Gromnir

"I think Bloodlines has very little to do with Anne Rice and all the goth stuff. It stroke me as more of a parody." if you say so, but it makes being a vampire seem fun/kewl, right? traditionally, being a vampire is s'posed to be a curse. no doubt you see nuanced difference, but for Gromnir it is easier to lump all the vampire stuff that romanticizes into one dismissive category. HA! Good Fun!

"Anything is better than simply following a map marker to somewhere, kill something and fast travelling back to pick up your reward." am thinking you have backwards. insta-travel and map markers may be an imperfect solution, but anything is better than wandering around aimlessly following terrible directions til you at last end up at a cave (a a cave which looks identical indie and out to 20+ other caves) simply to complete an ultimately uninspired and banal quest. even with insta travel back and clear markers, you still gotta travel on foot the first time before you can do your insta-travel trick... those folks who long for exploration still get... just w/o some o' the monotony and confusion. HA! Good Fun!

That's just part of the whole... Its [sort of] the same thing as as watching a musical and accepting that all the players burst into song. (It not exactly the same... but its similar). As for what fits and what doesn't... See I can accept a diner crowd breaking into a dance number, and an ex-fiance using a Light Anti tank Weapon at her ex-groom, and I can accept a blind pawn shop owner firing a pistol at a 13 year old as a warning shot, but I could never accept anyone in the film pulling a knife and stabbing someone with it. [i assume that most everyone here will immediately get the film reference ] Fallout had the RadScorpions from Damnation Alley, and it had a few quirks like pulling a minigun out of a skintight blue bodysuit... But on the whole it was quasi serious unless you were out in the wild [unexplored wasteland]. am having almost no idea of what you is trying to say. in any event, we thinks that the fallout setting has appeal in part 'cause it can be campy and deadly serious seemingly at same time. is a bad analogy, but we kinda see fo in similar manner as heavy metal, the movie. none o' the heavy metal individual stories were shooting for realism or plausibility... were going for kewl. regardless o' whether you like or hate heavy metal, it would be kinda silly to thinks the movie woulda' been improved with more realism. HA! Good Fun!

Often it is the believability of the minutiae that make that suspension of disblief possible when it comes to the larger impossibilities/implausibilites. Its a pretty basic tenet of fantasy/sf writing. some fantasy does strive for internal coherence... assume we got magic, then find plausibility once we makes that implausible assumption. fine. but notion that there is some inverse proportion function at work in sci-fi and fantasy is ... wrong. smaller the detail the bigger the impact on plausibility? uh... no. regardless, as we already note above, fallout is akin to flinstones where in the big and small is all silly. suspension o' disbelief is not something the fo universe honest not seems to strive for... is 1950's b-movie and pulp mag notions o' post apoc... is flinstones. HA! Good Fun!

you folks ain't trying to discuss fo population in terms o' realism, right? might as well point out that the sheer number o' large predators roaming 'bout pretty much invalidates the possibility o' you having a wasteland. you got giant insects, (impossible for multiple reasons) and super mutants (HA!) and miniguns as personal weapons (*groan*). am not sure why folks can stomach such stuff... and then get all twisted by minutiae. is the flinstones... is no more plausible than the flinstones setting. you wouldn't argue population density with flinstones, would you? would be silly to do so, right? HA! Good Fun!

... maybe you not believe us when we said first time, but we actually do prefer our current dynamic with twink... twink posts and then Gromnir can respond (or not) secure in knowledge that we won't have to deal with a canonical response. is win-win. no arguments develop. *shrug* guidelines is strange stuff. guidelines is typical useless w/o some kinda reference as to application. years o' posting in this place has given Gromnir some notion as to what is actual meaning o' the guidelines... but we suspect that the current new vegas discussions is gonna change the application standards. am okie dokie with the policy o' the Brave New World as long as such standards is applied predictably and uniformly... is only gonna cause problems if predicting application is akin to predicting lightning strikes. ... btw, am aware that you guys has a policy 'gainst bashing other developers... you have stated that more than once. however, troika is not a developer; they are deceased. am honest curious whether defunct developers and publishers is to be insulated from criticism same as current active developers. feedback would be appreciated. HA! Good Fun!

