Dhruin

But you have less than half the number of Jora's posts here on this board - does that mean your comments carry half the weight? I would have thought members of this board would have welcomed news on CRPGs out there - or does posting at Qt3 invalidate posting anywhere else?

You might check out this recent thread at Octopus Overlords - no guarantee on spoilers; I don't remember. I only played a preview version. I thought it was an interesting little Diablo clone with nice art scifi art but bad animation. The actual campaign is quite short - you play the same basic storyline but from the intertwining perspective of the four different characters who sometimes cross paths. I hear the gameplay gets more interesting with the latter characters, so you may want to miss the first guy (Johnson?) and just play with one of the latter ones. It was developed by 2x guys, so don't expect too much, but it's fine for some action at $5.

We covered it once because we really didn't have much info on Crossover at the time and we figured readers would want to know what they were up to. But that's it...no more interest in it.

Where did get the info that Nival would be working closely on the game? I assume F3 and Akella licensed the Silent Storm engine but that doesn't mean Nival will have any input on the game. ---- On JA3 in general...good luck with the optimism. Richard Therrien is incompetent (see hiring Mistland South in the first place and then arguing publically with them over whether JA3D was realtime or turnbased, plus Strategy First's recent history in general), Akella hasn't done anything useful for a while (see Metalheart: Replicants Rampage and otherwise, they've remade Sea Dogs twice but not actually improved it), F3 is new, and (assuming Nival is involved), each of their subsequent SS games have been getting worse.

Hurlshot hit the nail on the head. Don't forget the significant possibility of failure...Microsoft lost $40M half developing Mythica, for example. Sure, Microsoft can afford that but what about the backers of Dark and Light, Wish and a dozen others. Matrix Online would have cost Monolith a bundle and so on.

I'm pretty sure a bunch of people on this forum said ages ago the control scheme would be impossible on the PC, including Volo. So, since Volourn is never wrong, this version must be crap. Game over.

I didn't mean now. There's a difference between, say, buying the NA release in month or so and waiting for the bargain bin, no?

Just curious. Assuming it gets patched to the general satisfaction of most players, why wait for the bargain bin if you were originally anticipating the game? Don't get me wrong - I fully understand how you would be disappointed. On the other hand, you have been warned and haven't yet spent your cash...why not enjoy it as soon (and if) it is ready? As for the general thing about publishers, while your point makes perfect sense in a perfect world, the reality is that JoWood is broke and has been on the brink of collapse multiple times. No matter what anyone does or says, when a company simply doesn't have the cash to continue or any way to secure more cash, they will release. The market might be able to encourage less games to be released this way, but it will always happen to some.

Music feature.

I don't want to argue whether Troika were "sloppy" or a bunch of other adjectives but you're way off the mark on several things. Source was still in full development and new versions were being given to Troika regularly, which often completely broke existing systems. Ultimately, they had to stick with a much older version than HL2 shipped with, so they could actually finish and test. The sound system wasn't complete at the time (and many people still have problems with Source sound, so it isn't perfect) and the game didn't sit waiting for HL2's release - they worked on it to the end. Have a read of the wikipedia entry and I can dig up further quotes if you need them. I don't know why this urban rumour of Vampire: Bloodlines being complete with Troika sitting around doing nothing for months persists, when this has been denied by both Troika and Activision over and over.

At a glance it looks pretty much the same as Gothic and Gothic 2 to me in terms of being "alive", so I doubt the video shows just be the best bits. That's just the way Gothic is.

You don't have to "join" one of the factions at all - you can even do jobs for different factions at the same time. Depending on what you do, this will produce different consequences with the various factions. I don't expect you can avoid the factions altogether - presumably much of the story and quests are related to them, which makes sense.

I understand what you are saying - and I agree we don't know how accurately G3 will reflect the promises. I still think (and this sounds argumentative ) that Oblivion was on a different footing pre-release. We already knew you could join pretty much any faction with few restraints and we knew Morrowind's character development system readily allowed powergaming and more, so I never expected the level of choice and consequence from Oblivion that I hope for with G3. Anyway, I take your point.

I don't think those things apply to Oblivion at all. I certainly couldn't join the enemy and work against the humans, and factional membership was almost entirely irrelevant to the rest of the gameworld.

