Azarkon

Looks like a good game at the moment, but the hype machine's just gotten started...

There is one aspect of CRPGs that's never been mentioned overmuch on these boards, but perhaps that's because it is too often the subject of hype: the combat system, and to a lesser degree, the character system ontop of which it is built. CRPGs have always been heavy on combat. I don't think that this is merely the mechanism of market idiocy, but belongs to the overarching attraction of CRPGs. Very few games outside of CRPGs offer the sort of character-based combat that CRPGs provide. Adventure, action, and shooter games all depend on the player's reflexes instead of adept use of a character's abilities. RTSs rely on micromanaging multiple units/bases, and seldom involve substantial equipment collection / leveling. I don't doubt the idea that many of the original CRPGs fans were, in fact, fans of the party-based (or character-based) combat, and could've cared less about whatever else was in the game. It's no wonder that action RPGs took off with Diablo: Blizzard North managed to distill that exact aspect of gameplay to a impressive level of refinement, and in so doing created the ultimate CRPG combat game. It was a huge hit. I'm not inclined to blame them: CRPGs, at the end of the day, are *games*. Interactive storytelling is one thing, but there's a huge difference between a choose-your-own-adventure narrative and a CRPG: the former has a inhibitively narrow focus, whereas the latter is blessed with a broader range of gameplay appeal. It's the reason I tend to rank BG / BG II as better games than PS:T. I enjoyed the gameplay in the first two alongside its story/characters. I only enjoyed the story/characters of the latter. I understand that the norm of CRPG discussion these days is focused on the characters/plots/roleplaying opportunities, but by doing so I think we're ignoring a huge part of what makes CRPGs fun. After all, if you look back to the time of traditional CRPGs and roguelikes, you really don't find things like plot, roleplaying, and NPC development prioritized - combat truly was the single most significant aspect of CRPG gameplay. And that gameplay, I argue, is also a significant reason MMORPGs are so successful.

Non-linearity would indeed be great. However, what if you lacked the time and resources to make such a non-linear campaign?

Alas, another good PC developer falls to Microsoft's enticements

I see. So the real beef is with whether the story allows you to define yourself, rather than being defined a priori? Personally, I think the Githyanki sword thing is just there to keep you on your toes - to provide a sense of urgency and purpose to the player's involvement in the plot. Alot of people complained about Morrowind on the lines that the game lacked narrative drive - that is, personal motivation for the player's actions. To wit: the ideal "nobody" story would start you off tabula rasa and allow *you* to determine what your motivations and goals are. Yet such a game, from a player's point of view, is going to have a very slow start as in the beginning I'd have little interest and personal attachment to the world. In order to make a educated decision as to what my goal is, and to have the passion to pursue such a goal, I must first be *interested* in the world. This, in turn, argues for some sort of in media res introduction - a hook I can relate to (and anyone can relate to being chased by murderous Githyanki, surely ) that'll get me exploring and learning about the world. The sword piece stuck in your ass is probably not the best hook in the world, but it is such a hook. PS:T is one of those games that just couldn't have been done any other way without losing its thematic focus, I think. It *had* to establish your guilt, or the plot wouldn't have worked. Alot of people loved it for that. Well, if that's what you're worried about, then I tend to agree that I want neither of those attributes in the story. But I don't see predictability as a necessary attribute in the current NWN 2 story - what we've been given thus far is only a brief sketch of the plot. It could easily throw some curve balls (ie what if the King of Shadows was actually good?)

But why does it matter whether it's a chosen one story or not? See, that's the problem with this argument, which I think Eldar has got right: the "chosen one story" has become a kind of insult, and if it can somehow be associated with a game, then the game's mediocrity is self-explanatory. As a result, instead of arguing about the *why* the NWN 2 story might suck, you end up arguing about whether it's a chosen one story, with the knowledge that its relationship to the chosen one storyline is indictive of its quality. Naturally, since everyone's idea of what a chosen one story is might very well differ, the argument becomes meaningless - a disagreement over semantics (which inevitably end up in a stalemate), instead of a discussion over the merits of actual story elements.