yeah. obsidan has done 1 quasi-sandbox game: soz. were the writing good? SoZ had no where near the same budget of say Oblivion, so that is a rather bad comparison. The writing in SoZ was far better than what was in Fallout 3. On topic: It made me LOL when people actually entertained the idea that Obsidian may try to add Turned Based combat in NV at the Bethesda forums. :cue Aerosmith Dream On: 1) Gromnir didn't compare to oblivion 2) you think nv is gonna have budget of oblivion? 3) the writing in soz was somewhere betwixt forgettable and meh. you ain't one o' those codex guys that is gonna use the malarite druid in the hunting cabin as an example o' great obsidian writing, is you? soz encounters were typical far too brief to develop any character, and those critical path characters (volo and the snake chick) were hardly better than your dad or even 3-dog in fo3. plot in both cases were typical wacky sci-fi/fantasy stuff, so am not really seeing a gulf o' quality tween fo3 and soz. "Well you are missing out." if troika couldn't grab or attention after we sacrificed a couple hours o' our time, we ain't so foolish as to keep at it in hopes the game will improve. am not a big vampire or anne rice fan. if we were, maybe we would take another stab at vm, but we ain't. HA! Good Fun!

am not disagreeing that bastilla ended shallow... but add some genuine heroic sacrifice and character woulda' been pretty darn good. not require major changes. yeah, she gets the ice-queen shtick, but again, that were part o' the necessary plan in mirroring star wars 4-6. would rather chew broken glass than take another stab at vampire. some ok writing at start, but nothing fantastic and for all the hassles we went through to get through +1 hour o' vampire silliness... *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

yeah. obsidan has done 1 quasi-sandbox game: soz. were the writing good? is new vegas gonna be sand box? if it ain't, then they gotta do something vast different than soz... and if they does more akin to kotor2, then they still end up with a complete crap ending. am kidding. even so, can you imagine a fo game that is organized likes kotor2.? there is tangential stuff in kotor2, but there is a single coherent critical path plot that dominates the game. Gromnir would be okie dokie with such a game, but try to do such a game with sand box and you got... problems. if was a huge development with 5 years and loads o' people working on the project, then yeah, we can see a game that successful merges requirements o' compelling critical path and sand box wherein the tangential side-quests is equal intriguing. keeps a relative small number o' key plot points, take focus off the protagonist, and develop those side-quests so that they is more than brief encounters; make them genuine mini-stories that can stand on their own. am worried 'bout nv writing in part because these guys is familliar with fallout and 'cause some o' them worked on van buren. is gonna be tough to be practical. HA! Good Fun!

" I really liked it at first, but the immersion breaking was too much. " see previous posts by Gromnir (and developers) regarding the near meaninglessness o' "immersion." "Also the general question of why am I exploring? A lot of the places just ended up being similar hallways filled with similar things in similar buildings." not in morrowind? brief inventory o' bioware games: mdk2 were fantastic-- not so much writing focused, but gameplay were fantastic and had loads o' humor. bg... sucked. (am not gonna rehash old argument) bg2 were somewhere between good and very good... relative to crpgs as a whole. (already discussed in part) nwn and expansions were a mix o' good and terrible. nwn itself ain't near as bad as some suggest, but the clunky party system and the weak villains really killed enjoyability. side-quests were often excellent, with charwood being the best. expansions were a mixed bag... bioware sorta half-developed the first expansion and game felt half-baked. SoU started off ok, had a terrible middle, and ended rushed, but with some good content. Never did play HoU, so we cannot say... anything? tob were to short to sum up bg. some o' the wrting were pretty good, and we especially liked the additions Gaider eventually made to balthazaar via ascension, but the actual release o' tob were simply so-so for writing. were too fragmented 'tween the boss battles and the core story to be genuine compelling. the fire giant and swamp stuff were not bad, though coulda/shoulda' given more regarding Gorion during this stage. kotor were damned clever. do a game that complete parallels major plot points and characters from first 3 films? is only an obvious approach After kotor is released. in a post phantom menace world, is not so intuitive. jolee is an excellent character and bastilla coulda' been good. mix of good and bad. with all the terrible sw games, it were surprising that bioware were able to work within lucas restrictions and produce an enjoyable game. me? again, a mixed bag with some good and bad... 'least they finally manage to get some genuine element o' heroic sacrifice into a game. very intriguing universe, but with some wackiness and implausibility that made tough to swallow. generally interesting characters, but none that were genuine good or great. they has done considerable number o' games, so if you want a complete rundown you is gonna need to ask in another thread... and chances are we still not give a complete answer as you is asking for details on something like a half-dozen games. bio writing? generally better than fo 1 and fo2... and anything done by troika. played a bit o' vampire, so am not able to genuine judge complete game, but unless it got substantial better after the first hour o' soul-crushing buginess, we not feel as if we missed anything. some ok stuff were seen in vampire, but toee and arcanum were Horrible insofar as writing were concerned. HA! Good Fun!

