RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS!

[Rostere]

Aw, this warms my black heart

http://www.gog.com/e...urs_gate_series

 

Oooh, decided to pick up the Icewind Dale series. For some reason back in the day I never grabbed those, so it will be a fresh experience for me. Should tide me over a bit with the Eternity excitement.

 

You're in for a real treat!

[Serrano]

Aw, this warms my black heart

http://www.gog.com/e...urs_gate_series

 

Oooh, decided to pick up the Icewind Dale series. For some reason back in the day I never grabbed those, so it will be a fresh experience for me. Should tide me over a bit with the Eternity excitement.

 

Don't forget that Black Isles released a free expansion for IWD called Trials of the Luremaster which you can download from here. You need the expansion Heart of Winter to run it though.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Serrano

[Drowsy Emperor]

It'd be nice if we had a fantasy series that was genuinely different from the tolkien "Elves are awesome and nature lovers, Dwarves are awesome and miners, Humans are awesome and the most powerful of the "Good" races." I mean I understand that having elves dwarves goblins etc means that you can play with the concept of racism.... but it just gets old, and you can yutz with the racism JUST USING ONE SPECIES.

 

I donno... Maybe a setting like the one found in Black Company? (Oh shut up, it's my favorite book, and is significantly different from Tolkien... there is a GOD that's a TREE... and is warping the reality around it so there's flying wales, talking rocks that teleport, and all sorts of weird stuff going on.) Or something more along the lines of Clockwork tech.

 

Heh, did you ever read much about the Eberron setting that got made for DnD 3.5? The Orcs, Goblins, etc were the nature lovers and had previously had the classically inspired great civilised empire.. the elves were split between a "mongol horde" group and an "uber-fantasy version of egyptian style ancestor/death worship" (for the simplified explanation). Gnomes were information manipulators, spies, bankers and mercantile masters... That and dragons were not simple "big magic beasties to kill" but were more likely to be Magnificent Bastard manipulators wrapped in engimas, and hidden in the shadows pulling strings over centuries..

 

Eberron is nice, certainly better than the vanilla setting. I remember reading it and thinking that not everything was as clearly explained as it could be.

[Majek]

Playing Icewind dale for the first time? THose are some good memories.

 

edit:Serrano Trials of the Luremaster is included in GOG version! As is Heart of Winter of course.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Majek

[Serrano]

Sorry, I seem to be skipping over important details a lot this weekend.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I DON'T BELIEVE IT, FFS! THEY ACTUALLY INCLUDED A GAY ROMANCE IN BG1EE.

 

****ING MONKEYS!

 

That's their enhancement? Jesus christ, a year of work on an old game they just needed to polish up and they have to include such irrelevant bull****, just because some retards badger for it every single time.

 

What the **** is wrong with Bioware employees, its like everyone who spent a day working there is incapable of making a game without gay romances, and feels compelled to include it every****ingwhere. What's going to happen if they get to do a Super Mario remake? Is it going to be Mario or Luigi?

 

WTF!

Edited September 16, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[Lexx]

I thought all new companions have romance options or something like that.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Who the hell wants romances in BG1? WHY? Its a BG2 thing, like the only game where it was done halfway decently - where does this idiotic need to a romance in everything come from?

[Humanoid]

If you squint, at least there's the upside of them not retrofitting romances to the existing NPCs...

[Hurlshort]

I agree that romances are goofy and have become too important in RPG's. So I'm against romances in general.

 

However, Bioware is making a social statement when they include gay romances. It's similar to the whole green movement of many recent movies. Avatar, Wall-e, The Lorax; these are all movies designed around the idea that corporations are bad and the earth needs to be protected. Final Fantasy carries those themes as well. While it can be preachy, it isn't necessarily a bad thing to get people thinking about the environment. I see the same thing with gay romances in these games, the idea is to get people to think about it in a positive light, which given the fairly troublesome homophobia in the gaming community, isn't a bad thing.

[greylord]

I agree that romances are goofy and have become too important in RPG's. So I'm against romances in general.

 

However, Bioware is making a social statement when they include gay romances. It's similar to the whole green movement of many recent movies. Avatar, Wall-e, The Lorax; these are all movies designed around the idea that corporations are bad and the earth needs to be protected. Final Fantasy carries those themes as well. While it can be preachy, it isn't necessarily a bad thing to get people thinking about the environment. I see the same thing with gay romances in these games, the idea is to get people to think about it in a positive light, which given the fairly troublesome homophobia in the gaming community, isn't a bad thing.

 

Cars 2 was the worst on that entire green thing.

 

Ironic with FF if you think about it. Burn and destroy equivalent of 100 million people in pollution value while you make and promote the game...so that you might influence 10 million to pollute less????

 

I guess they figure they can buy enough carbon credits to offset the environmental cost...but then...those 10 million still need to expend the fuel in order to generate the electricity to play the game!

 

Fun times!

 

Anyways...TL2 is coming out this week...guess I'll be contributing even more to the destruction of the environment as I use energy to play the game!

 

[Azdeus]

Ironic with FF if you think about it. Burn and destroy equivalent of 100 million people in pollution value while you make and promote the game...so that you might influence 10 million to pollute less????

 

I guess they figure they can buy enough carbon credits to offset the environmental cost...but then...those 10 million still need to expend the fuel in order to generate the electricity to play the game!

 

Just out of curiosity, what are you talking about here?

[Drowsy Emperor]

I agree that romances are goofy and have become too important in RPG's. So I'm against romances in general.

