newc0253

you have plainly forgotten the endless development cycle of NWN, in which something that originally promised to be primarily a multiplayer game became touted as the single-player sequel to Baldur's Gate. of course we all remember how well that turned out.

Yes, the idea of Bio whipping up a game to order in the kitchen is silly, but not nearly as silly as the your view, which seems to be something like Bio makes one 'dark' game and all of a sudden they're canning the sequels to Mass Effect and Jade Empire and making a CRPG with Sonic the Hedgehog as a goth baby-killer. You want some straw man with your salad? If Bio wanted DA to appeal to most people possible, then why not include aliens and spaceships and guitars and a dance/singing contest of some kind? Or maybe the fantasy SP CRPG market isn't as broad a church as you think, and maybe Bio are simply recognising that all the kids are flocking to buy so-called 'dark' games like Bioshock and Witcher and following suit. Really, it's an empirical question based on what the fantasy CRPG market wants. Apparently you think there's lots of CRPG players like Di out there, honest upright folk who are disgusted by 'dark' games and would desert Bio in droves if they ever made a game like Bioshock. I don't. I think Di represents a tiny, tiny minority and one that Bio is happy to forgo if it means they sell as well as Bioshock did. We both agree DA won't really be that dark but we disagree as to why. You seem to think Bio are afraid of making a 'dark' game like Bioshock because it won't sell as well as a shiny happy game like Mass Effect. I think Bio would love to make Bioshock-kinda money, they just don't have what it takes to deliver something that novel.

Hmm, for a self-professed food fan, it seems surprising that Gromnir can't tell the difference between a restaurant and a menu. Does the fact that McDonalds adds salads to the menu mean that it is going vegan? Similarly, if McDonalds starts selling fancier coffee, does that mean that it will suddenly turn into Starbucks? No? So if Bio puts out a 'dark' game, would that spell the end of Bio as we know it? No, not really. Bio always has more than one ball in the air at a time and, since most of those balls are the kind of shiny happy balls that posters like Di seem to clap at, it's unlikely that a single 'dark' game would turn the crowd away. As for DA being the 'first pc crpg ... since nwn', so what? Bio now looks to make most of its dosh from the console market and arguably the PC market now favours darker games, so why would Bio be taking such a big risk by making DA 'dark'? Perhaps Gromnir believes that the PC CRPG market is dominated by soccer moms and nervous nellies but i've seen no evidence for it. Ultimately, I doubt DA will be much different than previous Bio games, not because they're afraid to try something different but because they lack the know-how. But in these insecure times, it's good to know that some things don't change, just like Gromnir still can't see the wood for all those darn trees.

Again, which games are we talking about here? I understand your objection to GTA given that you don't have any real option to avoid criminality if you want to progress the main storyline. Similarly, i can understand the same objection to Bloodlines, given that you have no choice but to play a vampire (although, hey, you could choose to only bite bad people). But neither Witcher, Bioshock nor STALKER force, require or otherwise encourage you to be a bad guy, so I'm at a loss to understand why you seem to have them in mind as the kind of games you object to as the poster children for 'brutality and selfishness'? Again, I don't know which games you're referring to. The Witcher has some hard choices for which none of the consequences are an unmitigated good. But so do some Bio games. For the record, I don't think 'dark' necessarily means 'morally complex' nor do i think games that try to present difficult moral choices are therefore 'dark'. There's plenty of sophomoric angst out there passing for moral complexity and I'd hate to play a CRPG that confused one for the other. I suspect your actual objection is really to do with the tone of some games and your particular conception of what heroism involves. If you dislike games or stories in which a criminal or a vampire is a hero, then i guess you could equally object to a game like the Witcher in which a social outcast is the putative hero. But it seems mighty strange to me that someone could profess like games like Planescape or Fallout but declare a moral objection to games like Bioshock or Witcher or STALKER.