bgii is seeming invariably under or overrated. the macbeth stuff were excellent and is a shame that so few folks played bards as the bard stronghold were particular well done and reinforced parallels 'tween and twixt the bg2 main characters and those from macbeth. irenicus were an excellent antagonist, but sadly he were underdeveloped at crucial end part o' game; the lazy reader could easily see irenicus as the typical mad-for-power wizard. blame not on lazy players but on lazy writers. the circus tent quest were well-done, if brief... does a fair good job o' foreshadowing without being ham-fisted 'bout it... get more macbeth. generally we enjoyed the party npc dialogues. etc. (we can go on considerable with a number o' the good quests... some o' the dream sequence stuff were actually pretty good too, if not really our kinda shtick.) side note... am gonna agree that the romances were terrible, and am sad that they were so popular as the tangential and optional romance became a bioware staple afterward. even worse, horrible and abbreviated romance in bgii were so popular that other game developers began to adopt similar models. terrible. Thats what I was getting at, and why I mentioned the art style. Oblivion just look like generic fantasy land I've seen in games and movies a thousand times before. Shivering Isle was still pretty bad, but at least it looked interesting, and I mantain art style is orders of magnitude more important to a game then pretty graphics. and again, even if we ignore writing complete and go with gestalt regarding setting, we still wonder how one can laud morrowind and sneer at fo3. bethesda did a fantastic job with the fo3 setting. HA! Good Fun!

a super fantabulous trailer might convince us to learn more 'bout a game. am not sure if a trailer could actually convince us to buy a game. converse... real terrible trailer not gonna serious discourage us from buying a game. is too many trailers that is terrible or have 0 to do with actual game for us to actually base a decision on trailer qualities. heck, we though that the ps:t trailer were tres kewl, but 50% o' stuff in trailer were not even in game, and we sure didn't learn much 'bout the game from the trailer. have not bothered to watch the da trailer, 'cause watching it won't make a bit o' difference anyways. HA! Good Fun!

am getting that you found the setting more compelling in morrowind than you did in oblivion. however, the essential question remains: why? "strong lore" just not mean much in and of itself. and as for compare morrowind to fo3, we thinks bethesda did a pretty darn good job with fo setting in a localized geographical area. as long as you not bring in fo or fo2, post apoc washington were done very well by bethesda with discussion o' current power groups such as enclave and mercenary groups, as well as the vaults and such. take out your fo pre knowledge o' how fo is 'posed to be, and we thinks that bethesda did a darn good job with setting... far better than morrowind or oblivion. in fact, possibly the best attribute o' fo3 were the setting. HA! Good Fun! ps short answer: Gromnir, the poster, existed considerable before Gromnir the tob game character. not mean anything other than a developer ha-ha moment.

Morrowind's writing wasn't bad. On the contrary, it was average to good. got any examples? am not being flippant, but Gromnir is having difficulty recalling memorable dialogue from morrowind. if we can't recall, then chances are it weren't particular good. "hey, gromnir. just checked out of curiousity. maybe you didn't notice when i told you...i have you on ignore and i'm not going to indulge in your forum-LARP games. wanna talk about self-indulgent nonsense? give your posts a read through, something i'm not inclined to do. want conversation? drop the LARP. until then you can continue having one-sided conversations with me until the end of time." is amusing that twinkie is such a narcissist that he believes we care for his responses. Gromnir responsds to inanities and stoopidities without some kinda desire to be validated, so it not genuine matter if he or grizzly or vol or vis responds.... and to be honest, our dialogues with twink has become more interesting once he stopped responding... all too predictable. don't anybody spoil the joke, eh? HA! Good Fun!

