aVENGER

Hmm, I'm not really sure. I guess it depends on whether the adapter's drivers can support them or not. BTW, if distance is the main reason for getting a wireless controller you could simply buy an USB extension cable. Not as neat looking as a wireless controller but certainly much cheeper. I use one whenever I'm playing games on my television (via TV-out).

If you want the original PS2 controller design you could get one of those PS2 to USB adapter thingies and simply use a PS2 controller on your PC, though that's not wireless of course.

BTW, more on loading times and performance issues from the WoG preview (translated):

Amazingly, I've never lost a savegame in Thief 3, although I have heard that a lot of people were having such problems. I guess it could have been a specific hardware related issue or something since it completely bypassed my old rig on which I've played the game at that time. " However, in the case of Gothic 3, savegame corruption coupled with insanely long loading times (2 minutes per quickload!) gives me enough reasons to wait for a patch or two. :ph34r:

Personally, this little bit has got me seriously worried:

Not necessarily, at least not in this case. One of the WoG reviewers reported that the game is quite playable on his A64 3200+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6600GT at medium details.

Note that one of Gothic's strongest points was the free exploration of its world. By removing climbing, mantling and diving we are robbed of a part of that freedom. As I've already said, the removal of those features probably doesn't have a significant impact on the core gameplay but it does limit some options.

Apparently, they are trying to (over)compensate the lack of climbing/mantling by giving the player an

It seems there's no more diving as well. It kind of feels like they've "streamlined" the Z-axis and that's not a good thing at all. IMO, while not exactly critical to the overall gameplay, these two features have greatly increased the feeling of the player's freedom to explore the world in the prequels. For example, climbing (mantling) and to a lesser degree diving could often be used to explore certain areas in many different ways, not all of which were intended by the developers. While it was possible to climb onto the "edge of the world" (i.e. out of the worldmap) on a few rare occasions climbing and mantling was mostly used by characters specialized in ranged combat and frail magic users for sniping. This wasn't an abuse or an exploit though, as the NPC's and some monsters could climb and mantle as well and they would, more often than not, reach the player before he could land the killing blow. Diving was employed to a lesser degree, but there were some interesting locations (i.e. Xardas' sunken tower) which could only be reached that way.

I prefer Deus Ex because I dislike the respawning enemies and the claustrophobic feel of the levels in SS2. Not that it's a bad game mind you, just slightly below DX by my standards.

I see. Well, I guess I'll look into it when the new site and forums are up. Best of luck with your future projects.

OT, but what happened to The Lair?

Hm, unexpected delays are always dubious, but on the bright side, this gives me more time to play Gothic 3. :cool: It was kind of weird having G3 and NWN2 come out on the same day.

Cut the guy some slack, will you mate? I'm sure he's doing the best he can considering the fact how late in the development process he took charge of the project. FYI, Josh openly stated that he personally disagrees with many of the questionable NWN2 design decisions (i.e. auto-resurrecting henchmen) but that it was simply too late to change them now. For my part, I'm glad that he's trying to fix what he can (Discipline, Knockdown, Disarm, attribute stacking...) in the amount of time he's given. BTW, I too think that NWN2 has suffered a lot because of mismanagement and Atari's current financial woes. So, while I'm sure the NWN2OC will be vastly superior to the NWN1OC, I somehow fear that the game as a whole will receive much less support than its predecessor in terms of patches and additional content.

http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=aim

Heh, I think this preview can explain that: I'm definitively getting this game. :cool: Actually, I recall reading somewhere (possibly on the Heroes5 forum) that DMoMM was merely a spin-off and that Ubisoft will eventually publish a regular Might & Magic RPG as well.