If it's true that all the kids want to play so-called 'dark' games like Witcher, Bioshock and STALKER, then it's only natural that Bio should make a so-called 'dark' game to compete. Personally, i don't think those games are anywhere near as 'dark' or 'despairing' as you seem to think, nor are the 'grim' settings that novel: certainly Rapture doesn't seem any intrinsically grimmer as a setting than the radioactive wastelands in Fallout, the suffering and woe of Durlag's Tower, or the misery of the inhabitants of the Outlands in Torment. The idea that these games uniquely involve 'lots of death' and 'betrayal' is a bit sketchy too: I'm struggling to think of a so-called bright and cheery CRPG that didn't involve a lot of killing along the way. As for the gratuitous sex, apart from The Witcher, i'm struggling to remember any sex in Bioshock and STALKER didn't even have girls. But if Gromnir is right in his McDonald's analogy, the economics actually favour Bio making Dragon Age as dark as possible in order to meet the demands of the market, just like McDonalds introduced salads to attract women customers and allegedly 'gourmet' coffee to win back market share from Starbucks. Me, I think the reason Dragon Age won't be that 'dark' (for the sake of argument, morally complex) isn't because of the economics but simply because that's not what David Gaider et al are particularly good at.

When I first heard about the Witcher a few years ago, I thought it might be on par with a premium mod set in some weird eastern european mythos. Pretty much everything I'd seen since (admittedly not much) seemed to confirm this impression. Safe to say I went in with entirely modest expectations. Having played the game, the best term I would use to describe it is a revelation. Playing Stalker earlier in the year, i was pleasantly surprised to find that the Russkies could produce an atmospheric FPS to rival Half Life but still I had no idea that the region was capable of producing a CRPG of this calibre. Seriously, who knew Poles could write a game this good? In truth, the Witcher is the best CRPG i've played in recent memory. Indeed, it's the closest i've come to an experience approaching the classics of PS:T and BG2. Truly impressive. For a time of the year when so many 'best of' lists are being made, it's a little sad that the Witcher isn't on more of them. Yeah, singleplayer CRPGs have always been a minority pursuit compared to other games, but given the story-driven direction of games like Bioshock and Portal, you'd think that the gaming press (such as it is) would pay more attention to games that are actually driven by story. It was particularly instructive to play Witcher straight off the back of MOTB. Between them, Bioware and Obsidian have released 2 versions of NWN and 4 expansions and - impressive as NWN2 now looks - Witcher blows them all out of the water using the selfsame engine. I'm sure the comparison is at least a little unfair: NWN and NWN2 after all offer far more flexibility for character development, plus the toolkit, etc. Also, The Witcher also takes advantage of all the mistakes of NWN and NWN2 and learns from them. I wouldn't describe Witcher as groundbreaking because, with the possible expection of combat, it's not really an innovative game in the sense that all the elements it uses have been introduced elsewhere (not to mention cough*amnesia*cough). Instead, what's striking is how well-integrated these elements are, how they've been fashioned into something rich and strange and transporting. It's also useful to compare Witcher with Oblivion as games that, while superficially appear similar, are polar opposites. As good as NWN2 now looks, only Oblivion and Witcher communicate the sense of a world that's wide open (even when, in many cases, Witcher uses the same area tricks as KOTOR or Jade Empire to stop the PC from wandering too far). The difference is that Oblivion is all scenery and fights and loot with no substance, while the Witcher is an actual story. In some ways, we've been spoiled by a reasonably high standard of story-driven CRPGs in recent years: games like KOTOR, Jade Empire, and Vampire: Bloodlines, etc. In this sense, it's hard to complain about generally well-written games like MOTB even when, at their core, you find them vaguely disappointing in some way. The Witcher certainly isn't perfect but it raises the bar. At best, I hope it prompts Bio and Obsidian and others to outdo them. At the very least, I look forward to the sequel.

