themadhatter114

If you're going to have different safehouses in the game, you should be able to have a kitten in each one, with a spy babe to take care of it while you're away. Perhaps we could load pictures of our cats into the game and it would make a game version of them. Or maybe we could have an option to turn all of the characters into cats and I could let my cats play the game. I keep trying to get them to play the games with me but they refuse to role-play as a human and won't play any game until I replace the main character model with a cat and rewrite the dialogue to suit them.

I wouldn't be surprised by some free outfits and then maybe some overpowered weapons and stuff that you can pay for. As for extra missions, I really don't see it. I mean, maybe they'll come up with some extra stuff that you can do after you beat the game, depending on how it ends. Splinter Cell, for example, had 3 free maps that continued the storyline, but it wasn't something that felt necessary after playing through the game. I mean, the game didn't feel unfinished before downloading the extra maps. I definitely want a satisfying conclusion with no apparent loose ends. However, they could always release some extra maps and say that something else happened that wasn't obvious from the main game content. Then again, if there are branching endings, it may be more difficult to add extra end-game stuff that fits with everything else. In that regard, I'm really interested in how Rockstar is going to pull of episodic content for GTA4. I'm going to be disappointed if it's just extra missions in the middle of the game, but if it's endgame stuff it will probably have to completely ignore 2 main characters to account for the fact that one or the other is dead depending on your path, so it might not mesh well with the rest of the game. But extra side missions I don't expect. Every mission in this game seems like it will be related to the main story, whereas in something like Baldur's Gate you can sell extra content because there were a bunch of side missions and such that were totally irrelevant to the main game. But in this game it would just be like "Here's some other stuff you could've done to help with the end-game, but you probably already beat the game and this wasn't necessary." Plus I don't really want to have to start a new game to enjoy DLC that I paid for.

Yes, you have unlimited ammo with your weapons. Basically they didn't want ammo management to be a part of their game, and you should simply assume that Thorton brings enough ammo to do the job. So think of it as simply having "enough" ammo and not infinite ammo. It will only feel game-breaking if you suck at aiming and shoot at people for hours and if there are infinitely spawning enemies, which is likely not the case. Since the game is broken up into missions rather than a continuous experience like most shooters, I don't think it's unreasonable for Thorton to have several hundred rounds for whatever weapons that he chooses to take with him. However, if we have infinite grenades or rockets, that will certainly feel a little cheap. Infinite sniper ammo could feel cheap but I don't think there will be enough sniping opportunities for us to really feel like we have infinite ammo.

Nevermind.

I don't remember any 'to hit' stats in Jade Empire. From what I recall your stats determined your damage and your chi and focus or whatever the stats were called. Hitting stuff was only about picking the right attack. KotoR combat was indeed boring. From what has been released, weapons do not have 'to hit' ratings, and increasing stats do not affect hit percentage at all. What you are requesting is that they revamp their entire weapon system to include a feature that sounds like it would be poorly implemented and used by very few people. Improving weapon skills unlocks special abilities, increases critical hit percentages, and I think improves stability. I prefer that they not spend a lot of time adding in another mechanic with the combat system. Do you also think that there should be a 'to hit' roll when you sneak up behind someone and grab him or slash his throat?

Then it's not a threesome. I'm sure the girl in the middle would disagree.

Then they aren't lesbians, duh. One of them could be.

Your character has infinite ammo and you have to aim them yourself.

I don't think that it would ultimately net any gain in sales. I also don't think missing the thing that your cursor is aiming at is in any way fun. In order to work they'd probably have to implement something like VATS in Fallout 3 which is going to be lame, anyway.

Yeah, no sympathy if the software they include with their game screws up your computer and goes well beyond its intended purpose. I'm awesome because I rented Mass Effect for 360. Also renting makes consoles own PCs, except that on PC you can more easily steal things. I had to invest a lot of money into my original X-Box to be able to steal things and ended up not saving any money because there weren't enough games that I liked to be worth all that investment to steal them.

I don't think it has anything to do with not having faith in Obsidian. Obsidian is good at what they do, what they do is what I like, and I'd prefer that they keep doing it. I don't want them to do an MMO even if they could pull off a good one, and I think most people in this thread feel the same way. Monthly fees suck. Perhaps if Obsidian wants to create something that only requires X-Box Live to play, maybe, but I prefer solid single player games.

It seems that to do that they'd also have to add 'to hit' modifiers for each stat and for each weapon and for each of the weapon mods. They'd also have to balance it so that it wasn't awkward looking for your guy to be aiming right at someone and miss. I think it's good enough to simply assume that, being a trained agent, Thorton can hit what he's aiming at. It simply seems like a lot of work for little gain.

They could toss in lesbianism with a surprise threesome without giving Thorton the option of saying "I'm not an orgy guy!"

