Gromnir

oh great, another reply/quote yutz. first of all rambo did indeed gets hit a couple o' times and kept on going... most adults groaned when this happened, but you is correct. how many times is you gonna get hit in a typical crpg? hundreds of times? thousands? your notions o' "exact reality" and the distance a crpg would fall from that point is... amusing. stalker, btw, is more a fps than anything else and it gots cheap magic to boot. where science becomes stoopid, it is no different than magic... and stalker gots that kinda crap. also, the stalker weapon progression ain't "realistic"... is more like fallout. ain't nothing wrong with fallout, but ain't realistic, is it? Gromnir can gets his hands on an ak-47 within days if he wishes, but you gotta start off with a relative crummy handgun... which shouldn't be as crummy as it is. btw, magic gots nothing to do with story being failled. is a quaint notion though. gabriel garcia marquez gots himself one of those nobel prizes for lit. toni morrison as well. both is considered to be writers of the magic realism sub-genre... which is simply fantasy for snobs. dickens and shakespeare used overt and subtle magic in their works... those hacks. heck, even nathaniel hawthorne wrote a fantasy book. updike has used magic a few times, but he only gots pulitzers, so is easy to dismiss him? am not sure how lewis carroll coulda' written alice in wonderland w/o magic... so am not seeing how it were an "easy out for a failed story." homer used magic, and so did the unknown authors of beowulf and sir gawain. you see different 'tween magic in myth and magic in other stories? serves same purpose... an regarless, somebody had to imagine the magic into the myths somewhere along the way to make 'em the story we knows today. john gardner liked to bully his stuents early during semester... he would use socratic method to get some clown to parrot the oft-repeate refrain of "write what you know." gardner would blast the poor sod... went into his lecture 'bout writing being the realization o' a living, vivid and continuous dream. gardner thought that all great fiction were ultimately fantasy... imagined up stuff that never did happen and probably never could. a close friend o' john gardner were frank mcconnell. is doubtful you recognize the name, but frank were near as influential as were harold bloom. heck, frank were the chair of the pulitzer committee for fiction. if you get the chance, takes a look at neil gaiman's lengthy dedication in american gods. is the same frank mcconnell. frank loved and hated sci-fi and fantasy with equal vigor, but if you had ever suggested that magic were simply an easy way out of a failed story we doubt you woulda' gotten a meaningful response; frank had the occasional fit o' apoplectic laughter when people said particularly stoopid things. as for being behind times... we doubt it. is simply that you lack perspective. the plethora o' current apoc scenarios is all pretty tame for those o' us who endured the cold war period at its height. Gromnir fully comprehends the possibility and plausibility o' multiple world killing scenarios (already noted above, but ignored by mk,)... but they is nowhere near as real and immediate as were the nuke stuff. even folks who were certain that soviets and USA would never launch nukes at each other still would have the nuke nightmares from time to time. am just glad tht Gromnir didn't have to watch and wonder during the cuban missile crisis. is biological or environmental apoc scenarios real to mk and gromnir. sure, but you just don't get how the nuke stuff were so part of everyday culture. HA! Good Fun!

