lobotomy42

Uh, I'm not positive, but I think asking about that in an interview may actually be illegal, small chat or not. EDIT: Okay, so I checked this, it's not explicitly illegal, but it does open you up to the potential for a discrimination lawsuit, so it's part of a set of questions referred to by some as "basically" illegal.

A) It sounds very much like whatever they add will be an appendix to, rather than a replacement for, the ending that is currently in place. I don't think anyone is going to be adding content to the discs. So as long you don't download any updates, it should still be available. C) Even if the above were not true, the current ending is so notorious at this point that it will live on in YouTube for infinity. So, I wouldn't worry about it.

So they're changing the ending to this! (Maybe.) I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I don't really feel like a bunch of people whining on the internet are necessarily right. On the other hand, I don't really buy the "artistic integrity" argument - art gets changed, edited, altered all the time, and certainly the two previous Mass Effect titles were supplemented with DLC. It's hard to make the case that adding these after the fact doesn't alter the game's artistic merit nearly as much as adding some "post ending" content. I guess it'll all depend on what they do with it.

Dear god, yes, agree! I feel like I am the only person in the world who thinks the graphics in the first game actually look better in most cases than in the second two.

Well, I doubt there's much help for the "dodgy graphics," but getting a copy from GOG should eliminate the compatibility problems. I don't think the interface and time investment are significantly worse than other RPGs. Also, I just now looked at the earlier novelization link, and it seems that it's actually the second attempt at a Torment novel, apparently more faithful than the original.

I've heard the book is dramatically contradictory to some of the key plot points in the game. And more importantly, a lot of the fun of Planescape: Torment is the way it messes with how you think about game narratives and causality. If "you" are not the main character, then a lot of the reveals just won't have the same impact. I can't imagine it would work very well as a story in any other form than what it is. Really, you should just play it -- if you don't like the combat, download a savegame editor and just pump your stats artificially high.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 are much more similar to each other than either is to ME. (It feels a bit like the relationship between Back to the Future and BttF Parts 2 and 3, actually.) I got about half-way through Mass Effect 3 last night, before deleting my character in frustration at a poor choice I had made unintentionally. (Why didn't I keep more savegames???) It's...ok? I still feel like it's cashing in on the emotional currency built up in my mind during Mass Effect, rather than making me care about any of the new characters or situations. And, like ME2, it has the weird plot device of "We're under attack, so you have to travel the galaxy and...talk to people! Sort out their problems!" I also find myself missing the lack of a clear "villain" character like Saren in ME. Saren was a great nemesis, functioning as parallel to Shepherd. He went rogue from the Spectres just as Shepherd was entering, and these two, after learning what was going on with the reapers, developed opposite reactions to this knowledge. Saren is the tragic hero of his own story, a story that is also about a Spectre trying to save a skeptical galaxy from the reapers. It's easy to imagine Saren choosing the "Paragon" options from the dialogue wheel when speaking with reapers and "Renegade" when talking to the Council. ME2 had nothing like this, and so far neither does ME3. Cerberus is held up as the villain, but Illusive Man is so transparently evil that it's difficult to feel him as anything more than a plot device. He is the star of his own 4X Strategy game, perhaps, but certainly not his own CRPG.

Sorry, that does read ambiguously. All I meant was that the last time I remember pixel-hunting being an actual problem I've experienced in an adventure game was probably 10 years ago -- in other words, this is not something that would even have been on my radar as a potential pitfall when making an adventure game had they not brought it up. I wasn't trying to hate on Ron! As I said, I don't think the conversation reflects on anyone's design sensibilities. It's just that the conversation seemed to be framed as a sort of "What's the problem with making adventure games these days?" which, I think, is a conversation in which you should maybe mention adventure games these days. Just something I noticed, that's all!

