Amentep

Vanity view = I hated having to run up to walls and spin the camera around to try and get a close up look at my character & what they were wearing in other games...

Yeah I've read that here - I just find it interesting how the gamesite previews have such disparate takes on the game (some that don't seem to match what the devs have said).

Hmmm, the information seems to be conflicting over the story aspect of the game.

My only hope from an action RPG is that it not be too fiddlely. And by that I mean if I have a button to attack, one to do a "special attack (magic/skill)", one to feint, one to dodge left, one to dodge right, one to block, one to jump, one to parry, one to dodge roll left, one to dodge roll right, one to switch weapons, one to switch spells/skills then I'm never going to remember it and will spend most of the fight trying to figure out what button I'm supposed to press until I die.

I thought that went without saying? You can have a different magic system that does squat in any game, or does something but requires you to sacrifice small goats every 3 minutes and isn't fun.

I have hope that we'll get something interesting and different though.

Plus you'd have to account for every possible combination of spells (otherwise its not mix and match its "occasional additional effect - find what works!" system).

Lets see: SPEED RACER - this is such a fun film; I still think its a shame it didn't find a wider audience. MONSTERS VS ALIENS - what can I say, I'm a sucker for 50s themed monsters...and fighting aliens! Also BOB is hilarious. THE DARK KNIGHT - Its still a bit longish feeling, and I think the end isn't as clear as it could have been, but its a great Batman-via-crime-drama film. AVATAR - still think its a little preachy in its pro-environment, human consumption = evil, and its not terribly original, yet it manages to compost all of its elements into an entertaining whole. BOTTLE ROCKET - didn't get into it, thought it wasn't terribly funny and the finale - "a heist" is weak.

Cover to Marvel Comics' Thunderbolts #128 by Francesco Mattina

Which wouldn't really be what I'd want, obviously.

Like that's any better. How about awesome and useful spells instead? Because its better than the typical fireball, ice cone, lightning bolt, rock toss type spells? My idea is that if the creators don't have to fall back to the old standards maybe it'd cause some "outside the box" thinking in terms of spells.

Yeah to tell the truth its been so long since I played Dungeon Seige, I honestly can't remember what magic was like there.

I would love a game that didn't use the classic elements (Greek: fire, water, wind, earth, aethir) instead looking at a different system (for example Chinese: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water or Alchemy: Sulpher, Mercury, Salt (the tri prima of Paracelsus))

Aye. Also, most consol-games atm don't involve the player at all. You end up watching a "movie", then you're allowed to click your right thumb off for 3 minutes for some mindless grinding, then it's back to a movie again.. Quite boring. I really loved the old co-ops, like Gauntlet. Imho, the more the player can be involved all the time, the better. J. My brother enjoys playing Guantlet like games with me (he's not the gamer he was) but he tends to get turned off by excessive "movies" in games that have more story than Gauntlet. It bores him to sit through the movies or cutscenes. A few games that had skippable cutscenes, I'd play for awhile and then get him to play so we could skip the cut scenes without missing out on what we were actually supposed to do or where we were supposed to go.

Thanks for the answer; I first played Diablo on the PS1 (although I did end up with the original PC version later). Playing it with a controler doesn't really make it that much different from other action based RPGs, in my experience (in fact it reminded me a lot of Arcus Odyssey for the Genesis playing Diablo on a console).

Are there any other co-op action RPGs (or even non co-op) that you have liked that stand out in your memory?

By making a good game, getting people excited about and having them buy it, enjoy it and tell their friends about who also buy it and enjoy it?

I never played Torchlight (as my game computer has been belly up since before it was released).

Action Mule!

I think as well Obsidian shouldn't be a narrow focus developer (RPG genre is probably as narrow as one would want to go). Plus - as someone who likes a good hack/slash game or dungeon crawler or aRPG, I can say its been some time since we've had a good one (IMO). Titan Quest may have been the last one I played that I really, really liked.

Most of the press remarks seem to imply its alpha or pre-alpha.

My thought on this - and of course everyone comes from a different place in what works for them in a game - is that starting off with "bad aim" and allowing the character go to "super aim" through use of skill points allows the player to get a sense of building their character and also creates a certain value to the gun skill. If a character starts with good aim and moves to great aim than the player may not feel sufficiently rewarded by their choice to spend points in guns. In fact if you start with good aim, it is an encouragement to dump points away from guns making the guns a weak skill tree because you'll probably be able to satisfactorily hit things without putting any points into the gun skills. This way - rightly or wrongly - forces players to live with their choices. Now I say this as someone who is not generally gifted at shooters but never felt that my weak gun skills in the game actually hampered anything. Sure I couldn't shoot anything early on, but I'd put more points into martial arts and quite appropriately had a much easier time rushing opponents and attacking than I did guns, rewarding me with results based on the skill points I used. As I developed my character my gun skills became more versatile in their use. I never put any points into SMGs but could still use them to waste ammo and keep opponents from rushing me.

It was intentional for gameplay. I'm pretty sure of that. Though it would be nice if that stuff could be modded. Just hope with us that Obsidian decides to help its Mod Community. >_ I think its intentional for gameplay to make each of the upgrades do something of import, but I also can't help but wonder if it was also to help further distance the guns from real-world ones (since I seem to recall there was a lot of talk about them not wanting to have to license from the manufacturers the real guns).

I remember writing a story and had everything plotted out and the character did this and then this happened and so on. It was well reviewed by my peers except one thing. I was asked - "Why didn't character A do action B when confronted with challenge C?" The obvious answer is that the author didn't think of it, and if he doesn't the characters can't either. I think with the above example

Depends on the game. You can use a combo of having some slow health/mana regen + making potions fall so frequently one rarely has to buy them, for example. I don't think I ever bought a potion in Titan Quest. heh But yeah, I do get your point. Most games there's something you're going to go back to town for on a too-often basis, where to buy or sell or turn in quests if there's a main town hub etc. I think one thing to remember in the difference between tanks and archers though, is that - assuming a system with health potions and limited arrows - a tank is not going to be required to use a health potion after every fight but that an archer will use part of their arrow inventory in every fight. This will necessitate an archer having to go back to the stores much more often than a tank (and possibly more often than a mana using magic caster who replenishes with mana potions). I remember my archer character in CHAMPIONS OF NORRATH for example. To be useful I often maxed my carry weight with arrows. Because other players were tired of having to go back to the merchants for me to buy arrows (and as an archer based character I wasn't terribly useful switched to combat). But that meant I couldn't pick *anything* up without a lot of dropping and picking up items so I could switch a worn item with a new drop or requesting another player to pick it up for me until I had enough "weight" free to pick up the item from them. I also remember in the IE games feeling forced by ammo limitation for characters whose primary attack was non-magical distance attacks - bows, crossbows, darts or slings - to load them down with ammo so that they didn't rush into melee barehanded before I could replenish their stock (a type of inventory micromanagement I never enjoyed). At least IWD2 gave me plenty of returning Ice Darts as loot.