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...the repetitive, cloned landsacpe and dungeons. Seen one demwer ruin and you'd seen them all...

The problem with Bethedesa is they think level design is like penis size. But unfortunately for them, the phrase "It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it!" actually applies here.

 

Thief is the best example of compacting the most action into the smallest places, so the big levels actually feel HUGE.

 

there were only about 6 types of monster in the whole game, and each one of them was shit, boring and easy to kill.p

You know what pissed me off the most about this? I remember watching a Morrowind level editing video, and it had a developer proudly announcing that the enemies automatically raise their stats to become more difficult as your own stats increases. This is the kind of mentality behind this game. Anyone seen Eric the Viking? "If you need to go looting to fund the next expedition of looting, then it cancels itself out! What's the point?"

In this case - what's the point of you raising your stats? Bethedesa brought this stupid "stat building" concept to its final conclusion and proved themselves how stupid it is to make heavily stat based video games.

 

I remember one of the things my friends did when he first played the game, he went straight to vivec and found all these vaults guarded by some mean looking fellows. Well he saved the game standing behind each guard and would sit there for hours reloading his save and trying to pickpocket the guard for his vault key, until random chance kicked in and he was able to steal the key. The vaults had nice stuff, but hooray for gameplay!!

Another fine example of why stat based games suck.

 

The 3rd quest at the mages guild in Balmora is to go upstairs and swap a fake soul gem or a real one, and while you're there you can help yourself to a lot of other soul gems which are worth enough to sell for a very good sword.

I never read any guides and that's what I did first time too. No one is allowed to SEE you steal but they do stuff all to stop you from going into their rooms, and you can rob the poor people blind whenver you wished.

Even though I created a Theif character, I was doing this from the start, and I knew that if I could get away with this at first level, with no skills, so could everyone else, so there is no point being a Thief character.

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Thief is the best example of compacting the most action into the smallest places, so the big levels actually feel HUGE.

But, a contributing factor that makes Thief levels feel huge is that you're creeping around slowly through the entire level. So instead of it taking 1 minute to go from point A to point B (as in a typical game), it can take you 30 minutes. Sure, Thief has big levels. I'm just saying the rate of speed at which you traverse the levels helps accentuate the feeling of level size.

 

it had a developer proudly announcing that the enemies automatically raise their stats to become more difficult as your own stats increases.

I hate this, too. It really does defeat the purpose of getting higher stats and is what bothers me about these types of games, like WoWarcraft. As your stats increase, all enemies proportionally get harder to kill. In Morrowind, I seem to remember the game wouldn't notice your stats increasing so much until you quit and re-loaded. Or maybe that was WoW. Or both. Either way, it's a lame game mechanic. Imagine guards in Thief getting harder to KO or kill as you stole more and more loot. Whatever.

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Yeah it does contribute that you are sneaking, but over all, the Thief levels are more enjoyable than Morrowind levels, because;

 

There is more to do per square meter.

There is no repeated geometry.

 

Obviously we have to repeat some geometry if we're not building it out of brushes, but you can keep it interesting by not placing so many of them end to end just to make a big place. Make it smaller so there is more to do.

 

In thief, essentially each room you move onto is a new experience. Every little thing matters. The placement of the guard, the placement of the loot, the geometry in between. In Morrowind, once you've been through one cave tunnel with a baddie in it, you've been through them all. Its just terrain with baddies on it, the rest is left up to the STATS.

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New article: http://pc.ign.com/articles/693/693483p1.html

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - PC or 360

What's the same? What's different? Which one should I buy? Confounding questions all.

Charles: Another issue for me between the versions is the control. I think the Xbox 360 controller may actually prove better and more intuitive. Since there aren't any specific damage zones on enemies in Oblivion, hitting a head counts just as much as hitting a fingertip, there's no need to make precise shots. That does away with any advantages the mouse may have held.

Lame. No damage zones? Wow, that's taking a step backwards in gaming, it seems. And/or is catering to consolers and not taking the time to tweak/enhance things for PC users. :cough:TDS:cough:

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Yeah, I forgot about the leveling up of the AI in Morrowind. When you enter any zone, AI are spawed near to your current level.

