Jackalmonkey

The only modern-day game that comes to mind, aside from AP, is Jagged Alliance. It's squad based, however, and utilizes 'RPG elements' (i.e., conventions such as skills and levels) more than story C&C. Depending on how you define RPGs, this might leave you a little cold. Silent Storm and Freedom Force are similar squad-based RPG's; though both are set in WWII and golden age comics, respectively, they're a bit more contemorary than your usual RPG fare. I don't know why squads and TBC seem synonymous with ye 'RPG elements,' but there it is.

It's not my intention to divert the topic to the failures and successes of RDR; my point is that if nothing else, RDR has a terrific 'sense of place,' and its variety of character animations and behaviors were assets toward creating a plausible and engaging setting. Fallout 3 does have a fine sense of place, but the behavior of its characters was constantly at odds with the environment. The setting is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where the otherwise mundane goal of survival becomes one's primary and most difficult job. It takes a hell of a lot of work to live in a semi-industrialized society where there's little labor specialization. But you rarely see anyone working (unless standing behind a shop counter and staring hard at passersby and customers is 'working'). Instead there's a very sparse population of tireless cyborgs who are plainly waiting for something to happen, and doing their best to stick to more or less human schedules in the meanwhile. They're not made by or for the world they inhabit. In a game like Fallout (1 or 2), where isometric character models don't so much resemble human figures as merely represent them, this isn't an issue. But as graphics become more sophisticated and realistic, developers often seem to forget that the active human figure will always be the player's primary means of identification and engagement. And this is why the uncanny valley is perceived as 'uncanny' at all: it's created by the divergence between players' expectations of humanity and the way humanity is depicted in the game. In short, your massive vistas and ragdoll physics don't amount to much if your people don't look and ACT like people (or at the very least, like people consistent with their world). Based on the limited amount of gameplay footage we've seen in FO:NV, I doubt this will be as much of an issue as it was in FO3. Recent gameplay footage from the strip makes the area seem a little underpopulated, but in the gameplay trailer, a crowd of Caesar's Legion soldiers do pushups and spar; street gangs loaf and lean on their corners. Looking at some of these shots, it seems like more than a dozen people can congregate in an area while maintaining system performance, and that Obsidian is taking advantage of this, doing their best to make populated areas actually populated.

what is this i don't even

I think that somewhere on the far side of the Uncanny Valley (which we've still yet to get through) is an even creepier place: the Uncanny Village. The Uncanny Village, where utterly believable digital people stand silently in their sparsely populated (but polygon-rich!) hamlet for four to five hours at a time, their wet eyes focused on an invisible point ten feet in front of them. Waiting. Their tiny electronic souls idling way down deep in their collision-detection zones until the precise moment when the PC gets close enough to trigger a recognition statement. I think RDR was a pretty lousy game (terrible story, underutilized weapon set, repetitive missions), but its designers understood that very few people just stand. People tend to keep themselves pretty busy - and even those of us who need to stay in one place for very long typically find a way to sit or at least lean. Everyone in RDR seems to be doing something, and even characters engaged in random semi-scripted conversation are often simultaneously smoking or drinking. If you're walking down the street in Armadillo, and you see someone standing square in place: that there is a character who is intently waiting - typically to duel you.

I work in book publishing, an industry also said to be 'dying.' And as with video games, all that's really happening is that the business model is in the midst of a sea change, where present success seems more a function of risky trial-and-error innovation. In both cases the problem isn't so much diminishing consumer demand (there certainly aren't fewer gamers, nor are there fewer readers) as it is different consumer expectations. Customers now expect things they wouldn't have dreamt of a decade ago: nigh-instant on-demand delivery, a low intro price point, and strong social components/reinforcements

If nothing else, Blizzard can sure as hell make a proper game trailer.

The first question that popped into my mind when I saw the collector's edition was whether Avellone will see any royalties for All Roads, the included graphic novel. But given that it's published "in conjunction" with Dark Horse rather than by Dark Horse (it's likely out of their custom shop), I'd guess he got a flat fee out of Bethesda's marketing budget instead. At any rate, I've pre-ordered the collector's edition, figuring that the best scenario is that FO:NV eclipses FO3's sales figures early. The rest is really up to critical reception. I'm excited to see what Obsidian will do with the franchise, but I really hope that a success will see them getting another shot at an original IP.

On the contrary, I completely agree. Perhaps I ought to have used italics to better convey my tone, but I figured that a statement as breathtakingly capacious as "every strategy game ever made" wouldn't be taken as anything but ironic. I'll likely wait until the collected "battlechest" takes a price drop (in 3-4 years) before buying it.

WH40k: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Got 'em for cheap at THQ, who apparently are trying to get whatever they can for their RTS catalog before SC2 comes out next week and renders every other strategy game ever made laughably obsolete.

I must be a horrible comic fan because I think this sneak peek is uninteresting. I love the guy, Geof Darrow, very distinct style. Why would anyone want to stand in line to have it signed by Chris Avelone. Just sayin', they better put them by the same desk, otherwise the line by Chris is going to be very short indeed. I'm trying to imagine someone older than 15 picking up a comic book for the art, and what I get is a grim image indeed: who exactly are these stunted little manchildren picking their way through their cartoony books, their tiny eyes glassing over whenever they encounter the confounding nebulae of pesky speech bubbles? Last I heard, the comic book was a medium for storytelling, and Avellone is one of very few writers in his industry capable of producing an original story. I'll grant that comic books are collaborative, but there's a reason why writers and creators have more visibility and recognition: they're a heck of a lot more integral to the final product. Looking forward to the book, and a bit annoyed I can't get a signed copy like a proper nerd.