ah, it's been so long, but i felt i should stop by and post a mini-review (okay, maybe not that mini-) of NWN2 for old times sake. yeah, even on Volourn's thread. he deserves the spam. so what do i think? visuals first, NWN2 looks fantastic. it's a shame it came out in the same year as Oblivion, which plainly raised the bar for CRPGs. but it's hard to believe this is still the same engine as NWN1 - the main thing which gives it away is the oddly roomy feel of the tilesets (or whatever they're called now they no longer have tiles): local taverns have the kind of square footage that walmart would envy, and even the most humble home seems to have corridors wider than your local highway. but besides that, the 'tilesets' look great: the lighting, day/night transitions, the level of detail on things like trees, the host of uneven surfaces, etc, all help to redeem the general crappyness of NWN1 graphics, with its washed-out colours and boxey sets. another thing which NWN2 redeems are the character models: helmets which aren't buckets, cloaks which actually show up, robes which aren't clown suits - i know NWN1 fixed most of these things eventually, but NWN2 gets it right from the get go - the character models look good (the animations too). i see some folk complaining about the apparently limited customisation but, quite frankly, it's more than you got with KOTOR, Jade Empire or anything except Oblivion (and who really wants to spend 40 minutes trying to find the right nose ridge and chin jut for their PC?). lastly, props to the overhaul on the spell effects. it took me a while to appreciate (mainly because it took so long to find a joinable magic user) but fights with magic missiles and fireballs look great. even buffing up the party before a fight with shield, etc, looks good. story not gonna say much on this since i'm only part way through. instead, i'll confine myself to saying that it has both strengths and weaknesses. at this point, the main plot looks suitably ominous and twisty. yes, 'farmboy travels to big city to save village' is obviously a generic fantasy plot hook, but so what? all CRPGs have this problem, and NWN2 seems to tackle it head-on. the characterisation is generally excellent, although i kinda wish the joinable NPC range could be greater (see below). the voice-acting isn't especially remarkable - sometimes a little weak, sometimes very good but even at its worst it is competently done. at this point, i have two main complaints. neither are all that major but they do bug me enough to reduce my appreciation of the game. first, it's too linear. you aren't railroaded through the plot like you were in NWN1 and it's very well-written in that there seems to be lots of different ways to solve particular challenges in individual quests. but neither do you get a strong sense of freedom either. obviously NWN2 was never gonna be hopelessly open-ended (c.f Morrowind or Oblivion) or even strong on exploration (c.f. BG1). but it still doesn't feel like it's got the balance right. i appreciate that there's two divergent paths you can follow once you reach Neverwinter which seem to put you on different sides of the law, but even that doesn't amount to the sense of different options that you had even in more plot-driven games as Jade Empire or KOTOR. secondly, your choice of joinable NPCs seems pretty frakking limited, and it doesn't help that the first one is such a stock fantasy type (a gruff, belligerent dwarf - even one who wants to be a monk - is still pretty tired). Neeshka is more fun, a cross between Imoen from BG1&2 and Ana from PS:T. and i like Elanee as well. but, in a game whose challenges rely so much on having different skill sets, it bugs me that - unless your PC is a spell user - you don't get a joinable sorcerer until several hours into the game, and even then she seems a right pain. at an equivalent point in BG1, for instance, you would have met at least 3 different magic users (not to mention the fact that you could always double class Imoen). even NWN1 (pretty much the nadir for joinable NPCs) gave you greater control over how your NPCs levelled up than NWN2. again, these aren't fatal flaws. but they make the game less fun. also, no time-travelling lizards so far, so that's a big plus. gameplay first up, NWN2 has the worst load times of any game i've played in several years. i have a 1.7 Ghz processor with plenty of memory but the load times are ridiculous. even Oblivion loaded faster than this. it gets particularly annoying when completing a simple quest involves going in and out a building or between different parts of town. it's frakking slow to save a game as well. whereas, with other games, there seems to be a difference between major transitions (e.g. travelling across the world map) and minor ones (e.g. entering a house), with NWN2 they all take a frakking. long. time. seriously, i could read a Tolstoy novel in the time it takes to complete some of the loads. to its credit, when NWN2 runs, though, it runs without stuttering or crashing, or - to date - any significant bugs (although, again, it could be smoother but then i'm willing to shoulder some of the blame for having an ATI Radeon 800). the interface is also something of a curate's egg: the good? the spells quickbar; the easy click between party members; the much-expanded quickbar slots; the look of the paper dolls. the not so good? the frustrating party AI; the even-more frustrating lack of party AI; the inability to quickly get my entire party to attack a single target en masse; the inability to make a quickbar link for my dual-wield ranger; the sometimes itty bitty item icons (what the frak is that? a cloak? a pair of boots?). preliminary conclusion the OC of NWN1 was the worst CRPG i ever played all the way through. it was somewhat ameliorated by SOU and then later almost fully redeemed by SOTU. by the very end of NWN1's run, we had professional mods like Darkness over Daggerford that made good on NWN1's potential. NWN2, by contrast, is off to a far more assured start. although i don't think it is shaping up to be BG, it may prove to be KOTOR good or possibly even JE good. it may yet fall short of those standards - being only part way through the game, it's simply too soon to tell. but, even if the OC of NWN2 ultimately falls short, the expansions for this game should be something to behold.

