Amentep

Didn't say there weren't bugs - just acknowledging I haven't found them (yet). Again I never noticed that Force storm was overpowered (I'm pretty sure I used it, but I used a lot of skills and powers). Why would the Weapon Master be useless unless he picks Favored Weapon (Falchion)? Or by useless do you mean "not optimized to be the most effective he can be" ie gamebreakingly unstoppable.

Sometimes I wonder if "health" when used in a regenerating system would make more sense identifies as more of a luck/ability to dodge injury on things that should normally hit (ie it expresses a fatigue factor that will eventually cause a blow to hit and kill the player). Anyhow its an abstraction and you kind of have to figure on that sort of thing in games.

I thought that they bred very rarely with a horse or donkey? (But I hedged my bets and mentioned artificial mules (with a double word score reference to a fav C64 era game) although a quest to restore your Mules Mojo would be a worthy quest indeed).

I loved IWD so a hack and slash game of comparable nature would be most welcome.

While I didn't like the game supermuch, the Hook Horror fight in IWDII was fun. And I loved Dragon's Eye in IWDI. For future games, I'd like to see someone tackle the idea that the only way to defeat a giant monster is to invade its body, thus the tunnels become various parts of the body where you fight monster parasites while trying to get to the organ to defeat the creature. Imagine fighting a monster that IS the tunnel!

Dungeon Seige 3: Mule Rancher (or maybe that should be M.U.L.E. Rancher?)

I'm sorry but I'm failing in thinking of anything that would entice a player to keep going forward short of having no health at all and have the choices be Live/Die. The only health mechanics in games I've played are either regenerating health or health kits. So I'd really like to know what the alternative is. Because if you're low on life the ONLY encouragement to go forward is either (a) not being able to go back or (b) being able to see a merchant in front of you yelling "health, get yer free health here!" Regenerating health is a very passive; it offers little in the way of encouragement to do anything except stand there. Breaking off from what you are doing and running off for health refills on a regular basis is just busy work. Those are general statements, fo course, good game design can make any mechanic work if it integrates it properly into the gameworld. So basically what you're saying is that you hate regenerating health and health kits except for when you don't? I'm confused.

Lies! All lies! It is pure awesome buried in a layer of thick velveeta cheese.

Yeah, the gameplay "works". It's not so bad it's enough to make you uninstall the game, but just compare with other games. That was my point -- a DS sequel, if true to the spirit of the previous installments, should be about having fun killing hordes of monsters with friends first, telling a story and making the player involved with the characters second. This isn't really OE's specialty. As for balance... what's there to say? You don't need to be a min/maxer or be actively trying to break the game; just take Force Storm/Vampiric Feast/Chain Shot, and win-button your way to victory. Don't bother with anything else, chances are it's underpowered and/or not working as intended. Polish is quantified exactly by the amount of bugs present at release. Err... yeah. I dunno, to me I take the game I'm playing on the terms its giving me rather than compare it to every other game I've played. While there's a certain amount of logical correlation to be made between ones enjoyment of game A or game B, if I end up liking game A more it doesn't negate the enjoyment I had when playing game B. That I enjoyed the hack & slash of DS1 (the one time I played it) won't make me upset if DS3 has a different approach to the game. Provided the information I have beforehand let me figure I'll like DS3 on whatever terms it establishes for itself, then I'll be fine with trying to enjoy DS3 for what it is, not for what DS1 was. As for balance, again I choose to skills I want to use. If I find that Force Storm is making things too easy, I stop using Force Storm. But again I choose to play the game the way I want, so as I mentioned I have a hard time seeing balance issues as I'm not actively looking for a win button skill. As for bugs...I've never found any of the Obsidan games to have bugs that stopped me from playing the games (I understand the PC Alpha Protocol peeps are finding that to be the case, but I'm not playing it on PC so can't give a personal reaction to that. I can say that I've not experienced anything like the Inventory bug in Arcanum that ate plot related items 3/4 of the way through the game or the weird save game problems I had with Divinity II that would cause me to have to reboot to load a save and that would sometimes mix save games so Character A would load where character B had been at when I saved game B).

I had the same problem, but actually figured it was my controller, not the games (in fact I'd never even considered it was the games). I guess I need to break out my other controller and see if I still get the same thing.

