Murdoc

I still haven't figured out the tactics menu; I'm literally retarded with it. Either they don't really do anything I think they will do or they do it too much. like i got my guy to finally take potions, but then just just swallowed them all, like after each time he hit something. So I just manage them manually, but I'm on Pc so that's ok.

Mass Effect, really at this point my 360 is now my mass effect box, I'll blow the dust off of it when the sequel comes out, but to be fair it's my favorite game experiance in the last decade, so I think it's awesome.

Marek makes a good point. It's also good to remember that EA pretty much does this all the time, pretty much every year. Maybe not in such numbers, but pretty close; I can't tell you how many times I've heard of EA burnaby letting people go and a few months later rehiring them because not paying people to sit around for 3 months is cheaper. Also the economy. Whatever you want to believe about that and however EA is actually doing with it, this is a way to save money and if stockholder asks them what they are doing to ensure profitability with a violent economic climate they can point to this. Saves money, keeps people happy, is a bullet point to mention in the next finacial statement; all pretty well and good. Also I get the sense when your as big as EA or activision you adopt a Fox strategy of business where "If it's not the Simpsons, we'll cancel it" meaning they want their 1-2 million copy sellers, they aren't in the business of putting out the 200-800k stuff. Another point on Mythic, since it took a hit, they pretty much had this planned right around when they bought Bioware so we can't really seem too surprised.

My game has slowed up a bit, i got bored of the warrior so started a new game with the mage, but I don't really feel liking doing anything, maybe its time for a break. The dwarf part was long, but it was also the best(have'nt tried the non mage elves though) it's also the one only race that really makes sense to me as asking the types of questions throughout the game. It honestly felt like this game was made to be played as a dwarf.

I know exactly what you mean, I have zero issues with the quality of the Torchlight textures or art, but I really just have these extreme urge to see a modern take on classic Diablo, and since we have the game that does it, I'd love to see a dungeon, map, texture set that reflects it. Even getting someone to add a couple post fx would be pretty amazing too, hehe. But I'm lazy, and playing games takes up my time more then customizing them.

I have a bunch of friends in vancouver and can say developers were hit by it, not just the publishing side. Also, yeah, I think the community here(which is why I'm lurking around eveyday now) is a bit of a niche community in gaming. As much as we love games and buy them, we're not the market that is paying the bills and to be honest, the people that do pay the bills for big publishers might slowly start picking up other stuff then madden and cod, but really that's all they want and need out of the gaming, it isn't a life style for them.

jesus fish.

Edit3: Removed link. Yeah so, it works, it's just other things are broken in the game to the point of not playing. wouldn't recommend it. Basically describes how you can edit your characters appearence afterwards and with a lot more control in the toolset. I'm doing it right now. I was happy with my dwarf mainly because it was a preset, I really can't tell dwarves apart aside from beard and hair colour, so I was happy when I saw dwarf, red hair, done. But I'm playing a mage elf now and I thought it looked ok in the creation, but in game, ye god. I was hoping to export to max and do editing myself, but seeing the options you can get in the tool set just blows my mind they didn't offer this kind of control in that character creator, so many more possibilities, neutral light setting, and just the texture blends are so much more robust then I thought this game was doing.... just awesome. edit: my elf looks dirty with a mustache. edit2: Ok a couple hours with this and, wow. I mean if they had an advanced button in that creator and gave me this I probably wouldn't have shat on it so much leading up to release. The face editor in the toolset is so deep to get a personality that I really wanted out of the characters. More options, being able to push those sliders just a little more, options right down to eyelash length are available, so awesome. I still ahve to deal with their crappy hair presets, but damn, I now don't have a mongaloid looking character, but one that exhibits personality. I can see where some of the main characters came from and it wasn't custom made in a modeling program, just used this damn thing. So cool. Edit4: Ok it works, and this post is a testament to random spam. Just read the whole post and remember to rename/delete the singleplayer folder in modules before you begin, everything works that way. http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=920668&topic=52130615

The demo was basically a cut scene of you in a car, crashing, and waking up in the asylum. I remember talking to a few people, but don't remember much else. From that era of demos, I basically remember that, some Sierra top/down strategy game with castles(lords of something? castles of something?) and Meat Puppets.... I'll say it again, Meat Puppets. I'm not sure if it was any good, the fact its lost to the ages probably means it was not. I just remember it having different art, violent combat that reminded me of Fallout, good music?(What did I know back then, but I remember it being cool) and a title that just stuck with me.

