203 replies to this topic

[Canned Chaos]

The only thing I know about the Death gate world is that the game ruled! I used to love that game - good old-school adventure.

Pratchett's Discworld is awesome (I read every book of the series, except the newest one I think). But Douglas Adams is even awesomer

[BallOfFire]

Grunker, somehow I just knew you were about to say the Death Gate Cycle when you said "For anyone who would like to read amazing fantasy books I can recommend" =). That series was amazing. My favorite fantasy series by far. I bought all seven of the books and would keep them next to my bed so I could read like 10 random pages before going to bed just to remind me that there is some beauty in the world =). Now that I think about it Haplo isn't all that different from Irenicus...

[Kish]

What about R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf trilogy (a prequel to the Icewind Dale trilogy )? Many people say those three books are the best of the Drizzt novels.  In fact, I've even seen Drizzt haters cite them as how good the rest of the novels could have been.

I for one is not very fond of Drizzt, but the Dark Elf Trilogy is amazingly written. Most of the Forgotten Realms books (especially the ones about the Time of Troubles) are badly written and made to make money, but the Dark Elf Trilogy is really good. Especially Dissolution.

Disso...You sure you're thinking of the same trilogy NiGHTMARE was asking about? By R. A. Salvatore?

The books are called Homeland, Exile, and Sojourn. If the trilogy you're thinking of has a book called Dissolution, that's not the same trilogy.

[NiGHTMARE]

Right, Dissolution is one of the War of the Spider Queen uh... hexalogy novels. Which, other than the prologues, weren't even written by R.A. Salvatore .

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 30 March 2005 - 01:16 PM.

[neriana]

Atari is a moneyproducing machine, and no good RPG has ever come from them, so we fanatic fans can begin shivering.

I've never played it, but I thought Gothic 2 was supposed to be a great game?

It is.

NWN isn't bad either, and Troika is no more, thank goodness. Atari's just a publisher, anyway; the developer is what's important here. I've never understood why some people think it's so awful for a game company to behave like a business. It could be a lot worse -- EA Games could have the license. They're a programming sweatshop.

The PC's mother being a priestess of Bhaal was a retcon, and a really horribly stupid one. BG3 may not even have anything to do with the child of Bhaal thing at all. It's impossible to know what it will be about and whether it will be good or bad at this stage.

[NiGHTMARE]

Personally, I'd like the game to be set at the time of the founding of Baldur's Gate. That would be pretty interesting, and you could even get to meet Balduran himself .

[Sir guestalot]

Lol, I get disturbing images in my head from that title.. > <

Oh... uhh.... i see what you're saying x_x

whops:p

[Tom]

The fact that it is a prequel isnt what bothers me about the idea, its the fact that it mentioned having one of Minsc's ancestors in it that worries me. What I envision them doing is what you see all too often in prequels to movies, that is they take a good thing and use it over and over, ultimately destorying the character (in this case Minsc.) And it will be even worse this time because, as someone already said, Minsc isnt like that because of his geneology, hes like that because of a few too many hits to the head.

[Sir guestalot]

No one said they are going to make that aincent misc retarded like minsc....

[Grunker]

Grunker, somehow I just knew you were about to say the Death Gate Cycle when you said "For anyone who would like to read amazing fantasy books I can recommend" =).  That series was amazing.  My favorite fantasy series by far.  I bought all seven of the books and would keep them next to my bed so I could read like 10 random pages before going to bed just to remind me that there is some beauty in the world =).  Now that I think about it Haplo isn't all that different from Irenicus...

Right, Dissolution is one of the War of the Spider Queen uh... hexalogy novels.  Which, other than the prologues, weren't even written by R.A. Salvatore .

Atari is a moneyproducing machine, and no good RPG has ever come from them, so we fanatic fans can begin shivering.

I've never played it, but I thought Gothic 2 was supposed to be a great game?

It is.

NWN isn't bad either, and Troika is no more, thank goodness. Atari's just a publisher, anyway; the developer is what's important here. I've never understood why some people think it's so awful for a game company to behave like a business. It could be a lot worse -- EA Games could have the license. They're a programming sweatshop.

