Amentep

Right, but I'd think that a fighter who specializes in sneaking would have to be paying a penalty to some other skill that would diminish their effectiveness in combat or other aspect of gameplay. Hence why I also suggested a "battle mage" build as opposed to a support one who might have an invisibility spell and a sound damping spell at the cost of not having as many combat spells to choose from.

PnP diplomacy can always be trumped by the DM. If a band of orcs are slaughtering the country side, the DM should have the orcs attack rather than parley. There's got to be some logic behind what is happening and the DM should control that logic. But that's the advantage of PnP, that things a lot more flexible than they'll ever be in a programmed game. It doesn't really solve the issue of avoiding combat becoming the best solution though. Wouldn't - in a well designed system - the best solution be based on the party build? ie, if you have a group of fighters and battle mages then surely the outlay of resources is going to be minimal compared to having the same group try a diplomatic or sneaky solution?

Sometimes good reviews make me go back to a game I don't like (case in point, Demon Souls). But I'm like you, I tend not to spend an inordinate amount of time on games I don't like (nor do I spend much time worrying about it if I didn't like it). I enjoyed Fallout 3. Was it as "good" as Fallout 1 and 2? I think I probably liked FO1 and 2 better - although all three games suffer from issues that if I wanted to complain about I could. But part of enjoying a game (IMO) is enjoying it for what it is rather than criticizing it for what it isn't; I can see flaws in these games and understand why others don't like particular entries but for me I find enough to enjoy and embrace that the negatives are outweighed.

No it's not the same because Risen, Gothic or Morrowind where never Turn Based. But to use your on example (The TES Series). Big Announcement from Bethesda. The Elderscrolls VI: Summerset New game Facts: Top Down Turn Based Combat. 5x5 square miles map with one village. Communicating in sign language. And it's set in the late stone age. Oh and there will be never ever again a traditional TES Style. Du you really think TES Fans would be cool with this? Even if it's a very good game. The fans would scream BETRAYAL. As a fan of Fallout 1 and 2 I didn't scream BETRAYAL when Fallout 3 was made. And frankly if Bethesda did the above with the Elder Scrolls games I also wouldn't scream BETRAYAL. Heck I didn't even scream BETRAYAL when Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was announced, nor when it shaped up to be a poorly conceived game. I'll look at the game they choose to make and evaluate it on what it is and whether what it is seems to be something I'd like to play. The rest of it is kind of irrelevant to me. Probably because to me the thing I like about Fallout is the 50s inspired apocalypse setting more than the turn based combat found in the original game. Others seem to think that Fallout can't be Fallout without TB combat. YMMV.

Yeah, MGM went bankrupt and couldn't afford to release it. They also had to digitally alter the film so the Chinese weren't the bad guys so they could release it in China. I was more thinking of MGM's bankruptcy; had the movie been stronger, I don't think it would have sat on the shelf for 2 years. One of the other studios would have snagged it.

Well Calax's parents seem to be going into the "as long as we pay something towards you, we have the right to tell you what to do" territory which is a bit foreign to me (although I know people like that). But I suspect that's really just an excuse for his parents to justify trying to tell him what they want him to do (well meaning or not, its a good way to alienate adult children).

That frustrated me, to be honest. I didn't know what happened in the Arrival DLC (since I had no way to get it and had been offline mostly for some time) so I didn't know why I was grounded under house arrest. Only later did I read what had happened in Arrival. Too bad EA doesn't release compilation editions of their games + expansions when building a game that relies on those expansions for narrative hooks...

Neither did I. My parents attitude was the only person who can lock a door in the house was them since they owned it and if you had a guest in the house, you didn't close the door to the room. I can't say that it was unreasonable.

There's probably a reason the Red Dawn remake sat for 2 years before being released...