This means you never get to feel powerful like you should in an RPG.

THere's nothitng like being able to kill 20 enemies in one fire blast at lvl 20, when it would jhave taken you a minute to kil lone of them at lvl 1.

What you end up here with is a lvl 20 player with an uber sword, in full plate armour, being attacked by a rat, and the rat is actually doing him damage and he has to hit it several times to kill it.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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WHat was the best game ever made then?

I can't tell which was the best one I ever played, there are quite a few that would deserve to be called that.

But if you really, really want me to name just one game, I'd say Planescape Torment. BG2 would be in my top 10 though.

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It's an RPG still, essentially all you're doing is telling your character to attack the other character.

 

Whether your character gets a headshot or a finger shot is up to some random dice rolls and stats.

 

According to that interview, they've taken pains to make it more believable by always scoring a "hit" when you see the blade hit the model, and having only the damage you do left up to the stats. They also made blocking player-controlled, and have you parry a hit when blocked, but how much damage you avoid is up to the stats. After going to this effort to equate what you see with what happens, it seems pretty silly to leave out the fact that you can see your blade hitting someone in the face vs. nicking their finger, and would expect different damage. If they wanted to make it stat based but also put in location based damage, they could have put in more wild swings based on your weapon skills, and make it hard to actually predict where and when it's going to hit when you suck with the weapon, but that would have taken some effort.

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I was more upset about the "hitting finger vs. head doing the same damage" thing when thinking about shooting enemies with arrows. I've seen a screen where there's a thief-looking character in it with bow & arrows. (I assume you can play as a thief, or at least shoot arrows in this game?) So if you pinpointingly shoot an arrow into the finger or toe of an enemy it somehow does the same amount of damage as if you hit the enemy in the head? Give me a break...

 

BG11 is the best game ever made, and it is stat based, so you're wrong.

I think I tried this game but returned it because it seemed like it would be too huge of a game, with too much reading for me. Morrowind and WoW turned me off for similar reasons. Games can just get too big for their own good, imo. For BG11, does it ever change as far as how much reading you have to do?

 

I could be wrong, but BG11 also seemed to have maps structured in a noticeable grid/square pattern of some sort, which drove me nuts. With this, the map would re-load or something as you approached an edge of a map, no? (It's been a long time since I played, so forgive me if I'm wrong.) I'd be willing to try it again, but since I only gave it about an hour's worth of gameplay, I'm looking for these possible myths to be disspelled first.

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There' not a huge amont of reading in BG11, just enough to fill out the great plot. It's a pefect mix of story, dialogue and acton IMO.

Of course, there's a lot of dialogue options with all the chaacters if you want to have it. but you can mostly tell them to shut up. You can have love interests with some of the charcaters, they all have their own personalities for and against each ther depending who you include in your group.

I.m not sure what you mean about a grid pattern, there are invisible grid squares there for the AI to use but you barely notice it, it's not blantant movement squares like turn based RPG games. The map doens't reload at the edges, its all stored in memoey when you enter the area.

I'd advise you to dual class as a fighter/thief. Playing a pure thief makes you very weak in combat, and combat is a lot of fun in this game, you have to use a lot of different strategys for all the AI types you encounter.

There are so many big side plots and whole areas I never even discovered until my 4th or 5th play though the game, and there are so many alternate path options and character types to play, there is almost endless replay value in it.

It's also pretty hard when you first play it

I can't recommend this game enough, I've played it though about 15 times in the last 5 years, and that's saying a lot considering how huge it is. I last finished it two weeks ago. It blows all modern crap away.

The people who made this were real craftsmen, they didn't just knock it out to make a quick buck like developers these days.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Huh, that's interesting. Replayability is one of the things I enjoy about T1/T2. I always find a new room, new secret area, new rafter to rope arrow up to, or new loot I hadn't seen before. just amazes me, since there's no other FPS game I can play that I can say this about. Any other FPS game is too linear to have such adventure.

