Gromnir

Please! I played through whole PST unpatched and it was fine. The game became a bit slower after a few HOURS of playing, so you just had to save, quit and load it back up. But to call it an "epic bug"? You're bending the facts to accommodate your viewpoints. *chuckle* so, the anecdotal experience o' bester trumps feedback from the boards back when ps:t were released? HA! you do realize that more than you alone played ps:t, correct? we said "for many people." if you were one of the lucky folks who could play ps:t unpatched, good for you, but don't assume that your experience represents the experiences of all/most/or even many players. "well, when i played game X..." as a response to observations 'bout a game being buggy. is ... cute. HA! Good Fun! I know a lot of people who played it and they were fine too. But ok, if you think it was unplayable, then you should easily be able to get me some proof on the internet, because people already posted on forums at that time. Back your claims with topics of tons of people claiming it's unplayable. I was on many different forums at that time and people were discussing many things, but never technical problems. hyperbole gets you nowhere. we said "many." though, if you genuine wants to use "tons" we would happily defer as that is probable a smaller amount. figure an average o' 150 lbs per player... so, evidence o' 26 people... +/- 1 or 2? that should be easy enough. heck, more than a couple people on this board has observed that they had significant tech issues with ps:t. as you is no doubt aware, the original ps:t fora is gone. josh sawyer were the board monkey at the time, but we doubt he chimes in to admit that ps:t were buggy and unplayable for many. this were fun though... we typed "technical problems bugs planescape" and gots loads o stuff. were some folks complaining on nma of all places 'bout the one-of-many bug we forgot about. patch 1.1 notes mention a game stopper we forgot: inability to get out of ravel's maze. *chuckle* appropriate. is endless loops in sensory orbs. gamespot retrospective, which is otherwise glowing, mentions the terrible memory leak which slowed game to a crawl. etc. so, even without access to original interplay boards, you gotta be willful obtuse to pretend that ps:t weren't a buggy game... buggy enough to stop some folks from playing/finishing. HA! Good Fun!

multiple endings is neither difficult nor unique. by definition, is nothing that comes after the end. therefore, one need not be concerned with bifurcations or continuity in creating such endings. wanna make an end wherein the hero dies unexpectedly 3 yrs down the road? on way back from 7-11 after buying a dr. pepper big gulp, the protagonist finds self caught in a seeming spontaneous and epic dragon v. nun battle and ends up a pointless casualty-- is never determined whether cause of death is 3rd degree burns, or strangulation with rosary beads... or diabetic stoke from all the sugar in the big gulp. make small changes to scenario to add to ending total. depending on important choices in game, the nun in question were either a catholic or buddhist nun-- important difference. has one ending wherein protagonist lives happily ever after w/o suffering nun homicide. for male protagonist in happy-ever-after, wherein he romanced with a female companion, the joyous couple have children... which would be different than same-sex happily ever after 'cause no kids would be included in that ending. one ending has protagonist ruling tyrannically over some fief til he gets murdered in sleep by a chambermaid who were terrorized once too often. another ending has saintly protagonist helping the poor of calcutta, only to be murdered in sleep by a homeless man who wanted the hero's shoes. etc. depending on how minor the differences is in the 40 endings, we see nothing nothing significant in such a number save that once again bio gets to be misleading. HA! Good Fun!

Don't let facts get in the way of your trolling Gromnir. As I said, this has nothing to do with BIS. oh well, if you said it, it must be true. say it again and maybe it will stick, right? but this is getting mighty repetitive. "Also, the fact is Nepenthe said (unsubstantiated and pure speculation) that the coding was a disaster that miraculously worked." again, black isle made similar observations about the ie, so while nep did not support, the claim that his observations is unsubstantiated is making you look silly. you try to imagine-away the fact that bis made same/similar observations as nep... which is why bis IS relevant no matter how many times you do the little kid routine: pre-adolescent screaming "no it isn't" over and over as if volume and sheer stubbornness will make truth. well, say something new. please. HA! Good Fun!

Please! I played through whole PST unpatched and it was fine. The game became a bit slower after a few HOURS of playing, so you just had to save, quit and load it back up. But to call it an "epic bug"? You're bending the facts to accommodate your viewpoints. *chuckle* so, the anecdotal experience o' bester trumps feedback from the boards back when ps:t were released? HA! you do realize that more than you alone played ps:t, correct? we said "for many people." if you were one of the lucky folks who could play ps:t unpatched, good for you, but don't assume that your experience represents the experiences of all/most/or even many players. "well, when i played game X..." as a response to observations 'bout a game being buggy. is ... cute. HA! Good Fun!