Not when it looks as cool as it does in that game. I still haven't bought it, but I did enjoy the demo. Glad to know I'm not crazy I've actually beaten the game multiple times and yet I still like picking it up from time to time and taking on some giant monster. And just walking around the landscapes and bashing stuff. Interested to see what they do for the sequel. A PC version would have been great; pity there wasn't one. I've also been trying Demon Souls and Dark Souls and I have to say I just can't get into either game. Logically, I can see why people like it, but I've read a lot about how people feel a certain degree of catharsis from overcoming a challenge. I mostly just dread finding the next challenge that I have to repeat-repeat-repeat. I stopped of Demon Souls at a level where you're underground and it just grated my nerves having to go through another tunnel. I'm suspecting both games aren't for me.

Yea, this. If this was a PR guy from Activision reviving the Torment "franchise" by saying the exact say **** Fargo's saying people would be screaming bloody murder. And if EA said that they wanted to make an IE inspired game i wouldn't have given them 1$. If this was a PR guy from Activision reviving the Torment "franchise",i wouldn't give a **** about the game. If Obsidian or inXile had the Fallout franchise i would be happy. For Beth's i don't care. *shrug* as much as EA or Activision seem to not make games I'm interested in, I'd wait out to hear how the game is shaping up / see footage / etc before making any complaints. Not liking the business decisions a company makes doesn't mean they can't make (even if its accidental) a decent game. Mind you I tend not to scream "bloody murder" in general about video games since, generally speaking, I just don't pay or play games that don't interest me. And if this sequel shapes up to be terrible, then I'll happily skip it too.

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma again. Is it sad that I still enjoy running up and down the countryside, jumping on giant monsters and stabbing them in the face no matter how many times I do it?

Tacos.

The forum badges apparently are going up when the fulfillment site goes up. Also, we should get a secret handshake.* * you may have to make your own

Wasn't he interrupted before he could do that? I saw the movie twice in the theater and I actually can't remember. Something happens.

My objection is that (especially given the restraint), there's no point in naming the game Torment aside from tugging on the heart strings since people highly regard the game Torment. For the same reason I'm not a fan of Interplay reviving the old Black Isle Studios name. It's manipulative and not necessary. Stating that they want to make a torment style game would be fine. But noooo, they are naming this game Torment straight up, and have said "Torment games have these themes." What made Torment amazing was that it was new, fresh, and unexpected. He's already handicapped himself for what the game's themes can be (i.e. a rehash of the same themes explored in Torment, so what was surprising and unique in the original game is now being leveraged to acquire more money, all the while undermining the potential for being surprised and unique in the same way that the original game could be." How has he handicapped himself? If he'd said that he was making a "torment style game" and said it'll have "these themes because we see this as the thematic aspects of Torment that will make a torment style game"...how does it matter what they name it? Your problem still seems to boil down to "I don't like them using the name" for no other reason than, apparently the name is sacrosanct. But they're still doing their own thing; they've defined Torment 2 within a context, but they could have defined that same context without calling it Torment 2; the idea that they've limited themselves is ridiculous because they've only limited themselves in ways in which they'd have to limit themselves - to define what it is they want to do. And doing Wasteland 2 isn't? Doing Project Eternity and mentioning Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale (and yes, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT) isn't? All of these kickstarters have used a hook, a way to boil down the essence of what the pledge is going for. And really Planescape: Torment is a "powerful franchise"...that never got a sequel back when the original Black isle could have done it? But how does development of this game effect PST at all? Is Fargo going to use the kickstarter to hire a bevy of break-in artists to snatch every existing copy of PST from the houses and vaults of the unsuspecting? Seriously, how has the "novel new funding mechanism that frees developers from their creative shackles" really done in terms of inventiveness? Project: Eternity - sold as a successor to IE games, heavily promoted BG, IWD, PST Wasteland 2 - sequel Shadowrun Returns - sequel and adaption of existing game system Star Citizen - sold on strength of connections to Wing Commander and Privateer / Freelancer Broken Sword - sequel Leisure Suit Larry - sequel Grim Dawn - spiritual successor to Titan Quest (using some of the same assets) and so on. Even most of the non-sequels are usually setting themselves up as "like [thing x]". So again, how new/novel is the stuff we're getting? Not much to my mind. Doesn't mean it isn't good or worth supporting, but I haven't seen anything that is shackle freeing (in the sense that defining a project will always shackle it in some fashion). And yet there are already arguments over things like power cool-downs, romances, level scaling and things like that and whether that makes Project Eternity a "real" successor. Anytime you frame a new creative endevor as "like" something else, there are going to be people who don't like it. And there are going to be people who dislike something - regardless of its quality - because they don't like the name. Maybe the game will be good. Maybe it'll be bad. But I'm not going to sweat the fact that they've decided to call it "Torment" of some kind. It is limiting, because we as gamers already know what the game is going to be about - the new and fresh themes that were established in the original. Which is completely contrary to what PST delivered (since Torment 2 is bound to attempt to recreate what PST delivered, lest it be a failure). Might as well just say "we're going to wow you just the same as PST did!" and step on your landmine right from the get go. No we don't know what its going to be about because we haven't played it. And again, had Fargo came out and said - "yeah we're doing a game and its going to have these themes" you wouldn't be saying he'd limited himself, because at some point he has to define what the game will be. The problem here is that they're calling it "Torment" and you see that as a slap to the face of torment fans. And that's fair enough. But I figure a game needs to be evaluated on what it is and whether it works for what it does, not for what its called or not even what the game its supposed to be like was.

