Amentep

I really enjoyed that; personally I'm waiting for the release of the FES expansion.

I'm not really sure how open ended any game could be; I'd be happy if they took the Covenants and made sure that whichever ones they implement have a solid story built around that choice. But even that will be limited; I'm reminded of how in V:tM:R if you decide to state your intention to side against teh Camirilla with the free vampires your mission is...to keep working with the Camirila "undercover", basically keeping you on the rails for the game (not that I minded, its a fun game. Just gave me a laugh is all).

I'd hazard a guess that would be Michael Fitch, Creative Manager with THQ for Titan Quest, the guy who's statements about Iron Lore going under was the impetuous to start this thread...

Well I can't imagine those people who were copying & sharing games from the 5.25 inch disks (or worse, those dreaded cassette tapes some C64 games were on), were all that dissimilar to those who made illegal copies of games from multiple 3.5 disks or from the CD/DVD burners and the online streamers. Its mostly a matter of scale. Those guys on the C64 were still pretty limited in what they could pirate by who they knew and what they could afford to buy, make copies of, and return (if they could). Nowadays they have the whole world under their potential contacts...

I knew people pirating games during the C64 era back in the early 1980s. And by "people", I mean pretty much everyone I knew who had access to a C64. None of them had a problem with it; in fact most used the "I want to try it before I buy it" rationale, but dunno if that counts as "socially acceptable".

Well I'd love to see other games set in non-standard settings. Steampunk, western, 30s gangster/film noir-ish RPG...

hehehe, reminds me a bit of people I know talking about 2e vs 3e when 3e came out.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm sad to hear about this. I thought Titan Quest and Immortal Throne were quite good action games. I had a lot of fun with them, even with playing them on an underpowered system.

Which makes the better analogy, if one wants to use one, the author and/or publisher who find their copyrighted works distributed online, I guess. As to the story, I can't say its anything I haven't heard before (as Di points out). I also got a laugh that he mentioned the cost of programming for PC games that have to consider multitudes of PC configurations, hardware and so forth since someone a few years ago on another board tried to tell me there wasn't any extra complexity in designing for PC vs a console... Sad to hear about Iron Lore though. I quite liked Titan Quest and was looking forward to something else from them (yeah I'm behind on my game info.)

Have you read the stories it was based on? The last movie I saw was The Signal, a low budget horror film about a broadcast through TV/radio and phones that causes people to kill. Its "okay" at best; the movie was divided by three writer-directors into three different sections, so the whole is rather uneven. I thought the opening was weak with some very poor drama and dialogue, then picked up only to descend into people acting really stupid. The second part is the best of the three, and also the darkly funniest. But it also contains a number of "why are these people acting that stupid" moments. The third is mostly a chase/race story so there's little to it and the immediate end is somewhat let down by a lack of budget and some confusing psychology, but manages to be kinda okay. Couldn't say I could really recommend the film though.

Wherever I find something I'm interested in at a price that is reasonable to me. My normal shopping spot has a Best Buy, a Circuit City, a CompUSA, a GameStop and 2(!) EB Games within a short distance of one another (used to be a Media Play in there as well).

I'm currently playing Monster Madness. Well not currently, currently, as I'm here typing this message. But its what I've been playing when I've been playing. Took me 2 hours to clear a level too. Sheesh! I remember when action games weren't all that involved! It'd take like 20 minutes at most to shoot everything! Beyond that I have ESIII:O that I've been poking around with, and ESI:A which I stopped playing because the automap was confusing and I couldn't figure out where the heck I was.

designer fiat?

Saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Thought it was pretty fun but then I liked the original movie; I suspect that people who hated the original movie will find plenty to hate in this as well...

Huh, looks kinda interesting. *reads a bit of the NMA thread* *claws eyes out*

I've probably only got a few hundred games...

Several of the Final Fantasy games allow you to choose your class (and in the original one you created your own party). The recent FFs (X, X-2 and I believe XII) have a skill based system that allows you to choose the various class skills and build to your own preference. So odds are good the characters wouldn't be exactly the same. They would have still hit all the same high points though, cause the stories are linear though...

My head spins at the thought of so many games - mostly the thought of the time required to sample them all, hehe. Sorry, I meant "Atari 2600" not that I had 2600 games...

I hated that Star Trek game. I never could figure out what I was doing. Of course at the same age I couldn't figure out how to get past the roaring room in Zork, or how to get out of the school in Sorcerer (or was it Enchanter?) before starving to death.

Well the setting still exists, it was just folded back into the core rules. One could, I suppose, still create a planar based D&D story if one were able to get the rights.

I don't think there is an easy answer to this question, and I think that ultimately its going to come down to what one thinks personally (hence why its a constant area of debate). To me though, I think that one has to accept the fact that all computer based role-playing games are not capable of mirroring the freedom of the pen & paper equivilent. To put it mildly, you're always on rails of some sort, whether it be Final Fantasy's stat based story telling, Wizardry's relatively personality-less adventure party, or something like Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate or Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines which allows you a lot of freedom to define who the character is but forces you to hit all the same main storypoints regardless of how free you may be to solve side-quests. To me its mostly a matter of degree and I think that most people usually will weed out what moves a bit past their usual comfort zone of RPGs.

That was a pretty nuts-and-bolts interview. What's "hypey" about it? I read it again and youre right. It was just the last line which left a bad impression in my mind. Sounds to me like he's saying its not going to be a "short" or "minor" expansion, like some have called, oh say Shadow of Undrinetide or Heart of Winter. Which - if it turns out to be a fully rounded game in its own right - will be a fair comment I think.

Right now I'm playing Neverwinter Nights 2.

Cain and Boyarsky are supposedly still in the industry last I heard - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/77/13 - "Boyarsky works in the industry, but wouldn't say where on record". Jason Anderson moved to Phoenix with his wife and works in real estate now. No rumours on where Boyarsky works at, but Cain is rumoured to be working at NCSoft.

Thanks! I wish I could remember more of my 2600 games. And I used to have a lot more C64 games (the one I miss the most being Phantasy) I love being a giant monster smashing buildings and stuff. I have one of the Godzilla games, but I can't remember the name. Godzilla: Save Our Earth maybe?