 

Okay, I will try BG11 out next time I see it somewhere. Or if I never see it anywhere, I will buy it online. It had great potential, from what I remember. Maybe now that my computer is several times better, I won't notice little technical glitches or load-zones as much now.

 

You mention you can turn dialogue options down. This reminds me that I think one of my gripes was that every time you clicked a character s/he felt it necessary to bark out a verbal confirmation. Must we? When I play games, I want to be that character. I don't want the character to be telling me. "Oh, gee, thanks for clicking me. Oh, you want me to move over there now? Okay, I will. Acknoweldged." An exaggeration, but you know what I mean. So, in BG11, I felt distanced from the characters on the screen. I was their God, rather than a member of their party. I seem to remember a setting where you could turn their verbal acknowlegements down(?), but it still bothered me. AoE3 does the same thing when you click your little explorer guy around the map -- or similar such things -- and it really does drive me nuts.

 

I only had like 5 days to try BG11 out when it first came out (the store's return policy), and I didn't give it much time, like I said. So, considering I've seen many stupid games come out the past few years, this BG11 may be a refreshing title to try again; now that I've seen a lot of nonsense hit the market the last few years. And considering the gameplay really is that good, I can get over little things like the things I've mentioned.

 

EDIT: Now which one do I get? I see there are maybe two: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.

 

EDIT 2: Oh, sweet! David Warner does the voice of Jon Irenicus, in Shadows of Amn. 'End of line.'

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You can turn the vocal confirmations off completely for charcaters. Throne of Bhaal is the expansion and the finale, though it's quite small and nowhere near the level of Shadows of Amn, but you'll want to play it if you manage to complete SoA.

There is a pack containg SoA and ToB which is good value.

THere is also BG1 of course. It#'s the start of the sorty that is concluded in BG2. It's sti la great game, but they improved literally everything abotut he engine and the game when they made BG11.

All of the vocie acting in BG is top notch, Warner is a little flat at times for my tastes though, but t's hard to tell if that's just how he interpreted the charcater.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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While we're on the topic of D&D computer RPGs, I'd like second Redface's nomination of Planescape:Torment. The combat is definitely not as polished as BG or BGII, but it makes up for it with what I think is the best plot and writing for ANY video game ever made. It's colorful, unconventional, and ultimately quite thought-provoking, and makes excellent use of one of D&D's most unique settings. The voice acting is top-notch too--it's got a very strong cast, including Robert Paulson (who does Pinky from Pinky and the Brain) as well as many others. If you can find it, play it, and if you can't find it, then try harder. You don't know what you're missing.

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You can turn the vocal confirmations off completely for charcaters. Throne of Bhaal is the expansion and the finale, though it's quite small and nowhere near the level of Shadows of Amn, but you'll want to play it if you manage to complete SoA.

There is a pack containg SoA and ToB which is good value.

THere is also BG1 of course. It#'s the start of the sorty that is concluded in BG2. It's sti la great game, but they improved literally everything abotut he engine and the game when they made BG11.

All of the vocie acting in BG is top notch, Warner is a little flat at times for my tastes though, but t's hard to tell if that's just how he interpreted the charcater.

 

There's actually a very nice utility called BGTutu that converts BG1 to run on the BG2 engine. It's a bit involved getting it up and running, but it really works great--they spent a lot of time on it, and it's on it's fourth now.

 

Along with that, there's a host of other BG1 mods that specifically use BGTutu. One is the BG1 NPC pack, which adds a LOT of new NPC banter and other miscellaneous character interaction. The writing quality for some characters is better than others, but it's worth it--they do some really great things with old favorites like Minsc, Khalid and Jaheira, as well as some unexpected ones like Xzar and Monteron. There's a fix pack that fixes many of the problems with the original game, as well as a tweak pack that offers many interesting optional changes.

 

Go here to download BGTutu. The Gibberlings 3 is also a good site for Tutu add-ons, and can be found here.

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There's also a ton of updates and enhancements for BG2.

www.weidu.org

I have Torment, and have attempted to play it several times, but I never get more than halfway though. The story and gameplay are both quite boring IMO cmapared to BG.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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