The PC's mother being a priestess of Bhaal was a retcon, and a really horribly stupid one. BG3 may not even have anything to do with the child of Bhaal thing at all. It's impossible to know what it will be about and whether it will be good or bad at this stage.

I thought there were 15 books in Death Gates Cycle? There was when I read it
Haplo is my favourite fictional character of all time. Yeah, he rules.

Right, I meant War of the Spider Queen. Sorry 'bout that

NWN is a heap of dung... And Troika redeemed themselves and made themselves state of the art game-creators in my eyes when they made Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, a game that's definetely in my RPG top3, try it, and see what I mean.

I think you underestimate the power of the publisher. It was Atari's choice to set so many boundaries for the Temple of Elemental Evil for example, that it ended up a shitty game. Also, Atari has the rights for the D&D rules, but all the games they set in motion with the rulesystem are small-sighted and with very little implemented roleplaying. It usually ends up being diablo with conversation-mode.

How many of us remember Pool of Radiance 2? Damn that was a bad game...

Edited by Grunker, 30 March 2005 - 10:02 PM.

[Kish]

NWN is a heap of dung... And Troika redeemed themselves and made themselves state of the art game-creators in my eyes when they made Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, a game that's definetely in my RPG top3, try it, and see what I mean.

Gah.

I can't say I've played Bloodlines; I can say I've seen a lot of the dialogue from it, and it's godawful--much worse than NWN could ever be.

[BallOfFire]

I bought Bloodlines. I played it for about 2 hours and decided it was a huge waste of money and haven't played it since.

And there are only 7 books in the Death Gate Cycle... Unless they wrote 7 more within like the last 3 years or something, which I really doubt. There was one book per world (kinda, they broke that rule later on jumping around). But if there are more I really want to know because I've reread them so many times because they were sooo great.

[Grunker]

NWN is a heap of dung... And Troika redeemed themselves and made themselves state of the art game-creators in my eyes when they made Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, a game that's definetely in my RPG top3, try it, and see what I mean.

Gah.

I can't say I've played Bloodlines; I can say I've seen a lot of the dialogue from it, and it's godawful--much worse than NWN could ever be.

I bought Bloodlines.  I played it for about 2 hours and decided it was a huge waste of money and haven't played it since. 

And there are only 7 books in the Death Gate Cycle...  Unless they wrote 7 more within like the last 3 years or something, which I really doubt.  There was one book per world (kinda, they broke that rule later on jumping around).  But if there are more I really want to know because I've reread them so many times because they were sooo great.

Then I don't understand anything. I've played BLoodlines through three times now, and I keep discovering new things about white it's so unbelievably awsome. Of course, it might because I know the story of Vampire the Masquerade, but I hope, as dexcent roleplayers, that you've read some first? Even though you haven't theres still plenty of information in the game so I simply can't understand why you don't like it? The graphics are awesome, the gameplay is fantastic, the interface is inspiring and the story is unmatched. Try playing it for 5-10 hours more. If you don't love it, I'm proven wrong. I thought VtM: Bloodlines was heaven for all CRPG'ers

[Sir guestalot]

You know whats the best voice acting ive ever seen?...

The mayor of soubar at SOS

[Grunker]

Here's why I don't like Bloodlines.  The men walk like women, and not just any women, the biggest sluts I've ever seen.  The entire game is insanely choppy, and gets unbelievably more so the longer you play.  If you don't restart every half an hour or so the game becomes unplayable (and I have a pretty new computer, it should be able to handle anything, and handles Doom 3 just fine even).  For an RPG, it seems overly simplistic in abilities, which I was actually OK with because I decided to have fun with it instead of powergame like I always do.  I was really looking forward to being able to finally be the bad guy in an RPG and do whatever I want without worrying about Cowled Wizards and such warping in and blasting me apart.  Then I found out about the "Masquerade."  You can't do anything cool or people find out that there are vampires in the world and bad things happen.  What's the point in being evil if you can't be evil? 

