Amentep

am very disappointed in you. did we not thoroughly and complete exorcise this demon during the past couple years? the ie games, ALL the ie games, were listed as inspirations for poe... along with other unnamed crpgs from the increasing distant past. no "spiritual successor" nonsense from obsidian. evar. Would you rather I say "homage" - like Obsidian did in their Kickstarter pitch ("Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.") than "Spiritual Successor"? I'm not sure such a semantic split is necessary, but I suppose that depends on what you see a Spiritual Successor means...

Sure, but it is their first game using it. And they had to create the systems and mechanics (stats, how they're used). That's all stuff a BG2 would have benefited from that a PoE can't. Heck even IWD and PST had the benefit of BG already existing even though they were BIS's first shot at the IE engine.

It can put a constraint on the scope of the game though. BG2, for example, has the benefit of an engine, systems and assets made for it (through the production of BG1) that BG1 didn't. Therefore time that was eaten by working on the engine or working on assets isn't a factor for BG2 like it was for BG1, that development time can be spent elsewhere. PoE did have Obs working on a new engine and having to create all their assets and develop their systems. Now I'm not saying PoE and BG2 aren't a fair comparison (IMO its all fair game), all I'm saying is that I can buy an argument that if you want to look at what's potential with development time, a first game might make more sense compared to another first game.

Doing a quick google search, trying to find a picture of Rihanna with a closter facial angle the best I can say is that I think the nose and brow line might be the similar. Mouth and jawline are pretty different IMO.

’Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself though, not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O! be some other name: What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself.

IIRC the thread limits were instituted after a board upgrade on the old BIS boards.1 The rationale was that threads of very long length became issues within the database. In BIS's case, it created the "Black Hole" thread, where you could post and the reply wouldn't show up. Or it would, randomly inserted somewhere in the thread making replies come pages before the message they're replying to. Eventually it caused a destabilization of the entire forum, screwed up indexing and ultimately ended up with the nuking of that board and moving to another. I'm assuming that the issue wasn't specific to any BBS or server and so has continued on so that a new "Black Hole" isn't ever created. 1It's been awhile, so I could be wrong.

To be fair, PST wasn't an instant classic. It took a few years for its reputation to be built; I remember being at BIS (and moderating the PST forums) and there were a lot of people who just plain didn't like it at the time.

I think you have not thought enough about this. If you are asking "What are the game made EXACTLY In 1998 which we take for context?" then it is an arbitrary judgment. AN year is not a metric of a formal comparison for contexts. The point in that PST, a game considered by many to be one of the best story tellings in RPGs was made in close vicinity of BG. That fact alone is sufficient to say that people in the relatively similar contexts of storytelling of BG could think about superior stories. Which is all that needs to be said. Same for DX. DX was being made before BG was released. So people in that time could and did come up with better stories. Is that not what context means? All this shows is that BG, which in my opinion had a bad plot and story telling can not be considered as a standard of comparison for storytelling in general. Okay, I understand what you're saying. However, you could argue that the first game in a new series (BG) is a more apt comparison to a first game in a new series (PoE) than the second game (BG2) to the first (PoE). Just because there are other comparisons that can be made doesn't make any one more/less valid than the other.

1) I think it is possible to be able to recognize that something is of good quality without necessarily being something that appeals to you; I wouldn't have called it "surprised" exactly, but I affirm it happens. For example I don't like a lot of crime stories, but I can recognize when I see a good one even though it's going to have a tough time actually appealing to me. Partially this is due to the fact that you can recognize the merit of the individual part (story structure, dialogue, character, game systems, etc) even if the total isn't personally appealing to ones personal taste. 2 & 3) I think bias recognition is going to be something that you recognize over time with a reviewer. First review from Darth Roxxor I have no clue what his biases are, so its harder to be able to relate what he might feel to how I might feel. Which is why the review is so ultimately irrelevant to my perspective of things - I just don't have enough context to make a decision as to whether the review is...well anything. 4) I'm not sure I'd call either example unenlightened. The first is merely one from a very different context from mine - but certainly I don't think a review has to be from someone who understand the complete context of the game industry to be able to make a valid observation; the second is a poor one because it reviews something other than the game (ie Oster's opinions).

I haven't finished because I keep restarting around the beginning of Act II...

