Gromnir

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!

is not like we is claiming that all the complaints 'bout the kotor2 story is misguided. am not denying that there is stuff missing from kotor 2 story... lots of stuff. however, some of the things folks claim is missing... ain't. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

ok, we has learned that an entire planet were nixed from kotor2... the droid planet. no doubt that setting would have been where the hk factory were revealed. unfortunately, Gromnir did not know that there were no actual assassin droid factory in the game. the factory were taken out, but the dialogue remained. why? what kinda pustule puts a quest in game w/o no way to resolve it? gosh, here is a thought: Remove The Dialogue if you is gonna remove the quest. bunch o' obsidian wankers. HA! Good Fun!

many of the questions some folks had, Gromnir did not have. why were nihilus a pushover if he could destroy worlds? Nihilus

"They need a Sith Lord who is TOTALLY ROUGE. No HELP from NO ONE. No friends. His purpsorse unclear. His species unique. Something different. Something unexpected." disagree. we can't disagree enough. purposes unclear? species unique? why? villains exist to give the hero something to overcome... is why they is referred to as "antagonists." as a writer, you can go the grendel/sauron route if you wish... has the faceless Evil that must be vanquished, but the truth is that all such villains is pretty much identical. why does sauron want to rule middle earth? 'cause that is what Big Bad Villains do. why does grendel kill those in hrothgar's hall? 'cause that is what monster's do. such villains has names, but little else as far as attributes go... they simply exist. grendel is the darkness just beyond the doors of the hall. he is evil/wilderness... back before the tree-huggers made us think that wilderness were a good thing. the other kinda villain is human... is always human, no matter what species it is. if villain is some completely alien puddle of quasi-tangible dust that can only exist in our universe along the event horizons of black holes, such a villain must be human to have any impact whatsoever... must have human motivations and responses. such villains must be human 'cause they is ultimately gonna represent some human flaw as the Evil that needs be overcome. make completely alien and make purposes unclear and you defeat usefulness of such a villain. empathy is essential to develop such villains. bah. it ain

"Some shameless self-aggrandizement:" some folks never change. ... *shrug* stinky-lizard always did make himself an easy mark. HA! Good Fun!

and those is equally wacky. compare half-life 2 to half-life 1 http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/readers.html http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife/readers.html something strange is going on over at gamespot. in the last year, the community ratings has become a joke... large number of votes appears before games hit shelves, and disproportionate numbers is abysmal or perfect... but again, if you can see such a high percentage of perfect scores and not laugh... *shrug* HA! Good Fun!