themadhatter114

Yeah, wow, I think DRM sucks, but admitting that you hate it because you like to make copies of the game for other people to play is just stupid. I don't even like CD keys because I tend to lose booklets and then pick up games years later. But in that case I don't feel bad for trying to find a cracked cd key, or even for pirating a game that I already own but misplaced the CD for (not sure where my Fallout/Torment discs are, but have been itching to play them, so I don't know if finding them will be as easy as pirating). And it's nice to be able to let a friend borrow your game after you are done with it, which you can't really do with DRM, and it's nice to be able to sell things when you are done with them, which DRM prevents. Supposedly Blu-Ray movies are going to start coming with this stuff. My advice if you don't like DRM: Buy multi-platform games for consoles. Get a 360 with a huge hard drive. I think they're even going to allow people to load the game discs onto the hard drive to be played without the disc. So, all you have to do is buy a new game, load it onto the console, put the game back in the case, play it, delete it, and then you'll still have a pristine disc if you ever want to play it again. Or, you know, console games actually have things called rentals, unlike PC games. So if you buy a new game, your friend can rent the same game for a month for 10 bucks. And, yeah, if you really don't want Obsidian's next two games to have DRM, talk to Sega. Just don't tell them exactly why you personally don't like DRM.

Ha, actually, I'm not that intrigued by the Doomguide. I am slightly interested in the Swashbuckler, but really I'm not that interested in the new races and classes as much as I'm interested in the overland map and the party system. I'll absolutely be content to create my 4-person party out of the old races & classes.

Mysteries of Westgate's release seems to be entirely dependent on the release of the 1.14 patch, and 1.13 has yet to be released.

Even Marcus Fenix cries. Sacrilege. Blashphemy. I can;t think of anything strong enough to describe how singularly wrong this is. Supposedly we'll be looking for Dom's wife for half of Gears 2. Dom will cry. Marcus will comfort him.

Eh, I think I had the reply box open before the mods commented. There's not a whole lot to talk about with regard to SoZ until they release more information. Though I can't wait to try out the Doom Guy.

Is this a hint that Thorton will be able to become a porn star?

Wow, in every single one of those quotes you essentially said that since it's an RPG it has to be an epic battle. Again, perhaps if you would write intelligibly, your arguments would make more sense. I disagreed with that specific point every single time, and yet you kept disagreeing with me. It seems you can't read normal sentences, either. I specifically said that there was a strong consensus that Akachi was an interesting character, while giving my own opinion that the actual ending could have been handled better. How you read that as my saying that there's a strong consensus that the climax, including the ultimate confrontation, is fulfilling. I didn't say that, obviously. That's what I said. Seriously, what percentage of people that played through the game would you say didn't care about Akachi? Not how many people were disappointed with some aspect of the ending, but specifically how many people didn't care about Akachi and weren't motivated to get rid of the curse. And how many of those people found it unfulfilling because they didn't care about Akachi or the curse, and then how many thought they should've been able to defy Kelemvor and tear down the wall? I think they'll do just fine if they get players just as involved in the central figures as they did in MotB. What exactly is your deal with whining about quoting? You quote me using quote marks, and I quote you using the infinitely more legible quote tags, but somehow it's wrong for me to do it to show exactly what I'm responding to. You don't summarize and re-explain. You reiterate the same stuff about villain being important, and I say that the villain is not important. You seem to think that saying villain/obstacle is the same thing as acknowledging a point. Give up the dumb orc act and write a coherent sentence, maybe? So you seem to think that because some people didn't get to the ending, that that proves that the ending sucked? Or because way back when some of your buddies didn't gush about the ending, that it wasn't, and still isn't, something that several other people gush about even to this day? I never implied that The Transcendent One was a strong character. I specifically asked a question to make point out that Torment has a great, satisfying ending despite The Transcendent One's lack of qualities that makes the player revel merely in his destruction. What does "truly story driven" even mean? Do writers for action games not have to follow the same rules that any other writers do? Hell, I think that Halo 1 has been novelized. But, regardless, Halo obviously does introduce a major conflict in the game, the Flood (in addition to the aliens you'd already been fighting), and you have to destroy the ring to kill all the Flood, and then get the hell off the ring as it's about to explode. Obviously any good game that has any sort of narrative needs a solid story underpinning it, but fighting uber bad guys at the end of every game gets old. It's simply more fun to convince them to nuke themselves, or will them out of existence, or whatever. And survival horror + epic fight with uber bad guy is a pretty terrible combination. As for Splinter Cell, those have pretty good narratives, too, but no epic battles because assassinating a foreign president takes nothing but a sniper rifle and an + escape route. Another has a story where you end up killing all the main villains but still ultimately have a bioweapon to disarm. In the latest one you can simply kill every main bad guy from the shadows before disarming a bomb. Anyway, you seem resigned to fighting uber bad guys and want more drama surround those uber bad guys, and I'd like more options besides being forced to fight an uber bad guy. It just seems like a lazy design choice to me. If nowhere else, you'd think that at the very least end-game scenarios would accommodate a few different play styles.