Also, all the cutscenes are VERY fast and VERY choppy.  I read in a review about one where a guy summons wolves, they run right through him, run past the enemy, and then bite the air and somehow rip the guy apart.  Then I watched the cutscene, and felt kinda like I did when I watch Moulin Rouge with a 103 degree fever; very very confused.  It went so fast I had no idea what I just watched.  After going through the tutorial for a few days (restarting, loading, giving up and coming back took quite a while, and the tutorial itself was so long that I wished there was a warning) I finally reached a city and had a mission.  It took me 20 seconds to forget my mission, about an hour to load walking out of the building you start in because I kept having to restart, and then I spent the next hour trying to figure out how to get the stupid prostitute to go somewhere where I could suck her blood.  She wouldn't shut up about the dark alleys being too public, and it kept freezing when I tried to go back into the building.  I finally got her to a dark alley, sucked was JUST about to suck her blood, then she ran away because apparently my time expired or something.  Then I gave up.

Most of the problems you're speaking about I have never met, and my computer is on the verge of giving up because it can't handle the graphics. The loading times were immense, but it was no problem because the readings they've provided is amazing. Why do you keep reloading? I thought the brilliancy of this game was that you didn't have to do it as much as par example in Baldur's Gate.

It is very simplistic in its abilities because the RPG system it uses is White Wolf - The company that originally wrote "the Masquerade". Just because you don't think it isn't cool that you can't rip every guys head of when you're a vampire it doesn't make it a bad game. It makes it an INSANELY GOOD GAME. The masquerade is a fantastic idea, because it solves the issue of "why we don't know vampires exist" and it makes it so that there's tons of roleplaying in the game, where you try to hide your actions.

"What's the point in being evil if you can't be evil?", you can be, just in other ways than ripping people's heads of, which by my standards would offer no roleplaying and would make it a shitty game. The "Beckett" charachter is fantastic, and yes, the voice-acting is fantastic also. The dialogue options even, I think are great, and the dialogue the NPC's offer is even better.

If you can roleplay, and especcially if you have played Vampire the Masquerade with pen and paper (or try playing VtM: Redemption, which offers more introduction) the game will be greater still. Also, if you feel thrown into the world with no knowledge whatsoever, that's only good, cause that's the way a childe without a sire should feel, because its very rare to be one, and they have no executive watching their backs and teaching them how to act in "the World of Darkness".

Every bit about this game just screams: "GOOD ROLEPLAYING" to me, but if you want to be evil by blasting everything apart with a .44 Magnum, play another game

Edited by Grunker, 01 April 2005 - 06:37 AM.

[NiGHTMARE]

Redemption is another, earlier game set in the Vampire: the Masquerade universe. It uses a completely different engine and offers more of a hack 'n' slash style of gameplay than Bloodlines.

Perhaps the most interest aspect of it is the first half of the game takes place during medieval times, whereas the second half takes place in the present.

Edited by NiGHTMARE, 01 April 2005 - 07:56 AM.

[Feanor]

A prequel? Nothing good can come of that.

The Throne of Bhaal ENDED THE SERIES okay? They couldn't do a sequel even if they wanted to, hence the decision to make a prequel.

Throne of Bhaal ended the story of the main character from BG1 and BG2 (and, BTW, the ending of TOB is so vague about Charname's fate that it leaves places for more than one sequel... ... but that is just my opinion). Who the hell says that BG3 should be about Charname or his descendants ? There is not a direct connection such as this in IWD series, nor in the Elder Scrolls series, but that does not stop them to be considered a part of the same series. Just one sample (to demonstrate how could a sequel be) : Charname could disturb some things in TOB and in a BG3 another hero could fix the mess. The main problem is not that TOB says a little about Charname's fate, but the fact that it has 3 endings for the player to choose. If it had not, it would have been much easier to create a sequel (just another sample : if Charname's ascends to godhood, Cyric could find a way to strip him of his divinity and cast him out among mortals again). And there can be imagined other ideas too.