I just had an image of thorton like that singing "Ooooh I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok, I sleep all NIGHT and I work all DAY!" as he plows through guards.

Or they could have kidnapped the lead designers and forced them to make the weapons system for them (and none of them thought of escaping by making a really cool personal armor battle suit like Tony Stark in IRON MAN).

IMO its sad it is unavailable on DVD (and long out of print on VHS) in the US.

I may be lacking in taste, but I've enjoyed playing all of Obsidian's games (with the exception of MotB which has a feeding mechanic that I hate in games and SoZ which my computer died while playing). So for me their gameplay has worked. Balance? I dunno if the games are properly balanced, but then I don't tend to spend a lot of time trying to find exploits or "the best character build" and things like that. I sorta pick a few skills I want to use and roll with it. Polish? I dunno how to quantify that in any meaningful way other than saying the non-gameplay elements have never made me think "if only..."

New Game + would allow me to do the first mission with the swamp hat and lumberjack beard though... :D

You're comparing bad design to bad design. I think having to run off back to town constantly to get health is just as bad as regen health. The former is probably worse actually since it is somewhat punitive. Regardless, I wouldn't have praise for either mechanic. Not sure I see why either is bad design. The design when a player gets themselves into this situation is typically because the player was less cautious than the scenario intended. And even if they are both bad design, you have expressed a preference for health kits, based on your previous statements. Either one is forcing you to manage resources (either your health bar directly or your health kit inventory) and both encourage you to be cautious during gameplay. Both offer penalties of time and/or in-game-money for trying to bull ones way through the game.

Krull is awesome - particularly the optical effect used on The Beast that for years made pan-and-scan versions of the film nearly incomprehensible (also has an early appearance by Liam Neeson). However the 80s were king for wild low-budget fantasy films, ranging from the good (Hawk the Slayer) to the hilarious (The Barbarians) the weird (Yor Hunter from the Future) and the cheesy (Ator the Fighting Eagle)

I'd imagine with Dark Sun returning for 4E that'd be the place to take a new game (since I don't think any of the Eberron 3e games did all that well...)

Not exactly inspiring. "If we make less ambitious game, people will care less if we fail!" At some point trying to make something big and failing is better than crapping out one mediocre game after another. Because obviously Square-Enix, GPG and Obsidian are looking at this and thinking "Man, look at the crap we can put out with this!" I mean that's just a silly argument. "Hey guys, we got the Dungeon Seige job!" "Yay! Now we only have to work half as hard as usual!" Ooo, ooo Ubisoft and Obsidan team up for a Phantasie remake! Obsidian gets the rights to do Wizardry 9! Obsidian and Interplay team for Lionheart 2! Obsidian and Namco team up for Mr. Driller: RPG! Obsidian and Lucasarts team up for Grim Fandango RPG!

IWD was a party based dungeon crawl, which I remember a lot of people feeling that it was overshadowed by Diablo 2 at release.

I wasn't crazy about DAII, but I did enjoy the Champions games. My hope - should gameplay go that route - that its something bigger and better than those games. I'm not sure how we'll find someone to replace you. Your 7 posts were gold. Pure gold, I tell you. Titan Quest 2 would have been fun; its a real pity Iron Lore closed down.

While it'd be nice for it to be a hit, wherever, "fun to play" is typically my only concern with games.

we is particular opposed to the retread o' any game for which the original publisher/developer is still 'round and may have influence on the development process. 'course, as you say, we is also opposed to any non-original IP. is like developer equivalent o' fan-fic.. at best it is a bit gauche. HA! Good Fun! Ah, I guess I understand your position. I'm more than happy personally to give a look at any game that piques my interest, sequel, remake, relaunch or original IP. In fact there are a few moldy IPs I'd like to see get revamped or relaunched (although most of them are from developers that don't exist any more or were swallowed up by other publishers (like SSI and Ubisoft).

I dunno Gromnir; is restarting a franchise necessarily a bad thing? Or is it simply because they're restarting a franchise that last had a game 4 years ago, as opposed to something like Wizardry (9 years)? Or would you be against making a game with any IP that wasn't original at this point?

To be fair, it isn't called CRATE SEIGE, so I figure crate discussions will come out naturally when discussing features.