I'll not argue with either of you if you simply didn't care about Akachi or the curse. That's up to you, but you don't seem to be in the majority on that particular point, so I wouldn't blame Obsidian for mostly trying to please the majority of us who enjoyed the story they crafted for MotB.

Sure, and yeah, whatever the conflict is, the player needs to feel a connection to it. But even if there is a villain he doesn't necessarily need to be any more prominent than the conflict itself. Yes, obviously, if there is a BIG BOSS BATTLE, it will be a climax. The actual combat with the Faceless Man and that entire scenario could have been done better. I've never denied that. But I think there's a pretty strong consensus that Akachi was a pretty interesting character. And I never said that some people didn't find him interesting, just that people who thought that were in a minority. There are a lot of other things that seem more prominent among players' complaints, including their disappointment in not getting to face off against Kelemvor. To each his own. But this all started because you went on a rant that every game needs an awesome villain, which I have disputed. Now you suddenly claim you agreed with me all along that it's not necessarily important to have a huge important battle with a huge important supervillain, but nowhere do I see your acknowledgement of my repeated claims to that effect. I never claimed my POV was unanimous with regard to MotB, but I strongly contend it is in the majority. As I've said, people have complained about a lot of things with regard to MotB, mostly the spirit-meter or not getting to destroy the wall, but I've seen few complaints about Akachi himself, or about the actual motivation to end the curse or anything along those lines. As far as Torment goes, I will concede that I wasn't around any forums when it came out. But you seem to be putting a heavy burden on the writing of Torment for why it didn't sell well, when people even today talk about how they never got into it because of the bad combat, the lack of initial character customization, the lack of marketing, the unappealing box art, etc. Sure some people didn't like the writing at the end, but among those who finished Torment, I'd say satisfaction with the climax is a relatively strong majority, with the heavy combat leading up to it being the most annoying thing. I don't deny that there were probably a lot of people who didn't like The Transcendent One, but would you say they are in the majority? Regardless, I'll simply say that I don't agree with them. And considering how my reading of the MotB forums doesn't seem to jive with yours, I wouldn't be surprised if your memory doesn't jive with others who were around at the time. So, wait, does ubg stand for Uber Bad Guy? Then you say that ubg does not necessarily need to be a bad guy? Eh, now I'm just picking on your poor wording. Obviously, if Obsidian cannot get players emotionally involved in the climax, it will feel hollow. I don't think this has been as big of a problem for them as you seem to think it has been. I mean, there are always going to be people that don't like the story, or people like you who can't even remember who Akachi was. What's the different in using quote tags and using quotation marks, besides the much easier readability? I merely disagreed that 'the villain' needs to be compelling or notable, or that one even needs to be present, regardless of the genre. You seem to forget saying several times that every game must have a final COMBAT. Or that every movie or book needs a final combat. Well, actually you did admit that not every game needs a final combat, by saying that not every game is story driven and that games like Madden obviously don't have boss battles. Then I give you several story-driven games that don't have boss battles and then you just pretend to have agreed with me all along. Whatever. Perhaps you pretend to be an orc with 8 intelligence so much that sometimes your arguments come across that way.

