's that the game has been designed with it in mind anyway. For example, there is one of the expansion quests in Nights of the Nine that has a door that asks you some nonsensical riddle. The answer of course, isn't hidden anywhere in particular, it's just on a piece of paper next to the door. The quest markers and such are just symptoms of (largely) overall overly simplistic quest design. Not really. I just have difficulty thinking of these because I very rarely ever bothered having to think through any quests. The journal always gave me the answers or I followed comrade green arrow to victory. Not that ignoring either of these actually makes quests more difficult, most things are highly straight forward. You're not really the chosen one in SI. I was being sarcastic than taking it seriously. Edit: Apologies for the numerous broken quote tags people. Forgot a few 'quotes' here and there.
  6. There is nothing plot important there (and that isn't commonly known I would say, with the odd exception). The watch and thieves guild part of the game is arguably the worst part of the entire game. I cannot emphasise how awfully designed those two quest lines are, firstly from the view of them being entirely mirror images of one another (which doesn't make sense) and secondly because they are boring, unimaginative hackathons. It feels entirely like padding between the well done starting portion of the game (The village festival, the attack on the town, the fort with associated tomb dungeon, highcliff etc are nicely done) to the beginning of act II (which again, is also well done).
  7. HAHAHAHHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH. That's all the hillarity I can handle for one day. Considering that Bethsoft were talking to sites like star trek gamers and after a critical review of the game they were involved with comes out, suddenly stonewalling and then subsequently blacklisting the site, I find that a little hard to swallow. There are none to my knowledge (or that I can think of off the top of my head). Perhaps you would like to cite an example? Can you choose not to be the chosen one? [r00fles]
  8. Negotiation quest? Which is this again, my memory fails me. Do you mean the stand off outside of what-is-his-beaks house? Or do you mean the quest where you have to pretend to be watchmen buying some illegal stuff? Because that too, is directly copied (just from the other way) by the thieves guild as well. Just put yourself in the city watches place instead of the thieves and vice versa. The Kill Moire quest in Act III is unique however, I shall grant you this, but only because you put her in the dead book in the informant quest as the city watch, otherwise there is truly no difference. Incidentally, I could not finish the Moire quest either. Edit: In fact, I believe that to be the only true difference in quests between the two. They are pretty much lame mirror images of one another. Never had the gambling den either. You do get the odd demand from the shadow thieves though, such as a demand for 10,000 GP and other things. It balances out because it's pretty much identical. It does affect the subsequent trial however, because the thieves guild sends some guy who really gets on torios nerves and makes the entire trial into a big farce. It can be worth it solely for that. Also, I find both equally annoying, but it depends on if you are a wizard or fragile PC. The forced dialogues that stick you right in front of the likes of Moire or the city watch captains leading mobs of watchmen are beyond frustrating. There isn't even a way (doing the thieves guild path) of just sneaking by the sods, because that dialogue will trigger and sure enough, you end up stuck in full view. Effectively, the warehouse/informants house are just chopathon dungeons in buildings. At least the Orc caves made sense from the chopathon point of view. If you're a fighter you can just butcher your way through without really thinking in my experience. The dude is still there regardless, you just have the option of booting him out. There are indications you can make a power play for the head of the thieves guild, but it is disappointingly never implemented. You get the assassination attempt by refusing to pay the 10,000 GP (IIRC), but for some reason he'll still want to talk to you about killing Moire (and this quest appears to be bugged out). Otherwise it is identical. It adds a few complications to your keep, including more disorder among greycloaks and a few other problems here and there, but otherwise has a minimal in game effect. The main difference between the watch vs. guild is the trial in act II, where you will get some vastly different NPCs turning up to aid you. If you are a rogue and specialise in bluff/diplomacy and similar, you can turn the trial into an effective massacre. Poor Torio hasn't a chance.
  9. Doubtful. But if not the critics, at least those criticisms. From what I've read, I wouldn't bet on it to be honest. I'm not that enthusiastic about the concept, specificially. I do appreciate that they aren't just adding on Generic New Fantasy Place. It has madness ore, MADNESS ORE!!!! How awesome and totally imaginative is that?! Oh and don't forget the ring of water walking and water breathing. MADNESS I TELL YOU, UTTER MADNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!
