metadigital

So you never faced the Kobiashi Maru scenario ?

I am very tempted to quote Kaftan's sig at this point. Thank you Ender for bringing up another good point which I neglected to mention earlier about Torment being inspired by JRPGs. In addition to my earlier claim that Fallout is an example where you can have more advanced party interaction without the more "emotional" JRPG-style interaction elements... Look at the complexity of Fallout's story compared to Torment's... Now compare Torment's story complexity to that of any good JRPG. Now tell me which game is closer to the more story-driven style of JRPGS? Now there are more western RPGs that have been trending towards being more story-driven ever since.. Look at the Baldur's Gates, Arcanum, KOTOR, Deus Ex, System Shock, Vampire..etc.. JRPG's have always been story-driven whereas western RPGS (with the Ultimas as notable exceptions) had always been less story-driven in the past placing the emphasis more on the gameworld and on customizability. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Again, I ithink you are misinterpreting perfectly innocent evolution and placing a sinister connotation to it; your initial post was a doomsay of the occidental cRPG, and you have been using your interpretation of the influence of oriental CRPGs onto the Western cRPGs as a prescriptive cause. I disagree with your analysis and your conclusion. Firstly, your analysis totally ignores the true nature of any market: any advances in audio equipment will be utilised in the car industry, for example. Secondly, your conclusion is specious. Even, as I pointed out earlier, in the unlikely event that all occidental cRPG developers and publishers either became insolvent or pursued the oriental console JRPG market, this would not preclude the ever-sprouting and ingenious talents of the users of computers. For the final piece of evidence, notice that all consoles are propreitary (and fixed hardware specifications) systems, and all of the games from redundant consoles is now available, through emulation, for the PC.

Maybe the actual in-party interaction wasn't as developed as it was later on, but there was certainly interaction with all characters, and you had to meet your fellow party members before they joined. I guess now I might sound like I'm being technical, but in line with Yst's comments (which I have quoted directly above in my previous post), I think it was a natural progression from the occidental RPGs of yesteryear as much as it was a cross-polination from their oriental cousins. Anyway, the point is: what's the point? Lancer was (initially) using this as some sort of prophesy of doom for the occidental cRPG. Which is what I was rebutting as patent nonsense.

By the nature of the beast, the party interaction style of a cRPG has to be different from the party interaction style of a console RPG. A typical cRPG is all about choices and in theory more non-linear play than a JRPG... As KOTOR was designed to appeal to both console and computer RPGers it needlessly had to have elements of both. However, the obvious similarities are ... Whereas PC games before (with the notable exception of Ultima VII part II: Serpent Isle) for all practical purposes almost completely ignored any substantial party interaction, this has been a mainstay in JRPGS since well the 8 bit days. And I never said that "party interaction" was a bad thing. Quite the contrary, I think this is something that PC RPGS should have been doing all along.. Especially since many PnP campaigns have always featured such party interaction well before cRPGS finally caught on. It is about time, IMHO, since cRPGS supposedly have always been designed with an eye towards recreating the tabletop game on to the computer. EDIT: Who knows? Maybe there would be more JRPG players that would also play cRPGS had the party interaction concept been established in cRPGs from the get-go. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Firstly, the proceed from a false premise. I concur with Yst: It is pointless and even misguided to pursue this distinction. Way back when cRPGs involved multiple player characters, there was party interaction. I can remember Ultima III had that, and that was the eighties, and eight bit computing (Apple ][, Commodore 64, etc). I think you are missing the big picture, by trying to be too clever about your categorisations. Computer games, as an organic beast, is the result of cross-breeding from all influences, whether it is Hollywood blockbuster cinema or Japanese anime; likewise, the RPG has given and received concepts and techniques from the FPS, Flight Sim, Strategy, Simulation and even Platform genres, but

Let's put it this way.. If the cRPG market "dies" it would make no business sense for a developer to continue pursuing a dead market. Certainly that doesn't stop someone from trying although they wouldn't stay in business long. Unless you want to make them. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, no, let's put it this way: as long as there are PCs, there will be people who will use them to play games, and some (a lot) of those will be RPGs, whether they exist or have to be created. Stating that the PC games market is dying or dead is a little premature, methinks. The PC games market will continue as long as the PC does. Also, games are constantly mutating; RPG elemets, for example, are being transplanted into other genres, just as any other componentry is being bolted onto any new game (like better graphics).

Masterspray! (Who's name was that?)

Ah, quick edit your post and disguise your email address before a spamspiderbot collects it!

With age comes wisdom, youngling. I do not stand in line for computer games. (And you'll have to do better than that to get a date with her. )

If there are no more cRPG developers then there wouldn't be any more cRPG games. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Non sequitur. I was stating my incredulity at your statement that no cRPGs would be made if all the [current] developers were forced into receivership or console platforms. It beggars belief to conclude that no-one would develop a cRPG whilst there is stil a PC on which to develop one.

Try killing the lost Mandalorian (Kumus), or telling the sergeant what really happened to him ...

I think the tomb is merely a mental trap, and represents nothing outside the immediacy of the fight. Witness the notes made by the other Jedi, whose body you loot in the endless-Hsissis room for a datapad.

Yes. Firstly, I have capacity for only a few, currently. More importantly, my previous games of Diplomacy has seen upwards of a hundred messages in the first few turns. I do not want to manage the communication through PMs, as it is just too awkward. If you don't have a (suitable) email address, I can help you get one.

I hope you just didn't give us "Diplomasauce" as a synonym for

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Seriously. As w666tvr posted above, you have to find an alternative method to progress the story if you do not have the required skills.

So no new developers will ever create games for the PC? You remember Duke Nukem? It was shareware to begin with.

Scrapie has existed everywhere for decades. But, yeah, it is quite possible that there is an undocumented Bovine Spongiform Encephelopathy epidemic in the US, though I wouldn't want to say that on a public forum lest I get sued for libel ...

Males are notoriously poor communicators, especially compared to females (on average). Men can spend their entire adult life as friends and not pass on simple information, like why their partner left them, or how their parents died. Women can exchange their spouses bedroom habits with another they met in a crowded washroom.

You need to clean your nails.

I see. GL screwed "that" up, did he? According to whom? Some comic book? Also, stop using coloured fonts, it makes your already pointless comments even more unreadable. To answer the original question, the three colours were given meanings by Bioeare when they created the game. There is no reason to ascribe any subtext to the colour of a lightsabre beam (except red has only ever been used for Sith). Of course I don't expect it will be long before some zealous fanboy revisionist explains that the colours have always had deep, intrinsic meanings based on long-established principles.

Wrong. Wrong. It is baed on your PC's level. (Try it.)

Way to go, Anakin! How to win friends and influence people!

Well, I don't think it's a reflection on your comeliness :Darque: more a statement of how persuasive DarkSide thinks you are. ... in other words she thinks you're a push-over ...

Can I suggest that everyone email everyone else, then? Also, Archie, would you update the first post so that we don't have to hunt for this page later in the game? Cheers

Well that just confirms it!