Gromnir

"why do graphics matter?" sure they matter. how many would buy if kotor2 were a text-only game? much of what made kotor successful were fact that it looked "kewl." it were never cutting edge or anything, but lighsabre combats were fun to watch, and the critters were good 'nuff. is graphics as important as story or gameplay? not for Gromnir... graphics ain't even close to being the most important thing for us, but graphics matter... don't kid yourself 'bout that. HA! Good Fun!

copied it... we figured that one of the threads would probably get deleted... so we decided that we would post in both threads... just in case. HA! Good Fun!

looks pretty much like kotor... with robes. why you ask? kotor2 were a short development using same engine as original... an engine which weren't all that impressive as far as graphics went when it were released last year. kotor2 were developed more like an expansion than a sequel. we has seen almost 100 screenshots of kotor2 over the past year. we has seen quite a few game footage movies of kotor2 over the past year. is not like the fact that kotor2 looks much like kotor is much of a surprise to Gromnir. *shrug* "up to par"? am not sure what you set as par, but we note that at least for those of us who has been following development even a little, none of us should be surprised by the quality of kotor2 graphics. lord knows that Gromnir ain

looks pretty much like kotor... with robes. why you ask? kotor2 were a short development using same engine as original... an engine which weren't all that impressive as far as graphics went when it were released last year. kotor2 were developed more like an expansion than a sequel. we has seen almost 100 screenshots of kotor2 over the past year. we has seen quite a few game footage movies of kotor2 over the past year. is not like the fact that kotor2 looks much like kotor is much of a surprise to Gromnir. *shrug* "up to par"? am not sure what you set as par, but we note that at least for those of us who has been following development even a little, none of us should be surprised by the quality of kotor2 graphics. lord knows that Gromnir ain

"I understand that ill-defined characters are more difficult to write. But that doesn't mean IWD is superior because they added difficulty and, imo, didn't succeed." you got backwards... again. iwd was EASIER... which is why the plot turned out better. the plot did not focus on your characters at all. your party moved action along but you were a largely incidental part of story. iwd did not try to tell your story or give you a specific background. your motivations as a player did not impact plot one bit. the "mysteries" of ps:t were happhazard and disjointed... as they had to be. why couldn't you die? is not any bigger mystery than those in any other game. examples: who is the villian... what is their plan... am i the child of prohecy... why... if you felt something in particular for TNO's plight, that is mainly a matter of character development as 'posed to plot, 'cause ps:t did nothing particularly special or impressive with the way it structured those "mysteries" you were so impressed with. ps:t plot were harder to get right (and failed to do so,) 'cause the writers were trying to keep focus on YOUR character. the story of ps:t were TNO. and yet, the witers wanted TNO to be your character... a character with a personality and motivitions of your own devise... but since they couldn't make an infinite number of possible protagonists, they made one kinda fuzzy and general one with vague 'nuff motivations such that they would work for just 'bout anybody. "A bit unfair given that Planescape itself is pretty much AD&D wrapped in Philosophy 101." is not unfair. "the grapes of wrath" were not simply a story 'bout some oakies on the way to ca, and "moby ****" weren't just 'bout a guy on a whale hunt. is reasons why you gotta study 'bout symbolism and extended metaphor and other stuff in college if you wants an MFA in english. Gromnir played planescape... lots. the fact that the planescape rulebooks had anemic little descriptors for the philosophical leanings of each of the factions not mean that each bleak cabal character you met in a planescape game necessarily would necessarily start spouting mangled versions of nietzsche. if we wants misquoted nietzche we can go to any college campus coffe shop and listen to some junior try to explain "Thus Spake Zarathustra" to his freshman girlfriend. nevertheless, chris did similar stuff with any number of characters in planescape. had 'em spout fortune cookie wisdom and cliff's notes philosophy at every opportunity. got old. were unnecessary. you wanna have coax metal talk 'bout entropy? fine, but you not ever need to have him say "entropy" once to do so. heck, would be even better to simply show the character entropy ... avoid all the messy and ugly dialogue. maybe the character not know that they has learned something 'bout entropy after such an encounter, but if chris a does right, then at some point late in game the pieces will start to come together and the reader/player will has some minor epiphany. and don't tell us that such subtlety is impossible in a crpg... 'cause ravel were such a character. HA! Good Fun!

this is getting stoopid. somebody do lacan a favor and type "cross-genre" and "computer games" into a search engine for him. even the obsidian developers has, from time to time, noted the increasing move twoards blurring the genres and even the distinctions 'tween pc and console platforms. silliness. "I would like an accurate evaluation of a game's qualities, and the only way I see to make them accurate is to compare by genre." well then, you do care. please make up your mind. HA! Good Fun!