Of course it does. But so does saying a game is "inspired" by the Infinity Engine. The arguments down in PE's forums show that not everyone agrees as to what "inspired by the IE" should be. BG2 style romance arguments, anyone? So your objection is less that this game has tenuous ties to the original game but that you'd like it to have less ties to anything and be more original? Because a lot of people in this thread are arguing the game can't be "good" unless it has more ties to PST (in fact many seeming to have wanted a direct sequel with the same characters). Which kind of proves my point; everyone has a different perception of what "Torment" means - including Fargo. The game that (may) get made will be his (and his teams) perception. That's not limiting - but if you want to see it as such, any game they made would be limited by the creative group's perception of what the game "is".

Boss probably shouldn't be making fun of people's names. Not terribly good boss-like behavior.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet;

For me, the real issue is "why call it Torment?" The things he listed are things I want in pretty much all my RPGs. But in calling it Torment, you still have a better hook for what their goal is than if they just stated the things he listed.

“There is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark"” While I like DSotM, I probably like Wish You Were Here a little better. And of course Syd Barrett was a genius, so Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Saucerful of Secrets are must listens since he's on Piper (and possibly some of Secrets). Albums I always go back to (as well as some of their movie music, like Obscured by Clouds). Also -

Ditto. C64 was awesome. Less awesome was the Apple IIe that we borrowed (that may be because of the crappy half-done games we tried to make on it, though). I actually didn't take a dip into the Windows/PC stuff until 1999 (missing out on many classic PC games in the process).

Right...but would the fans of Planescape Torment be pleased with a game that could be summed up as "TNO and crew fight their way out of the Blood War"? I'm under the impression that that kind of "actiony" concept actually isn't what fans of the game would want. Again I'm not saying that a direct sequel is impossible, you can do a direct sequel to anything. But you need a bigger hook than tying up the loose ends from the previous story. The character arc for TNO is wrapped up so what new character story are you bringing to the table?

Neither Dak'kon or Neeshka are immortal (or shouldn't be as both were regular members of their races unless I'm forgetting something). The other maybe, but I'm not sure I'd be jumping at "Morte, Ignus, Vhailor and FFG travel the planes looking for TNO in the Blood War" game either. What is the narrative hook outside of trying to tidy up the ending of the previous game and put a bow on it? Arguably I'd imagine a sequel like that - which exists solely on wrapping up dangling thread from the first game without a stronger narrative hook to give the new game its own identity - would lessen the impact of the first game, to be honest. EDIT: Clarity again