"i've actually argued many times that videogames cannot truly be art because their primary goal is capital gain. art, in it's pure form...exists because the artist has something inside which needs to be purged. selling your art should be an afterthought meant to expose yourself to the greatest audience possible. but creating art with the intention to constantly compromise in order to make money immediately changes it from art to commodity. though i WILL argue to the death that some games are, to use a turn of phrase, more of a "work of art" than others. some games held onto their integrity and sunk their artistic principles so deep into them that they said "i hope people want a game like this. here goes nothin'" and you know what? that's why we have games like Grim Fandango, Fallout and Planescape." what a load of self-indulgent nonsense. am not sure if we would use "purge" to describe the artistic imperative, but regardless, rare is the artist who is satisfied with the act o' creation. art and ego is inextricably intertwined as the artist most often fight pretty damned hard to get his art appreciated by the multitude. how many years and how many publishers did Joyce go through to gets Dubliners published? there is almost never "art, in its pure form" as you describe. art is as much 'bout ego as it is 'bout creation; the artist has a need for his art to be experienced, even as he sneers at the unappreciative and unlettered masses. now, as for lack o' compromise being integral to art... that too is a suspect notion. Dickens wrote many o' his works as part o' magazine serializations. why he got those wacky cliffhangers and Dickensian moments? 'cause his muse told him to do so, or 'cause that were the kinda stuff that sold magazines? ever read Dumas? the repetition and redundancy in his dialogues were almost hypnotic... and as he were getting paid by the word much o' his style is readily explained. go through the vast record o' published works from the past few centuries and read up on the actual history o' how artist works went from your purged product to published work and we thinks you find that there is a goodly number o' authors who compromised and yet were still able to produce great works o' art. am not even gonna get into specific dramatic works. anybody who has been involved in theatre can probable explain just how much compromise is involved in getting a dramatic work from writer's final draft to actual stage performance. try to take the commercial aspect out o' a major dramatic production. nevertheless, we expect that there has been some few plays released over the years that qualify as art, in spite o' the compromise that invariably were part o' the production. games, much like plays, not got A artist. is a collaboration of multiple folks working together (HA!) to creates a single product that hopefully sells well during the first 2 quarters following release. how many writers is working on typical game? is it even possible to have those people work on one project and Not compromise? games is also having technical demands... so as much as a writer might wish to stand firm to his principles, perhaps certain aspects cannot be realized or actualized 'cause it just ain't possible to bring writer's vision to life. josh talks a good game 'bout games being taken serious, but even he has thrown sacrifices on the altar o' necessity. am recalling how Gromnir personally blasted him for HoW. josh finally admits that HoW production suffered from a surfeit o' resources. as much as Josh wanted to do certain sooper-groovy-kool stuff on burial island, he couldn't: not enough resources and not enough time. and let us not forget The Money. troika takes on toee, a game that is 'posed to be part of a series of d&d games with a short development cycle. Is not as if atari hid the fact that they wanted toee to be first o' a bunch o' cheap-to-make and quick release products. troika took on the toee job with complete understanding o' the motivations o' atari. does such a scenario prevent art? why? "You have X months and Y florins. now go make me some art." isn't that kinda how things worked during the Renaissance with patron and artist relationship? has been some okie dokie games made that way. and more than a few notable works o' art. heck, the fact that iwd were so successful (more successful than fo by far) contributed to fact that it took so long for a fo3 to gets made. ask fergie for the explanation. as for specific games noted... ps:t, unlike many games, were more 'bout One-Man's-Vision than were the typical game, but given the success o' bg and the infinity engine, and recognizing that planescape were an extreme popular setting for tsr, the notion that ps:t were simply a labor o' love wherein the "artist" ignored the wants and desires o' the grubby masses as he built his magnum opus is... silly. am sure that there were dozzens o' things that got "compromised" right out of ps:t. wacky naivete regarding purging and uncompromising artists is... quaint. is even less meaningful when you tries to apply to fo. HA! Good Fun!