"Not see why it should have to. Are we being graded? Simple statement, you said I was in for a world of hurt. A hugely exaggerated statement in relation to me. " in regards to your continued attempts to support such arguments as you has been making, yes, you is/will be in for a world of hurt. am not seeing what is so difficult to grasp. and as to your observation 'bout cross-genre titles being aberrational rather than representing a trend, we thinks you has not paid much attention over the past couple of years. is a time when kotor would not have been considered a serious rpg. the aforementioned vampire game were accused of being a quasi-shooter game. more and more games is becoming cross-platform and cross-genre. heck, name the hard-core rpgs coming out next year... ones that is arguably not cross-genre. last year we had numerous adventure rpgs like sacred and divine divinity 2 and next year we get... freedom force? nope... is cross-genre. jade empires? cross-genre. how

"Maybe I played with an old version of Ascension, but Ascension's (at least from Weimer's perspective) modified the strategy, the bosses, and the ending in TOB. Besides, we're talking about the product shipped, right? " yes it modified tob, but it also added dialogue to bg2. most seems unaware of this fact, but you can check with gaider if you wish... he is quite accesible at the bio boards. "In BG and BG2, the perspective was specifically on your character. In fact the BG2 plot revolved around you to the point of making everything else insignificant. " exactly the point... is the reason why it is generally tougher to make the plot of such games cohesive and meaningful. if the actions of YOUR character is the focus of the story, then the choices you make will be most important, no? well, a writer of a crpg has to take your actions into account as he builds story but YOUR actions might have been completely different than Gromnir's. in a crpg with the focus on the protagonist, a writer has to make a story where the protagonist has Choices and those choices is Meaningful, but at the same time, there is no such thing as a truly non-linear plot... so, to be completely honest, your choices cannot actually impact the game to any significant degree. the writer faces the impossible task of placing focus on a meaningful protagonist and giving him choices, but he still gotta make sure that such a character accomplishes A and B and C and D. ps:t and kotor tried to minimize this issue by giving the player less control over character development. you played TNO in ps:t. was male and dead and from the start there is various other characteristics that is fixed and known to the writer making a story 'bout such a character much easier to write. ps:t should have had a stronger plot if only 'cause it were a much less complex task to write. the revan character, while less concrete, were also a know quantity with a specific background. iwd went a step further and took focus off the protagonist(s) completely. events followed in a logical and meaningful order and the characters that were developed were static and known quantities. *shrug* give the notion of writing story focused on an ill-defined protagonist consideration, and you will figure it out on your own. HA! Good Fun!

"I'm in for a world of hurt? Not really, because I don't care much about reviews." not see how that observation helps your argument none. " Just pointing out that uncategorized comparisons are fairly meaningless. Most every game shares some convention with a genre. FPS, RPG, RTS, MMO can still be characterized by substantial differences and shared conventions." again, your observation does the opposite of what you wish. games is increasingly becoming cross-genre titles, and attempts to divide according to genre gives us a standard that becomes proportionally meaningless. is dungeon siege more adventure or role-play? is there some formula based on % of adventure to rp that we can use to come up with an appropriate value for graphics? for each game we would have to come up with a different formula. avoid this kinda calculus not help us neither. after all, does it make sense that a simple re-categorization would result in a game getting two completely different scores? "Of course not. But certainly you realize it takes money to hire people to write that dialogue. You have a finite amount of resources to complete a project. A decision must be made to cut certain things, such as r&d in a graphics engine." this is true in any game. genre not change this. is always up to a developer to spend more resources on programming as posed to other aspects. "Again, I don' care." we noticed, and is hardly moved by the recognition o' your apathy. is also maybe why your arguments make less and less sense as we go along. HA! Good Fun!

p.s. some of you might have a leg to stand on if the numeric categories that gamespot and ign uses necessarily were weighted equally to get a final score... but they ain't. HA! Good Fun!

where did we say tob? ascension added some dialogue to BG2 as well as to tob.... and lord only knows what creating your own characters has to do with your diminished opinion of plot in iwd. the fact that you have non-specific and non-important characters actually helps keep plot more cohesive as you not have to deal with the problem of Player A and Player B wanting their characters to be vastly different entities. take focus off the so-called protagonist improves chances for a good plot. again, we is talking