Gromnir. I'll see if I can make this as simple as possible for even a 5 year old can understand. Overhaul has some of the original Bio developers of the original game. You also claimed Bio "knew how and why things worked". Overhaul had access to the original code, despite not having access to the original art assets. Overhaul having the original game, the original code, and some of the original developers are now 'enhancing the original game'. What we have with the EE's is something different to the original game and in a lot of ways not for the better. Overhaul introduced new bugs to the original game when they tried to enhance it. This has nothing to do with BIS. Never has, never will. But keep trying to introduce those red herrings if it makes you feel better. If for some reason Obsidian decides to do an enhanced edition of PST and the IWD games, having some of the original developers from those games already working at Obsidian, then your analogy may apply. That would be the level playing field. Since Obsidian are not enhancing these games (PST/IWD), then for you to talk about BIS is just a fail attempt at trolling. Thanks for highlighting to the forum your selective and ridiculous trolling analogies. guess we gotta make simple enough so you can understand... seemingly more simple than 5 year old. bis had access to the biowarians when they was making the ie games, and that didnt help em either, did it? so, as 'posed to having access to the guys who actually built the ie engines at the times they was made, you got a handful o' ex-biowarians who often were only tangential related to code, trying to makes the windows 98 era ie engine run smooth in windows 7. gosh, what could possibly go wrong? regardless, and 'cause you keep seeming to miss the freaking point, black isle guys claimed that ie were terrible to work with. "You've never done any programming I see. Coding disasters don't just miraculously work. That's an insult to the programmers and other people who worked on the games. It also implies that the programmers didn't know what they were doing at the time with their coding" those were YOUR comments. we noted that black isle folks, while hardly the ignorant rubes you wish to paint nep as, used the ie-is-a-confusing-mess argument over and over and overandoverandoverandover. so, even if ie worked, if it were a mess and illogical and tough to work with as the Black Isle folks have suggested, then we suspect that a handful o' biowarians trying to bootstrap ie into windows 7 functionality over a decade later may be reaping some o' the problems that were sown by bioware sooooo long ago. is no red herrings save for your ignorance... which is, ironiclay what you tried to claim were nep's problem. the mere fact that baldur's gate worked (after many patches btw,) doesn't in any way diminish the likelihood that the original ie were a funky mess and that overhaul is fighting time and bioware's legacy in trying to make it playable on new operating systems. ... is funny that Gromnir is the one being called the troll and hiro is claiming red herring. is like he dont even read his own posts. HA! Good Fun! ps am not saying that overhaul/beamdog/whomever has an excuse. trent oster and others took on the job o' fixing and updating the ie. maybe they weren't up to the job, but they shoulda' know the scope o' the task better than most others. the original bgee were unplayable for us. whether or not the original ie were borked is complete irrelevant to us as a purchaser. we paid for a working game and didn't get one til many months later.

... you made claims suggesting that nep were ignorant. Gromnir noted that the black isle folks were not only running into problems with their enhancement efforts, but they blamed some o' their difficulties on bioware's engines. is the black isle folks also ignorant? is not trolling to wish for a level playing field where bio and obsidian and overhaul all get treated same. in point o' fact, we would consider the person who is trying to be selective critical (as 'posed to fair) to be the troll. so, congratulations on illustrating that point for us. HA! Good Fun!

And what do the BIS developers need to explain with PST and the IWD games? Do they not work? And BIS were not enhancing already established games. kidding right? for many people, ps:t were unplayable for a LONG time after release. the memory-leak were something that were problematic for folks in every single ie game made by black isle, but ps:t were epic in this respect. heck, much o' obsidian/black isle's reputation for releasing buggy games were blamed on bio as their game catalog were, for a time, almost entirely ie and aurora games. 'course obsidian has now released a bunch o' near unplayable bug hunts that had no bio connection, so that excuse is gone, yes? regardless. you gotta very short memory if you don't recall the multitudes o' folks complaining 'bout unplayable ps:t, iwd, and iwd2. oh, and yes, the black isle folks were indeed enhancing the ie engine with every release. seriously. HA! Good Fun!