Obsidian needs to give Malcolm McDowell more work if he's done doing voice work for Bethesda. I cry inside thinking of how crappy his career has been relative to how awesome A Clockwork Orange, particularly every single thing about his performance, is.

One thing that is great is that the dialogue stances actually tell you what your character is going to do. I absolutely HATED in Mass Effect when I was just trying to be a jerk and I'd end up knocking someone out. I think if you go for the aggressive "This interview is over." with the journalist, you knock her out, and some of the intimidate options have you pulling a gun on people when it's way over the top. I think collar-grabbing would've been enough.

And you think that's less interesting than the Bhaalspawn stuff? I'd put the spirit-eater curse right up there with The Nameless One's affliction. And if you're suffering for your own sins or the sins of your father, what is there to discover? His fate is on the entirety of Rashemen, which makes it triply tragic. But it wasn't his choice to afflict you, or to afflict anyone. Did you miss all the stuff about the Sword of Gith? Eh, I liked her a lot, but to each his own...

I found Akachi to be an interesting opponent, because he was partially you, or you partially him, so you were fighting a part of yourself. An anwanted one, but none the less. This is an analogy to Planescape: Torment, and not the least of the reasons I loved the game. It also motivated the strange interest of the Red Wizard, and it presented you a very good reason to play the game through to the end. Really, one of the best opponents from multiple perspectives, even if he as a figure remains unknown until the very end. It would have been interesting if you could have conquered the incarnations through force of will, with the checks getting progressively higher, or something like that. Just wailing on him did get a little tiresome. My only real problem with it was that sometimes it took an incredibly long time for the action to progress. I'd just spam Devour Spirit and then Bestow Life Force to keep me and Safiya alive, wail on him, rinse and repeat, and it just seemed to go on forever before anything happened.

Wow, coming from you, that means a lot, merely to see that you understand what an opinion is. I'm half tempted to start following up all of your posts with "That's just, like, your opinion, man." I got almost 3 full playthroughs out of it. I couldn't get past a certain part of Insane on the very last level by myself, then I let a friend borrow it several months ago and haven't seen it since. But it's just plain awesome to play co-op. Vegas is probably a lot more accessible than the others in the series. It's squad-based terrorist killing...what's not to like? Well, since I was focusing only on the combat, and my opinion that the Geth are boring, and that the loot system sucks, I just don't think it would be all that fun if you were only playing it for the loot and combat. And in that case, I'd rather play more Gears, or some Halo 3 team slayer (the campaign was a little lackluster), or whatever. Right now, though, I'm thinking about putting either Splinter Cell or GTA4 back into the 360. And, uh, I'm excited for SoZ.

But is it mindless combat? Seriously, if you want mindless combat and phat loot, what's better than playing Diablo 2 and click clicking away and spamming attack spells? Diablo 2's combat is pretty deep if you really want to get into it, but if you just want to hack & slash without worrying too much about character development, I can't imagine a better game than Diablo 2. And I'd probably buy Sacred or Dungeon Siege or any other Diablo clone if I wanted mindless hack & slash. And Mass Effect? If you bought Mass Effect for the combat and the loot over a game like Gears of War or Rainbow Six: Vegas...wow. I guess some of the biotic powers are pretty fun, but killing lame robots is nowhere near as fun as killing the Locust, or killing terrorists. And the powers in The Force Unleashed will be way more awesome than using any of the powers in Mass Effect.

