newc0253

Is this gonna be a standup fight or another bughunt?

and here i thought RPG meant 'Role Playing Game'. it's true that the first RPGs were mostly tactical combat rules for minatures. but so what? they've moved on since then. the fallacy that because X originated from Y, therefore X=Y should be pretty obvious. i agree btw that CPRGs shouldn't have sucky combat just because combat ain't the focus of the game. after all, most CRPGs are a lot more combat-intensive than most pen-and-paper sessions. but i'm also willing to excuse mediocre combat in a CRPG so long as the other elements of the game are strong, c.f. Bloodlines.

different? sure. very different? yeah, i wouldn't over-egg it. for all the differences in setting and story, the standard Bio formula in the past 3 games has been hero plus two companions, with a common base - ebon hawk or the magnificent dragonfly or the normandy, take your pick - in which the layout of the core adventure areas seem reminiscent of the other 2 games: a hub plus x number of locations. I liked the Mako exploration in Mass Effect, for instance, but i always knew that i wasn't gonna suddenly hit a world with 15 levels because the structure of each world follows the same pattern. the familiarities increased with Mass Effect and KOTOR. unfortunately for Bio, it's difficult to make a futuristic spaceport corridor look different from other futuristic spaceport corridors, so easy for anyone who'd played KOTOR to think when they're getting lost in the Citadel in Mass Effect that they've been here several times before. the other main source of familiarity - indeed probably the thing which seems most familiar from game to game - is Bio's writing: whether it's ancient china, earth in the 22nd century or a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you get the same rhythyms and beats, the same humour and character types, similar arcs and twists, etc. this isn't nearly as much of a complaint as it probably sounds. to the extent that Bio's games tend to follow a similar pattern, it is at least a popular and successful pattern. certainly i played and liked the last 3 games and look forward to playing DA. but i think the real challenge is for Bio to deliver something that feels fresh and different, not merely from other fantasy CRPGs but from its own, undoubtedly popular, conventions of heroic fantasy.

all things considered, the radial menu was the least of TOEE's flaws. looking back, that game involved some of the most bewildering design choices in an ostensibly story-driven CRPG: minimalist dialogue, minimal characterisation, minimal flavour - hell, even the items in the inventory lacked frakking descriptions. and all the more bizarre coming from a company otherwise known for story-driven games: Arcanum and Bloodlines each had flaws of their own but neither of them lacked for interesting characters or depth of story.

so, assuming that there's quite a substantial backstory to the DA setting, how much are folk gonna be able to know about Ferelden before playing DA? Mass Effect has its novelizations, what will DA have?

so is it true that DA will be dark but not too dark? or just dark enough?

actually, "they" says that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. actually, the correct quote is that 'foolishness is the consistent mental quality of little hobgoblins'. not many people realise that emerson was a big sword & sorcery fan, and widely misquoted.

what? no Jason Bourne-style combat, complete with shaky cam and super-fast cuts? does this mean will we be able to see what the frak is going on?

wuh? oh sorry, dude, i nodded off reading your post. please continue. so using philosophical terms makes something 'deeper', huh? that's like how putting fins on something makes it more aerodynamic, right? or racing stripes on a car makes it go faster?

simple, pseudo-philosophy is something pretending or masquerading as genuine philosophy. If i'm writing a science fiction story and make up a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about 'warp fields', 'tetrion particles' and 'cascade failures', then i'm offering a bunch of pseudo-science, not actual science. similarly, if i'm writing a fantasy story (or any kind of story) and i want to give the impression that one of my characters is a deep thinker, it's pretty easy to come up with a bunch of philosophical-sounding waffle ('hermeneutical', 'praxis', 'ontologically') to acheive that effect. unless the reader knows what 'hermeneutical' or 'praxis' or 'ontogically' means, they might be inclined to think that it's genuine. we use the term 'pseudo-philosophical', therefore, to refer to writing (or whatever) that seeks to acheive the appearance of philosophy, rather than actually involving the search for truth, etc. now you might generously extend the term 'philosophy' to anyone who sincerely engages, however badly, in any kind of broadly intellectual inquiry. but i can think of plenty of professional philosophers who would disagree: for them, philosophy is a serious exercise requiring proper training and calling stuff like PS:T 'philosophy' would be like me hammering a nail into the wall and calling myself a builder. yes, it really is.

sorry, but how is 'pseudo-philosophical' an oxymoron? 'pseudo-' is just a modifier, suggesting something is fake or pretend. It doesn't suggest any paradoxical quality or essential contradiction in properties, e.g. bittersweet. a 'genuine fake' would be an oxymoron, for instance. so would 'mindless philosophy'. but there's no essential contradiction involved in describing something as fake as opposed to genuine philosophy, just like a lot of science fiction tends to involve fake science.