I'm not sure what you mean here. Who are "they"? What kind of context are you building your comparison with? Game maker (Black Isle and Ion Storm are not Obsidian Entertainement)? Age (2007 is 8 years from PoE and MotB and Deus Ex is 2 years later than BG)? Gamestyle (Deus Ex and MotB are both 3D action RPG games, First Person and Third Person respectively)?

If you hate science fiction, it'll be readily apparent in your reviews. The need to clarify that (beyond, perhaps, the most introductory) would ultimately be unnecessary. Roger Moore (not the actor) is a film critic who I disagree with almost completely on film. But he's rather consistent and its relatively easy for me to see from his reviews whether I'd like something or not. In that instance, his job in personally reviewing a movie works as I can still use his opinion to make informed choices on what I might like to see. While recognizing bias is good, I'm not sure its necessary. And to me, not recognizing bias doesn't render a review "dishonest", it merely makes the review subjective...which it already is. Dishonesty in a review would only come if you're not being honest about your opinions and interpretations. What would be an "uninlightened opinion"? How many years of game design and theory should I have before I can make an enlightened opinion? Probably the only review that I think would be "bad" would be one in which the person didn't try to fairly engage in it at some point.

"Relative context of time" - you can discuss the relationship of a game to its relative context and then their relative contexts to their own. ie BG's narrative vs other games narratives in 1998 contrasted with PoE's narratives vs other games narratives in 2015. In other words, do the games compare within their relative contexts to one another (with respect to their "time" in video game production).

Question for reals - Why has Sensuki not liking a game suddenly become open season to ascribe a motive to him for not liking the game (beyond that...he doesn't like the game) and then argue against that motive? I mean really, why the hell does anyone care (beyond normal posting on a message board kind of care) that Sensuki doesn't like the game? Or that Darth Roxxor doesn't like the game? And why constantly try to diminish their dislike of the game by ascribing these motives to them. Does it allow you to disregard their opinions by declaring them "sour grapes" (whether they are or not)? Does it make you're liking the game somehow more "legitimate" if you can dispel the notion that someone might honestly dislike the game?

To be fair, when you advertise your game as the spiritual successor to BG (and IWD and PST) then comparisons to BG would seem to be natural. And even if comparisons directly between a modern game and an 15 year old game weren't "reasonable" (something I don't agree with) you could still make comparisons to how they are relative to their respective contexts of time.

How do you have the stronghold on act 1? Act 1 ends when you get the stronghold.

Yeah I enjoyed RIPD too - its hard to believe it took a 15 years for someone to try a legitimate Big Budget MiB clone.

The only opinion that ultimately matters to me is my own.

I fixed the stat system too. Mine involved 256 individual stats, the ability to assign 1,024 points between the stats, and a 70 minute power point presentation entitled "How to determine your new PoE character with this new stat system in 120 easy flow charts" with accompanying 120 flow charts as hand-outs.

SPACE OPERA ESPIONAGE!

People change the end of stories because they realize that the story works better with change. This really isn't the same thing but I knew a fictional example was dicey... My point is that a review will ultimately be your judgement. If you get to the end of an article that is based solely on your judgement and are surprised at the results, there's something uncannily self-unaware in yourself to not realize what your own judgement is.

No, god damn no. That's the opposite of a review. That's a simple rationalization of the persons own gut reaction and biases. A review is the opposite, namely a careful and honest analysis of the individual elements of the game, which then grounds a fair conclusion based on this, despite of what oppinion the person had prior to writing it. If done well, the conclusion is often supprising to the reviewer him/her-self. Ultimately all a review is a report of an evaluation or inspection of something. The criteria of the evaluation is just as valid if it is "did I like it" or "is this a good representation of its type" or even "how does this compare to genre leader". And frankly (and IMO) it'd be impossible for a reviewer to be surprised by their own conclusions, only surprised by the thing they reviewed. What you're arguing for would be the fiction writing equivalent of Agatha Christie getting to the end a novel and thinking "The sister is the killer? That Poirot - what a surprising little man, I totally thought the butler did it..."

All they had to do with the memorial was review submission, type it in file, press "save" and double checking final results. I'm sure they totally could have solved 5-6 critical bugs in that time. Such a waste of their resources...

mediocre bland RPGs like PoE could happen But they OWN PoE, I said IPs they don't own (like the thread starters suggestion, KOTOR III)

It can't all be Erol Otus.