Amentep

The Chantry organized an Exalted March against the Dales (the second homeland destruction; the first was at the hands of the Tevinter Imperium, IIRC) named after the Exalted March against the Tevinter by Andraste. Again it may just be me, but I wish there was more in the game to cast doubt on what they have to say. Yeah Wynne isn't evil-crazy (and Morrigan may or may not be totally evil) but it just seems to me the game doesn't do enough to establish more doubt (beyond basic lip service; sure people SAY the Chantry's story is old and steeped in legends, but if we see little hint its wrong...)

I've never taken Oghren to the sacred urn - what does he say? I guess part of my problem is playing a Dalish elf early on I got a lot of opportunities to dis the Chantry but as time went on it seemed like I could only praise the Maker. That combined with the following: The Urn of Sacred Ashes exist - implies the Chantry is right. The entire Gauntlet implies the Chantry is right. That the Mages turn to blood magic and demons run rampant through the tower - implies the Chantry is right about magic. That the Arl's son becomes bonded with a demon and kills a bunch of people - implies the Chantry is right about magic. There's no option (that I could find) to destroy that Dwarven Chantry dude's faith in the Chantry. The Dragon-Gods of Tevinter being the focus of the blight - implies the Chantry is right (or that the Chantry created the blight). Combine that with their less than noble deeds...I dunno I just kept waiting for something in the game to cast a big doubt on what the Chantry says and it just doesn't. Even for all the "Well the Chantry says but it might be legend" stuff, most of it seems to be borne out by the game.

Or take Wynne along and control her and in adition to fire resistance potions taken by the entier party, make sure she does the following: heal, heal, heal, drink lyrium potion, heal, heal heal, heal, etc. I played through Dragon Age again and I think I finally put my finger on what bugged me on my previous go through the game. Not that I disliked the game; I enjoyed it and have beat it thrice now. But something about the story bugged me as I played, and I think I finally got it. The Chantry is right. Now I'm not against religion per se, but the Chantry apparently thinks nothing of subjegating others (exhalted march against the elves, for example). This wouldn't be so bad if the Chantry was shown to be fallable, but they're right about everything - while a lot of play is given to the idea that the Chantry only has one view of what caused the blight, everything else in the game seems to back the Chantry's version up. Everything seems to back the Chantry's view of the master maker. Which in turn seems to tacitly justify what they did to the elves. And I think that's why I kept feeling uneasy during the game - subconsiously I was waiting for the Chantry to be shown to not be 100% right in their claims...but nothing in the game seems to show that they aren't right. Or maybe I'm crazy.

Heartbreak + (Sausage

I don't know - while I don't keep track of it myself (had to look up the information) - I don't suppose its that weirder than aviation buffs who keep track of air kills in WWI or WWII. I suppose its a bit morbid, but I guess its somewhat understandable in our fascination with man vs man or man vs nature (I know people who talk about famous explorers and their exploits - even those that got them and their entire group killed - with affection due to the man vs nature aspect of the attempt they were making).

That's a pretty impressive looking store! Glad the thief got caught.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko had 309 confirmed kills EDIT: and I see I was beat to it (that's what I get for being distracted by reading the fate of Tanya Baramzina)

"The Merchant's Friend" Goddess of coin and wealth (Portfolio: money, trade, wealth). Enemies are Mask and the demon Graz'zt

lord of flies

Am I the only person who reads "the young lady who canvassed me" and envision some lady throwing a giant cloth over Wals?

Ask about Sex in Alpha Protocol

I saw it at the store over the weekend and now a small part of me regrets not having seen this thread before going there.

The Pterosaur is looking at me.

Not too surprisingly, the story has been pulled down (presumably because it was as fake as a $72,000 bill).

Sorry. Consider me chagrined and silenced on the point of the topic drift. Back to Fallout: New Vegas discussion! I personally have no problem with the red shield display as part of the abstraction of combat information and interaction.

Now that I can see; I think that has been a contraction in scope and depth in video games. I'm not sure if this is because of games being more popular (and thus supposedly "dumbed down" for the LCD player) or if its because of the weight of things that are expected (3D graphics, spoken dialogue, etc) compromises how much time can be spent bringing the story into a less narrow focus. While I enjoyed Dragon Age I did feel a bit like "this is it?" when I played it. I expected something much bigger in scope than what I got. Now I tend to mitigate my experience; I enjoyed what I got but what I got wasn't what I expected. I also wonder how much the slow merger of genres has effected things as well; does a modern RPG being realtime action has to also appeal to an action gamer as much as an RPGer in this day and age?