To be fair, his assessment was focused on one aspect (point of view), and almost all of his examples were taken from shooters and adventure games. The writer, to be frank, does not even try to integrate the storytelling successes of third person games like the FF's and the Infinity Engine games. Oblivion is a solid example of what he was talking about: the agency of the player, particularly if you never switch out of first person mode, is never violated. Yet does that make Oblivion a masterpiece of RPG storytelling? Eh...

Gah, every discussion ends up an argument over semantics. Who cares what "Chosen One" stands for? Argue the storyline, not the terminology.

To answer the original question: 40 hours on average is about where I'd put my bottom line. However, these days I seldom buy a game based on its OC alone. Ultimately, this question comes down to a judgment of worth. Forgetting the economics on the producer side for a moment, it seems to me that entertainment value is very diverse across different mediums. Example: Thirty minutes of dining in a high class restaurant: > $100. Two hour movies: $10. Hundreds of hours of gameplay: < $50. I have no doubt that "worth" is determined by the medium; what's up in the air is a consistent way of categorizing the mediums. What makes a movie tolerable at $5/hour while a game, at $2.5/hour, is heavily criticized? I see some arguing that it has to do with the "completeness" of the experience: a movie can provide a complete cinematic experience in two hours, and can therefore charge more for it. That's fine, but says very little about what aspect of an experience makes it worth more or less from our point of view. Can there ever be an hour long game worth $50? If not, why can high class restaurants charge you that much for a meal, which at the end of the day is simply another form of entertainment? Some possible approaches: maybe the worth of an experience is based on the level of bodily stimulation - hence, because games are less stimulating than films (arguable), their hours are worth less. Maybe it's based on rarity: a high-class restaurant can't be easily replicated, whereas a game, being software, can be. Maybe it's simply a matter of expectations: we've grown attached to long-lasting games and refuse change. Or maybe it's a internal value scale: we pay what we think the developers deserve, which would explain why games with crappy graphics are often expected to be cheaper than those with start-of-the-art rendering.

The reason many JRPGs take so long is because their battles are turn-based. The story length itself can usually be condensed within a 2-3 hour block, all things considered.

The natural counter-argument, then, is that a multi-polar world would be ideal... But that's clearly not acceptable by the movers of the world, or else the League of Nations & UN would have been successful. So I would argue that the desire for hegemony far exceeds the desire for a multi-polar world.

Power politics would have us believe that nations are locked in an endless struggle for regional and global dominance. The US policy for permanent global dominance, which I believe will be played out in the coming decades, will attest to the strength of this belief among leaders. However, one cannot but help wonder why global hegemony is so important. Certainly, the feeling of insecurity - of not wanting to become a victim of global forces - is a rational justification for grand mastery. With that, I can sympathize. However, surely those who desire absolute power over the world can see that the imperial apparatus necessary for that level of control would be more likely to create instability than promote peace and prosperity. When you forcibly take control of another people's destiny, exploitation is the natural result: the hegemony of any singular state for its own benefits will inevitably result in imperial inequity, which in turn sews the seeds of rebellion and necessitates a neverending string of preemptive strikes in order to keep the enemy from growing. On the other hand, economics would have us believe that the quest for global hegemony is a quest for limited natural resources. This philosophy would certainly fit with the Iraqi War. However, possession of natural resources like oil in this day and age seems rather pointless, as the projection of resource consumption indicates that any such attainment would be strictly temporary, and cannot be sustained. Moreover, one cannot imagine a stable world in which one nation would be allowed to simply extort resources from another. A return to the days of imperialism would mean forgetting decades of exploitation; I do not consider this sort of amnesia a plausible outcome. Postcolonial discourse suggests that the nature of all empires is to further the goals of a specific ethnic group, whose quest for dominance is the age-old, genetically coded desire to become the "master" race (whether through exterminating and enslaving "lesser" races as the Nazis attempted, or through the much simpler task of exploiting them economically). Therefore, the ascension of the US and Europe is a codified attempt to assert Western dominance, which is defined as the triumph of the Caucasian, property-owning male. The issue here, however, is that a world in which the Caucasian male dominates cannot be sustained, and is indeed not imaginable, since the average person would have little to gain from "racial superiority" barring exploiting/enslaving other races, which gets us back to the original problem of instability. One last argument remains - which is that global hegemony is simply the apparatus through which an elect group of society, ie those who hold political and economic power, protects their personal priviledges. That is, global hegemony is not a national goal but one shared by a group of individuals who managed to convince the nation otherwise. I cannot speak for the accuracy of such statements in respect to modern politics, but it seems to be true insofar as the beneficiaries of war have traditionally been restrictive. One would think that the US would never fight a war that would place it in such dramatic deficits, but there you have it. My question, as stated in the title, is as follows: what's the point of global hegemony? What is its ultimate end explained in the sense of a vision for the future? If living conditions in the US compared to Europe/Japan is of any indication, global dominance is not necessary for the maintenance of priviledge, and at any case militarly dominance certainly has little to do with it. So - what's the point?