Assuming you really are serious, here are some quotes. "Gothic 3 is all about choices in the first place. Yes, there are great sword fights, powerful magic, a lifelike gaming world... but yet choices are the main gameplay element. The player can literally shape the world and influence the story through the way he's handling things. Most decisions have to be made in the field of human relations. The way the player is treating others influences their attitude towards him, and thus their cooperativeness depends on the right choice of words. With a dexterous tongue the hero can even talk a whole city into a revolution. This can also backfire on him, of course. If he falls out of favour with someone, he will most likely not get useful hints or lucrative quests. And yes, if the whole world wants him dead, he might at last regret his choices." From RPG Codex "The scope is much larger than the previous games, and we have added a number of improvements - apart from the stunning graphics and improved AI - that will make the world react to each action the player takes. This not only means that the city watch will try to arrest you if you steal from the merchant; you may also rise to lead whole settlements in revolt against the Orcish occupation or become a renowned gladiator or slave master. Your actions will have ramifications far beyond your immediate surroundings on a truly epic scale. This will, of course, mean that each and every game you play will be different and may end differently. An important difference from many recent games comes about with the story and gameplay shift toward interacting with the world. You will need to find allies and supporters, not just in the sense of NPC henchman, but really on a wider scale. You may need to convince a barbarian tribe to help you storm the Orc camp, but for this, you must steal the totem of their rival tribe that will turn against you because of this. So, it is all about choices and consequences, which makes the game that much more alive." "Sailing from his native island, the hero sets foot on the mainland shore and finds a world in turmoil - the human Middle Kingdom has been overrun by Orcs, who rule the population with an iron fist. You may choose to join the usurpers or the resistance, journey north to the free barbarian tribes to gather their support, or go south and be introduced into the mysteries of the slave trading assassins. The game will allow you to solve many quests on the way, gathering reputation with the many factions that you may want to join. In the end, you will be part of the great events that shape the future of the realm of men, and also discover more about your role in the prophecies of old..." From RPG Vault That will do - there's lots more of that. Will the game fulful those ambitions? Don't know. But there certainly seems to be an attempt to offer a range of "actions and choices" superior to most RPGs.

You'd be hard pressed to find a game that promises the player's choices have more impact than G3.

So far it is a largely intelligent discussion. Explain to me how a "plan" is the same thing as a "promise". The actual issue is the price rise but your post positioned some promise as the issue. As far as the price rise itself, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. Gamers can voice their opinion on the value of any title they perceive as overpriced by not buying it or waiting for the inevitable price drop down the track.

Yes, he did. But highlight the large markets and streamlining bits. I occasionally see someone write on a forum something like "I wish Blizzard had developed [insert flawed "hardcore"/niche game]", meaning they like Blizzard's polish, attention to detail and support. Only Blizzard would never develop a niche title and if they did, it wouldn't hold the same appeal because Blizzard would take it in a different direction to assure that bigger audience.

Wiz 8 is old-school, for better or worse (yes, it's an over-used term but quite appropriate). The biggest attraction is very, very detailed character and party development. With up to 8 characters per party and a huge number of races and classes, the combinations are enormous. Wiz8 fans sometimes use spreadsheets to work on party combinations. Otherwise, it's a large, fairly open gameworld broken into areas with some factional nuances but otherwise, it's a dungeon-crawler that just isn't set in dungeons. The dialogue has some reasonable depth but uses a key-word system instead of dialogue-trees. If you like older style RPGs with a lot of party development and a combat focus, it's pretty good. Get the the little mod that speeds up the combat animations and re-balances a little, because the vanilla game has way too many lengthy random combat sequences. Oh - and being #8 has no bearing on the quality in this case at all.

I don't care about their technical limitations - all I care about is what I get in game.

Sure, I'd conceed Oblivion will probably look better in some ways (even though the technology base is the same)...but there is more to it than just the technology. The original Gothics have things like a better sense of height and scale with bluffs and cliffs than are miles ahead of Oblivion, along with other advantages such as a continuous gameworld with (almost) no loads. It adds much more for me to stand at an alchemist's door and watch him work etc etc than higher ploy counts and HDR offer.

Sure. And I'm just expressing my opinion that if the graphics in Oblivion turn out to be better than Gothic 3's, I won't be surprised but I still expect G3 to will be the better game for my tastes because of other factors.

Of course you can...but to my eye those two are worlds apart. Gothic doesn't have the depth of lore that supports Elder Scrolls or a Forgotten Realms game but the in-game presentation is without doubt the most consistent and realistic gameworld ever presented. The plots are mediocre but the narrative is pretty good with some interesting characters. The first Gothic has a unique atmosphere and the second (especially with the Night of the Raven addon) has some fantastic subplots, even if the overarching story is nothing special. Already done.

Screw the graphics. Does it really matter whether this has more advanced graphics than Oblivion or vice versa? If they stay to the previous series, the environment and gameplay will be miles ahead for my money. As an aside...Warcraft? The characters are stylised but this is a dark and gritty gameworld - perhaps Warhammer might be closer to the mark. You won't find bright pastel colours here.

I haven't been inside a games store for around three years. Don't plan to, either.