same here. i can't get tired of it. it's just so hilariously perfect in it's inanity. ya gotta love Bethie. you know what would be really funny is if Obsidian fixed SPECIAL and made it meaningful again...so that a low intelligence would give that modifier [intelligence] and all your responses would be as idiotic as that one. just simply repeating what the NPC says back to them. oh joy would that be ultimate lulz! special were meaningful? when? back when outdoorsman were virtual pointless? when first aid and dr. were split? special is so kewl; the system lets you play as you wish. right. how many folks start off with gifted perk and tag small guns? more than half? how many o' you said, "agility is my dump stat,"? etc. special had loads o' potential, but it were a mess from a balance pov and it were less meaningful than you suggest considering there were maybe a handful o' builds you see repeated +80% o' time. ... am sick and tired o' the Church o' Cain preaching a return to goode olde tymes that never were. special were a pretty nifty system and we like it loads... but we sure not wanna resurrect. Gromnir gets criticized for being old fashioned-- the word curmudgeon has come up more than once in polite conversation. even so, the fallout faithful makes even Gromnir seems downright progressive... revolutionary even. am also not quite sure why the idiot's response from fallout is held up as some kinda proof o' gaming goodness. if special were balanced proper then you makes int meaningful via skill points n' such anyways. typical obsidian game invariably gots a few unique Intelligence dialogues that is available only to the smarties... such stuff were available in fo3. but have moron dialogues for every encounter seems likes a whole lotta work for relative nil payoff. make int. meaningful by actual balancing o' special rather than cheese o' idiot's response? would be a novel addition to fallout franchise as fo1, 2, and 3 not do a very good job o' balancing special. HA! Good Fun!

creative names is nifty for parents, but often you is simply consigning your child to needless teasing and potential beatings. have never understood those folks who decides to name their son Rainbow Moonbeam Sparklenaut... or somesuch. thankful is typical only the hollywood people who do this kinda thing nowadays. have always liked the names Grace & Catherine for girlies and Gabriel or Michael for boys... but as Gromnir's gift to the universe is to avoid producing progeny... we knew a guy named Buddie Friend... honest. also knew a person with name Forey Duckett... named Forey 'cause he were birthed in delivery room 4-A. ... is sometimes easy to tell which folks shoulda' never been permitted to procreate. HA! Good Fun! ps have never understood the jack=john bit.

I can see fighting on truck-back as functionally identical to to fighting in a room with dynamic hazards. I bet not falling off the truck would be about the same thing as not stepping off the edge of a wall; And you can't take a truck into a man-hole, or subway, so the VtV combat would only occur in wide outdoor spaces (though it would be neat if the NPC hitting a bump (or rolling over an opponent) would shift the truck/or car such that the PC risked falling off if they weren't careful. What I'd like in a game turned FPP explorer is for the game to include climbing as a full feature. (quick non-sequitur) kotor had these stoopid minigames where player would gets attacked when traveling between star systems. player would sudden be manning gun turret and would fight off tie-fighter analogues. lame. keep simple like kotor where fighting in vehicle is little more than a shooter interlude, and is wasted. maybe does like mass effect? probable not what you want, eh? turn into genuine vehicle combat and you need rules to gets a whole lot more robust... not to mention the graphics concerns to make look good. have seen the crpg mounted combat arguments and requests for over a decade now... have also heard developers explain why they choose not to do. developers has been pretty convincing on this issue in past and some o' the terrible attempts by bethesda and bioware doe not convince us otherwise. HA! Good Fun!

is you changing overland map too? fine... end up with fo:t. vehicles moved you faster than foot and cut down on chances o' being attacked. sure didn't seem to add ... and don't get us started on the problems with forcing characters to bake bread. some anachronisms should be left to die, molder and be forgotten. HA! Good Fun!