 

However, Bioware is making a social statement when they include gay romances. It's similar to the whole green movement of many recent movies. Avatar, Wall-e, The Lorax; these are all movies designed around the idea that corporations are bad and the earth needs to be protected. Final Fantasy carries those themes as well. While it can be preachy, it isn't necessarily a bad thing to get people thinking about the environment. I see the same thing with gay romances in these games, the idea is to get people to think about it in a positive light, which given the fairly troublesome homophobia in the gaming community, isn't a bad thing.

 

I play games to relive a part of my childhood fantasies, for nostalgia reasons and to get away from real world misery, social statements, politics etc.

 

Stuffing ideas/beliefs down people's throats (like Bioware does) will just induce a knee jerk response (like the ones you can see on the Baldur's Gate forums now) so its counter productive at worst, ineffective at best. Its particularly bad because its always tacked on, never an integral part of the game itself. They could just make a game with a gay protagonist that revolves entirely around the gay issue and end this lunacy once and for all.

 

Besides the gey agenda thing is in every newspaper, on TV, on the internet, in bookstores (with entire shelves just devoted to it), on the street (parades etc.)- are you seriously suggesting it needs more exposure? In games no less?

Edited September 17, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[Nepenthe]

Romances are overexposed both as advertised material and as a source of whining. Personally, it'll be just content I won't access (I like to identify at least to some degree with the characters I play in RPGs, which is why they are all straight males, that being what I consider my core indentity) and I don't really give a toss about it's inclusion one way or the other.

 

If you need them to cut it so that you're not tempted by the irresistible pull of homosexuality, I can see complaining about it, but otherwise just ignore it, ffs.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Romances are overexposed both as advertised material and as a source of whining. Personally, it'll be just content I won't access (I like to identify at least to some degree with the characters I play in RPGs, which is why they are all straight males, that being what I consider my core indentity) and I don't really give a toss about it's inclusion one way or the other.

 

If you need them to cut it so that you're not tempted by the irresistible pull of homosexuality, I can see complaining about it, but otherwise just ignore it, ffs.

 

At this point I'm more angry that they tampered with the original game in such a manner. BG has a special significance for me and I can't believe that they did the same thing Bioware would do - its just so endlessly lame and misguided to even think that that would make BG1 (an archetypal, naive DnD adventure) a better game. Their job was to update the game and add some new content - and that's the best they could come up with? Bleh, whatever.

 

Thankfully there will be an off switch for all new content.

Edited September 17, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[HoonDing]

I DON'T BELIEVE IT, FFS! THEY ACTUALLY INCLUDED A GAY ROMANCE IN BG1EE.

[Nepenthe]

What, you rated it red x?

 

All kidding aside, Boo, it's the least surprising thing to add, considering that quite a few of the BG1 NPCs are essentially cardboard cutouts. But I guess people will always have different relationships to this game, especially as it appears to have been a "first" for many. I played it when I was 20 and had a lot of CRPG experience from the old gold boxes etc. (which also had the first CRPG "romance", Sulajia)

 

Also, I'm not sure what your source is, but according to Trent Oster the idea isn't to add a full Bioware style "romance" into BG1, more like some early hints of one (or three, as it may be) that will only be "romances" in BG2. So no sharing the bedroll yet, sorry.

[Bos_hybrid]

I DON'T BELIEVE IT, FFS! THEY ACTUALLY INCLUDED A GAY ROMANCE IN BG1EE.

 

****ING MONKEYS!

 

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[Drowsy Emperor]

What, you rated it red x?

 

All kidding aside, Boo, it's the least surprising thing to add, considering that quite a few of the BG1 NPCs are essentially cardboard cutouts. But I guess people will always have different relationships to this game, especially as it appears to have been a "first" for many. I played it when I was 20 and had a lot of CRPG experience from the old gold boxes etc. (which also had the first CRPG "romance", Sulajia)

 

Also, I'm not sure what your source is, but according to Trent Oster the idea isn't to add a full Bioware style "romance" into BG1, more like some early hints of one (or three, as it may be) that will only be "romances" in BG2. So no sharing the bedroll yet, sorry.

 

BG NPC's may be cardboard cutouts but that was what they could do at the time. I just thought they'd add more quests and areas, and maybe new characters, but romances, really

 

I read it on the BG forum

[Mamoulian War]

Stretch goal nr. 1 achieved we get one more race, class and companion

 

$1,432,874 atm

 

 

170k more and I will be happy enough, but hopefully we get more than 2.5 mio at the end

[Bos_hybrid]

Stretch goal nr. 1 achieved we get one more race, class and companion

 

$1,432,874 atm

 

 

170k more and I will be happy enough, but hopefully we get more than 2.5 mio at the end

 

I would think it would match Wasteland 2 and DF adventure game. So 3.5mil is what I'm hoping for.

[Malcador]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-17-bioware-announces-dragon-age-3-inquisition

 

Using Frostbite 2 engine, so will be pretty fireballs or something.

[C2B]

Dragon Age III announced

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-17-bioware-announces-dragon-age-3-inquisition

 

No sleep for the Inquisition.

[Serrano]

Dragon Age III announced

 

An inquisition storyline in a new Dragon Age game was leaked in an EA survey in August. The survey said you, the player, would be the leader of a new establishment called The Inquisition. You'll have to root out the evil conspiring to bring the world of Ferelden into ruin.

 

 

Well I wasn't expecting that.

[Bos_hybrid]

Frostbite 2? So it's Third Person?

 

Wonder if they are going to try quasi open world.... If you can't beat Bethesda, join them.