In general, I won’t buy any game the day it comes out… burned too many times by too many developers. Black Isle Studios might have been the exception (but only when they were the developers). Firaxis lost their free pass after Civ 3…
Some people just didn’t like NWN Dave. It was a change of gear from Baldur’s Gate. They’ll change their tune once they get ahold of KOTOR though. I’m surprised to say so (I’m a huge BG2 fan) but it’s the best game BioWare’s ever made.
Oh sure, I can understand them not liking it, but not trusting us after NWN is a pretty harsh statement.
Off topic a bit: Dave, did you do sound on KOTOR?
My compatriot, Steve Sim and I did some of the sounds (mostly in-engine cutscenes, force power sounds, some of the combat, extra ambients, editing exisiting sounds, and lots of VO processing). I think we did about 200 or so sounds in total, not including tweaking sounds that we got from Lucas and VO processing. I particularly like the great job Steve Sim did on the Pazaak sounds. Most of the ambient sounds and pre-rendered cutscenes were done by Julian at http://www.thesounddepartment.com and the creature sounds and most of the alien VO processing were done by Paul at http://www.duffstudios.com. They are both fantastic guys to work with. Also, a huge heap of kudos has to go to Cindy Wong over at Lucas for keeping track of over 13,000 lines of VO.
Care to elaborate?[/quote]
I posted this story on a few other forums, but I’ll recap it here. I played through the OC with a friend for about two or three weeks. We worked our way up to the end boss and needed to rest since all our powers, potions and spells were exhausted from the previous battle with the two remaining dragons. Too bad you can’t rest or leave the final area right before the boss, so you are fucked once you enter into that final little inner sanctum area. A warning would have been kind, but I guess that was too much trouble to add in.
The problem was that we hadn’t saved since way before the dragons. So not wanting to go through that frustrating battle again, my partner decided he was gonna win the game one way or another. So I caved in and used cheats, which I fucking hate doing. I especially hate having to cheat to beat a game, which ruins all sense of accomplishment and indicates to me a shitty game. So we flick on the God switch, expecting to finally put an end to this game, but not before one last bug. The acolyte that would have allowed my monk to beat down the boss with my uber fists of half-elven fury was bugged. Fucker wouldn’t die and trigger her unarmed vulnerability. So I had to whip out a plus one club and with my sorcerer companion proceed to beat on the acolyte until five minutes later we finally killed it, triggering her vulnerability. Done right? Bzzzt! Wrong! Then! we had to beat on the hag for 10 minutes until pumping all our stats to 20 and finishing the fucking enounter (since both of our chars sucked with blunt weapons).
So yeah. Hours and hours spent playing that game only to have the end turn into an absolute trainwreck. If it weren’t for me wanting to see the third installment in Adam Miller’s fine (and when I say fine, I mean, “Exquisite.”) Shadowlords/Dreamweaver trilogy, partially because I want to see where my lesbian relationship with my henchman leads, I would have sold this game months ago.
The aforementioned would not have happened had some thought been put into the ending. I know it seems like we hit on bad luck and ran over every potential pothole, but for the price of entry, that road should be been paved.
EDIT: Just noticed that you work for Bioware. Hey, could you steal some of Adam Miller’s ideas? Like, more sexual relationships with henchmen (I was skeptical at first but I’ll be goddamned if it didn’t make things more interesting) and more focus on characters. Build characters that are memorable and make me care, and you can drag my ass through Extreme Paintbrawl, no shit.
Peter Molyneux is passionate, but hardly a liar. He tend to speak a lot, and more about the things he has on mind that things that are clearly in the code at that moment, but you have to love how passionate he is about his work and how he want fairly put forward the videogames. You should speak with him personally.
Without people like him, that don´t hesitate trying new and risky things, this industry would be dead long ago.
About the topic, have faith on all developers until the game is running. Can´t think on a single developer I would refuse to take a look to its next game.
I’ll be the guy not buying Doom III.
Same here. God knows I trusted them and used to look at them as great developers.
As for the others, I’d say everything Davilex or Empire (minor a few exceptions, of course), Shiny, Bullfrog (Dungeon Keeper or one of the biggest letdown ever), 3DO (for inventing Army Men & fucking up the M&M series), and id. Long way from Doom, and not a true good game since. Not as good as Doom, mind you.
He’s the David Copperfield of the gaming industry, he makes whole pans of gameplay vanish behind flashy concepts and great “ideas” that do not last very long once you play the game(s). The man is redoing Populous over and over again. And I’m still pissed at him for Dungeon Keeper.
Gaming Module - I suspect Scott stole it from them. Check out the Viconia relationship from BG2. If you played it right you actually did the nasty with her at one point. And the storyline had this whole edgy slighty naughty aspect to it that made it a hoot.
Another vote against Molyneaux and his titles that start out sounding great but end up being a huge disappointment. I fell for the promise of what Dungeon Keeper and Black and White were touted as being only to discover the intriguing aspects didn’t make the cut. I will never buy his games Day One again, if ever.