  10. Well, I finished the game a while ago so here are my general comments, without spoilers as a rule: 1) Overall, the game is pretty decent and feels like it was trying to be a successor to Baldurs Gate 2. This is not a bad thing, because I think BG2 was one of the best "DnD" style games around and highly entertaining. 2) Combat is awful however. Unlike BG2, there are few entertaining battles in the game and I often felt the developers had to resort to blatant rules abuse/cheating to make some encounters actually difficult. The fight against was about the most entertaining fight in the game. I would much prefer TB DnD combat, particularly with the feats I find most tactically interesting like trip implemented. 3) The forced NPCs were just...urgh. This was by far and away the worst aspect of the game. Honestly, forcing me to take a Cleric who is almost utterly useless (Str 10) in any front line position is just really annoying. A str 14/16ish cleric with a simple bulls strength buff is very effective, but 10 is just crippling. This also compounded the fact there were a few NPCs who were really worthwhile to have in the party, IE: excellent statlines and useful class abilities, while others were just not worth including. That you were subsequently forced to take some useless NPC for the ride critically weakened my party on several occasions. I found myself rushing through areas to get rid of the baggage as soon as I could. This is NOT a good thing. 4) Generally on NPCs, some of them are written well and others not so well. It's a bit of a mixed bag but is generally good. Sand makes hillarious comments at times and I thought that Khelgar had some depth (in fact, he was given a large amount of depth in game). 5) I will never forgive whoever designed the Orc caves and warehouse whackathons. I've never encountered more blatantly boring, uninspired designed dungeon hacks in virtually any game before. Whoever thought mowing through large numbers of Orcs that seemingly respawn (RESPAWN?) in places was amusing is grossly mistaken, but eclipsing this in magnitude for sheer 'awful' factor was by far the warehouse. Playing through the good path, it's filled with rogues who seemingly get sneak attack damage even when you know they are there (no comment should be required about what I think of this) or alternatively watchmen+clerics with irritating debuffs. Oh and they appear to respawn in places in both cases as well, further adding to the level of aggravation this insipid 'dungeon' crawl causes. Honestly, in all of the CRPGs that I have played, the warehouse and orc caves stand IMO as some of the worst designed areas I've encountered. The orc caves are too long, filled with too much monotonous hacking of the same dumb threatless enemies, while the warehouse is just a ridiculous excercise in frustration with the never-ending respawning enemies (in places) and non-sensical massacre it turns into. Surely the city watch would care that you've just engaged in this gigantic butchery of over 30+ watchmen and have a bounty on your head/attack you on sight. It just plain doesn't make any sense and clearly degrades verisimiltude. At least when you're butchering the rogues it makes some sense that the local militia isn't trying to run you out of the city. 6) Another big problem is how the city watch/thieves guild quests basically turn into mirror images of one another, just with different massacres. This was disappointing. 7) The best part of the game was by far the trial. This was incredibly well done, thought through and written. It's such a shame the game couldn't have featured more of this and less of the insipid orc tunnels/warehouse slashathons. I'm still impressed at the various ways the trial can resolve itself and how different actions throughout the game (leading up to the trial) and statements in it can make a considerable difference. The trial by combat part was the let down, with the developers artificially making the combat hard by having some sort of stupid rage invincibility (which I still don't quite get how this works). Not that it mattered, I just used the grasping hand spell and completely butchered him without threat. However, I really want to emphasise that this was arguably the best part of the game and some of the most interesting use of dialogue in a CRPG that I've ever played. It redeemed (IMO) most of the pain of the overly long and hackathon filled first act. The stronghold was well done and I liked this aspect a lot. I don't really get the impression my hard work in upgrading the keep and inviting in the extra-planar mage/monk was really that worth-while though. Still, I really did enjoy having the keep and I am certainly thinking of putting a stronghold into my own campaign as a result. 9) The final fight was meh. Yet another puzzle bop-athon, however the option to . 10) Even though I've done a lot of complaining, I would like to emphasise I enjoyed NWN2 and I think it did really well in providing generally flexible choices to the player. One thing I despised and the thing I disliked the most about the game was the fact that if you're a mage and you talk to the guy with the sword of cutting you up +10, you end up right in front of him. Meaning that if your PC is a fragile class like a mage, you are at the front of every single combat and given that a lot of conversations before a fight are forced, it can be extremely aggravating. Add to this the fact the AI tends to 'lock on' and chase incessantly the first character that comes into range, this becomes a really annoying excercise in running around until the enemy eventually gets bored/kills you/you kill it. This was vastly irritating and I now understand why Baldurs Gate 2 did things the way it did: It may be entirely unrealistic, but it works just so much better.
  11. Morrowind was equally as poorly balanced as Oblivion in many respects, the difference was that Oblivion makes an attempt to compensate that is even more stupid than Morrowind. Morrowind takes a whopping 3-4 hours for me to get to the 'massacre anything in the world' stage- as in utterly no threat from anything anymore. However, at least Morrowind makes the world feel appropriate by having hard monsters in remote areas and making sure that there is a good reward for exploring hard areas. Oblivion demolished this aspect and destroyed any risk/reward for exploration. But I do agree with anyone who says that Oblivion managed to do things even worse than Morrowind. Edit: In the end if I had a choice between two failures at balancing, Morrowind where you were overpowered after a certain point, or Oblivion where levelling ends up punishing the player: I would take Morrowind very easily.