You didn't say that you didn't play shooters. You basically implied that you didn't play real-time games. Since when is Bioshock not essentially a shooter? Since when is it not a button mashing twitchfest? Regardless, you are ignorant about Halo and Splinter-Cell, considering that both franchises have extremely popular characters and storylines and have spawned several books. But that's really beside the point. You keep repeating that every single narrative (as you said, every video game and every book and every movie, right?) needs to end with epic combat, yet apparently RPGs are more dependent on epic combat than action games are. You keep saying that every game needs to end in combat. Then try to back up your argument with stuff like Diablo because action gamers have to fight big bad guys at the end. Then I show you a lot of actual action games that don't have epic boss battles, to prove to you that no one, not even action gamers, need a game to end with an epic boss battle. Are you ever, ever, ever going to admit that a game doesn't have to build up to combat at the end? You keep repeating a bunch of BS that I've acknowledged and you won't address any of my assertions in the slightest. Please, please, please tell me how any of this proves that games need to end with combat. You're just repeating yourself and not defending the one thing that I contest. And, again, I've never heard substantial criticism about the ending of Torment, with most of the complaints being about having too much combat in the last part of the game, with it actually redeeming itself at the very end. So, you can contend whatever you wish with regard to the consensus about Torment, but it's totally contrary to every discussion I've seen of the game. Now you're just deflecting. Sure I expect a boss battle. And it will be much better if we are connected to the conflict. And it is indeed the conflict itself which we need to be connected to much more than we need to be connected to the villain. Regardless, it would be a lot better if you had more options besides combat at the end. But most CRPGs don't have engines that are conducive to epic escape sequences at the end of games, because usually it's boring click-to-walk stuff. In this regard, Bloodlines is probably the only game that could have had a viscerally exciting non-combat end to the game, but instead it had to turn to crappy non-stop combat toward the end. But, so long as you're in a betting mood, what kind of odds would you put on Alpha Protocol having an interesting non-combat solution to the final mission? I mean, it's going to be a CRPG, so it can't end with something fun like defusing a bomb or escaping from a burning building, or intercepting a biohazard, right? Or will it have an epic boss fight with a guy that can sustain multiple headshots before dying? If only you knew how to properly use the quotes.

No, you are missing the point. Just because you are playing a game doesn't mean that the final obstacle has to be combat, and many endings are worse because they do involve combat. Again, how many times do I have to agree with you that the player needs to be emotionally invested into the conflict and have a satisfying resolution? And how many times do I have to repeat that I only disagree in that you think that every game needs to end with epic combat that is epically built up to outside of the actual conflict that the combat itself is resolving. And I'm simply disagreeing with you on that point, and feel that you are in the minority. The ending is great, and I think there are plenty of people who feel that way, despite the fact that The Transcendent One himself is not a supervillain. This is all irrelevant, really, though it does work against your (correct) assertion that a well-written story is important for a satisfying resolution. Diablo is popular because it's fun, and allows for very diverse good character builds. But Diablo is a mindless action game and doesn't do anything to prove your point. Mass Effect, on the other hand, had a lot of blandness to it, isn't nearly as fun gameplay-wise as Diablo, and wouldn't be nearly as popular if Bioware didn't have a reputation for good stories and the EPIC twist. Anyone who buys Bioware games for loot and awesome mindless combat is a moron. They'd be better off sticking to Diablo or playing Oblivion. But you can't separate video game conflict from combat. You complain about the endings but don't seem to realize that they could tighten up the end-game scenarios by focusing less on combat. Well, perhaps you should be less quick to toss around generalities about video games, when you apparently don't even play anything that's real-time, which is virtually everything that's come out for the past several years. So I will spell it out for you: Halo 1 doesn't have boss fights. You simply set off some bombs and then have a timed escape sequence to close out the game. Halo 2 has a few boss fights, but was the most disappointing campaign of the series. Halo 3 went back to the classic Halo 1 style ending, and closed out with a long, timed escape sequence. Half-Life is a great game until you get to the end game which builds up to a weird boss fight. No game which has an escape/survival theme needs a boss fight. There's not a single boss fight in the entire Splinter Cell series (unless you consider a headshot with a sniper rifle to be a boss fight in precisely one of the games). I might be able to think of some more, but I think that considering that I've discussed some of the highest-selling games of all time, I don't need to belabor the point. So, prattle on about how every game needs to end with epic combat and continue to let everyone know how little you play video games.