LOL, except that's just the cost of a single head of state who has been appointed by a democratically elected government, who only serves a limited term and can be removed for misbehaviour. the costs of supporting an appointed head of state (which many republics have) is nothing compared to the costs of supporting an entire family of billionaires and their palaces at public expense, generation after generation, century after century, regardless of how they behave. do you really think its consistent with a society in which all people are created equal for one family to be priviledged like this?

so are jellied eels and bad teeth. only because it stops folks confusing the canadian dollar with the american. that makes absolutely no sense. because they cost us billions of pounds a year in taxpayers money? because they're an unspeakable anachronism in the twenty first century? so has syphillis maybe because you don't have to pay for them with your taxes.

if you've read the books (and if you haven't, dear god, what are you doing on a forum like this?) then the extended editions are always good value because they put in more of the stuff from the books that tended to get left out of the cinematic release because it was extraneous. in ROTK, for instance, they seem to have restored: the scene with gandalf and sauraman at isengard, the palantir, the crossroads, the houses of healing, the mouth of sauron, etc. if you liked ROTK, how can you pass up the opportunity to see 50 minutes extra footage? for me, the mouth of sauron sequence was a notable absence from the film because - at that point in the book - it made the final battle seem especially hopeless. from the trailer, it looks like they had some interesting ideas for how the mouth should look...

and yet your first argument in favour of automatics is that they're better for when you're stuck in traffic... i see closure of the GM foods thread hasn't altered your taste for bizarro logic.

battle royale was actually kinda silly. but go-go yubari was good.

uh? you think the average teenage girl doesn't watch stuff like ella enchanted or mean girls? yeah, i guess they're all watching obscure bulgarian political dramas and egyptian movies with subtitles instead?

proof, in case anyone wanted it, that volourn is actually a teenage girl.

how about Landscape Torment? it could be about a landscape architect with amnesia who awakens to find he's stuck in a property development with terrible landscaping. slowly, piece by piece, he must assemble the clues that lead him to the discovery that he's the one responsible. sounds cool, huh?

let me guess, you don't have any downhill skiing in finland, just cross-country?

'any good' is relative. no, you won't be trying out for the olympic ski squad after two lessons. but you certainly don't need 10 weeks to become a decent skier.

10 weeks? sweet jesus mary and joseph. who has 10 weeks to spend on a slope? with an instructor no less. most people should be okay to tackle an intermediate run after a couple of days on the baby slopes. it may take a few more trips before they're truly comfortable on the slopes, but it certainly don't take 10 bloody weeks...

apologies, i meant to write 'not necessarily the noir style', if that makes any more sense.

sorry, that just shows they're going for more graphic violence, not PB's noir style ... i think you're reading more into that than is there.

did kindergarten cop stop schwartzenegger's career? no. they'll doubtless greenlight a COR sequel at some point once they've counted up the returns from the international release, the DVD and the video game. plus i don't buy that it will be 'gritty' like PB either. everything i read suggested that the LOTR-style of CoR was the direction that twohy and diesel wanted for the franchise in the first place ... 'gritty' don't build franchises. just compare the receipts for aliens with those for alien 3 and you'll see what i mean. cheesy CGI-style epics with hot chicks is the way to go.

yeah, more than pitch black in fact. i mean, i liked pitch black but it was more downbeat SF whereas CoR was more like Conan in space. plus the girl in CoR was a thousand times hotter than the one in PB. i don't think CoR was a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly one of the movies i most enjoyed in 2004 & i'm looking forward to the sequel.

i think this might also explain volourn...

sorry but how do you control your speed if you don't turn?? it's okay if you're just scooting down a blue run or something but on a black run? turning is the only thing that stops me from hitting the sound barrier...

can't name a single favourite. here (in no particular order) are my top 5: 1. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind 2. lost in translation 3. collateral 4. hero 5. harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban honourable mentions: spiderman 2, chronicles of riddick (not actually a good movie but i enjoyed it) films released in 2004 that i want to see but haven't yet: the incredibles, garden state