Bold, but very true, I think. I don't subscribe to the Nazi notion of race war and genocide being the expected outcome of history, but nor do I think that everyone can simply put aside their differences and live in harmony. The Self is always defined in terms of the Other, and even if interracial copulation one day homogenizes the color line, we'll just find some other aspect of difference to "racialize" various groups.

Which is exactly why China is building up its military. It knows that the West cannot be trusted, and that even if it were to make amends to please the US or Europe, it can never be a true superpower in a world where the West sets the rules of engagement. And really, it's not at all about the one party communist wannabe capitalist etc. etc. etc. Political excuses are nice and all but deep down under, human beings are racists - we stick to those who look like us. European rhetoric is exactly that: words spoken out of dislike for American arrogance, not love of China. When push comes to shove, East and West are innately antagonistic and will remain so. Consequently, idealists (on both sides) who think that everything would be so much better if China simply bowed down to US/European demands and adopted Western democracy are kidding themselves. All that'll ever do is make the East the eternal subordinate of the West.

Yeah, but a revolution in China is as likely to turn against you as it is to benefit you. I thought that Iraq *should've* been a lesson, but apparently not.

I doubt it. North Korea, btw, wouldn't need conquest. They're already on the same side. And if the US attempts an embargo on China in the current political landscape, many other nations would be on their side as well.

Wait wait wait, who said China will attack the US? Plenty of countries in East Asia for China to attack if it became an extremist, ultranationalist regime. Moreover, with nuclear deterrents China would not be intimidated by US threats, and conventional US responses will be heavily bogged down by logistic and manpower issues. The US will be virtually powerless to stop a initial, blitzkrieg-style Chinese takeover of East Asia without resorting to nuclear war, and even if victory will eventually come ala WW2, it will be a hard fought battle that will once again darken an entire chapter of world history. Destroying a nation's economy is simply never a good idea. You think human right violations are a problem now? Raise the embargo and I guarantee it'll get alot worse, not only for China but for all the nations around its sphere of influence.

There is a difference between reality and ideal. Ideally, the US would be controlled by people who have the best interests of the world in mind. Realistically, the US is controlled by people who have only their own best interests in mind. China is no different - ideally, Communism would have worked. Realistically, it was the instrument of an authoritarian regime that killed millions. Regardless of how you feel about China, the living conditions of modern Chinese are made possible by foreign investment. If you remove that in protest to the Chinese government, the country would not only sink into poverty once again, but likely blame the US for it. Global stability would be lost, and WW3 would likely be the result. You have to understand a simple rule: the common people do not care all that much about politics. What they do care about is the economy. As long as the Chinese economy remains strong, the country has a very high chance of emerging peacefully and becoming a democracy. As soon as that is taken away China, like Germany after WW1, will fall straight into extremism, and with a country comprising 1/5th of the world's population, the results will be far worse than WW2.

No offense Hades, but you advocate isolationism for all of the US's problems, and if it were as easy as that China would never have been in the position that it is today, since the PRC came to power largely as a result of Western imperialism. The US will never isolate itself; as a consequence, all nations looking to become a mover in the global scene must do so with the knowledge that the US will attempt to either woo them or stop them. A embargo from the US on China will not be interpreted as a moral incentive, but as an act of global bullying to "keep China down." It will be interpreted as an act of war, and no one will benefit from it.