is getting wacked with a sword just as likely to cause death as an ak-47? probably, but most o' us is brought up on movies where the hero and villains trade blows w/o getting dead until it is appropriately dramatic to do so... and for crpgs we throws in magic to explain away any lingering obstacles to suspension o' belief. magic explains why player can has leather armour that seemingly wards off battle axe blow to the noggin and it explains why people can gets instantly healed even if they does gets hurt. most people recognize just how lethal a ak-47 is. is not much fun to play a genuine lethal crpg. pnp? yeah, you can do a lethal pnp without much combat and wherein combats is deadly, but crpgs gots lots o' combats, and it not look like that model is gonna change anytime soon... besides which, makes a lethal game and it not matter if you is talking swords n' sorcery or ar-15s. is not the swords... is the swords and sorcery dynamic that makes work. got a modern day analog to the sorcery bit? nope. is why we typical sees super-science thrown in if you want modern weapons... need special healing kits or injections. also keeps in mind that gaining experience and gaining better 1007 is part o' the modern crpg and is so integral we not see who is gonna buck trend. if you start game with ak-47, then by end o' game you is probably gonna need disintegrator rays, or handheld railguns. gaining experience is only part o' the experience... as with diablo and d&d and fo and most other crpg rules, you gets better weapons and protection as you progress through game... is part o' the reason peoples play these games... as ridiculous as it seems. heck, there is a reason why uncle fergie added random weapon/1007 drops to iwd... with some ridiculous powerful stuff avialable at end o' game. people wanna see their characters get better, and finding increasing powerful 1007 is 1/2 o' the scme. sadly, modern weapons not got the appropriate kinda curve for both offense and defense insofar as mano y mano combat is concerned. btw, Gromnir is not really a fan o' any of the post apoc settings. dunno, but post apoc just not do it for Gromnir the way it once did. part o' the problem is that Gromnir grew up when cold war were at its height. is difficult to explain to folks nowadays, but pan global nuke war seemed terribly probable. have never met somebody who grew up back then who were unfamiliar with the nuke holocaust nightmare... all of us had the nuke nightmare. ... can't recall the last time we had the nuke nightmare. is apoc due to disease or biological weapons or environmental disaster as likely as ww3 nukes? possibly, but is just not the same. no meteor or greenhouse gas nightmares for Gromnir. anyways, from design pov, our 2 fav settings is low magic 100 years war or American fronteir (circa 1850s.) magic makes anything possible... for science to do same it has gotta be advanced 'nuff so that setting is no longer quite as familiar... and some people will still see stuff as scientific impossible. magic is a trump card for the impossible. HA! Good Fun!

is a little know fact that fergie and Gromnir is tight... kinda likes third cousins who mildly dislike each other based 'pon the 2 or 3 times they has met at reunions or funerals over past couple decades. real tight. anyways, the 40k stuff is smoke screen. fergie has always had a favorite post-apoc license that he has wished to devotes millions o' dollars and thousands o' man hours to realizing... combines magic and tech. linky am not always on same page as obsidians, but we thinks this one gots real potential. HA! Good Fun!

I never knew that. I learn the damnedest thing on this message board. don't feels bad... 'cause it maybe not mean what it means. the devil ain't The Devil. devil is some colorful sailor name for a beam in oldie ships that were particularly hard to reach and seal, and there were not but a bit o' nothing 'tween the devil (the beam) and the ocean. caught in a tight jam? face a difficult task? somewhere along way, the origin gets lost and devil becomes Devil and meaning o' phrase changes. 'course, we coulds be wrong. some pretentious know-it-all informed us o' origin. can't vouch for veracity, but the jerk were more often right than wrong. and so it goes, from one pretentious bastard, to the next, and to the next. HA! Good Fun!

" It's apparently impossible to depict any real internal struggle, let alone evoke such a struggle in the player himself." has player feel same struggle as horatius musta' faced as he stood at bridge? no, but that not mean that there ain't possibility o' meaningful sacifice. take an example from bg2, 'cause we assume most here will have played. 'member in the dream sequence stuff where you is tying to save imoen? demon looking thing requires you to give up 1 attribute point to continue. is a pretty paltry sacrifice as far as heroic actions is concerned, and is not like you had an option to NOT sacrifice an attribute point... but what if you had the option? Bob the Barbarian can give up one point o' strength, or he can lets a valued party member die... permanent. even the player who is playing the Paladin is gonna pause, no? obviously tougher moral dilemas, ones with no clear right v. wrong is possible in games, and the above examples shows how the developer can confont the Player with genuine sacrifice (if petty and small.) would not suggest that every such choice should be a devil v. deep blue sea situation, but even a handful would be a handful more than we has ever seen in a crpg. baby steps... gotta start small. shoulda' seen what happened when we suggested that not all crpg battles should be winable. HA! Good Fun!