The BethSoft forums are miraculous to behold, no matter the subject.

There have been many Minscs in the short history of CRPGs, but Steven Heck is the greatest Minsc to ever Minsc while Minscing Minscily for all to Minsc. Minsc minsc minsc.

*parcel. On the train home, while I was asleep, I realized I'd made this typo, and snapped awake in a cold sweat. I'll leave it to later to figure whether this makes me a good copy editor or a terrible one.

I do understand (though don't necessarily agree with) the cynical observation that warfare is intrinsic to human nature. If this is the case, however, "war never changes" seems less apt than "humanity never changes." Granted, statements about humanity tend to seem sort of inflated, so I can understand choosing the former over the latter. Moreover, I do see how in FO:NV, the conflict is on a large enough scale that it would be hard not to use an old standby like "War never changes." With that said, the declaration that "war never changes" in FO1 is part and partial to the argument that war has always been economically motivated. The only difference in the 21st century, explains the narrator, is that the spoils of war are also its weapons. You're more qualified to comment on the history of warfare than I am, but to me this perspective seems wildly reductive and even historicist, which is why I take issue with it.

My main suggestion - and I bring this up because it actually seems feasible to modders - would be to lose the Shotgun and SMG skill trees entirely. For sake of comparison, consider the stealth, martial arts, technical aptitude, and sabotage trees. All of these are successful skill trees because each works like a little toolbox under the umbrella of a single skill. Take martial arts, for instance: The player gets a nice active ability in Fury to even the odds against gun-wielding opponents, a running takedown which makes dealing with multiple enemies much easier, and a devastating finisher, especially useful against bosses. And this is all on top of the passive resistances and damage bonuses you would expect from the skill point investment. If successful skills are toolboxes, then unsuccessful skills are merely entrenched commitments to a single tool. Investing points in any of the firearms skills does not enrich or add to gameplay. Rather, it makes the firearms do their one trick more efficiently. You get a better wrench, but it's still a wrench, and sometimes you need something a little more like a screwdriver. Ideally, SMGs and shotguns would be lumped together with assault rifles under an Assault Weapons category, thus creating a single strong tree with a nice assortment of situational tools (and under a common theme: shooting people loudly). The activated abilities could be reduced to only one or two tiers each; I'll grant that this is a lot of active abilities for one tree, but given that none of them can be used simultaneously (and could even share a cooldown), I don't think they'd be overpowered.

I think you're right - by now, Perlman and the opening line, "War never changes" aren't at all integral to the series. I can certainly see the marketing justification for using Perlman in FO3: Bethesda wanted to legitimize their stake in the series, and the opening narration was an easy way to brand the game as "authentically" Fallout. I fail to see the point in continuing the tradition in FO:NV. And the blithe little maxim about how "war never changes" always seemed prima facie silly, especially at the tail end of the 20th century. I'd be happy to lose that.

If I'm seeing this correctly (and I may not be), what we're looking at is an entire subset of people for whom anonymously posting on the Blizzard forums doesn't really seem "optional," and refraining from said activity presents a significant enough lifestyle change for them to be aggravated. It's quite a spectacle. A little ironic that this [sea] change is ostensibly to the detriment of trolls: I'm not a proper troll, but I reckon that if I were, I'd be giggling myself crapless at the multitude of nerds sobbing over this policy.

Heh.

One of the best interviews I've seen with a game developer in some time. I'm wondering, though: What's a honeycomb mission structure?

Albatross- 21 Conrad Marburg- 12 Henry Leland- 20 (+1 to see him through to the endgame.) Konstantin Brayko- 18 Omen Deng- 24 SIE- 22 Scarlet Lake- 26 Sis- 26 Steven Heck- 21 (-1 for being another incarnation of ****ing Minsc.)

Nooooooooooooooo.

Jagged Alliance 2, finally. After cagily scrutinizing the character generator and the merc roster for over an hour, I gave up and began shuffling my stats based solely on their social currency: "Leadership sounds rather executive; +50 to Leadership. Mechanical: Blue collar! Set it to 35. If I have any car trouble I'll call Triple-A. Medicine? No harm in another four years of education. +200 to Medicine!" Dr. Percival Jackalmonkey III (nickname: "III") has a minor fiefdom of five absurdly cheap and barely functional mercenaries. Lousy help is the least of my difficulties, though, as I still spend most of my time trying to remember the hotkey for standing up. We'll see how it goes.

I just noticed that, less than four weeks since AP's release, major retailers are aiming for a 39.99 price point - a 20.00 drop. Though the shift is far from unprecedented, it's nonetheless disappointing.

The best I can do right now: The Gamehelper preview is long since gone, though choice bits can be found here. Emil's statement is from OXM, and though the article is not online, you can find excerpts here. EDIT: I should note that the quote by Howard is actually duplicated to varying extents in several previews turned up by Google, all apparently covering the same press event. Apologies, by the way, for linking to NMA and RPG Codex, as I've no affiliation or sympathy with either site. Every frontpage item at the Codex is a case study in the awkward superfluousness of teenage irony.

I'm aware that Obsidian does have plans to modify VATS (decreasing the initial/unmodified pool of AP, for instance) but I'd find it very hard to believe that Bethesda would allow anyone to alter the mechanic substantially (for instance, making VATS unavailable to anyone with an AGI below 5). For better or worse (guess which side I'm leaning), it's as integral to the new game as TBC was to the old.