They don't need to create personalities for your characters, because you can use any one of them to interject in conversation. Conversations always have the nice/neutral/jerk options, plus all the skill-based stuff. It's more fun to role-play if one of the characters occasionally does get angry about something and gives a jerk response or tries to intimidate someone even if your favorite paladin liked to always play nice. So, essentially, you craft the personality of each character by having them interject in conversation whenever you want. I personally think it will be fun to have a paladin who is always nice to people and a rogue that frequently butts in ahead of the paladin to be snarky, and a ranger that doesn't care one way or the other, and a bard who simply charms everyone with his charming performances. It would be particularly nice if they handed out alignment points specifically to the speaker allowing you to further divide your characters in terms of alignment.

They don't need to create personalities for your characters, because you can use any one of them to interject in conversation. Conversations always have the nice/neutral/jerk options, plus all the skill-based stuff. It's more fun to role-play if one of the characters occasionally does get angry about something and gives a jerk response or tries to intimidate someone even if your favorite paladin liked to always play nice. So, essentially, you craft the personality of each character by having them interject in conversation whenever you want. I personally think it will be fun to have a paladin who is always nice to people and a rogue that frequently butts in ahead of the paladin to be snarky, and a ranger that doesn't care one way or the other, and a bard who simply charms everyone with his charming performances. It would be particularly nice if they handed out alignment points specifically to the speaker allowing you to further divide your characters in terms of alignment.

Feargus wasn't the only Obsidianite who was involved with Baldur's Gate. According to Chris Parker, from the recent Alpha Protocol roundtable: And who knows if any others were? Regardless of who developed the Baldur's Gate series, I would count myself among those who started following Black Isle after Baldur's Gate came out, despite finding out that Bioware developed it. Even so, because Baldur's Gate introduced me to Black Isle, I later picked up the Icewind Dale games and later went back and picked up Torment and Fallout 1 & 2. So, I would say that I've been following this 'team' since Baldur's Gate, though I guess obviously when Vince Lombardi went to the Redskins, regardless of how many assistants might have gone with him, they didn't become the Packers. But I certainly would not have been nearly as interested in KotoR2 if I hadn't discovered that Obsidian was started by some of the crew from Black Isle. As for Obsidian doing an MMO, my opinion is the less of them the better. If I really wanted to play an endless game I'd simply join an NWN or NWN2 persistent world, or a MUD, or just rack up thousands of lines with infinite spin Tetris. I don't want to pay subscription fees to play games, and personally hope that Obsidian's future announcements continue to appeal to me, because I don't really buy RPG's from anyone else. Regarding LucasArts, they might have approved the story for KotoR2, but perhaps more comments like this one from Avellone have gotten back to George:

Who ever did say that? Did you miss the part about the topic starter complaining because he used up his install limits on his friend's and his brother's computer, presumably so they could play, too? And that the reason he likes Steam is because he and his friend can all use the same account so long as they aren't playing the same game at the same time? Do you really think that those types of attitudes are actually going to dissuade publishers from wanting to use DRM?

Are the dumb collection quests really worth it, especially after the first time around? I can't imagine doing more than landing on a planet and driving to the quest area if I did it again.

I'm not really anticipating having Thorton go toe to toe against guys with guns. However, if we have some good stealth kill mechanics, I think I'll love that, and would totally invest in close-quarter skills to upgrade it. Are we going to be able to slit throats? Grab people from behind and interrogate them, and then slit their throats? What about the option to knock people out (so that we don't upset various factions too much) and hiding their bodies? One thing I did like about Splinter Cell: Double Agent, was that you'd get conflicting orders from Lambert and from Emil, with Lambert telling you to keep it clean, and Emil saying to leave no witnesses alive, with your choice affecting your trust meter. It will be great if we can have like a stealth/CQC guy that plays differently than the stealth/hacker/locksmith. I think perhaps I want too much for Thorton to even more badass than Sam Fisher, who could probably kill any of the JBs without being detected. Hopefully Thorton's love life turns out better.

Well, hopefully there aren't any ridiculous scenes of Thorton getting kicked in the nuts, though. Or scenes of him watching Dumbo.

It's the truth. That is totally sweat pouring off his forehead after a long day of killing.

I also am very pleased that combat will get more challenging for aggressive players. Oh, and apparently, Fallout is less than 10 MINUTES if you really know what you're doing (I am just fascinated by the speeddemos website).

Well, that's Steam, though, and not everyone wants to use it. Heck, if you simply went into Offline mode, you probably could play the same game at the same time. But companies understand, at least, that for people to share a Steam account, they have to trust each other not to screw with the password or anything like that. So, the fact that you have to actually trust someone else is an added level of security for them. But if you were able to just install Mass Effect on every computer that you wanted so that everyone could play it, then you are going against the very intent of the DRM and complaining about the DRM because it prevents you from doing what it doesn't want you to do is infantile.

13-15 hours gets no award. http://speeddemosarchive.com/JadeEmpire.html