oh, and one quick aside: story is story. writing a crpg character or plot is different from writing a novel or a play. given. no argument. nevertheless, we thinks that developers sometimes use differences as a crutch. what makes us admire heroes and hate villains (or vice versa) is same in all other media as is crpgs. the means o' achiving ends as a writer stays largely the same regardless o' media. tragedy and comedy and heroic sacrifice and even such stuff as extended metaphor and symbolism is having equal validity to games. harder to achive? sure, but what makes us weep or laugh or cheer in movies is gonna be same stuff that makes us laugh or cheer or weep in games. should be obvious... but developers often argue opposite... they insist that addition o' gameplay and interactivity makes crpgs sooo different. rubbish. we suspect that same comments were made when moveable print finally made novels possible... would be so different than dramatic elements o' drama once you take away actors. *snort* HA! Good Fun! whatever is in keyboard is underneath e/r... damn.

preach to the choir. Gromnir have been posting for years that easy and obvious choices kills drama... but you would be surprised by how much resistance we sees. is multiple threads at DA board over at bio debating what constitutes the "darker" setting bio developers has suggested that DA would be. many people not want grim. many people not want hard choices. many. take a looksee. is more than a couple threads that address moral ambiguity and heroism. Gromnir suggests that inherent in our modern notions o' heroism is sacrifice... has gotta be some willing payment for character to be genuine heroic. sadly, many peoples balk at notion o' heroic sacrifice in game. re-load means that simple abbandon o' personal safety is an illusory sacrifice, so to make Player feel sacrifice you gotta do in other ways. is unfortunate that as soon as you suggest that player might not always has a clear and beneficial game option open to them, they gets mighty worried. josh and others may thinks that it is obvious that game would be better if there were costs linked to choics... makes those choices more meaningful and memorable and dramatic, but if you implement you better do so w/o telling fans ahead a time, 'cause they will whine and moan and cry as if you were trying to take their favorite toy away from 'em. sometimes what will makes a game better is the opposite o' what fans ask for. you keep giving fans what they ask for and they will hate you for it, 'cause then you is unoriginal and boring. Gromnir agrees with josh on this issue if not others, but you will see more resistance than maybe you might expect. CRPG = Fantasy Fullfillment... seems to be opinion of many developers and fans. those fans and developers not eally thinks that tough choices full o' potential regret and gnashing o' teeth is appropriate material for a crpg. HA! Good Fun! ps our "r" key seems to be sticking... so you notice a missed r or two and is not that we has sudden turned into vol.

Well, if you take NWN2 as an example, the player would have the power to either heal, or resurrect that chick companion tho dies at her uncle's hands. This would effectively change the storyline from then on. Player freedom, though within the narrative. Best if both worlds for almost everyone here. This does take extra coding on the part of developers, but its all a juggling act of what aspects of games are most important to the RPG player. you is still thinking too limited. why take nwn2 narrative as an example? try to gets out of box. we will give 1 example, from there you can probably thinks o' dozen approaches that is cinematic and allow high freedom. heck, since you is so enamored with nwn2 example, we will use an aspect o

is lot o' assumptions being made... for nonce we will only address one small aspect. am gonna stay mostly on sidelines, 'cause not want this to become 'bout Gromnir. that being said, we would like some folks who has determined that a "cinematic" approach to narrative in a crpg is a bad thing, to simply consider what happens if focus of the narrative is removed from the pc. still have all those so-called cinematic aspects, but consider how the somewhat fuzzy notion o' rp freedom changes. HA! Good Fun!

"Its no more contrived than anything else on television right now." ... okie dokie. well now dallas and bsg got something in common... ain't that grand? HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* is like talking to a wall. fact that cylons don't really die means that emotional impact o' their dying is pretty much zero. kinda a good deal o' effort went into starbuck's death scene. were the first compelling bsg moment since ty kills his wife back on new caprica. oh yeah, another death scene... which woulda' been equally cheesy if they had brought ty's wife back two episodes later. as for the resurrection o' jason todd... HA! exactly our point. bsg has jumped shark... is now no better than comic book's worst aspect. HA! Good Fun!

