Dhruin

I think you are way off with that. Oblivion was delayed 4 months and that wasn't announced until after the anticipated release date, not to mention Bethsoft's prior reputation (fairly deserved or not) for timely releases. Do they need help releasing on time? What will the average player think? They won't. The Witcher is never going to achieve Oblivion's hype prior to release no matter how good it is (or isn't). Most players won't know it exists unless the game gathers an audience and even then the awareness will be peripheral. Personally, I like the darker art style regardless of the technical aspects. I still think it looks better than NWN2 and that doesn't come out until Sept.

What do you mean by "very little evidence of progress"? What sort of progress are you expecting to see? On a general note, yes, the game was "announced" early (it was more revealed than formally announced at the time). The team was small - about a dozen people - and there was no firm release date for some time. I'm not sure why anyone would think they had cancelled - there has been a pretty constant flow of material over the time as far as I recall. We were then told they wanted to be code complete at the end of 2005 with "several months of polishing and balancing" to follow...so something like Q2 2006. The delay to 2007 puts it something like 6-9 months behind schedule -- quite like an awful lot of projects really. Can't think of too many that ship on time. At this stage, any comparison with STALKER is a bit unfair. Time will obviously tell how it all pans out. The reaction at RPG Codex sort of underscores one of the possible reasons for an early announcement: it's just plain hard breaking into gamer's consciousness for some projects. Look at how many people over there have said "hey - this looks alright!"...but all of that info has been out there for 2 years or so.

Yeah, 'cause 4Head are idiots and all their games are crap. Thank heaven I don't only rely on US publishers for my games. You'll find UK publishers are often quite different, by the way.

You haven't? I think the AI is pretty broken. Playing as a thief/assassin, I've done several quests where I had to kill everyone in a particular location. I've had two people in bed in the same room and when I backstab and kill one, the second leaps up out of bed then goes straight back to sleep. I've killed people in locations while everyone else walks past the body without reaction and I've had NPC's enter a room while I was in the process of hacking someone to pieces and they calmly walk past. Put an arrow into one bandit and the one standing next to him is oblivious to his friend's death. Contrast this with phsyic guards who come running without any possibility of having seen or heard the transgression.

They have already announced plans for a patch but I doubt they will make any real game-changing modifications - they'll just fix a couple of minor quest errors etc. As for whether the game is worth it as it stands, that's open to discussion.

Edit whatever you like - you're the one with the authority here - and I was simply calling it as I see it. I'll leave the "thanks for playing" quip out in return but that just confirmed my suspicion. I see Briosafreak accusing you of poorly thought out arguments but nothing about spelling. I made my arguments earlier in the thread, so I'll leave you to it.

Metadigital, I wish you'd find better arguments than "Metagaming!!" every time someone posts something negative about OB, while at the same time patently advocating metagaming. And being smart over the spelling and syntax of a non-native English speaker just lowers your position further. What a jackass.

I don't like the dialogue system, which is outmoded and should be chucked out. However... There isn't only "Yes" or "No" choices - there are (a few) dialogues with multiple responses, so it can be done. They just don't do it very often. I don't know if you can tie a response to your Intelligence but some dialogue is driven by Personality (some NPCs will refuse to talk to you about quests until they like you, for example), so this doesn't sound right, either. Stat checks are a good thing in dialogue but I don't think they have much to do with making the NPCs memorable. Ever play Ultima 7? Big world, lots of NPCs, not entirely dissimilar keyword dialogue system...plenty of memorable NPCs. I agree a better dialogue system would help but it really comes down to the writing.

I don't quite get this: why don't they lend themselves to interesting characters? I agree with Gromnir it's hard to make them all interesting when there are so many but I can't see why the gameplay is stacked against having any.

How would RAID help with the cables?

No, each IDE channel only supports a master and a slave. In other words: 2 drives per IDE cable. You could look at an external HDD enclosure but otherwise, you'll need to put up with the cables.

My error. Not being interested in enchanting until you pointed out its importance, I hadn't looked into it. The manual has one line on the subject of sigil stones, which I overlooked. Actually, I think that's enough for me.

I've fiddled with a mage and fighter but played mostly with a ranged thief, who is having a hard time. I only skimmed the tiny enchanting part of the manual for that reason. Do I read that right? My thief should enchant weapons and to do that, has to join the Mages Guild?

It's my understanding it's an Xbox 360 requirement - every game must have marketplace content I believe, it's not really a Bethsoft thing.

Spot on.

...and heaven help the character who foolishly gained some levels by having Speechcraft, Alchemy etc etc as Major skills.

I have often complained about the motivation in BG2 - I never liked Imoen in the first place, so good riddance. Still, in the context of the game, it's clear it will take time to search out answers and gain the power to face Irenicus so the urgency is somewhat balanced. Oblivion makes it clear the world needs saving now - with the fate of the world resting on the shoulders of a criminal - who in my case simply wants to get on with joining the Brotherhood and causing mayhem. Knowing that Oblivion features an enormous free-roaming gameworld with a myriad of side quests, this was a poor choice of plotline. The problem, as with some other things in Oblivion, is that Bethsoft wants to appeal to gamers who want a linear, epic, story-driven game as well as the explorers, which makes all sorts of things a compromise. Other games do this as well, sure. But the contrast isn't usually as stark for obvious reasons.

Sorry, I don't agree with your insistence that the problem is only caused by metagaming at all. There are a lot of us who are just playing the game as it comes naturally and for me it's obvious there are serious faults with the level scheme. Your suggestion that players "wait until you arrive at a good character build point" is, in fact, metagaming to me. There's nothing wrong with scaling. Applying it across the board with a poorly designed character development system causes all sorts of havoc - not necessarily for every character or play style but it does for many.

That's just the Collector's Edition. Not real leather, by the way, just leather embossing on the cardboard.

SR2 is one of my favourite games in recent times. I won't try to convince you one way or the other on Starforce, so I guess that's one that will go untried. I don't want to overstate it. I have a low personality (there's a free hit for someone...) and five or so times I've not been able to talk to NPCs without bribing and/or extra dialogue has opened up. It tends to be an all-or-nothing thing from what I've seen. I refuse to use the stupid persuasion game, so I've only bribed a couple of them and let the other quests go. Yes, they have half-stars. It's not a perfect review - just closer than the 9.6s or whatever elsewhere. And yes, immersion is a difficult term but I think it's OK if you are careful and explain the reasoning. Then again, you'd probably say that makes it redundant and you may be right.

Those of us with low scores in the appropriate stats need to bribe from time to time to get started at all. I wouldn't call it commonplace but it does happen.

The hype was enormous plus Morrowind scores were pretty high (especially early) and this is a step forward in many areas so I don't find the scores surprising...GameSpy went 4/5 yesterday, which seems closer to the mark to me. I must say it's an odd phenomenon - I have a laundry list of complaints and individual elements fail to impress when examined or compared with other games...but the whole is rather enjoyable. I find myself wanting to get home from work and fire it up, despite the shortcomings. Not sure if that will last...time will tell.

That they don't see you standing there and the combat at the end is a matter of implementation. I certainly think the quest should be better polished...but that has nothing to do with the style of quest it represents. Let me turn it around...give me an example of a quest that you think isn't fedex. I've played pretty much every cRPG for many, many years so choose whatever example you like.

If you are going to include Thorinir as a FedEx quest, then there aren't any non-FedEx quests in the existence of cRPG-dom. I'd like to see branching paths in the quests but otherwise, they're pretty good.