You've never done any programming I see. Coding disasters don't just miraculously work. That's an insult to the programmers and other people who worked on the games. It also implies that the programmers didn't know what they were doing at the time with their coding (coding disaster as you put it), but hey. it somehow how miraculously worked. Must be special programming magic. Also, as a few have pointed out, they have some of the original team members working on the EE's. You should have a minimum base line (original game) and work up from there. At the moment, the EE's don't even meet the base line in various ways due to introduced bugs. well, to be fair, if we take hiro post as TRUTH, then obsidian/black isle folks has some explaining to do. more than once the black isle developers observed just how difficult it were to work with the infinity engine. bio knew how and why things worked, but obsidian were not part o' the engine building process. the thing that bothered us is that black isle folks were still using that excuse while working 'pon iwd2. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

While I generally share your criticism of style over substance, I don't think the art direction is necessarily a good example. After all: (pic here) Yup. Leave it to us Europeans to produce something so obscenely ornate that ends up being caricaturesque. (though I suppose a valid complaint is about the taste of anyone who draws inspiration from that... ) edit: Also, because why the hell not: (pic here) "Yo dawg, I heard you like sceptres, so we put a sceptre in your sceptre so you can rule while you rule..." am having a friend that collects crosier. he is particular interested in religious staves, but he gots some basic-to-ornate shepherd stuff too. am guessing that some guys tending flocks with a lot o' time on their hands gots pretty darn good at wood-carving. is not our thing, but many o' the sticks in his collection is beautiful. regardless, all one needs do is type "crosier" into a search engine and look at images. if this were the straw that broke nonek, we can't help but chuckle, 'cause the weird walking stick/staff that bio's maleficent wields is pretty tame. that being said, am recalling post nwn complaints. one stuck with us 'cause o' how irate the poster were-- she were livid in her condemnation o' bio and their obviously myopic design philosophy. developers were clear incompetent. after all, bio's lack o' footwear selection were bordering on criminal. didn't matter what you put into boot/shoe slot as your chestpiece determined footwear appearance. ... shoes. she were serious that the failure that busted nwn beyond repair were shoes. staff or shoe don't matter-- there will always be folks who sees things so different that any kind o' meeting o' the minds is impossible. HA! Good Fun!

that is our biggest complaint regarding bioware. am not certain if they realize that their pre-release claims has become comical. HA! Good Fun!

drop fenris and we is in sync. fenris were... cartoony. a super-powered slave who were tortured by former master so that now he is all morose and grumbly-- just needs a hug from a good woman to... *shudder.* am also thinking we liked merrill for what she coulda' been more than what she was. HA! Good Fun!

'cause you could go ahead and play world of tanks instead? *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

I dunno, currently playing DA2 and having a harder time making good decisions. I mean, when the dude wants me to help him gather obvious gunpowder, I can make the good decision of not doing it or the bad decision of helping him, but the end result is the same. Pretty sure you can make some fairly bad decisions in Awakening, too? If both decisions lead to the same result, it's not much of a decision. If helping Anders led to the Chantry blowing up, and not helping him meant it didn't blow, it would be a rather meaningful one. I'm fine with 'helping a terrorist make an explosive device' being a bad decision for PCs who want to attempt a peaceful resolution. It's not some bizarre gotcha situation, is it? Likewise, pissing off the magistrate by murdering his son probably should have had negative consequences. Bad as in evil young grasshopper, bad as in evil BioWare lets you make a ton of evil decisions. Why would I ask for evil decisions in BioWare games when I can already slit the throats of bound qunari because they follow a different religion than I do? am still not certain what mc intends with "bad," especially in this context. is many folks who suggest that choosing evil in bio games does result in bad for the player. for years we heard complaints that choose evil gets bad/worse rewards. conversely, we has heard same from people playing good. we know what Gromnir would intend by saying "bad," though we wouldn't. similarly, we suspect we know what mc is driving at, but as Gromnir has had a similar debate with gaider on multiple occasions, we will ask for clarification-- use your words. or don't. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2261752.stm am not knowing why a russian knock-off of world of tanks makes us thinks o' tanya grotter... and obsidian gets to contribute to the next grotter. how cute. HA! Good Fun!

for Gromnir, priority travel would be having far less significance than possible access to fleet gen chat-- perhaps this issue has already been addressed, but we only saw little swtor trailer and not the more detailed info drops at various fan sites. also, our biggest questions is regarding legacy bank. with exception o' bank, strongholds appear to be little more than an additional cartel coin sink. HA! Good Fun!

