newc0253
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Posts posted by newc0253
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What I want to know is, why the frak do I have to wait for it to unlock?
Didn't I back this game? Didn't I help kickstart it?
Wait, I hear you say, if you wanted in early, there was the Backer Beta.
To which I say, frak that noise. I wanted to play the finished game, not some sloppy seconds half-version. I didn't back your game to be its beta-tester.
So here I am, someone who gave royally to see this game made, reading about how a succession of random nobody gaming journalists (a job which ranks just above piano-player in a brothel, by-the-by) have been playing the final version of the game in the week before release and oooh it's so much fun.
Listen here, Obsidian, pull up a chair. We've known each other years. Over a decade, in fact. So here's something you need to hear. Your backers deserve better than this. They deserve the final game before the press, in point of fact.
But what about piracy? I hear you cry. We can't make money of this game unless we cooperate with our publisher to enforce a single release date. If we give backers the game early, it will just get pirated. Well, no. That's a terrible reason. For a start, the press are some of the worst leakers. Always have been, always will. Secondly, piracy? You must not think very much of your backers to think they would give you money to make a game and then immediately frak you over by putting a copy on the internet. But also, piracy? If you were really worried about that hitting first day sales, you wouldn't have made it available DRM-free.
So take this from one of your oldest fans. This is a lousy way to treat people who have backed your game. Because I was there on the ground floor, helping you out by paying over the odds for a product that only existed in our dreams, and here you have me waiting in line with all the other customers, the overwhelming majority of whom haven't backed the game, and all while some frakking journalist plays it for a week
Shame on you, Obsidian. Shame on you.
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^ You mean umbrellas, shurely?
hats, umbrellas. either way, they're kicking back on a beach in some non-extradition country drinking drinks with some form of covering.
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My badge is that I am an Obsidian Order member. Priority Number 1 should be getting the game done.
Sorry but that's not a badge. That's a vanity plate.
As for the game, i'm beginning to think Chris, Tim and the rest have already skipped town with the Kickstarter money and are sitting on a beach in Mexico or somewhere with those drinks with the little hats.
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yeah, pretty sure he's just plain trolling. If nobody feeds it, it'll go away.
says the guy who, by his own logic, is feeding a troll.
as others have pointed out, however, the badges were promised and - in my case, at least - amply paid for.
i mean, we're talking badges on a message board on the internet- how hard can they be?
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seriously, this is taking too long.
i'm beginning to think this game is vaporware (or, as we call it here in london, 'vapourware').
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The badge, at least, should be easy.
I say make it priority #1.
developing the game should be priority number one
Nah, the game's gonna take ages anyway. Badges are low-hanging fruit, an easy win.
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The badge, at least, should be easy.
I say make it priority #1.
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so where's the game already?
or at least my backer badge.
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The first glimpse of Meredith you get is when she walks past the thief in the intro cutscene after year one. Then you get a glimpse of Orsino in Act 2 during Feynriel's dream. Pretty much it until the end of Act 2. I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone who thought they were given significant enough roles and character development.
actually i thought it was clever the way Bio held them back until Act 3, although Meredith had a much more substantial lead-in than Orsino.
what failed was the execution in Act 3. it isn't that they weren't introduced soon enough. after all, Bio could have constructed Act 3 with a series of quests around getting to know both characters.
instead, both characters were ciphers for their respective factions, and boring ones too. Meredith, in particular, could have been really interesting. instead, she was shrill and one-note.
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i liked DA2. a lot.
i don't think DA2 let down the legacy of DA1. i think the third act of DA2 let down the promise of DA2.
i didn't have a problem with many of the things that folks seem to hate about DA2, e.g. the move towards a single, named character with voiced dialogue; the streamlined inventory or the more action-heavy, less tactical style of combat. i was also happy in principle with the adoption of the dialogue wheel - it worked well in ME1 and 2, although i think its execution in DA2 was sometimes problematic in particular cases.
and i think the first two acts of DA2 made good on the concept. a focus on a single character in a single setting, building a real sense of place, strong writing, layered development, plenty of threads, a general lack of annoying characters. this was a Dragon Age story that showed real promise, one that i was happy to spend time in.
and i also didn't begrude some of the shortcuts that were adopted. it seems to be the universal consensus that DA2 was a rushed job, but i didn't mind so long as the main evidence of this was a reuse of the same maps, and an overabundance of swarming gangs.
but what i felt with the arrival of the Third Act was a certain degree of sadness that the most interesting part of the story seemed to have passed. Don't get me wrong, i like the overall theme of the Templars versus the Mages. it's one of the most interesting things about the DA setting, and the willingness of the writers to balance our sympathies. But sadly Meredith, once you finally got to meet her just before the end of the Second Act, is a let down. what would have been interesting if she had turned out to be a suprisingly sympathetic or complex character, but instead she's a shrill single-minded villain, a Javert in plate mail.