I remember playing the demo over and over that I got in a pc magazine when it came out. It was a pretty neat premise, but never did pick it up. cool atmosphere from what a remember and I was amazed the guy had a slot loading cd player in his car at the time.

EA has something bigger then a closet of awesome/dead IPs in their company, I'd probably call it a lair. I do have an outstanding notice for them to put me in charge of a Populous or Dungeon keeper sequel.. but they have yet to comment... its been about ten years since I asked the internet, they haven't taken notice, I should have made a petition.

Was this rhetorical? Look at movies, books, childrens cartoons, toys, and cereal and you'll get the answer of what they do and what actually makes money.

Ah Crap, juv3nal, could you add a bit of a lead up to what you may be spoiling there? I read it and wished I didn't(my fault, not blaming anything here, but blocking out one word it could have been "giant rat" for all I knew.

Couple of my friends were hit by this, and really Mirrors Edge? Could we trade a good sequel of that for any version of Dantes Inferno and whatever Jack the Ripper game they cook up?

Yeah some about dungeon siege(both of them) that never quite got to me. I liked the first one a bit more with it's less fantastical world though. The one thing I did appreciate that a lot of games don't have is just the dark ominous feeling in the dungeons, pretty much only diablo has been able to pull that off. In DS they had some really cool set ups of creatures coming out of the darkness, the spinning elevators going down, etc... also, I like the idea of the mule, though the pets in Torchlight pretty much server the purpose, I like the idea of a non-fighting animal there just to store goods. Also the massive world you could play online was pretty cool too.

I did in mass effect, read everything, not so much in dragon age. There is literalyl a book of stuff to read when your going along and the backstory is by farmore interesting then the actual story, but ready all that stuff just bores me to death when it comes to fantasy. I think the complet-o-meter is based on everything, like every quest/etc... because I'm pretty far(at least it feels like it) and I've done side quests here and there and it says I've completed very little. re:elf forest. No kidding, I deleted so much and left so much crap behind I need to go back. Started a mage last night and am buying backpacks left and right.

Nah I agree with Chris on this. It's pretty obvious there were priorities for the game and most of them were game mechanics and fun; which congrats to them, they pulled off really well on a budget and such a short schedule. I figure the lore/art direction took a bit of a back seat because of it; so yeah its things to improve, but when they get a little more time and money I'm sure we'll see it expand for their next game.

Funny, had the same damn thing happen to me today too, I even commented that what will it take for Bioware to make a functional autosave one of these years, this shit has been going on in every one of their games for almost a decade. It'd take maybe a week for one guy to do it, come on! Or just get the LD to put triggers in and make sure they god damn it properly. edit: Monday update: (Btw, sorry for nannering on about my damn game, in a strange city where half the population doesn't speak english, so kind of need an outlet to talk about the game, lol) Ok, this thing has demolished my weekend, I woke up this morning and just stared at my workstation where it looked like some sort makeshift altar to the gods of sloth.... just sad. anyway, I kind of plateaued with my dwarf; he's just destroying everything, I guess I got to a high enough level and the right team combination where nothing is challanging anymore; this is really odd because the first 4-5 levels of the party was like a damn gauntlet, I mean I abandoned a city because I couldn't help it and basically traveled around until I found place I could handle(there was a lot of running) The warrior class has kind of gotten old for me and I'm controlling the mages in the fight now, it's kind of cool, it's become more like a commander role, where I sit back watch the fight, heal a few people and deal damage from a far, rather then the complete chaos i was doing with the warrior. After going to the elf forest, I wouldn't mind trying to play an elf, but also a mage, but it seems when you pick mage that supercedes the racial part of the game. How many times will I have to play through this game? I'd like to try a bunch of different ones, but the game is so damn big, I'll probably only do it twice over the next ten years(as it would get repetative too much)

That's not real is it? lol Ok, sooo, I pretty much played over 12 hours straight yesterday, this is starting to get mildly depressing, so I better start it up again before I think about that. Some had a thought that would be awesome, but might spoil it for anyone not playing as I talk about the past of one character, also had a enya musical interlude last night...it was weird.