You are missing the point entirely. I'm not saying that Akachi was a memorable villain. He wasn't even a villain. And I would never expect The Transcendent One to be on a list of best game villains, but I would expect Torment to be on a list of best game endings or best writing. Your point is that you need memorable villains, and my point is that the villain is less important than the conflict. Can I make it any more clear? Torment had a frustrating end-game because of the greater focus on combat. The actual ending was brilliant. NWN2 had complaints about an unfulfilling conclusion because rocks fell on your entire party and everyone was assumed dead. Not to mention that the actual battle with the King of Shadows was terrible. Kotor2 had a frustrating ending because a lot of content was cut that left the endgame somewhat unintelligible. I've not heard much complaint about the actual conflict, or about the villains themselves. And I notice you left out MotB in that respect, because the only people who complain about the ending of MotB were people who thought you should've been able to tear down the wall. But just about everyone I know who actually played the game and didn't cry like a baby about the spirit meter loved the ending. Yes, the Faceless Man himself could have been done better. But I won't argue that certain parts of the end could've been made better. But you're trying to say that the conflict itself was poorly done, or that people wanted a better villain, which is nothing but BS. Did you need an epic battle with Kelemvor to satisfy you at the end of MotB? I'd like LESS focus on combat at the end of games, and wouldn't be surprised if there is some publisher mandate that you have to kill some Big Bad at the end of the game. That's complete BS. Do people play Mass Effect for the awesome!!! (terrible) loot system? Is it popular because of the terrible battle with tech-Saren that's simply ridiculous? Or did people buy it for the EPIC!!!! story and the lesbian alien sex? And because of the hype because it's Bioware who created the EPIC!!!! twist? Since when does writing a good story that's not focused on an epic boss fight cost sales? Is it not epic enough to maybe do something like defuse a bomb at the end of a game? Or to simply shoot a foreign president once in the head with a sniper rifle and then escape? Is it not epic enough to arm a nuclear bomb in a Cathedral and make a run for it? Was killing Frank Horrigan more epic than ending the mutant threat? Was fighting the Master more fun than convincing him to commit suicide? You do not need epic combat at the end of a game. You do need people to care about the conflict in a game and have a satisfying resolution. How many times do I need to acknowledge that before you stop repeating it as if it justifies your obsession with boss fights? If you think mindless players love boss fights so much, how many boss fights are there in Halo games, particularly in Halo 1, which has the most solid campaign of the 3? Would escaping from Black Mesa and letting the military finish destroying it have been more satisfying than fighting some weird alien? Or maybe simply finding a way to close the portal? Probably. Boss fights are terrible video game cliches. Many games are better off without them. People who actually pay attention to the story often enjoy alternate end-game solutions. I honestly don't know what to make of your assumption that every game must have a final battle. Do you really play a lot of games?

It certainly does help if stores are more willing to buy your game from the publisher, and if the publisher makes a lot of money from your game. Unless they realistically hope to one day self-finance their games, I think the best way to help is to instill publisher confidence. Obsidian has 2 games in a row that will be published by Sega. If Alpha Protocol makes a lot of money for Sega, and then especially if they have another hit with the Aliens game, Sega could be a reliable partner down the road, and I figure they'd get even more leeway to create original IPs. Or maybe they'll want a sequel to Alpha Protocol, or Sega Sports might ask them to make MLB 2010 RPG (er, maybe Take Two has those rights, I don't remember). And if the NWN2 franchise keeps making money, Atari is going to be much more likely to contract Obsidian for a 4E game. And Atari is very likely going to want to cash in on 4E as soon as possible.

Was Sarevok really all that interesting in BG1? Irenicus was great, but I can't even remember anything about TOB. Did you really think Malak was an interesting villain? Master Li was ok. But was there even a villain in Bloodlines? Ming Xiao was just someone that had the key, right? And that was a terrible fight. Same thing with the Sheriff, who was not interesting at all, and offered a pretty irritating fight. I felt absolutely no real motivation to fight either of the final battles in Bloodlines, and only did them because they were obstacles to be overcome.