now i don't mind being forced to take a side, and i don't mind being presented with the unattractive consequences of doing so. i get that grey areas sometimes have to resolve into black or white, and that lines sometimes have to be drawn, no matter how messy the reality. i get what the writers were aiming at here: a situation where you have to chose, but that there are negative consequences on either side.
but Meredith is so shrill, it's impossible to believe that anyone would play the game on her side. and the way that the writers seek to balance our sympathies is to keep showing mage after mage becoming an abomination, so so much so that it's virtually a cliche by the end when Orsino turns to the dark side (what has to be the most pointless waste of a character in a Bioware game). but no matter how often its done, it never really convinces.
what's worst of all, though, is how - having chosen to back the mages, very publicly and from a very early stage, the game forces me as Hawke to slaughter dozens of mages and templars who are on my side. as others have noticed, I'm the Champion of frakking Kirkwall, i slew the Arishok and a high dragon. and i've consistently and publicly and stated my support for mages, helped mages escape the templars time after time, and Thrask knows it. hell, the bloody nobles come to me in secret in an effort to depose Meredith. but i'm meant to believe that the dissident Templars and circle mages led by Thrask would rather attack me on sight and die in very large numbers than ask me if i'm interesting in helping their cause.
i mean, for frak's sake, Bio, this is an CRPG. i get that there's plenty of minor decisions that i'm not going to get to make, and i'm happy to accept a certain degree of railroading from time to time for the sake of the plot. but don't make a game which gives me at least a dozen opportunities to make clear my sympathies for mages and then resoundingly ignore those decisions when it comes to major plot developments. So a templar screams 'he's with Meredith!', and i'm like 'dude, which Champion of Kirkwall have you been watching?'
the shame of it is, this cack-handed series of developments comes at the expense of massive amount of promise and goodwill of Acts 1 and 2. the build-up of tension with the Qunari? Flemeth's apperances? the Dalish on Sundermount and Merrill's efforts to repair the mirror? the death of Bethany in the deep roads? Sandal's erie moment of prophecy? all that stuff was fantastic, and made me think this is all building to something.
but apparently what that was building towards was something ultimately outside the scope of this game. you'd expect something as major as Bethany's death would have major consequences in Hawke's story. but i'm pretty sure there was no mention of her in Act 3 that i can recall. not even a picture of her in the house. you can't help but think that they didn't just take shortcuts with reusing maps: they shortchanged the very story they wanted to tell, and that's the biggest shame of all.
if this sounds like a bad review, remember: i really liked DA2. i think it's two thirds of a nearly great game, and i think Bio will get a lot of hate for things that are ultimately quite silly, and so a lot of truly excellent stuff will be overlooked. but you gotta hope Bio learns its lesson from the negative reviews for the next installment...
p.s. okay, i messed up the romance with Isabella but i can't blame Bio for that.
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this is a shame. AP was a very flawed game, but it was also a very promising one.
i, for one, was looking forward to a sequel that would iron out the game's more glaring faults.
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do some people think there was a conspiracy against AP?
really?
you mean, like someone snuck into the building and gave it such a crappy interface?
seems to me that it was more like self-sabotage by Obsidian - a desperate cry for help or, at least, more resources to fix the game.
i enjoyed AP and i would play a sequel. But AP also richly deserved the kicking it got for its many flaws. few of which, i should hasten to add, were to do with story.
but, and perhaps i've been spoiled recently, but AP was the shoddiest game i've played in a long while, and that includes several of those indie games that run off your browser.
the graphics? actually, i thought these looked pretty good overall. a little crude in places and certainly not state of the art, but it all looked pretty enough on my rig.
the gameplay? well, as i'm sure many have already said, it plays more like a commando game than a spy game. but it was generally fun, except when some lazy design decision or glitch meant that it wasn't, e.g. like a boss fight with endless waves of henchmen that only becomes possible to beat because the boss gets stuck in the floor or something.
i came to respect the design decision behind the checkpoint system, making it exceedingly difficult to go back and replay a key moment. that might be fine if the game worked. but it often didn't. i like that the game has a very high replay value, but my experience with its bugs makes me not want to hurry back any time soon.
the little timer on speeches? nice idea in principle but often silly in execution. me? i normally wait until the other person has finished talking before i decide what to reply. but not possible in this game apparently. it kind of breaks your story-driven, choice-driven RPG if i have to guess at what my response is to something i haven't even fully heard yet.
but the GUI? broken, broken, broken. for a game to be delayed for so long and that basic mechanic to remain unpolished reaks of a half-assed approach.
which is a real shame, because - had this game been more polished - it could have been a genuine phenomenon rather than an object of ridicule.
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someone pirated the DLC?
damn.
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It would be kind of like if after Baldur's Gate II, all your party would get their collective asses vanished
or like Khalid and Dynaheir getting killed at the start of BG2?
yeah, i know i've never been able to cope with that loss...