Not to derail since I like to ramble on and on, hehe, but here we go with kotor2. Also I am by no means a Starwars fan, I like maybe 2 movies out of the 6 and the samurai jack star wars was pretty neat, oh and jedi outcast. Ok, I still carry the hatred torch and really I shouldn't, it just wasn't a very good game, even though the gameplay mechanics were improved and it was essentially more Kotor. But a few things to consider... 1. It came out a year later(shouldn't have expected much) but at that time Kotor and Sands of Time were just astonishing to me the year previous. Never playing BG before, you'd have to understand the impact Kotor had on me, I loved it about as much as I love Mass Effect now. 2. I wasn't really used to iterative sequels. I get it for franchises like madden and stuff, but at that time, in my mind, a sequel was a really big deal and deserved a lot of respect. Which means better graphics, better story, better every thing. Kotor 2 was basically more kotor in Kotor 1; which nowadays, I get and don't mind as much, but at the time didn't care for it at all. 3. The first three times I started the game a bug wouldn't allow me to continue past like 30 minutes and their were various others that pissed me off. 4. The story and characters were basically just parelleling the first game, it was not very well thoughtout, many of the the environments were shared from Kotor 1 and overall it just ruined the whole universe for me. 5. Loved the kotor 1 story at the time, loved the characters, but kotor 2 basically ignored all of it with only passing mention like they didn't want to be bothered to come up with a end game to kotor 1 but just wanted to remake the same thing, only shittier. Also that end 3/4 was pretty aweful. So yeah, that's why I didn't like it and will at least carry the hate torch as a reminder. But I think take into consideration the age of gaming it was in(wasn't that long ago) and it was a franchise just getting its feet off the ground only to be axed right at the end. Also take into consideration if Kotor 2 didn't happen and Mass Effect was Kotor 2 how awesome Kotor would be right now? But to be fair I think the Mass Effect universe is far superior to Kotors now, so it's all for the best. @Tobili: Yeah I guess that's it, I didn't play it just watched a friend play it, I could tell how he could set that up and it worked, there is something about Dragon Ages I just don't get, too many options I still don't get how I can get my guys to heal if they are hurt, I tried all those health options and still nothing, so I dunno I'm retarded. enchantments! @Groucho: Oh I see Yeah, I really don't mean to get on a rant here, but Bioware knows how to make a fiction I really dig myself into, I love their games to death, but they seem to be shoving this really weird and teenager view of maturity down the throat of their games since jade empire. I just don't get how a company that does everything else so right has someone there with an agenda to get that crap in there. By all means I applaud people that just do what they want (rockstar) but theres a sophisticated way(rockstar) and a unsophisticated way(everyone but rockstar) and Bioware for some reason in that one small department is in the everyone but rockstar camp.

This one is mature? How so? Not to be a downer on it, but throwing in gore and tits doesn't really make it mature in my books. The story so far is pretty sophmore, but that's not really what I'm in it for, its the day day conversations that is getting me going, but its the same stuff from most Bioware games. I dunno, I'm finding the mechanics exactly like Kotor, just with more DnD into it; again this is probably just Baldurs Gate then, like a lot of people are saying. So I can only assume Kotor was very much like BG, because the same beats in the story/gameplay/characters,tactical combat, environment setup, quest setup, etc... is straight from Kotor; which I guess was straight from BG. Cool stuff though, spent the day playing. I really really would like the AI to figure out not to step on traps that have been dedicated though. I also can't figure out the automated AI thing. It supposed to be like that other Final Fantasy or something? I saw it work in that, but I can't seem to get the auto AI to do anything I think it will do so it pretty much becomes useless. @GrouchoClub: The abomination that is titled Kotor 2 isn't Kotor 2, and that is the last I will speak of it here. This is also why I always considered Mass Effect Kotor 2 because it was the logical direction for that series. @Erriki: Probably right I just have no basis of BG to say.