I would say you are in a minority on that point. You may even be unique in that you played MotB within the past year and don't remember Akachi's name. And Akachi was the Faceless Man. And I certainly agree that the ending sequence of the PC just having to wail on him could've been different. I would've liked an option where you didn't have to fight him. But he certainly didn't need to be made into a villain. No. Torment did not need a different villain. I'm also pretty sure that you are opposed to the vast majority on this subject as well. Pretty sure that makes your criticism rather moot. Those sequences certainly could have used a little bit of a do-over from the gameplay perspective. Traversing the Fortress of Regrets was pretty frustrating. Had nothing to do with the writing as far as I could tell, though. God forbid game designers try to transcend the platform and try to provide quality entertainment. I don't think a game story needs a supervillain. It needs conflict, it needs motivation to resolve that conflict, and yes, there needs to be satisfactory resolution of that conflict. But forcing that resolution to be an epic battle is ridiculous. And you really need to make up your mind whether you are saying that players need to feel connected to the conflict, or whether they need to feel connected to some uber bad guy. On the first point, I think Obsidian has done a good job, and on the second point, I don't need games to end in epic battles nor do I need them to be against epic villains. Indeed.

Gromnir, your rant about memorable villains has nothing to do with Mask of the Betrayer. There is no villain to get worked up over. There is a story to tell, and a curse to end. Are you telling me that they didn't do an excellent job in telling the story of Akachi, and the curse, and motivating you to free your soul, put Akachi to rest, and end the curse? Was it not enough to do all those things? Did you really need a villain? You got to freaking destroy Myrkul, for crying out loud. And if you're evil, was it not enough to finally have complete control of the gift, once and for all? I mean, whatever it was your character ended up doing, the game built up to it perfectly. As for NWN2, the fact that he was a faceless shadow was part of his character. He gave up his entire self to protect the Illefarn empire, and became corrupted. Garius was the one you were really meant to despise. The King of Shadows was meant to be pitied but ultimately destroyed. I'd say that the writing was far from the problem in NWN2. Was The Transcendent One a big bad guy that you were supposed to get satisfaction out of killing in Torment? As much as anyone may dislike Torment for whatever reason, can anyone say that it's poorly written? You are right, players need to have a connection to the chief obstacle. But they do NOT need to have any connection to any villain. And I think Obsidian has delivered pretty well in that regard, in NWN2 and in MotB. And there was certainly a connection to Kreia in KotOR2, and a good buildup to facing Sion and Nihilous, even if the actual end sequences were a little lacking.

Yeah, I read about the differences in the ending on Wikipedia. And when I refer to expanding the storyline, I'm mainly talking about the way they handled Enrica in the 360 version. Sam gets to hit on her a few times, she clearly shows resentment toward Emile, and if she's still alive at the end she helps you out, but there's just nothing outside of that. I just think I'd much prefer the more developed relationship there in the X-Box version. Plus I'm simply annoyed with how the 360 version handled I didn't mind the daylight, and I liked the missions in the JBA compound, but I just didn't really enjoy sneaking around a battleground in broad daylight to find Hisham. In general I'd say Chaos Theory has the best gameplay. I mainly want to play the last-gen version of DA just because I need more Splinter Cell. But if the 360 version had simply kept the same light-meter mechanics as previous versions, it would have been a much better game. Just anything besides the red light/green light crap. I'd suspect terrorists would prefer to do their missions at night, but...oh well. But the JBA headquarters missions were excellent. And the scene where you end up in Enrica's bedroom and end up going for it so that you don't blow your cover was great. Now...back on topic. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there are no truly evil options in this game. I mean, maybe there will be, but I expect it to be more along the lines of turning on some due that you had been doing some missions for, who isn't exactly a good guy. Probably closer to "Renegade" options than really evil options, but hopefully much more complex than that in that we'll have several factions to balance. I sincerely hope that you're given more motivation to kill some guy beyond "Well, this hot chick wants him dead, and she's really hot, so..." in that you'll actually be aligning yourself with the hot girl's faction rather than merely doing what she wants so that you can keep banging her. So I sincerely hope that implication was mostly a joke. I mean, maybe a shallow player will do what she wants for that very reason, but I suspect she'll make some effort in convincing you that it's the right thing to do. I mean, sure, I don't expect her to not use her seductive charms while trying to convince you, but I still expect to be given some reason. I don't really want evil options in this game unless they are really going to commit to giving us a different end-game for being evil. And I certainly don't expect them to actually let you do something like assassinate the president or decide to help someone unleash a bio-weapon on US soil. Sega and the ESRB would have fits. So, I expect that no matter what happens, we're going to have a mission to do and we're going to have to complete it. And I don't mind that. I'm certainly more interested in aligning myself with different parties in some grand power struggle than I am in having the option to do something completely evil. I mean, I don't want there to be thing like invincible NPCs or anything, but I think there should be game-ending consequences if you ever do anything truly evil. It certainly never broke immersion for me when I killed some Chinese soldiers in Splinter Cell and got chewed out by Lambert, told to prepare for WW3, and had the mission aborted. Or having Gorion just murder you in Baldur's Gate if you deserved it. Or endless battles with the Flaming Fist in Baldur's Gate.

