MrBrown

I never had trouble. But I played it exclusively as a single player, so maybe my character's level was higher.

I never saw much reason to play NWN as anything other than high damage melee fighter. They can just whack their way through anything. The only problems are instances where you fail a will save, but that isn't a big problem. I don't remember the details of my build, but it was basically a Fighter/Weaponmaster. If you can really crunch the numbers, you can also throw in that Disciple of Tor prestige class, or whatever it was called.

On the bio boards, it took the first thread of this video about 10 post to note the boobs. Then it was all about that. The Bio people say her breasts aren't supposed to look big though, it just looks like that in the screencap for some reason. EDIT: Might be the new look of the elves.

I don't particularly care about dual-wielding as such, as long as there are other meaningful choices. Complaining about dual-wielding is like complaining about Torment not having swords; it might have become an industry standard to include it, but when you get down to it, it's just one choice you can have, and the important thing is that you have meaningful stuff to choose from, not what those choices are. That said, while DA:O had quite alot of talents for all styles, the problem was that many of those were bugged or badly designed. I wouldn't mind it if there were less talents, if they're more useful and fun to play with now.

On that note, has Bioware said how much stuff DA2 is going have about wardens or the darkspawn? I've seen no detailed info.

If DA2 turns out to be "Mass Effect with swords", I'd be very pleased.

The main difference was abilities (about 4 in DA:O iirc, more in Awakening) that directly influenced threat-ratings, thus making enemies choose specific characters over others as targets. The gameplay idea is that you can in this way direct enemies to attack characters that can more easily shake off the attacks (the tanks) rather than the weaker ones. The bigger issue is that, if you have no way to control which enemies attack what character, that means you are encouraged to make characters with similar ability to soak damage. And this takes away from the variance of characters design, as you encouraged to design characters the same way, at least in this aspect. I can think of 3 ways to solve this: 1) Make stupid AI, that attacks the first enemy it sees, so players can solve this with easy positioning. I think the IE games had a lot of stupid AI like this, but there was several exceptions as well, even within a specific game I think. 2) Make combatant positioning count so that enemies can't attack any characters they see freely. The attacks of opportunity used NWN is one example, though I don't think it worked at all (it works fine in PnP). 3) Give the player abilities to influence what enemies attack directly. I'm not sure if WoW was the first one to do this, but it's probably the most famous.

Just commenting on stuff mentioned in the last few pages. I think WoW-style aggro-management is Teh Future for RPGs with real-time combat. It just brings a wealth of tactical options games like the IE or NWN games didn't have. Certainly, it's not very realistic, but RPGs tend to be so abstracted anyway, I'm surprised people have a problem with this at all. Now, in turn-based combat, something like the positioning of combatants would work, but I doubt it'd work in games with real-time combat. Especially if the player is expected to control all the characters. As for DA:O, it was a mess. Half the abilities were bugged or didn't work the way the game said they would, and the most effective builds were often very counterintuitive. Awakening fixed some things, but also created more weird stuff. I kinda hope Bioware has cut the amount of abilities, since they seem to be unable to QA the amount DA:O had. I'd really prefer to learn to play the game by playing the game, not by reading about the actual workings online.

I haven't followed DA2 that closely so far, so this might be an old question, but is DA2 going to have the same general control scheme as DA1? That is, you control 1 party member always, the rest follow their scripts, but you can switch anytime?

Is this crowd big enough to be considered to exist?

Hasn't Bioware been catering to this crowd since BG2? What's there to be surprised now?

Is it just me or is the woman on the right stabbing herself in the arm?

As I see it, it's the want to create a story. And a story needs characters. And if the player determines stuff about the main character, the developers can't touch it too much; so, to create a story, they need strong NPCs. It seems to be working too. It seems alot of people are willing to sacrifice some of these old-skool values of yours for that.

Frankly, if they want to make a more story-focused game, I'd prefer they use a predetermined main character. The more choice you give to the player about the main character, the more you have to either a) change the focus of the story away from the "main" character, which results in him/her becoming a sort of observer who goes to places to find out the stories, rather than the stories revolving around him/her, or b) make game content that is exclusive of each other, which they always want to minimize because it means they'll be putting work into content that will only be used by a some of the players.

You can steal anything in the game this way. You still get negative karma, but no one gets hostile. It's useful for getting limited stuff like books, or getting money early on.

There may be a design flaw with energy weapons. I haven't been following it close, but these guys have... That's interesting. I wonder how that'll turn out in future patches. Not that it matters much gameplay-wise, Plasma Caster and the YCS/186 still kill everything so fast it's a joke.

No no, that's there so you can

I really enjoyed Marcus in FO:NV, him being his usual self. Very intelligent, but not a man of many words. I wonder who wrote Marcus for FO2 in the first place.

Following the main quest is the only sure way to get appropriate encounters. The rest of the wasteland is full of variance. You can end up finding a cave of deathclaws next to a cave of coyotes. Anyway, to get to New Vegas as early as possible, go to Sloan, and proceed northwards on the ridge of the mountain that is on the westside of the road. Going too much east or west gets tough encounters, but there's a sweet spot. It isn't hard once you figure it out. In Vegas, even a level 1 character will survive easily, as long as you don't go to the southeast sections.

= "Wait for me here." For the whole game, I bet.

If I remember correctly, Caesar also aims to create a civilization that lasts. As he sees it, the NCR functioned best when it was still a de facto dictatorship under Tandi, and it's pre-war values of democracy and western individualism will eventually destroy it, like it destroyed the pre-war world. What Caesar is creating is a nation that values the whole over the individual. I still gotta check that speech victory over Lanius, though.

There are supposedly 110 caps placed in the game world, + any you get from bottles. Unless you rush through the game, it's kinda hard not to find lots of them. Pew Pew has a base DAM of 77 or thereabouts, btw. It's one of the most powerful weapons in the game.

I'll probably end up playing the old Fallouts again, just because New Vegas constantly uses their background music. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

"For Auld Lang Syne" brought a tear to my eye.

RE: Lady killer and associated perks: Unpatched, you were able to use Confirmed Bachelor to get free repairs out of Major Knight. Talk about broken. It doesn't seem to be a bug though, since the dialogue seems to imply it. Recently, I've been attempting to break the game by getting the good equipment as early as possible. Currently I have a character that got a Gauss Rifle, Plasma Caster and the Intelligence Implant on level 1, and Reinforced Combat Armor MkII and the YCS/168 by level 2. Haven't tried getting power armor early, but I think it's possible. Power Armor training, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be.