It took me at least one false start before getting into PS:T but it wasn't metaphysical drivel or the box-art that put me off initially (I liked the architect scene in Matrix Reloaded so naturally I'm a big fan of metaphysical drivel). The main reasons was being locked into a single character with a pre-set appearance and class plus the sheer morbidity of the initial setting. After giving it another shot (due in part to the appeal of the trailer), it became one of my all-time favourite CRPGs but it's pretty easy to see that the nonstandard fantasy setting and locked-in story was never gonna have the same broad appeal as the heroic fantasy stylings of BG.

and a year after MoW was first heralded, poor sods. I feel sorry for Ossian, getting dicked over by Atari like this. it's like buses - you wait and you wait and then three come along at once.

PS:T had a meh trailer? Did we watch the same one? True, it said bugger all about the gameplay or story, but the images and sheer atmosphere were unforgettable.

Hmm, I don't remember Bloodline's combat being that bad, which isn't to say that it was great. But it certainly didn't stand out as bad in the way that Oblivion's goofy click-and-swing style of combat did, perhaps because not many folk played Bloodlines as Strondar the Destroyer or whatever. In contradistinction, TOEE had fantastic combat. It was just the rest of the game that blew like my ass.

dude, trust me, people would pay extra for a copy of AC without the bloody dialogue. whenever you get to a cutscene, just pick up a book or something. it's the most bearable way to play the game.

hey, am i the only one who can't get that video to play? all i get is gamespot's retarded click to enter page, but nuttin' happens. if anyone has a mirror, etc, i'd be grateful...

could be worse. could be a swashbuckler/bard duo called Captain and Tenielle.

even a busted clock is right twice a day.

actually i'm not that bothered by the orc-like nature of the bad guys. most heroic fantasy has need of an evil footsoldier of some kind, and it don't matter if you call them orcs, goblins, narfs or slorms, so long as they get the job done. i agree with gromnir though that gaider's little backstory doesn't seem chillingly different from previous stock fantasy, maybe with a little hint of phillip pullman mixed in with the miltonic overtones. i also reckon bio's "dark but not too dark" approach isn't gonna make this a tectonic shift in fantasy CRPGs. witcher already stole a march on the whole dark & gritty fantasy deal & i don't think anyone's gonna be sacrificing babies in this one. so it has orcs? plus

indubitably.

ah, Assassin's Creed. one third of a brilliant game, two thirds complete dross. in fact it's still a great game if you don't mind: a stealth game with very little actual stealth repeating the same basic mission 9 or 10 times endlessly tedious, badly-written dialogue that can't be fast-forwarded an increasingly lazy reliance on awkward combat the climbing and jumping were great, though, and the cities looked amazing. i kept leaping around rooftops, imagining what the folk who made the Thief series would have done with the same material.

yes, i'm also sick of all this hate speech. from now on, we should refer to them as 'differently-abled demihumans' instead of 'orcs'. the term 'orcs' is just more anglo-saxon prejudice.

i'm disappointed frankly that they didn't make more of the title. after all, as a game 'divine divinity' was merely a mediocre action CRPG. but as a title? 'divine divinity' wasn't just a bad title. it was special olympics bad. it was exactly the kind of cool-sounding fantasy title an idiot would think up to impress other idiots, only for the idiot to discover that - by foolish accident - he had inadvertantly stumbled upon a gateway to a whole new epic dimension of spectacularly triumphant witless stupidity. i reckon they should have made a virtue of this, by naming each sequel with even stupider titles: divine divinity 2: diviness reloaded divine divinity 3: diviner harder with a vengance divine divinity 4: the wet water chronicles divine divinity 5: deification

Here's hoping that it's better. MotB kinda bored me a little.