Side tangent: One thing that really sticks out to me watching that video is -- and I hate to say this -- Ron Gilbert comes across as a bit out of touch with adventure games. The thing that he hates most in adventure games is pixel hunting? He can't think of a *single* recent game with good dialogue? It is weird to me to hear two active industry folks talking analyzing the state of adventure gaming and its fans (and analyzing does seem to be the correct word here) without any apparent awareness of what has happened in the genre since Full Throttle. (Other than to hair-split genres and specify that Limbo is definitely NOT an adventure game. I'd be curious to see if he counts anything other than the classic LucasArts games as entirely within the genre.) I realize Ron probably deserves to be cut a lot of slack for being one of the foremost early adventure game designers. And certainly, being hip to what the kids are playing these days is not a prerequisite to being a good designer, so I don't think it necessarily reflects on the game being made. But he did strike me as a little territorial -- Tim even seemed to be trying to moderate that impression by moving the conversation back to a more jocular, reminiscent mode. Did anyone else notice this, or am I just making crap up?

This is the question that will make or break this game: DOES IT HAVE TEAM BATTLE MODE FROM SC2? (This is the mode where each player selects a sequence of up to 8 characters to fight against the other player's sequence, and then each time one of your characters dies, they are immediately replaced by the next one on your roster, without the opponent's character getting health refilled, or cutscenes or any crap like that.)

So, after the first 30-day period runs out, I'm canceling my subscription to this game. What it comes down to, I think, is that I just don't like the MMO-RPG genre. I was hoping my love of Star Wars and love-hate relationship with Bioware could overcome this, but it really can't. The ratio of story elements to "kill 30 things" quests is set at a point that makes this game too much of a time investment to be worth it for me. This isn't really the game's fault - it is more or less what it promised to be - but my life is too short to invest time in this kind of thing.

I played the first episode for about 2 hours last night. I have some preliminary thoughts, but bear in mind this is JUST TWO HOURS IN. It was....not that exciting? There are a couple of big problems with it. (So far) The biggest is that it wants to be like Heavy Rain (I mean, it *really* wants to be like Heavy Rain) but it lacks both the production value polish and, more importantly, the element of decision-making and choice (either real or smoke-and-mirror.) Everything seems essentially linear - the game just waits for me to press the "continue" button. Well, and sometimes there are deaths if I don't press it fast enough. Maybe the game opens up more with branching paths, etc, later on, but I seriously doubt it. The other is the license. I'm a big fan of the first Jurassic Park film. I'm not such a big fan of the sequels, and there's a reason for this: there's not a lot to revisit. Once you've seen the dinosaurs...yeah ok, they kill stuff, I get it. Don't mess with nature! You're playing God! After you've seen one group of people learn this lesson, it's hard to feel invested in the concept. The necessarily-lowered production values of a video game only reinforce this. The dinosaurs aren't big and scary anymore, they're just...more video game stuff. Which means that the writing is left to carry the game. I'm not far enough in to judge this aspect. But it's already starting off at a disadvantage: the lowered production values reduce the potential for moments of either awe or horror, and the characters from the original film are completely absent. So I'm expected to care about these new characters while all the game's setting, references, asides, etc are constantly reminding me about those OTHER characters. You know, the ones I already know and care (a little) about? So, I'll keep playing, because I like Telltale, but my expectations are low.

Yeah, I got the aug and...it takes all the fun out of the social battles.

A salaried position is not "some weird regulatory status." Suddenly being asked to work a weekend is standard in many white-collar professions, albeit far more common in the games industry.

I agree with a lot of ThunderPeel's stuff. I'm only 3/4 of the way through the game, but I'm quickly being pushed in similar directions as TP. My experience has been: enamored -----> disillusioned -----> frustrated / disappointed. In general, if you're going to make a highly linear story-driven game, which is what this is at heart, there are two things you should do above all others: 1) Make sure the story and writing is good. L.A. Noire's feels, eh, passable. I'm no noir expert, but this seems more like "Law & Order: 1940s" than "The Big Sleep." 2) Be mindful of the other structural strategies in story-driven games (*cough* Telltale, Bioware, Obsidian, Phoenix Wright *cough*) and either incorporate the positive elements from these or eschew those elements "cleanly." (E.g., if the plot is not going to change when I take one fork versus another...maybe you shouldn't have put a fork there? With all the flexibility in solving cases, this game ended up biting off more than it could chew. I can go through every conversation and get every single interrogation question laughably wrong AND STILL WIN. Without a failure case, you're just bringing the forced linearity front-and-center. ) Also, am I the only one who *doesn't* find the technology all that impressive? I get that it's very very very detailed facial capture, but I'm not sure it adds anything that couldn't be done with, say, hand-drawn sprite animations. The gameplay effect seems negligible.

