aVENGER

The only difficult battles I've had on my first playthrough were the ones where waves upon waves of enemies spawn out of thin air, usually behind your party. I really didn't like that, it kind of made Tracking and scouting useless. I mean, I'd check a seemingly empty area and right after I bring my PC there a bunch of enemies would insta-spawn everywhere. Sometimes it even happened that when I save a game in an empty room, and load the save at a later time, I'm suddenly surrounded by enemies! This was most evident in the and the quests.

Couldn't put him (it?) in because of the 10 entries per poll limit, so someone had to get the cut. Sorry, my bad. I can't seem to edit the poll anymore so if a mod could correct this I'd be much obliged. Also, if he/she could somehow add Zhjaeve and Construct to the list it would be great :cool:

As the title says. For me, Sand clearly stands out. His snide, witty comments had me laughing all of the time he was in the party. Chris did a great job with the writing and the voice actor did his part perfectly as well. IMHO, Sand is on pair with BG2's Edwin and KotOR's HK-47 as far as sarcastic comic relief companions go. Runner up: Shandra. I liked here character a lot. She starts out as a simple farmer girl and builds up gradually from there. She also seemed to get along quite nicely with my Paladin PC, without seeming like an uptight arrogant prick half the time, like a certain druidess. " I would have made her my no.1 choice if it weren't for the

Not necessarily. An epic level HotU-style expansion seems plausible, especially considering that the epic feats are already in the 2DA's.

Actually, I believe the rights to all D&D based games are now owned by Atari. IIRC, that was one of the reasons why Interplay couldn't publish their own BG3 (project Jefferson) back in the day. So technically, Obsidian could use any assets from their past (BIS) games, including NPC's. :cool:

Anyone caught this? Apparently, if you manage to gather enough influence with she mentions a few notable Githzerai warriors, including Dak'kon. Now, I personally couldn't get her to talk to me about that, but several people on the Bioware forums have reported this. FYI, here's the transcript taken directly from NWN2's dialog.tlk file: I like it how Chris managed to subtly sneak in that small reference. :cool: BTW, judging by the end sequence, the next NWN2 expansion could take place in the Planescape setting and, who knows, if we're lucky we might even run into a few of Torment's NPC's.

Heh, another silly clipping bug can be seen when a Tieflilng's horns pierce right through his headgear. It looks especially hilarious with certain helmets and hats. :D

I just noticed an interesting bug - hostile Shadow Mastiffs can apparently cause fear on each other when playing on Core Rules. :D This is easiest to witness in the valley surrounding Anyone else seen this?

Well, that dryad openly admitted that she helped slaughter a whole village out of revenge. That's pretty evil in my book. " You still have a point though, and it's a shame Obsidian didn't impelment the Detect Evil ability for Paladins, even as a simple dialogue option when dealing with evil creatures like in IWD2 for example.

Actually, there is.

I've experienced a few stray bugs here and there but no real show stoppers so far. Well ok, there was that one time when a plot critical cutscene couldn't trigger because I wasn't directly controlling the protagonist but I hear that's patched now anyway. Besides, it only took a relaod to fix it. IMHO, while NWN2 does have its share of minor bugs and interface annoyances in general it's quite playable and, more importantly, a very enjoyable game. Personally, I haven't had so much fun playing a proper cRPG in a long time. So, while NWN2 may be a bit buggy it's a been great game for me so far (just starting Act 3 right now). It's also very reminiscent of the classic BIS cRPGs so if you're a fan of Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate 2 I think you're going to love this game.

Anyone know of way to permanently turn Power Attack on? So far, my characters seem to be using it for 1-2 rounds and then they automatically deactivate it for some reason, even if their AI is set to Puppet Mode. <_<

Possibly, but I'm getting those frame rates while playing at my monitor's native resolution which is 1280x1024. :cool:

On medium texture settings and with shadows turned down to low I get 15-25 fps on my A64 3000+ and 6600GT in most areas. Not exactly smooth, but playable. Compared to that, your next rig should eat the game for breakfast. BTW, make sure that you have a lot of free space on the partition which will hold your "My Documents" folder since the NWN2 save files can take up to 500MB easily. That's with 3 used slots + quicksave, and I'm only starting Act2 right now, so it's bound to get even larger.

He said he wanted to re-publish the FAQ soon, so I guess he has an archive copy of it as well. You could try contacting him via email since he rarely posts here now. There's a tip about it on his google-hosted website which I linked to in my previous post.

Unfortunately, Sammael's huge Jefferson FAQ has been offline for quite a while now (though it may return in the near future) but you can see a short summary of the game along with some interesting developer quotes and interviews here.

Concerning Thief 2 levels, Emil was the main designer for "Life of the Party" and "Precious Cargo" and a contributing designer for "Eavesdropping" and "The Sword" (Thief Gold). He also worked on Thief 3 but I'm unsure on which levels exactly.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Thief series as well as Deus Ex. I just don't think that such a design approach would work for Fallout 3. If we're lucky, we might end up with something like VTM: Bloodlines which could be pretty good, but compared to what a real FO3 should be like, it just wouldn't cut it.

Just to clarify, I was replying to Dark Raven's post and thus commenting solely on the graphical aspects of Bethesda's Fallout 3. Of course, good art alone is not enough to make a worthy sequel and there are many other things which should be done right. Whether Bethesda will succeed in making a good Fallout game remains to be seen, but as I've already said, I doubt it.

Heh, I don't think there are many "Fallout 3 in 2D!" supporters in this day and age, not even among the hardcore fans, especially now that 3D graphics are nearly approaching photo realism. :cool: Instead, I think most people would like FO3 to retain the artistic style of the prequels. You know, small things like the rundown, gritty atmosphere of the Hub, a Junktown-like area theme, the tidy sterile halls of the Vaults and of course the overall '50s pulp-fiction tech feel. It would be a shame if the whole concept got streamlined into "Oblivion + guns + desert = FO3!" :ph34r:

Yes Troika tried as well but Bethesda had the most funds so, in the end, the license went to them. As for Obsidian: http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/fallout2-2.php

BTW, although Emil is the Lead Designer he seems to be working closely with Todd "Axes are blunt weapons!" Howard on designing FO3. :ph34r: Link On a more positive note, here's Emil's Bethesda profile.

According to DAC and RPGCodex Emil Pagliarulo is the Lead Designer of Bethesda's Fallout 3. IMHO, he's a fairly talented guy as he did some awesome levels in the Thief games and was also responsible for the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion, as far as I know. Despite all that, I still have less then a spark of hope that Bethesda's FO3 will be a worthy successor to the franchise. At best, it'll turn into some kind of a Deus Ex/Oblivion/Fallout mixture which might be enjoyable on its own terms, but I doubt it's going to be even close to the prequels or the canceled BIS version. <_<

Good preview. I'm definitively checking out the toolset once I'm done with the OC. BTW, rumors are that the DM Client might be released on Tuesday, along with the first patch. Link