Oghren may be my least favourite of the jNPCs in DA, but i don't have any problem if he's the only one returning in DA:O:A. after all, the denoument to DA made pretty clear that they have lives of their own (so to speak) and you can be reasonably certain most of them will turn up in DA 2 or 3.
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much as it pains me to say it, i agree with Vol: why are folk complaining so much about the pricing for Awakenings?
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i think an expansion pack in march for a 100+ hr game released 4 months earlier is pretty sweet myself.
as for value for money, most folks here paid for wardens keep, so everyone's expectations will be suitably lowered...
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The bad guy in Awakenings is called the Architect!
Will he wear a white suit, sit in a room with lots of tvs, and use big words: "concordantly, vis-a-vis"?
Will we discover that this is not the first time that Thedas has been destroyed by a blight?
All of this has happened before, All of this will happen a - oh wait, sorry, wrong cyclical series of events.
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the Steam sale is frakking killing me.
i bought Mass Effect on Steam just before Christmas, to replay through before ME2.
a week later, it's selling for less than
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I got GTA 4.
I got GTA 4. Then i got bored of GTA 4 real fast. Which was surprising given how long i spent playing Vice City and San Andreas.
I'm a big fan of story-driven games, characterisation and all that, but not when it gets in the way of random acts of violence and general mayhem. GTA 4 was too much like hard work.
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i didn't get the impression that Branka intentionally led her clan to become darkspawn. i read it as her obsession with trying to reach the anvil at any cost, which included the rest of her clan being wiped out.
edit: just checked online, and realised she did deliberately sacrifice them. so, wow.
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in any event, there were the implication that killing flemmeth would not lead to her permanent death, so why not fight her? after all, she deserved to die for being such a lousy straship captain and the way she tries to mimic Kate Hepburn has always made Gromnir want to slide a sword between her ribs anyways.
huh, she always did a much better Kate Hepburn than that Galadriel chick, and she won a frakking oscar for that hee-hawing effort.
i also killed Flemeth because she wouldn't give a straight bloody answer. that she turned into a dragon was just a bonus, although you receive neither an actual dragonslayer credit nor dragonscales for doing the deed.
more ridiculously, after one of the tougher fights in the game, morrigan was all 'well, hey, even if you didn't kill her, it's okay, she'll probably be back anyway'. clearly Bio wants to preserve the whole Flemeth/Morrigan storyline...
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that being said, we not see a conflict, but given how vague bioware was regarding their darkspawn and gods n' such, we didn't expect conflicts. is subsequent games where there will be problems. as soon as bio attempts to take the bogeyman out of the closet or from underneath the bed, Then they is gonna needs be very careful to make sure they hasn't created internal conflicts... or they can do as gorth suggests and simply wing it, embracing practicality and abandoning the geeks and nerdlings who actually bothered to read their thedas lore.
it's very simple. dwarves lack a sufficient concentration of midichlorians in their bloodstream needed to perform magic...
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i've never played any of the RE games, don't plan to.
all i know was that i went into Dead Space with minimal expectations, having heard some negative word of mouth and was pleasantly surprised at what a decent game it was: a good mix of atmosphere and action.
no, it wasn't game of the year, or genre-breaking. but if it was mediocre, then they've apparently raised the bar for what passes as mediocrity these days.
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Are there any mods out there that will allow me to do a complete rebuild ?
i think so - there was an article over at Rock Paper Shotgun by some guy who'd used a mod for something like this:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/23...-in-dragon-age/
Launch Time: 9 AM PDT / 17:00 CET
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
What I want to know is, why the frak do I have to wait for it to unlock?
Didn't I back this game? Didn't I help kickstart it?
Wait, I hear you say, if you wanted in early, there was the Backer Beta.
To which I say, frak that noise. I wanted to play the finished game, not some sloppy seconds half-version. I didn't back your game to be its beta-tester.
So here I am, someone who gave royally to see this game made, reading about how a succession of random nobody gaming journalists (a job which ranks just above piano-player in a brothel, by-the-by) have been playing the final version of the game in the week before release and oooh it's so much fun.
Listen here, Obsidian, pull up a chair. We've known each other years. Over a decade, in fact. So here's something you need to hear. Your backers deserve better than this. They deserve the final game before the press, in point of fact.
But what about piracy? I hear you cry. We can't make money of this game unless we cooperate with our publisher to enforce a single release date. If we give backers the game early, it will just get pirated. Well, no. That's a terrible reason. For a start, the press are some of the worst leakers. Always have been, always will. Secondly, piracy? You must not think very much of your backers to think they would give you money to make a game and then immediately frak you over by putting a copy on the internet. But also, piracy? If you were really worried about that hitting first day sales, you wouldn't have made it available DRM-free.
So take this from one of your oldest fans. This is a lousy way to treat people who have backed your game. Because I was there on the ground floor, helping you out by paying over the odds for a product that only existed in our dreams, and here you have me waiting in line with all the other customers, the overwhelming majority of whom haven't backed the game, and all while some frakking journalist plays it for a week
Shame on you, Obsidian. Shame on you.