Recent content by chainguns

Favorite aRPG - Dungeon Siege 2 (great loot, music, quest structure), followed closely by ME1 (the only true ME game) Favorite story/atmosphere in an RPG - Knights of the Old Republic 2 Favorite recent RPG - Might & Magic X, followed closely by Divinity Original Sin Favorite ancient RPG -...

Well, since you are arguing semantics and off topic, at least get it right. BioWare does have directors (common ones with EA), its own stock does exist and is held by EA and since it (BioWare) is not publicly listed (it is held by EA) it does not need to publish financial statements (EA...

MONEY. As a lead designer you have $100k and can either spend it on: A) Your writer to come up with 90,000 lines of different MUTE outcomes, questions, permutations OR B) Your writer to come up with 20,000 lines and and then have them VA'd for the remainder of the budget. Simply put -...

I came to this thread to write "Sid Meier's Pirates!" but seems I got beaten to it. Ranks as my most replayed game ever (counting the original Pirates on Dosbox). One of the rare examples of modern remakes that keep everything great from 1980's gameplay classic (except for the loss of naval town...

If you have no love for "classic" RPG combat systems then what are you interested in the genre for? The things you describe as chores are the things genre fans love (assuming they're properly implemented). Stats are not there because of technical limitations from the old days of computing -...

Examples of *some* RPG conventions (the more of these a game has the more of an RPG it is) Player skill vs character skill (ie stats) ideally turn based (or RTwP) combat Choices and consequences (ideally with cut content if you picked A over B) Levelling and loot Story driven Exploration...

Compensates is not a strong enough word if you're playing on PC (and you probably are as 'isometric' wasn't really there in the same way on consoles). DA:O combat is about tactics and builds. DA2 combat is just spamming abilities as they come off cooldown, while waves of generic enemies spawn...

That's exactly what it was. An RPG is where things are determined by your character's skill, not the player's skill. So you could be pointing a gun perfectly and still miss. This was not a Gears of War clone (that came with ME2 and ME3 where people widely said "gameplay" had improved"). That...

Depends if you think the only problem with ME3 was the ending. As far as I'm concerned the ending was just so egregiously bad that it stole attention from the remaining serious flaws which are discussed more rarely. But BioWare already sent itself down by jettisoning its existing customer...

For each DA:O problem they fixed, they created five new ones. The fast combat is a strange thing to hope for. If you run DA:O combat on Hard without pausing your party will be dead in like 12-15 seconds real time. In DA2 if you run the combat on Hard without pausing your party will be dead in...

Wow, a multi-quote, anti-elitist wall of text, that no-one on this board will be bothered to read. Wonderful post. For someone of your age you seem to be unaware that your reply turned this into a private conversation descending rapidly into the dreary world of semantics, and off topic. But I...

Hack & slash and FPS are indeed great genres. Diablo 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 are in my top 10. Any genre done well is great to play. I have no "sneering disdain" for a genre on principle. My concern is when cinematic action adventure/FPS represent 90% of all (non mobile/social) releases...

My hopes for Dragon Age 3 - the new EA boss will realize that it's got neither the core RPG fans nor the 'casual' FPS audience on board .... and will can it, putting the devs onto an ME MMO. Then, in 10 years time, Obsidian, Spiderweb or some other RPG developer will buy the Dragon Age IP...

As a fan of non-action games: Divinity Original Sin Wasteland 2 (Kickstarter) Avadon 2 (look past the weak visuals and you'll get 60 hours of the best RPG fun) Thief 4 (hoping this year) Rome 2 Dishonored DLC (next week)

There are no buzzwords, just plain English. What it means is: BioWare used its solid fan loyalty (aka "Goodwill") and the reputation of its top-notch previous game series' (aka "IPs") to offload tons of copies of mediocre games (that would on their own merits - ie without the aforementioned...