Gromnir

the first movie... of course. ends with conan sitting on throne as mako does some narration... text scrolling. is good stuff. HA! Good Fun!

awkward... but not a rush job. kreia hated the force and force users... is reason she found you... 'cause you is an ambulatory gaping wound in the force. kreia sees all force users as slaves to the force... and she hates the quasi-sentient force and its "desire" for balance and so she uses you to destroy all the remaining force users. keep in mind that the jedi masters, while being deceitful bastards who use you throughout the entire game, is possibly right 'bout you... at least kreia believes that they is right 'bout the danger you pose to the force. that is exactly why she makes you powerful 'nuff to destroy all such force slaves... including herself. the jedi masters HAD to die... just as did scion and nihilus. atris is the one hole for us... am not seeing how she could survive... doesn't fit. with all of kreai's careful planning, we can't see how she would leave such an obvious loose end. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

didn't work. fought all the handmaidens with a female character and we not got battle precognition. is there a dialogue AFTER the fight with all five that maybe gives battle precognition? do you recall when exactly you were awarded battle precognition? am curious. HA! Good Fun! p.s. we warned a female gamer 'bout battle precognition being male only... so if there is a way for females to get it, we would like to know so that we can pass along info to our friend... would hate to think we gave her bad advice.

cliffhangers is ok... but the questions posed by such an ending should make the player wonder what will happen next as 'posed to making us ponder, what the hell just happened? use Empire Strikes Back as an example of cliffhanger... you know exactly what has happened to luke and leia and han and the rebellion, but you not know what the future has in store for them. is the way such things can and should be done in a computer game or movie where possible sequel may be years away. HA! Good Fun!

Never played Fable either, but Morrowind was... odd. After beating the main baddy, you just... kept going. No cinematic ending, no credits, nothing. As I said, no ending to speak of. Saying it was disappointing is an understatement. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> okie dokie... kinda feel vindicated in our choice not to finish morrowind. as we recall from fable, they had storyboard cutscenes for most major plot points. would be surprised if they hadn't done so for ending. btw, did anybody see "Conan?" the epilogue stuff there were handled predominantly with text and narration... and personally, we thought it were one of the best such sequences of any fantasy movie we ever seen. HA! Good Fun!

never finished either... but we find hard to believe that there was no cinematic. just 'cause there is text included not mean that there weren't cinematic. would be very surprised if end battle takes place and suddenley screen goes black with only rolling text followed by credits. HA! Good Fun!

the excuses some of you folks come up with is just plain creepy... is almost like listening to cultists. whether you like the game or not, multiple powers and feats in kotor2 is BROKEN. now that you know that force aura/armour line of powers not work, will you choose that power on subsequent play throughs? no? why not? 'cause it is broken? if you spent three power choices on force aura then you spent possibly three levels of character generation choosing useless powers. ... is not good to have useless powers and feats in a rpg where character development is a major selling point... and those of you making excuses for the obvious qa blunders of lucas/obsidian deserve the same consideration we typically give to vacuous cultist zombies. HA! Good Fun!

name a recent crpg that did not have a cinematic ending. go ahead, we dare you. now, if you is talking 'bout all the kotor2 epilogue variations... well, that is not the same thing, is it? HA! Good Fun!

use kex. HA! Good Fun!

Yeah, poor old Kex. He fought pretty well in the Battle Circle considering he's a geezer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> this is gonna get us in trouble, but what the hell... is all in good fun, right? kex were 'posed to be young, but other than the voice, she seemed to be very female. just assumed that it were the armour's voice synthesizer... that made deeper and more masculine. heck, she took an instant and unreasoning dislike to our character, and even after a friendly combat she refused to give up the grudge. is very female. besides which, kex sounds like a girl's name to us. no doubt the unflattering mandallorean uni-sex armour is throwing folks off... HA! Good Fun!

... and here we thought kex were a female. seemed female to us. HA! Good Fun!

"Not necessarily. " sorry, but yeah, it is necessarily a bad argument. the fact that a thing is bad or poor has no tendency to prove that an alternative would be better. sorry, but that is just basic logic. "Therefore to assume a cinematic sequence would automatically be worse is bad reasoning Gromnir" Gromnir made no such claim. *shrug* agree 'bout the "shame on you doomy," part. HA! Good Fun!

"Ah...but are we really so certain? Sure, maybe not "inherently better", but if the alternative proves to be grossly less effective (as was the case in TSL), is is not better?" huh? is bad reasoning there... and you know it. if the text version obsidian used in kotor2 were bad it not have any tendency to prove that cinematic sequences would be better. and yeah... hades is making an unequivocal blanket statement. he does such things... from time to time. HA! Good Fun!

"Sometimes cinematics convey emotional immersion better than words, sometimes they don't. That's why many times 'the book' is better than 'the film', or vise versa." and so ends the debate that there is something inherently better 'bout the movie sequences. we ain't saying that obsidian did a good job... but hades blanket statement is clearly nutters... especialy in light of fact that he not even play the game. HA! Good Fun!

