CommentTater

Why I already love this board, none of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJEErf9bZWM

Pretty true, even really hard games like Dark Souls don't require much risk. It's definitely rare when games actually can cause you to be significantly set back by a poor choice.

I'm I the only person who's excited to see how many ridiculous Mary Sue companions are modded into the game? I had a ton of fun murdering those characters in BG, and more recently, Fallout and Skyrim.

WAAAAY off topic with the industry talk.

I've only backed 4 projects, and none of them have come out yet. The only Kickstarter games I've played post-release were FTL and Shadowrun, and Shadowrun got boring real quick and FTL is a garbage game that's incredibly overrated.

Well, the 90s were 14 years ago. Japanese to English localisations have com a long way imo. Then again, I'm not a weeaboo purist. Really, most of the localisation failures recently have come from smaller devs who can't afford good publishers. Games like STALKER or Witcher have very good localisation.

Yeah, I would also really like if characters (NPC or party) acted upon you if they think you're an a-hole. You know, actually putting what they believe into action, like real people do? There's few scenes in Dragon Age Origins where you can can straight up MURDER people who pose no threat to you, without trial or anything. As you do this, your companions just stand there like choads. You get a big "ALISTAIR DOESN'T LIKE THIS" message, but that's it. If you give Alistair gifts, or agree with him in conversations, you can restore a positive opinion with him, even though you're actively contradicting every single value he holds dear. He should at least make an attempt to restrain you when you freak out. Even in Baldur's Gate, characters would leave if they thought you were a murderous psychopath or a goody-goody champion of the meek, but if you committed random acts of kindness and evil, everyone would like you. That's not pragmatism, that's retarded.

Endings are hard. Has no one learned from Monty Python's example? Just have your stories trail off.

WOW! Is stuff like that why this game keeps getting delayed? FIgures, I forgot South Park was South Park.

Er... sorry to ask, but why did you even bother playing the game if it annoyed you so much?

That's strange to think about as a native English speaker. Localisations in English tend be pretty good, regardless of the base language. Have you tried contacting Obsidian more directly? I'm sure they don't want to alienate Russian/Polish markets.

Edgy. What exactly is your problem with Slavs?

Not to derail the chat about how ball-bustingly hard BG2 is, but here's an update on my sorry butt: I gave up on DA:O for now. I got past the Magi quest but I'm burned out already, so I started playing Drakensang: River of Time cause you guys have been playing it. I had really low expectations, but it's bretty good. The character creation was really fun and intuitive thanks to the right clicking, and it has more of an old school feel than DA did. Also, the armor is cooler. However, the old-schoolnessitude is most noticeablepainful with the traveling. It feels so slow to move from one place to another, somehow even slower than the Infinity Engine's iconic Stick-in-ass Speedwalk. Fast travel is fine but I think they should've put in a third movement speed, or changed their "run" animation to something less pathetic. Also, the voice acting is pretty bad, but this is a German game made for Germans so whatever. I give it THREE DOTS out of four.

I'll join the circle jerk and agree. Combat based exp doesn't work in this kind of game. It should be objective based. The only problem with that system is that completionists will be playing a relatively more boring, easier game by the end anyway, because they've been grinding through side-quests

It's okay to red herring a player, as long as the player gets something out of it. The guard flavor scenario would work in a tabletop game, because the GM would say, "you go and ask the captain (who's a large bearded etc) about it and he has no clue what you're talking about." That takes a minute at most (maybe two if players rolled to see if he was bluffing), but having to trudge back and forth between contacts for nothing is much longer in a video game and definitely more boring.

Making an MMO is a great way to bankrupt your company.

I'm trying to beat Dragon Age: Origins again cause it's so gut (and apparently totally optional and super cool stuff is possible late game that I totally missed), but it's very possible that I wont finish it. I'm doing the "Circle of Magi zerged by demons" quest, but this is the most tedious stuff ever. There's hardly any tactical planning, because you're alone the entire time (Niall you lazy jerk). The setting is fittingly dream-like and weird, but the way it's lighted makes me want to fall asleep! It's a great concept, and they put effort into it's execution, but it's the drizzling poops. And I forgot to save so I (of course) died while fooling around and reverted to an auto-save from like an hour ago. Also, it's good to hear RomeTW2 has been largely fixed.

Surrendering, fleeing (you or an enemy), bypassing combat with nonviolent or less violent means as a feature, rather than a dialogue choice here or there, prisoner dilemma, less obvious good guy/bad guy characters. Also, this is something that is more a a genie lamp kind of wish, but I'd like the ability to from a greater (in terms of size) party, like a gang or a band of public servants, bounty hunters, or bodyguards. Something that could operate off screen without too much input, but could still have an impact on the player and their reputation/well being. State of Decay was a pretty solid attempt at that, but it's strange to me that more games haven't tried it, considering it happens very often in tabletop games I've been a part of.

Basically what I'm getting from this is "don't take anything from Mass Effect at all," which I totally agree with. Mass Effect was a neat storytelling idea, but in hindsight, it was also a colossal failure regarding what it set out to do.