Hmm, he was actually pretty easy for me, without NOTR that is. Dragonhunter = slice and dice, dies in 9-10 hits. Mage + Rain of Fire = one crispy undead dragon in 5-6 casts. Paladin = just use the Destroy Evil spell a few times and presto, you've won. Well, that's kind of the point - you can't expect to take on Orcs at low levels. However, from lvl7 or so, and with some decent armor, it's quite possible to defeat a singled out Orc. They actually are pretty dumb you know, and if you observe their behavior for a while, you'll notice that they swing those huge axes in fairly predictable patterns. You can easily adapt to their fighting style if you just learn to time your blocks properly. Skeleton Warriors OTOH, are a completely different story. :ph34r: Hmm, in my experiance, doing a bunch of side quests in Khorinnas and the surrounding farmlands can easily boost you to level 6-7. Even more if you do the Thieve's Guild quests. Also, new faction-based quests usually offer a moderate amount of XP in each chapter. Actually, the respawned critters are usually just a minor fraction of the original group. So, if you kill a dozen wolves in a forest glade for example, next chapter you'll only find 3-4 wolves in the same area.

Your opinion. Personally, I thought the G2 story was adequate. Not PST-style stellar, but neither NWN OC "time traveling lizards from hell" craptastic. Simply adequate. The NOTR expansion subplots were slightly better though. Actually, that's not true. He does have a backstory - a backstory which the player forged for him in Gothic 1. He's the hero who defeated the Sleeper, brought down the prison colony barrier and freed the convicts. This is referenced several times in G2, but I guess one has to play through the first part in order to fully grasp that. Now this is just plain wrong. Granted, it took me a few hours to get the hang of the keyboard scheme when i first started Gothic1, but after that, the controls never presented a problem for me. If you actually need to be level 12+ in order to be effective in combat than you simply suck at fighting. Try playing a mage next time. Huh? I never got that feeling in either G1 or G2. OTOH, Oblivion and Morrowid came pretty close to what you describe. Wrong again. You can earn a lot of XP by merely doing side quests. The point is, they are optional, as are most other things in Gothic. And as mkreku already pointed out, Gothic doesn't hold your hand, though it does grant a marginal ammount of XP for merely progressing through the main qest. However, you can't really expect to go toe to toe with a bunch of Orc Elites at level 3. It's just not realistic. On this point I agree with you, though only to an extent. While you don't have a party in the traditional sense in Gothic, your character does have a few close friends in the game, and those characters are certainly much more fleshed out than the rest of the NPCs. While you can't exactly have a cheesy BG2-style romance with a female companion in Gothic, you can certainly appreciate the insight, loyalty and the help which your friends offer you during your quest. Nah, you are just jaded that some of us actually enjoyed the game. Gothic 3 will improve almost every aspect of the past games which you seem to dislike so, who knows, maybe you'll end up enjoying it too. :cool:

Heh, that's why I said "attempted" (j/k) I really like your system because it essentially makes various calculating tasks easier for the players while still managing to retain most of the other defining aspects of SPECIAL. Somehow, I doubt that a full scale d20 conversion will manage to do the same.

^Here you go.

Perhaps he meant that, with today's technology, it's possible to express many aspects of the dialogue through other means. For example, ever since I've played VTM:Bloodlines, I've become a fan of realistic facial expressions and body language in games. IMO, both of these things can do a great job in further reinforcing the emotions conveyed through regular dialogue. Thanks to that, the developers could remove some of the more abstract scene descriptions (which were present in their older games) and present them in a visual form instead. Don't get me wrong though, I loved the lengthy scene descriptions of Fallout and PST (those two are my favorite games after all :cool:) and the extra lines made both games much more immersive for me at that time. However, using modern technology, the developers can now actually make those lines come to life, and thus achieve an even higher degree of realism and immersion while saving some money on the localization costs at the same time.

It was, and GURPS 4.0 would have certainly been a better choice than d20, but then again they could have simply made a PnP conversion of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. It's not like that hasn't been attempted before.

http://www.gluttoncreeper.com/page3.html I don't get it. An obscure, fairly unknown company gets the license to do this and they instantly manage to screw it up by going with the d20 route. Bah...

Heh, that's interesting, I actually prefer turn-based, isometric-view, party-oriented cRPGs, but that never stopped me from loving the Gothic games. I simply recognized them for what they are, thoroughly enjoyed the different experiance which they offered, and it was no less satisfying for me than playing a hardcore cRPG. And yes, I'm really looking forward to Gothic3 as well. :cool:

IMO, the game is not very demanding in terms of hardware. It's quite playable on my sister's old AthlonXP 2000+, 512MB RAM, GeForce3 rig at medium settings with some moderate slowdowns in large scale battles (i.e. during castle sieges).