makes worse, not better. is the kinda crap you sees all the time in comic books... is a running joke that only robin has ever managed to stay dead (though a bit of an overstatement, if only barely.) the fact that bsg writers not get that they was part of a bad joke makes worse, not better. HA! Good Fun! The second Robin? Didn't he eventually come back as some criminal mastermind, or am I thinking Elseworlds here? I dropped out of buying comics regularly and have lost track of Batman continuity - only going by with rumors and heresay... Death and sacrifice in comics seem to last as long as XBox exclusives. you is asking the wrong guy. the bit 'bout only robin staying dead is an old comic book cliche... am thinking that it is the one that fans got to vote for or 'gainst, but our knowledge o' comic books post 1990ish is terrible. if they brought jason todd back, we is unaware of it... 'course, our observation works better if some yutz did bring even robin back. and sand still not get. if starbuck weren't dead, then it were simply a trick... which again makes worse, not better. HA! Good Fun!

you just don't get it. death has value. death gots an emotional impact. death gots all kinda meanings for peoples, but is universal. ever wonder why kids books seems so preoccupied with death? charlotte

makes worse, not better. is the kinda crap you sees all the time in comic books... is a running joke that only robin has ever managed to stay dead (though a bit of an overstatement, if only barely.) the fact that bsg writers not get that they was part of a bad joke makes worse, not better. HA! Good Fun!

just 'bout anything is plausible in a sci-fi or fantasy show. is not 'bout plausibility, but rather stoopidity. resurrecting characters is... lame. once this trick is used, then you can never go back. heck, princess bride did as a joke... made fun of bit in which hero is only "mostly dead." we all chuckled and laughed. did you laugh when starbuck were resurrected? no? well then, it weren't very funny, were it? is simply an unfunny joke. HA! Good Fun!

am all in favor o' giving the other great apes Human rights, but we want 'em subject to human law too. if in california, chimp A steals a woobie from chimp B, then charge chimp A with petty theft... 'less the woobie is worth more than $400, or is an avacado. gorillas shoulds be made to wear appropriate clothing lest they find selves violating those pesky indecent exposure laws... please, think of the children. if Gromnir visits a zoo in sacramento, and a baboon throws poop at Gromnir, we want the baboon (the baboon not named Gromnir) charged with crime(s.) HA! Good Fun!

sssssooooooooo... ... been a couple o' weeks, no? *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

future trivia question: when did the new bsg jump the shark? answer: ______________ *shrug* no doubt many here don't think that the show has jumped, but we suspect that after the series is over, lots o' former fans will looks back at the final episode o' this year and admit that shark were jumped. sure, the whole season post new-caprica rescue were under whelming, but we thinks that this last episode were the one that sealed bsg's fate. and those o' you fans who did not groan in anguish as they sees starbuck resurrected from seeming death should maybe be a bit ashamed. HA! Good Fun!

where X is a game development issue or feature, the appropriate first question is and alwasy shall be: how close does X correspond to the way TIM CAIN made FALLOUT? forget that fallout ain't what codex represents, and that tim cain weren't the CREATOR of it, but... ... btw, Gromnir fully concedes that the above is a hasty and unfair overgeneralization... just seems accurate most times. HA! Good Fun!

If a madman says that 2+2=4, it's no less true because the speaker is mad. true enough... which is why Gromnir don't dismiss all vol posts out of hand. however, from a practical pov, if a person don't know what is total of 2+2, and vol claims answer is 4, but josh or eldar or some random sane person claims answer is 5, then we can understand why maybe some people would rely 'pon josh or eldar or sane person answer, the wrong answer. again, the problem with codex madness is that there is codex dogma. spend 15 minutes reading codex editorials or news bites and you gots a pretty good notion o' what is codex dogma. ever listen to religious experts makes scientific arguments 'gainst evolution? is same kinda madness you see from codex, 'cause 'stead o' coming to conclusion based on evidence, the worshiper o' dogma starts with a conclusion, then works backwards... highlighting only those bits o' evidence that woulds possibly seem to undermine evolution's viability. heck, Gromnir even concedes the possibility that evolution is flawed, but the way a dogma inspired disciple gets to that conclusion makes Gromnir wanna knee-jerk to opposite conclusion... much as it is easy to knee-jerk opposite o' vol and codex and other mad peoples. HA! Good Fun!