... am wondering if you is aiming for irony. ... is pointless, but we will try. a sane person would recognize that your volish blanket dismissal o' any and all bio critics in this thread makes your dismay at being cast as a misguided defender o' biowarian honor less than convincing. to stay on-topic, we woulds petition bio to include a quirky jester character in their next game... maybe a jan jansen with turrets syndrome and an inexplicable penchant for non-sequitur. unfortunately, as bio aims for full voice-over, a catchphrase of "lulz" wouldn't work. bruce and chis would want the jester to be romancable, but we finds such a notion repellent... for multiple reasons. HA! Good Fun!

as you are clearly insane, the fact that you could criticize bio and defend them in same breath is not surprising. oh, and your oft repeated weak sauce o' pointing out that you only gives the nwn sp game a score in 70s is hardly convincing neither. not change fact that you is one suggesting that if folks don't like bio or thinks they make games inferior to bio, the reason for their butthurt is 6. more volism from vol. shocking. HA! Good Fun!

Because you hate everything Star Wars stands for? another possibility: first three movies and original kotor already occupied the shallow end o' the thematic pool. no doubt lucas faced a similar quandary when developing 2nd trilogy-- how does one follow up a story that didn't ask any complex questions that remained unanswered? kotor were successful in part 'cause, following the prequel movies, folks were longing for the nostalgia o' episodes 4-6. bioware gave folks nostalgia by the bucket-- recreated characters, story-lines and themes o' episodes 4-6 and altered setting to a few thousands years previous. gamers were hungry for a star wars crpg, and giving them the stuff that worked in the beloved trilogy were a good idea. unfortunately, crafting a kotor sequel left obsidian in same situation lucas were finding himself when developing phantom menace. *shrug* as an aside, up to point where you confront 3 jedi masters on dantooine (sp?), we would argue that kotor 2 were a superior game to kotor in virtual all meaningful ways. sadly, obsidian frequent has difficulty ending games-- pulling all the threads back together so as to have a satisfying conclusion that is both surprising And inevitable is a skill obsidian lacks. regardless, we thinks mc's query ain't near as perplexing as she were thinking. HA! Good Fun!

is something we rare mention, but in the present situation it is worth noting that bioware did not put Gromnir in their game because we rabidly defended problematic aspects of their games. quite the contrary. bg1 were, in our estimation, an extreme flawed game, and we shared our opinions on the matter with bioware ad nauseum. things has changed a bit at the bio boards, but while vol and others may suggest that critics o' bio is just butthurt, bioware is/was far more accepting (and even appreciative) of criticism than those misguided fans who believes it is their duty to defend biowarian honor. HA! Good Fun!

to suggest that answering why somebody (where the "somebody" in question is potentially thousands of different people) prefers X to Y and suggest then answer is 6 is... volish. in fact, that is our new label for any extreme obtuse response or trollish oversimplification: volish. "if all the people on welfare would just get jobs, they wouldn't need a handout." volish. "bioware is better than obsidian. period." volish. "let them eat cake." that is sooooo volish. HA! Good Fun!

Not really, no. hmmm... as we speak of "most" people, am not sure what is answer. sure, for many folks, "bio sux," is enough, but there is probable at least some reason for the feeling o' animosity, even if such feelings ain't rational or reasonable. obsidian has had the benefit and burden o' working on the work o' others. obsidian could thus improve on many aspects o' the original game builders. example: if fo:nv hadn't improved 'pon many aspects o' fo3, it woulda been quite disappointing. the fact that fo:nv did improve many aspects o' fallout3 doesn't necessarily mean that obsidian is a better developer than bethesda. similarly, that nwn2 and kotor2 improved aspects o' the genesis games is maybe not as significant as some might s'pose-- is poor evidence that bio is inferior to obsidian. nevertheless, we has seen such arguments, and one cannot deny feelings. a different possibility is that obsidian has, with perhaps the almost ironic exception o' ps:t, focused more on tactical sophistication in their games than did bioware when using same/similar engine. no crpg is particularly demanding o' intellectual acuity o' the player, but obsidian does (perhaps) ask more of players... 'least when combat starts. additionally, bio has been much more traditional in choice o' thematic fodder. is nothing wrong with hero cycle as given to us by lucas, spielberg and tolkien, but some folks sees repetition as an inherent flaw, regardless o' what the developer does with such material. etc. is reasons to prefer obsidian and vice-versa. fact o' the matter is that we ain't purchased an obsidian game for a Long time... project eternity will be first since fo:nv (and we didnt purchase alpha protocol, which we s'pose technically were previous to fo:nv.) by the same token, we only got 1 playthrough o' mass effect 3, and that were delayed almost 1 full year after the initial release. we played da2, and while it were a very good game in many respects, it were also horribly rushed and almost amateurish by bio standards. even so, we considers our self a fan o' both developers, and we does at least consider purchasing most games released by the developers in question. aside-- we will note that bio has a tendency to vastly oversell their games. those things promised falls very much short of goals... reminds us a bit o' troika in that sense. for example, our disappointment o' the origins from da:o were Not that they railroaded you or other such similar nonsense that happens in every other story-driven game... sheesh. folks got short memories, but Gromnir recalls how each origin were s'posed to result in highly unique gameplay once the origin tumbled into the unified critical path. playing as a dwarf noble or elf or human were all 'posed to be different experiences once one were trudging through the main story... which never happened. sure, you gots some limited differences depending on your origin choice, but the origins impacted very little once you were a grey warden. is Not how bio sold the origins. similarly, the way bio sold impact o' me1 and me2 choices on me 3 were also woeful unrealized. got long list o' stuff that bio... exaggerated. has made us jaded 'bout bio pre-release commentary. regardless, we thinks it is a bit myopic to suggest that most folks hate developer X or love developer Y 'cause o' spite or some similar motivations. is too ez and simple. HA! Good Fun!