Ok out of the origin and tutorial-ville and into the world. Was up until 2am to play it, which is really rare for me to be playing a game that late(unless Iw as playing online with friends in the west) so that says something. My play style has slightly changed now since the Thumbs cast now that I know I can sleep with women and kill children, but Bioware alway does a really good job of sucking me into being really good just to squeeze the all the content out things. I'm also wondering how many people I'll be able to pick up along the way, since they seem to be joining me left and right and it seems I can tell them to piss off whenever I want(not sure if they will actually go though) but I wonder if I would be able to go pick them back up if I needed. The games visuals seems really hit or miss, like some characters are really well done(at least for this game) and others are just aweful... and it doesn't even seem like there was priority over the importance of the character, it just seems like uniformed skill set on the art team and a lack of art direction to make sure it gets to where it needs to. Also, I think ever brightly lit human place is probably by far the ugliest, there is no light direction in the environment or different materials, so it all just flattens out. It really kind of feels like this was their first next gen game where they didn't know how to properly make a normal map or light to specifically show of the textures/materials... It doesn't seem like there is a day or night cycle in these areas(ala Kotor) so I'm not sure what the issue was because kotor had amazing mood lighting that really showed off their environments(mostly). I've always considered Mass Effect a "Kotor 2" you can see where it came from and they changed a lot of things around to just work better(and some tiems worse, but they made an attempt) at the style of game it was trying to be. So with that said, Dragon Age is really, really, really more Kotorish then Mass Effect, so this almost feels like Kotor 1.5, or at least a split in the tree going more to enhancing what Kotor did well but sticking with the formula. Just the environment setups, the tasks, world travel, character interaction, your first 2 main characters that join you, the story set up really, combat is back to being more tactic oriented like Kotor(I really liked this so glad its back in a bioware rpg, but think it has no place for mass effect) so it's really kotor + DnD; which works.(I never played Baldurs Gate, so I imagine a lot of BG was in kotor?) There are also things in here that I would die to have in ME2. I felt the one design flaw(not some of the combat, that was just some other kind of flaw, I think mostly level design since when it worked in a certain area it was amazing... like the end and the DLC) was the Citedal was the kotor rpg solve problem game and the other planets was more or less the kill everything dungeons. The one thing I liked about Kotor and DA was the rpg-talk to people-solve problem was spread out everywhere and that's what really draws me into DA right now, their dialog has a certain style and it's fun developing who my character is...last nights play through really made him foggy. The on the fly character banter, thumbs already talked about this, but I loved this in ME1 int he elevators I made a point of taking elevators. But there is so much more stuff in this now and them doing it while walking around would be amazing. Ok back to my game, my character is realllly bad at intimdating, and I tend to explore every possibility even if it means killing a person when the situation seems to warrant it( I need help, the world is in peril, my mission is to help it, if I have rough someone up to get that help, I think it's justified) but since I'm so bad at intimidating the first town I come into I scare off a few people with no results and kil a few people that I really could have used their help. The problem is I'm not seen as "bad" to get the bad party members to like me since I'm ultimately trying to help and I'm not seen as good... I'm just kind of a incompetant screw up right now and this was all after a few conversations, so that's pretty cool. There is always this grey neutral area and I'm sure it's here, but I think I found the *fourth way "Useless Knob". *edit: said third way when I realized it's actually the forth. I'm sure there are many more mistakes then that in the post, its just the one I thought of when I hit submit. edit2: And honestly, I could go back and make decisions differently, but I'm not. I'm a capable person, but you recruit me and then 2 days later expect me to save the world, this is what your going to get, next time get the seasoned proffessionals, not the rookie.

Yeah Nicks Dragon Age impression mirrors my own. Sum it up Generic Lotr, bleh. Background story really effects my interest level Dialog is pretty cool and keeping me interested. Edit: English fucking accents, yes! I was thinking the same damn thing when I met one of the warden recruits from redcliff and it was shitty english peasent accent #100. Even if you want to put english people in your game, why not at least take some god damn time, start arranging your english voice actors into localized areas, so at least it makes some god damn sense like it does in real life that dude across the street has the same accent as the other one and a different english accent in a different town. Edit 2: Holy shit this is over 2 hours long. THANKS THUMBS!

Ok started a new game with dwarf commoner, already it's cooler. Does anyone know if they create your family based on your choices(FO3)·(I canèt seem to make a question mark on my pc suddenly...) My retarded mongoloid character didnèt seem to have any resemblence to the family, but my dwarf playthrough looks like it may did(or I lucked out by making the character look like the sister model) Edit: Ok, having a lot more fun with the dwarf. Not sure why that is, but a game has to hook me with something from the start and I found the dwarf beginning so much better then the humans(wouldnèt mind trying elves, but Ièll wait to play the game more) wtf is going on with my keyboard... ignore the weirdity.

Are you sure? I really remember playing a rouge in Baulder's Gate.