is room 'nuff for lots o' different pov. difference is that josh has, on more than one occasion, gone Critical Bill on fans that make demands or criticisms o' developers w/o a corresponding offering o' practical alternatives. Gromnir were simply amused that a fellow obsidian developer would makes observations 'bout a game that seemed to come up woefully short o' josh's minimum standards... though we assume that bullock/bulock won't be so amused next time josh goes Critical on some unsuspecting fan and Gromnir points him in jb's direction. *shrug* 'course, as you and can't/eldar/or-whatever-he-is-calling-self-this-week seems to wanna takes a short trips off-topic, we will respond with extreme and uncharacteristic brevity. to a certain degree we agrees with can't. freedom is all well and good in a crpg, but that freedom is mostly an illusion, and it comes at a cost as well. not even josh would argue that every dialogue choice in game should have multiple meaningful results. the myth that is the endlessly bifurcating dialogue tree would become reality, which is in practice, impossible. josh has made obvious that he cares less 'bout story than he does 'bout freedom, but is simply impossible to write engaging dialogues and characters if you needs necessarily comes up with dialogue trees that can survive bifurcation past a very limited number o' significant branching. is an illusion

am aware that rp is feeling picked 'pon at the moment, so we gives some help. define story is not so easy as rp assumes. plot= story? no writer is gonna assume such a thing. use websters not gonna help you on this one. flawed definition leads to understandable busted notion o' narrative. if story is simply the straightforward chronological revealing o' plot to audience throughs a chosen narrator, then is easy to see how a limited notion o' narrative results. something to consider... ever heard o' the thieves world books? back in the 80s and 90s numerous publishers o' fantasy lit released collections o' short stories. a dozen authors would write short stories that all were set in roughly same universe. thieves world were most successful o' the bunch. dozens o' authors contributed to multiple thieves world books. there were sharing of characters and events 'tween writers. heck, there were even a kinda rough unified plot being advanced in a chronological manner, 'cause there were specific plot events and characters that were seemingly sacrosanct to all contributors. were nothing actually experimental 'bout thieves world... nothing wacky or far-fetched. maybe you get some notions how thieves world model might translate to a video game in which developers were focused on storytelling. heck, sounds kinda familiar. *shrug* tangent: we does suggest reading the liavek collections. a very diverse group o

codex is always good for a chuckle. not everything from codex is terrible, but their pov is so extreme, and they is so darn certain of their conclusions (in spite of often bad logic or horrible reasoning,) that debate is largely pointless. codexian staff likes to start with an initially flawed premise, which they assume is unassailable and undeniable, then they simply run with it... extrapolate out to some ridiculous conclusion which they then declare Proved.

is tough to draw conclusions 'bout entire dialogue system based 'pon a single screenie. that being said, one wonders why gamespy or bio or whomever chose that particular screenie to shows to potential future purchasers. *shrug* me confuses Gromnir. based on feedback from bio and from articles we gots so little interest in me that we might even concludes that we gots more interest in obsidian's aliens project. however, every person we knows who has actually seen and or played some portion o' me seems to rave 'bout it. not makes sense. oh well. oh, and we thinks that josh would be disappointed with bullock

but we all lose. "Ah. Well, good luck then. I'm a games journalist. I review games, I don't report the news. All I have is a (somewhat educated) opinion which I try to convey as objectively as possible to the readers of our site." review games gets special qualification? is too bad. that being said, is not like mkreku is alone in incompetence and is not as if games is only class o' reviews that has such a poor group o' technical writers. is music and books reviewed better than games? maybe, but the gap is getting smaller. there is still a ny times book review, but what is music equivalent... Rolling Stone? and what 'bout movie reviews? is thousands o' movie review sites on internet and every major newspaper gots a dedicated movie reviewer. how many o' those reviewers do you thinks is excellent at their craft? sure, you may find a reviewer who gots some similar taste as you, you may even find a reviewer who is entertaining, but how many reviews has you actually read that you would you rely 'pon if you not knew the track record o