If there are vast tracks of barren [and flat] wasteland, then an NPC can drive from point A to B while the PC defends the vehicle from attack (similar to the train levels in Blood in a way), or the PC can drive the vehicle and get close enough for the NPC's to make shots at their attackers. Consider a pick-up truck with raiders trying to leap onto the truck bed and overtake you, or steal something that you have, and the player must deal with them and not fall off the truck. ~It'd be tricky. but I think the way (if done at all) is to study Mad Max. It worked pretty well in the PnP games called "After The Bomb" made by Palladium Books. the problem with mad max example is that 90% of game would then be vehicle combat. is same stuff that keeps mounted combat out of most crpgs. getting mounted combat into game would add a considerable level o' complexity and sophistication... but demands o' doing so are high, and pay-off is... again, if is just fast travel and pack mule, then why? if is genuine true vehicle combat, then you is potentially making a whole second combat system... not to mention all the graphic resources needed. am simply not seeing cost v. benefit... specially given afct that we ain't talking 'bout real long term development neither. HA! Good Fun!

if main function o' vehicle were fast travel, would it genuine be worth the trouble... hit exit grid or whatever and now you is in your 1958 edsel? store extra 100t in trunk? if is gonna have vehicles shouldn't there be ore to it... and if not, then what is point... other than flavor? HA! Good Fun!

dunno how to make vehicles genuine useful. add a pilot skill and specific creates opportunities for vehicle use? (ok, we can see how to make useful, am simply not convinced that such efforts is worth efforts) typical we see see vehicles thrown into a crpg as a minor side aspect or as a quick travel and pack mule device... am not sure such stuff is worth effort considering how little is typical added to game. HA! Good Fun!

Political Correctness, a cancer of creativity. Like I said, that hasnt stopped games before. sure it has. you is a troika fan, right? every game developer in world were aware that if you wanted to sell your game in germany, you couldn't have graphic depictions o' child killing. nevertheless, troika forgot or didn't care 'cause they acted all shocked and surprised when they found out that they couldn't release toee with killable children. resulted in some silliness and funky quests. is probable ok to lampoon religion and evangelists and such stuff... is any number o' games that does so. that being said, target catholic church or mormons may be problematic. pentecostals? is a pretty easy target and am not thinking they gots any noteworthy PACs. make funnies directed at religion is worth doing, but the Publisher (not obsidian) is eventually gonna be the folks that gotta deal with whichever organized religion is cheesed off by game content, so am not surprised that those publishers often ere on side o' caution. from publisher pov it simply not make sense to alienate and enrage major religious groups when what you is trying to do is sell games. here is a suggestion that is unlikely to ever see light o' day: use obsidian's fallout game as a platform for abortion debate. in a post apocalyptic setting there is gonna be ample opportunities to depict abortion from multiple povs. am betting that any number o' ambitious game writers would love to work on a fallout abortion clinic... Dr. Bob's Abortion Clinic & _________. ammo shop? brothel? fine meats? whatever. nevertheless, in spite o' possibilities, is it really worth the aggravation... inviting all kinds o' problems. oh, and Gromnir is dead set against adding anymore skills than bethesda used in fo3-- couldn't even balance and get appropriate use out o' those skills they already has and folks wanna resurrect outdoorsman and doctor n' such.... and gamble has been so busted and subject to abuse in every fallout game we ever played that am genuine surprised folks would actual suggest bringing that nightmare back. HA! Good Fun!

is not as if mlb has ignored steroids. even pre-balco there were more than a couple attempts by the commissioner to implement a genuine drug testing policy... but the player's union rejected. baseball player's union is on a whole different level than the other major pro sports. HA! Good Fun!

never saw a point to first aid in fo or fo2. doctor were rare useful 'cause crippling happened infrequent. we got no problem with the med skills being combined, 'cause having 'em separate not really work in fo 1 or 2. as much as fo:t is maligned by the faithful, am recalling that doctor skill became very useful in that game... first aid uses would eventual result in the "bandaged" status and you would have to doctor up anyways. typical we boosted stitch's dr skill through the roof, but ignored first aid in favor o' small guns or other such. keeps the combined fo3 medical skill and return usefulness by eliminating the stimpack solution for handling crippled limbs, blindness or concussion. HA! Good Fun!