I'm agreeing with you to a certain extent. To sort of round off my thought, let me put it this way - a lot of the "depth" you mention is just making the games to reflect the pnp roots that they were building upon. Certainly the scope of Baldur's Gate or Fallout had already been done two decades prior in a variety of pnp sessions - possibly using GURPS, Tunnels and Trolls or Dungeons and Dragons as their system. So I don't see "being more like a pnp game than previous cRPGs" as being terribly innovative. Increased scope and depth are good, but again its building on the things that have already happened and seems to me to be a natural progression for cRPGs whose existence really stem from those pnp games. EDIT: About the games sucking or not - well hindsight is always 20-20. Its very easy to point to the past and say 'these games were great'. But give us ten years and we might see a lot of gems that right now we don't have proper perspective on. Or we may all agree it was a crappy period for games. That happens occasionally.

what games before these had the same cRPG depth? in game mechanics, quests, c&c, the way the systems affected the characters (saying the S.P.E.C.I.A.L., Traits, and Skills systems weren't original and innovative in the cRPG genre is...a bit silly, imo)? I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that the SPECIAL system wasn't the first system of its type - didn't Daggerfall use a skill based system the year before Fallout did? Wasn't Fallout supposed to use GURPS (and SPECIAL then does similar things to the GURPS system)? Didn't Wasteland (which Fallout started out as a sequel to) adopt the system from Tunnels and Trolls/Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes? Look I'm not saying the games aren't good, or aren't worthy of being considered top of the line. Something doesn't need to create a new wheel to do that. But to me and from everything I've seen and read, Fallout and Baldur's Gate were logical steps building on everything that came before them. Not a "new concept" game but more a culmination of all the good stuff that came before them.

Alpha Protocol: More Sex than Mass Effect, more interrogations than Fallout 3

The only difference I see is that there's a weaker market in PC then 10 years ago now (and I remember about 14 years ago the PCs were supposed to be dead, as they were about 10 years before that). Gamewise, it seems like video games are still pretty much follow the leader in terms of creating new games in particular genres. I do think that as technology has advanced, there's been less need for some genres (as their elements have been co-opted through technology - why do you need to create a game that's just a platformer when you can introduce platformer elements into your action-adventure game?) Ah. Well... I attended Juilliard... I'm a graduate of the Harvard business school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. I've seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT... NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU'RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY... NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK? You think I'm qualified? agreed. when the best answers to "What RPG in the past 5 years is as original and innovative as Fallout or Baldur's Gate" are either "Mass Effect!!!" or "Dragon Age!!!" i think we're in an obvious state of decline. Fallout and Baldur's Gate were really all that original and innovative? A game that would have been a sequel had they not lost the license and the umpteenth game in the D&D Forgotten Realms license? Don't get me wrong - I love both games. But I'm not sure I'd think of either as being totally groundbreaking. I'm willing to be convinced on the point, and both were really good...but...

Watched The Losers. Great fun. Loved the bit about how villains henchmen understand the meaning of "the nod". But good action and fun characters = fun.

When "gaming" became mainstream so "true gamers" had to differentiate themselves from those who just gamed on their off time I guess. Wouldn't that mean that true gamers consists solely of people who are paid to play games (reviewers, those in the game industry). I know I only ever game in my off time and always have. Cause my "on" time belongs to others... When they started to suck on a regular basis. Personally I haven't noticed them sucking anymore now than they did back in the days of the C64. Even taking into account personal taste, the signal to noise ratio on creative mediums are always going to be high in the disinteresting category. Or when gaming became so mainstream that a lot of what made it interesting vanished. The only thing that's really missing in modern gaming are the days where a major release was created by four people (or one person entirely). Of course you could argue that big money has created a situation where games tend to "play it safe" and are therefore rendered bland, but in my experience that's always been an element in games - not finding a new path that works but to take what worked for the other guy and make it work for you. Clones in essence...but then how many games can you name that are Donkey Kong clones from the early 80s?

I'm glad to hear that Aragast war isn't a hentai game in disguise - some of it looked good but I was a bit put off by the OTT sexual elements being presented. That mouse pad was a big "wha-huh?" when I saw it. Ended up not getting it. I'm playing Nier (which has its own "wha-huh?" element, I suppose ). Early impression so far is that Vagrant Story and Planescape: Torment had a torrid, secret love affair which gave birth to an action game with light RPG elements. This may actually make it seem more impressive than it really is (as those games have huge fan followings) but they were the games I thought of as I've played through it (and I'm fairly early in it so far, I think, so my opinion may change as time goes on). At its heart it is an action game built around hacking and slashing (the first thing you get to slash is sheep too, which seems to be a trend or something in games to beat up sheep) and flinging spells in a post-apocalyptic setting with some of the strangest characters and situations I've seen in a game in awhile (there has been one sequence so far entirely built up of text based puzzles in what has been mostly an action game in terms of gameplay!).

I liked the Strength screen. I loled.

Like a blob of black goo...