I don't think a comparison to different genres is very comparable. Fair? Who knows? Helpful? Not really. I would imagine the coding is vastly different for a shooter than an rpg. Also, writing thousands of pages of dialogue allocates resources toward that end instead of graphics. Not much dialogue in Halo. So should they be penalized because the nature of the game is different? A straight comparison is not helpful, the nature of shooters will always place their graphics quality above an rpg. A genre comparison seems more realistic. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> the whole notion of numeric reviews with limited categories is bunk, but to try and split up each category even further and to compare w/i a genre, especially in this day and age, would make such reviews relatively meaningless. when dungeon siege came out, many people were impressed with its graphics. game scored very well in graphics. not much dialogue in that game. as noted above, the notion of there being clear-cut genres is an increasingly specious one. if you wanna hang your argument on a genre by genre breakdown, then you is in for a world of hurt. also of note is that nobody suggests that the music or sound in a crpg should be weaker simply 'cause of all the dialogue that had to be written. heck, is not like the people who is doing the dialogue is also doing sound and programming too. if graphics is a secondary concern for folks, then why does they care if it not score as well as halo2? HA! Good Fun!

I played FO, and all those other games. I would rate PS: T's plot up there with most CRPG's. I can't think of any game's storyline that was vastly superior to PS:T, well maybe except XG. I've never really played any game that can stand up to literature. Maybe I missed some. Any recommendations? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> fo is as good in terms o' plot, and bg2 (especially once the ascension mod added some missing dialogue,) clearly is on par if not better as far as basic plot goes. heck, truth be told, iwd stands up to ps:t quite ably as far as plot goes. 'course, Gromnir has noted here and elsewhere that plot in fantasy/sci-fi is often weak... and in games this generality becomes even more true. to expect much from the plot of a crpg is questionable. to be worried that a game

also, keep in mind that the division between genres is often suspect. how many games has you seen marketed as multi-genre? more each day? we gotta come up with a new measure for each cross-genre category? what if a game is MORE a crpg than an adventure or fps? what if the reverse is true? bah! HA! Good Fun!

whatever works for you. chris wanted to get short little bits o' philosophy 101 into ps:t, but he did so with those big and fat crayola crayons. example: robert howard did a pretty good job of working existentialism and nihilism into his conan stories, but at no point did he ever waste space on conan explaining his personal philosophy or world view... summarized all into a trite little 10 line monologue. thank goodness. also, tno's story were kinda lame for us.... and maybe it had to be as it were kept general 'nuff so that people playing different types o' protagonists could all enjoy equally. redemption is a common 'nuff theme in heroic lit, but we were not really impressed with how chris handled... particularly after the first meeting with ravel. (though we does note that we think chris a handled redemption better than did bio with revan or bastilla and others.) in terms of basic plot, after you left sigil ps:t took a down turn... and even previous to that we felt like rolling our eyes more than once. is the characters that made ps:t great for us. ravel were the bestest npc we had ever seen in any crpg previous or since, and some of the joinable npcs were good too.... but tno... only so-so. HA! Good Fun!

the fact that crpg graphics is secondary (at least to hades,) does not improve the graphics in a crpg, does they? just 'cause you is a crpg fan not mean that you gotta suffer from this ridiculous case o' pen1s envy for fps graphics. halo2 does have better graphics than kotor2. to give same score to both games

again, we wouldn't be surprised that many folks prefer old coke... and strength of chis stories in past has rarely been core plot. ps:t, for example, really didn't shine when you look at chris' philosophy for dummies stuff... but the individual characters was often the best we ever seen in crpgs. HA! Good Fun!

sure, that makes sense. HA! Good Fun!

"i guess IGN is now comparing everyone's graphics to HALO 2's" which is precisely what they should do. ign finds an industry standard and then measures all other games 'gainst that standard. makes sense to us. the fact that kotor2 graphics is an improvement over kotor graphics does not change fact that it is clearly lagging behind the industry standard. we not got any problem with ign measuring kotor 'gainst halo2. however, for anybody at this point to be shocked that kotor2's graphics is not up to halo2's graphics is foolishness in the extreme. we has all seen screenshots of kotor2 and we has even probably seen some in-game footage. we all knew that kotor2 were gonna look largely the same as kotor. sure, we got robes and snow and a handful o' other things, but if anybody is shocked or surprised that kotor2, (which uses same engine as kotor, and were developed by a small group of people in a short period of time,) is not a vast improvement over kotor in terms o graphics, then we thinks they is nuts. HA! Good Fun!

