Matshelge

With IPs like Halo, you can do risky shit, it will sell no matter what. With new IP you can only be so orgininal before it becomes obscure. Dragon Age needs someplace for people to peg it. (If BioWare was as known and trusted as Valve or Blizzard, maybe they could have done it another way) If you are doing new original stuff, you need familiar stuff for focus. If you are doing generic stuff, you need non-generic stuff for the twist. So for Dragon Age to draw a new audience (and it does to make a profit) you need to show people why this is not the same old RPG stuff they have been giving out for the last 20 years. (It might be the same, but you could never sell a product with that slogan) While many might have scoffed at Manson used in the trailer, it might have been a poke from the marketing department. After all, that song is about rebranding old shit as new shit, something Dragon Age quite clearly is doing. Dragon Age after all claims to be the spiritual sequal to the original boilerplate model for modern western RPGs, how do you sell something like that? Label it with "Grognard approved!" "Neckbears around the world rejoice". Look, it is simple, this game needs to sell to a new group of people. BG2 fans alone cannot carry this game. You can complain about being original, about drawing from other sources then movies, about not playing music you like/attach to the mood of the game, but this is new IP, it costs a fortune to make, and it needs a huge install base right of the bat. When you need this you don't fuck around with the formula. When EA/BioWare has already gone out on a limb to make original IP, they should use the old way to sell it, because that works. *edit in* You pointed to Warrior Within, but remember, that game sold a LOT better then Sands of Time. If you want to look toward games that did the marketing right, that is one right there.

Try to open up Steamapps folder and find the Vampire.exe file and run in compatability mode with XP Serv 3. (Don't do it with the shortcut, as that is a shortcut to steam.exe)

youknow, if you did the talky talky right, you can end up with not having to do that last bossbattle... I'm just saying, you can have your cake and eat it too.

You need to define what you mean "ripping off" means. Last I checked, pushing a bunch of guys off a cliff using a shield was not copyrighted by 300. Also, the destinct lack of dragon slaying comes to mind when I recall watching 300. The visual style, the rock music instead of a rehash of Braveheart soundtrack, and the idea of few against many, yes, those things bring the 300 image to mind. And you know why it's presented this way? Because of this: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6185476.html and this http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-e3-dragon-age/36034 When this game was first shown, everyone was down on it for being a Lord of the Rings rippoff. The bellyaching about how played out all that LotR was, and how orcestral music was so last year, and how, while they trusted BioWare, this might have worked in 2002, but not 2008. So whats the marketing guy to do, well, there was this other fantasy(ish) movie out there that was a huge hit, it had replaced the LotR high fantasy music with more modern tones, it was much darker and moodier, it had oneliners like "this is Sparta" and "then we will fight in the shade", people were covered in blood and biceps. Now, if you are a brand new IP, would you try to carve out a space (marketing wise) in the Lord of the Rings high fantasy settings (Forgotten Realms, Elder Scrolls, Fable, Ultima, Might and Magic) or would you try to carve out a area where few other games exist? This game needs to say "This is not WoW, we are not Lord of the Rings" that market is to saturated to grab new consumers. It wants to be the alternate RPG, the Witcher, only with more marketing and with that BioWare storytelling. Will it be that? Maybe not, but marketing it as anything else would be a deathknell for the game.

Third. Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, best RPG I have ever played.

You think ripping off 300 is a bad thing when you are trying to sell people on a fantasy RPG? We, all of us on the internett who talk about games on forums, are not people marketing is trying to hit with stuff like this. We will buy a game based on peer review, and our total impact on the sales will be minimal. If you think this looked like something ripped from 300, that is one of the biggest praises the marketing department can get. 300 got a better Theatrical performance then Batman Begins, how could they not aim for that group?

I also think we need to go see what sort of issues people have had with the lovestories in other bioware/obsidian games. Baldur's Gate never let you get it on with the Viconia DeVir, NWN2 never let you get anywhere with Neskaa. In NWN, there was 2 love stories, but you needed to be good for both. In Kotor there was complaints that Mission did not have a love story attached. If you look toward the modding scene, adding a love story for a evil character, female characters, homosexual characters, these are the most popular ones. I think BioWare is thinking about how to add a lovestory for everyone playing, no matter what type of character you play. You can see this in Dragon Age, where you see 4 love stories, 2 for each sex, one for evil one for good. I think Miss Zero is Viconia DeVir in space.

I find it weird that people use the word "clichè" for this character. I mean, could anyone argue that the idea of a bald, sailor talking, bikini clad woman has been used in so many forms, (tv, movies, games, books, music) that it has glided into popular culture and no longer resonates in any meaningful way? I think the fact that people are even talking about it shows that this is not the case. If anything, this Zero person is a stereotype, but I would say that we have so few examples of this type of character in all media that would be hard to argue as well. I know it sounds like I am arguning semantics, but clearly, if you do not like this character, and the base for this is "she is a clichè", then the answer is no, you are using that word wrong. Try to tell me again why you don't like the character. And while she is no Zoey or Faith, she is far more "real" then Marcus Fenix ever was. And maybe that was the whole idea, make Marcus Fenix into a chick, and see how that works.