not your worst response. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

"heroic" does not needs carry with it the baggage o' noble self-sacrifice. sure, when we refers to a person running into a burning building to save a puppy, the heroism is integral linked to sacrifice... or potential sacrifice. doesn't take superpowers to risk death-- takes will and at least a moment o' foolish courage. however, "heroic" don't need have sacrificial component. looks through the catalog o' pre-christian heroes and you find some serious jerks. their granted title o' hero were a result o' the obstacles they overcame and not so much their concern for the greater-good. a hero is one who defeats monsters. the monster may be literal or figurative, but it takes a hero to fights and beat the monsters. 'course context is important, but as bg allows you to play as a jerk, we thinks we can assume that #s were not limiting himself to post-christian notions o' the hero as One Who Sacrifices. HA! Good Fun!

one of bio's greatest strengths is also a terrible weakness. bio does actual listen to fans. gaider and other writers/developers/designers looks for feedback from boards and elsewhere to discover what people want. bio... listens. all you gotta do is read some o' the insipid and juvenile suggestions made at bio boards regarding romance to be understanding how bio romances coulds be so nightmarish and grotesque. bio Is giving folks what they want. *shudder* ​bio is creating a commercial product. is probable smart to aim to meet expectations. nevertheless, we cannot helps but feel cheated. "meet expectations" is not the goal o' any writer we know--is actual a scathing condemnation. HA! Good Fun!

am hesitant to help bruce, 'cause we thinks bio romantic leanings is 'bout as appealing as a bucket o' rotting shrimp. nevertheless, the first step is to know your audience. this is an obsidian board. folks here is unlikely to be representative o' the Average Fan's (a mythical entity) feelings 'bout bio romances, but if you wanna talk romance in this place, you gotta recognize who you is dealing with. what is the bestest obsidian game? has been polls done to death on this board asking that question. sure, some folks here Loathe ps:t, but your typical obsidian poster is a big fan o' ps:t... is almost akin to rpg codex fixation with first fallout game. so, if you wants to convince an obsidian audience that game romance is a good thing, might you not wanna point out the very real and integral romance contained in ps:t: ravel's love for the nameless one? is one o' the bestest romantic story arcs we has seen in a crpg to date. "but that isn't what we mean by a game romance." anticipate such terrible arguments and then destroy them. *shrug* the biggest obstacle bruce faces is bioware and the expectations they has created. am recalling a story we read 'bout deciphering of mayan (maybe it was inca... don't care) written language. there were some handful o' experts here in the west that had written the definitive text(s) on mayan language. everybody who studied mayan language and culture woulds, by necessity, read those texts... were no escaping the insidious influence o' those texts, and those texts all turned out to be wrong in some key ways. eventually a cold war era soviet linguist/anthropologist comes along, and this guy'gal has been insulated from western texts 'cause of silly political reasons. he/she has never read professor longwind's dissertation on whatever. our soviet doesn't know that somebody has already come up with the answers to all the questions he/she is wishing to answer-- so he/she comes up with own answers. our soviet comrade ends up revolutionizing the understanding o' mayan language. crpg romance and bioware crpg romance has somehow becomes inextricably linked, and bio approach is a dead-end. gonna need to look at romance different. HA! Good Fun! as an aside, am thinking a romance in which a so-called villain is the interest could be fun... if done by somebody other than bioware.