Not possible in both cases. A US trade embargo would actually worsen the situation (where did it not worsen the situation? I've got a long list of countries where the US trade embargo simply led to more suffering down the line, rather than the intended outcome of promoting democracy), since it'd encourage a ultranationalist regime to take power in China - one that is mostly distinctly hostile to the US and the rest of the world and which will be in a position to launch a war of conquest ala Germany in WW2. The US might survive the war, but I doubt any East Asian countries will. The problem with the Chinese government remains one of corruption: the central government, insofar as it goes, seems to be on the right track of promoting development and capitalism. The Chinese President, Hu Jintao, even announced a five year plan for redistributing the country's increasing wealth to these exact impoverished peasants you see here. However, any such attempt is held back by the inherent corruption of the bureaucracy, where local "officials" act like gang bosses in keeping the people down and the money to themselves. A crackdown of such corruption is made especially difficult by the fact that they own the police - and have enough friends in the central government to prevent easy ousting. One argument Western thinking likes to bat around is that China would be better off under a democracy. Frankly, I don't think so. The combination of democracy and capitalism has no way of preventing what you see here from happening - which is essentially the growing gap between rich and poor, and the exploiting of the poor by the rich (and the powerful, which in China is the same thing). In fact, the only revoultion I can see happening in China is not a democratic evolution but a return to the old Maoist form of Communism where 800 million peasants launch a Cultural Revolution against the intellectuals and capitalists in the country. Suffice to say, not a good idea. So ultimately, I have no clue as to what might eventually happen in China. However, I do know this: third world countries will never attain the benefits of true democracy. India has not (the class/caste system remains the dominant social device, despite democracy, and continues to impoverish and exploit the majority of the country), Iran has not, and neither will China. Only by becoming a first world country, it seems, can democracy really succeed.

The whole process is bogged down by the logistics of playing 300+ mods. According to what I read, the panel of judges, and in particular Kevin Bartlett, only played the top ~25 mods as voted by the community. This essentially means that both categories of the contest were "popularity" contests, to a large degree, and we'll never know whether some truly excellent mods were missed. But how is this different from real life job recruiting, where connections can land you a job over dozens of more qualified people whose resumes sit in the corner of an assitant's office gathering spider webs? The meritocratic ideal is never followed to the letter, and that's just the way the world works. I surmise that Bioware indeed never expected to receive so many contestant mods, and so set aside only a relatively short amount of time to reviewing them. Hence the necessity of basing perusal on community votes.

But eliminating the exploitive business class and returning the profit to the workers was one of the central tenets of Communism. We are obviously dealing with commies here! :D

Getting rid of the middle men and turning profits back to the workers that produce them!? This is Communism, I say! GDC is RED! :cool:

That's what I intended to do as well, but it made no narrative sense. The point of going to Kvatch was to fetch said person to safey, and going dungeon crawling to open the gates of the castle while he's in the church (or in toll) just felt wrong, especially since none of the guards there even acknowledged his presence. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to not talk to him until you're done with the castle quest. But damn, you'd think that after hyping up the narrative around the guy they'd expect you to search for him first as opposed to trying to retake the city, especially since he was standing right there in the chapel.

It's a huge immersion breaker because the narrative doesn't match up with the world. The problem with Oblivion is that it doesn't quite make sense, even if you started off following the narrative: Kvatch is apparently under siege by a legion of stunted scamps and daedric churls, which the guards make short work of at level 1. I happened to have followed the narrative at this point instead of going off to do side-quests (after all, saving the world is more important!), and it just felt out of place when the guard captain's all bravado and glee after defeating a few scamps. In the end, I feel more *forced* to do silly, out of character sidequests in Oblivion than almost any other game I've played simply out of a sense of wanting to play the game as it's meant to be played (which apparently isn't the same as following the narrative). That is - wanting to see Oblivion in all its glory, engaging in epic battles, etc. instead of finishing the game at level 1 after defeating a bunch of stunted scamps. Here's a game where I'm actually *afraid* to continue with the main quest lest I end up not experiencing 90% of the actual game. Oh and, whoever designed the main quest in Oblivion... There is a discontinuity smack in the middle of Kvatch when the captain ushers you on to recapture the castle but you're supposed to deliver a certain someone to a safe place. You'd think that the captain would understand that you've practically got the most important person in the empire with you, but no - he suggests that you attack the castle at once with that certain person in toll, despite the fact that he's the one person all of Oblivion is after. *shrug*