I don't see how the inclusion of a few crazy females among the group is a big problem. I'm sure they're not all going to be crazy. And the Ladies Man achievement is probably just for people who obsess over achievements, and there's probably some meta-gamey tactic for bagging all the chicks, which forces you to betray each of them in turn or something. I doubt it's going to be something that you can do on a single playthrough without genuinely aiming for that achievement. Like in Fallout 2 where you can get made by all 4 Mafia families if you play everything just right, but it's not something that you'd just do without a concerted effort. And just because some of the girls are crazy doesn't mean that all of them are going to be shallow. GTA4, for instance, had some crazy, shallow, self-absorbed optional girlfriends, but had one normal one who turns out to be watching you, and another one that's extremely well done and is very rewarding to go out on several dates with. Of course, a lot of people complained about her because she was "ugly" (she wasn't) and didn't "put out." While GTA4 retains a lot of the juvenile humor (mostly in the form of radio ads and graffiti) of the previous games in the series, it's not really present at all in the storyline. The game has some excellent characters and writing in general. Any article which would have focused on all the girls you can bang on GTA4 would have missed everything that's truly great about the game. I'm more amused by this preview than anything, as it certainly doesn't sway me one way or the other in wanting to buy this game. I certainly don't think Obsidian is trying to use the sexuality as a major selling point, except to perhaps provoke people to make a lot of false claims on Fox news so that they can get free publicity.

So long as we're going to say that combat should be player skill vs. character skill, you also really have to consider the other aspects of the genre. If you are playing a dumb character, do you still manage to find all the solutions to the quests you undertake? Or should your character be too dumb to piece things together? When you're given a stupid puzzle in an RPG, shouldn't your character's skill determine whether or not you figure it out and complete it rather than the player having to figure it out (like some of the stupid puzzles in the KOTOR games)? If you are playing PNP, and you are playing an extremely intelligent character, are YOU, the player, ever going to think up clever enough responses and quest solutions while you are playing? Or does the DM simply roll some dice and tell you that your super-intelligent character devised a way out of his predicament? Every single game that has weapon skills has them affect damage. Don't pretend that it's just Oblivion. Deus Ex adds more damage when you have more skill, Bloodlines adds more damage as you add more skill, Mass Effect adds more damage when you add more skill, etc. I think it's stupid to do it that way, but that's how it seems to always be done. (I'd prefer that you do things like modify your weapon or simply start buying higher quality bullets once you can afford them). And I have to say that I didn't like the idea in Deus Ex of a trained government agent not even being competent enough to shoot a sniper rifle without it rocking all over the place. And in party-based games, do player stats determine your combat tactics, or does an intelligent player have to come up with good tactics to get through puzzles? Does a rogue automatically search for traps all the time and disarm them, or does the player have to tell the rogue not to run around like an idiot? I'm just fine with making combat twitch-based and simply fun. Regardless of how awesome you are at Baldur's Gate, if you the player are an idiot, you're not going to beat Sarevok at the end. And perhaps in 3.5E games, we should have characters choose their own feats based on how intelligent they are. So your dumb fighter, without your input, could pick Skill Focus: Perform just because he gets delusions of being a singer.