I actually really enjoyed the GBA/GCN connectivity (what little there was of it). I actually have fond memories of the Tingle example in the Wind Waker. It was the sort of interaction that allows a second player to be involved in a single-player game, without being a full player in and of themselves. (Sort of like in Mario Galaxy where Player 2 can fire stars.) Tingle in Wind Waker could, among other things, dig up treasure, see points of interest on a map, and -- most hilariously of all -- explode bombs at will. Depending on who was playing with you, this could be helpful or it could be sadistic. Each bomb denotated cost the main player some rupees and also, you know, exploded. So a cruel Tingle could just keep blowing up Link while spending his money. Besides FSA, there was also FF Crystal Chronicles, which I never played, and Pac-Mac Vs. Pac-Man Vs. was (for me at least) a ton of fun. Similar to one of the Wii U demos this year, one player is Pac-Man and three other players are ghosts. Pac-Man can see the map, the ghosts can't. Whichever ghost catches Pac-Man becomes Pac-Man! That was a lot of fun, too. The general idea pushed by both GBA-GCN connectivity and the Wii U is that of asymmetrical information. By giving different players different perspectives and more or less information, you can change the play dynamics. It's much harder to visualize than "You can swing a sword LIKE YOU'RE SWINGING A SWORD," which explains some of the negative reaction. But I think there is a lot of gameplay potential there, especially in multi-player.

So....a stylus with screen mirroring doesn't do it for you?

http://kotaku.com/5809706/nintendo-looking-into-games-that-support-two-new-controllers It sounds like using more than one controller at once is theoretically possible, but not something Nintendo currently has specific plans around.

I for one am pretty excited by the potential. It remains to be seen if the software will be there to match. This is becoming a perennial issue for Nintendo - great idea, awesome buildup, and then the first six months there is almost no compelling software. So it will really depend on whether they're able to get a good launch (or post-launch) lineup in place. But still - this idea is *awesome*. Miyamoto's 2003 dream of Pac-Man Vs. being a popular gaming sensation may finally come to light. Also, are we sure about the only-one-tablet-per-console limit? I haven't seen any information about it other than speculation.

Yeah, that song was ace.

That's definitely an issue I've had. There's at least one action sequence where What?

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest I wasn't enjoying the game. You can ignore all the open-world stuff quite easily, and the game actually helps you do this in some ways. My strategy is: 1) Never leave an investigation area on foot. 2) When you want to drive somewhere, you can make your partner drive so you don't have to destroy half the city on your way from one location to the next. Boom, it's a location-to-location adventure game, done.

This. It's actually quite immersion-breaking. In the first tutorial mission, if you leave the investigation area, it suddenly becomes daytime and Phelphs turns off his flashlight. Then you walk back in, and it's dead night again. And it makes no sense that you can leave in the middle of an investigation, spend a few days driving around (and running over pedestrians, etc, like in GTA), return, and...there everyone is, still waiting for you.

I'm not sure what everyone's complaining about. How is this different from, say, any adventure game? I resent hand-holdeyness, but I think there are certain genres and situations where it's appropriate. Adventure games are one such case. As an adventure game, I think this will hold up quite well. I think the key is not to think of it as an action game or an open world game or an RPG, because it clearly isn't any of those things.

I mean, I get that, and in theory that sounds great. But in practice, the game - previously very good at handling different sorts of decision-making - makes it clear that you are being funneled to "the big battle" one way or another without any ability to, say, sit it out or talk the various sides into a peace agreement. And since the game doesn't continue past that point to let you see the consequences of having one side or another in charge, it doesn't matter all *that* much to me who wins. I guess my real complaint is not about the story as much as the fact that the endgame was the one part where I felt very railroaded down a particular path.