"Because in good literature you are shown the action and not told." you not get the insanity of this continued argument? HA! Good Fun!

p.s. anybody here ever seen an in-game movie sequence with the production values of LotR? no? how many possible epilogue variations were there for kotor2? HA! you people is being silly to compare to LotR. how much would such movies cost? you know, is reasons why folks still read keats. HA! Good Fun!

Amen to that. 'A picture speaks a thousand words.' <{POST_SNAPBACK}> and yet, literature refuses to die

our actions do no such thing... but we can see how somebody like you might not be able to see any other way. is folks other than hades in this thread and other folks on this board... and some of them has actually played the game. Gromnir is responding to you, but he sure ain't trying to convice you. got it? probably not. good naration and good writing coupled with quality artwork... yeah, who could possibly like such things. HA! Good Fun!

congrats... but again, we ain't trying to convince you, so your opinion not mean much to us. lots of folks did like the iwd intro... and for good reason. HA! Good Fun!

am confused. Gromnir is not trying to convince you of anything. why would you think we were trying to convince you of something? am simply pointing out to folks that hades, who has not played game, is applying a non-rule to a non-conforming media to judge the validity of a developer design choice. *shrug* as were pointed out by Gromnir already, the iwd intro narrative worked quite well... and we see no reason why such an approach could not have worked in kotor2. HA! Good Fun!

am just discussing... but if you has reached your limit on the issue... HA! Good Fun!

"I don't want to be told what is going on. I want to be shown." did your creative WRITING teachers tell you that too? HA! Good Fun!

your teachers were idiots. even john gardner noted in his book, "the art of fiction," (probably the bestest how-to book we seen for young authors,) that there ain't no real hard and fast rules for writing. is any number of times where Gromnir has had a character narrate action as a recollection rather than describing as a participant observer many times. is very good reasons for doing so. example: have multiple characters recollect the same event. regardless, hades point is completely worthless in the present context. this ain't written media, but if it were, we would actually have to do the epilogue stuff much the same way it were actually done. in a book you always has to describe events through written words rather than pictures... is what separates literature from painting and sculpture and drama. besides which, the time and effort wasted to do cut-scenes for each planet and character described would necessarily have taken resources away from other stuff... so tell us what you would have sacrificed in kotor2 to get expensive cut-scene epilogues. however, we does note that we thinks that cramming the epilogue stuff into the particular scene in which it were forced, were a mistake. could of made the epilogue stuff actually epilogue and it would not have disrupted the already questionable sense o' closure. heck, coulda

Gromnir were expecting kotor2 to be more of an expansion than a sequel... so we weren't surprised by the fact that kotor2 were little different from the original. however, we thinks obsidian made a fundamental blunder when they chose to sacrifice performance as an acceptable casualty. yes, there were some relatively minor graphic improvements in kotor2, and no doubt there was lots of improvements behind the scenes, but as bad as performance were in kotor, kotor2 were even worse when it came to dropping frame rates and load times (though the load times were only a minor issue for Gromnir,) and crashes and corrupted saves. we understand that such a choice were not a measure of technical know-how... but no doubt brian can see how some folks might be discouraged by this first example of obsidian technical acumen. also, some folks is comparing troika's situation with toee to obsidian's difficulties with kotor2... and that ain't necessarily fair. troika asked for 18 months and they ended up getting more than 20. obsidian were told they had something like 14 months, and they end up getting 12. is different. however, one wonders why brian thinks nwn2 will be different. most of us who watched bioware and troika and others occasionally struggle with atari is probably thinking that brian is gonna have to make his same "what can you seriously expect," speech following nwn2 release... and like it or not, consumers has little patience for such speeches. troika blames on publisher every single time

actually, is possible that nwn is the only rpg on the list. with nwn, a dm can create a world and you, the player, can create a role to play. is no pre-canned dialogues and the story that evolves is dependent on yourself, your fellow players and the dm. nwn is the only game listed 'bove in which actual traditional role-play can be accomplished. nevertheless, we does understand how the "rpg" term has been perverted to fit the pc and console gaming industry, and we will, for the nonce, accept the rather suspect classification as used by the industry to choose a "best" from the list. however, we does note that roshan, as is his way, posts a poll that is inherently confused. the poll asks us what we thinks is the best crpg, but then he asks us what our favorite is. to an objective person, "favorite" and "best" is not always gonna be same. bg2 were the best. it were the biggest and most complete crpg we ever played. it offered a huge range of character development choices and it had solid writing. combat were fun and in spite of the fact that the game offered 120+ hours o' gameplay, we never got tired of it. ps:t were our favorite... but it had far too many glaring flaws for us to proclaim it "best." *shrug* HA! Good Fun!