  12. It's just broken in an entirely new and even worse way.
  13. I think this was bit funnier than the Codex interview. Whatever it takes to get through that door? Good stuff. The doors must be pretty extremely difficult opponents in Mass Effect. I
  14. No, he'll torture you first for the freedom of America - I mean space - then kill you in a dramatic explosion at 11:55pm.
  15. This is not what I asked. Can you actually point out what they misrepresented? As I said, the IGN interview sunk the game for me (I thought previews were meant to get you more interested in a game) and I didn't have a thing against the game period (and I really liked both KotoR games as well incidentally). As far as I can see, the 'fake' RPGcodex interview is just mocking the stupidity of the IGN interview I've already linked. Which IMO, is fully justified.
  16. What did they misrepresent? It was Bioware and the IGN interview above the set off this whole "LAWL EXTREMMMEEEE" thing. I've posted a link to the interview above and the relevant quote. As I said, after that interview I can't take the game seriously anymore. All in defending freedom and America...errrr space.
  17. I'll keep my comments brief until I've finished the entire game, but overall I'm fairly satisfied with NWN2 though it has some really irritating flaws. Overall, I would put the game somewhere between Baldurs Gate and Baldurs Gate 2. I don't think it manages to achieve the same level of DnD on a computer awesome BG2 did (which is a high demand to be honest), but it's quite a substantial game with lots of things you do making a difference to the gameworld/interaction with it. The OC of NWN2 is far and away better than the original campaign of NWN though, which is a really good thing. Overall good job Obsidian. Now I just look forward to releasing my converted PnP campaign using the toolset [PS: I need Mariliths and Yuan-ti, hint hint ]
  18. I wonder if the game takes place over 24 hours and forces you to torture terrorists, doing the wrong thing, to do the right thing. But yes, this interview is based on some of Biowares previous ones and I think mainly one from IGN where they compared the main character to Jack Bauer. To be perfectly honest, ever since that IGN interview with whoever the PR person from Bioware was, I've just been unable to take Mass Effect seriously anymore. They sunk the entire game for me with the whole Jack Bauer and being extreme crap. Edit: Specifically this part of a recent IGN interview: I'm sorry, but I can no longer take the game seriously after this. Edit2: Added a link to the IGN interview, just in case you think the above is also from the codex. Sadly, it is not.
  19. That's why they tuned it down, so the game wouldn't become a barren wasteland of dead NPCs... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Instead it's a barren wasteland of personality-less plants. I'm not sure what's worse.
  20. Which is part of the reason why I feel Casavir could have been a very interesting character. Paladins are stereotyped (both by players in the in game world) as being beacons of righteousness. But there's nothing saying that they have to be. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not to go off topic, but I'd like to point out that Paladins are usually played as psychotically and socially inept mass murderers of anything they view even remotely as 'evil'. I've very rarely seen paladins represented well by players.
  21. I don't hate love in game stories; I just hate reducing love to shallow, masturbatory fantasy indulgence. Maybe that's all love is to some people, but I think that's a pretty narrow view. Ego-stroking is very popular in CRPGs, which is one reason I don't feel comfortable doing CRPG writing anymore. I appreciate that people wanted more romance options in NWN2, but sometimes I think that people want there to be romance "victory" conditions for all companions. I think that can diminish some characters. For instance, if Shandra and Qara had their own romance plots, I think some people would still want Neeshka to be "romance-able", regardless of how Neeshka's author felt about the character's place in the story. That bugs me. I don't like the idea that you can "win" everything or get everyone on your side. I'm also not fond of the idea that romance always has to resolve with a "fade out" to implied coitus, but that's another issue. I'll re-state what I wrote before: I want romance to receive either less or more attention in games. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, especially when it's something with so much emotional potential. But I certainly don't want to go the route of harem anime, which is total fantasy indulgence and gross pandering. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Wow. Brilliantly put.
  22. Yeah we can romance an Alien. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'd hit it.
  23. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> don't joke with that 75% of the fans DO look toward it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah you go on believing that chuckles.
  24. It's just a joke. Don't throw a huge fit. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Given how many people wanted this very thing to happen, it's a VERY cruel joke. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> They are an even better joke on their own as reality would obviously indicate it would never happen. It should of been an obvious prank from the outset, especially around april 1st.
  25. If this game wasn't such a complete mess we wouldn't need a patch. I just feel sorry for those with the X-Box version who can never get one.
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