2 fears: 1) buggy if this title is really more buggy than the previous one, then we will simply have to wait til february to purchase the pc version... a version which no doubt will be bugged too... but one that can be patched. so, looks like Gromnir won't be playing this game til march... 'cause Gromnir no longer buys pc games until after first patch is released. isn't jade empires slated for a march release? is possible that it may be a goodly time before Gromnir gets to actually play kotor2. 2) more of the same we liked kotor, but kotor had some big problems for us. balance were screwy. some attributes and skills and feats was being next to worthless. the sentinel class were laughable. ranged combat were nowhere near as effective as melee. jedi npcs were so clearly superior to non jedi (save in some very limited number of situations,) that you felt like you was gimping party if you wanted to take a non-jedi along. the end boss could be a wimp or unbeatable depending on your character build... and those were just some of the balance concerns we had. add in fact that we thought that combat were less than challenging and a half dozen other issues and one wonders how on earth Gromnir coulda' liked the game... but we did. regardless, we is hardly looking forward to seeing some of the same broken mechanics all over again. is many aspects of kotor that were fun, but story is where it excelled... but if it weren't for the nostalgia factor, the core story from kotor woulda' been kinda uninspired. bioware managed to walk a Very thin line with kotor. they recreated events and settings and characters from the original star wars trilogy... but they somehow kept original 'nuff that almost nobody minded... and many didn't even realize. a great deal of bio's success with kotor were simply 'cause of the warm and fuzzy nostalgia factor... which were only heightened by the negative backlash surrounding the new trilogy o' star war movies. bio repackaged the original star wars story... and they did a damn good job of it... much to our surprise. obsidian gots a problem with story. obsidian can't do what bio did. they cannot simply recreate the star wars story arc... 'cause we just got that from bio a year ago. people would dismiss kotor2 as a bad kotor rip-off if we got more of same. nevertheless, if you get too far away from the formula, you risk alienating the core of your fan base. furthermore, we must not forget that people is insane. 'members when coca-cola tried to market new coke? some of you is too young to really remembers, but it were a disaster for coca-cola. funny thing were that in blind taste tests people preferred new coke by a large margin. kotor2, like it or not, is new coke. even if kotor2 is better, people will honestly believe that it pales compared to kotor. we fully expect, when all is said and done that most folks will prefer the original kotor story. is almost inevitable. on the positive side, from what little we has heard so far, obsidian correctly put emphasis on npc character development

true... but how many ign reviews exaggerate bug problems? usually they downplay or dismiss, no? Gromnir will wait

we never had crippling bugs in kotor... like the leviathan bug. however, there were lots o' things that, when added together, really cheesed Gromnir off to no end. how on earth do they miss fact that there weren't no dw penalties for double weapons? in kotor there were feats that not work and powers that were screwed and quests that were broken and all the kinda minor stuff... stuff that you not expect to be busted in a console game. were no excuse for condition of kotor 'pon release... and ign claims kotor2 is worse? makes you wonder. HA! Good Fun! p.s. keep in mind that Gromnir enjoyed kotor... thought it were a fun game in spite of bug problems. is not like we is saying that the bugs ruined kotor. however, as a person who owns both an xbox and a pc, this is one more reason why we is inclined to wait for the pc version.

am also surprised that anybody would expect particularly great graphics from kotor2. heck, when you look at the screenies for kotor2 they look pretty much identical to what we seen in kotor... so why on earth is folks shocked at this point that kotor2 actually does look like kotor? heck, we didn't think the graphics were all that damned hot in kotor neither... and with how fast tech advances in the game industry, a sequel (kotor2) using same engine to a game that were itself were using some relatively old tech (kotor) did not seem like the most likely candidate for prettiest game of the year. *shrug* now, as to bugs... bugs in an xbox game... well, that is depressing. what the $@*& is the qa folks doing anyway? we were very unhappy with the 'mount of bugs that were in the original... and the sequel is worse? am still gonna get the game... but we may just hold out for the pc version. 'least if that version is buggy (and considering the vast number of hardware configurations it must work on there is little question in our mind that the initial pc release will have bug issues,) we know that it will eventually patched. will be a tough call for Gromnir come next Thursday or Friday. HA! Good Fun!