Oh sure, I can understand them not liking it, but not trusting us after NWN is a pretty harsh statement.[/quote]
I have to agree. Some of the initial overly ambitions goals had to be abandoned, but the game, aside from the horrible bugginess of multiplayer in the initial release, is a classic.
I posted this story on a few other forums, but I’ll recap it here. I played through the OC with a friend for about two or three weeks. We worked our way up to the end boss and needed to rest since all our powers, potions and spells were exhausted from the previous battle with the two remaining dragons. Too bad you can’t rest or leave the final area right before the boss, so you are fucked once you enter into that final little inner sanctum area. A warning would have been kind, but I guess that was too much trouble to add in.
The problem was that we hadn’t saved since way before the dragons. So not wanting to go through that frustrating battle that took countless reloads, my partner decided he was gonna win the game one way or another. So I caved in and used cheats, which I fucking hate doing. I especially hate having to cheat to beat a game, which ruins all sense of accomplishment and indicates to me a shitty game. So we flick on the God switch, expecting to finally put an end to this game, but not before one last bug. The acolyte that would have allowed my monk to beat down the boss with my uber fists of half-elven fury was bugged. Fucker wouldn’t die and trigger her unarmed vulnerability. So I had to whip out a plus one club and with my sorcerer companion proceed to beat on the acolyte until five minutes later we finally killed it, triggering her vulnerability. Done right? Bzzzt! Wrong! Then! we had to beat on the hag for 10 minutes until pumping all our stats to 20 and finishing the fucking enounter (since both of our chars sucked with blunt weapons).
I don’t mean to sound uncaring, but…uh, where was Bioware’s mistake in this? You expected to walk into the cavern where the end boss was and be able to rest once you got there? I can’t believe you didn’t save/rest after you beat the dragons.
I am, however, quite sure that the game autosaves immediately before the dragon battle – which is a great way for Bioware to cover themselves against instances like this. I’m surprised (but don’t know for sure, as I never beat those infernal dragons) that it doesn’t autosave as you enter the room where the final boss lives.
End boss encounters nearly always have no-rest, can’t leave areas, and I think they should. I have no problem with that.
And I can’t believe you’d write Bioware off over this one incident. Neverwinter Nights is a great, great game, and it doesn’t seem fair to knock Bioware because you didn’t save your game.
He’s the David Copperfield of the gaming industry, he makes whole pans of gameplay vanish behind flashy concepts and great “ideas” that do not last very long once you play the game(s). The man is redoing Populous over and over again. And I’m still pissed at him for Dungeon Keeper.
I’m not. DK was a lot of fun. He wasn’t with Bullfrog any more by the time they DK2, which was also fun. I was really bummed when they canceled plans for DK3.
I was very disappointed with Black & White. But you know, there was so much space to spread that disappointment in, what with all the (sorry, but it’s true) pipeheaded 5-star gaming reviews by people I normally trust, that no single source took all of my letdown feeling. PM managed to create soemthing that shined really bright for most people, at least for a bit. I just never saw any of it myself with B&W.
Relying on autosave fucked us over on our first attempt to beat the OC together. Sometimes the save file would be, inexplicably, a few steps behind where we just received the saving game splash screen. So we disabled it, and rightly so since it had killed our first attempt to play the game.
You have to remember that we were playing online, which is fraught with all sorts of bugs, lag, server disconnects, etc due to NWN’s extremely weak netcode, IMHO.
You must have played singleplayer, which from me experience is much easier from a technical standpoint.
Try it with a few friends sometime. Your first attempt will probably fail. There will be all kinds of frustration and people dropping and returning with different character states (to a stickler for not cheating, such as myself, I consider playing with a different character state to fall under that category). Playing MP coop is truly a juggling act of various factors spanning several people.
Good luck.
I’ve played with buddies a lot. Mostly on a LAN, which might ease some of the problems, but I was in the exclusively-MP beta, online only, as well.
I admit it’s not great, but it sounds like you had an unlucky experience all the way 'round, as I never had the kind of nightmares you experienced.
I didn’t mean to imply that it didn’t suck for you, but I don’t see any way that it could have been remedied once you disabled the autosave. I still fail to see where the fault lies with Bioware…Sounds like just plain dumb luck that things went for you the way they did.
Of course, I’m just comparing personal experiences, too, but I know a lot of people that have done lots of playing online, and have had minimal hiccups.
I am sorry you had a rough time, though, because I think Neverwinter Nights is the Best Game Ever. (Haven’t played Knights of the Old Republic, but I can’t wait for it to hit PC.)
REFLEXIVE!
Try it with a few friends sometime. Your first attempt will probably fail. There will be all kinds of frustration and people dropping and returning with different character states (to a stickler for not cheating, such as myself, I consider playing with a different character state to fall under that category). Playing MP coop is truly a juggling act of various factors spanning several people.
Good luck.[/quote]
I play NWN a lot MP and have run across very few problems. I put up the server, load the right save, and my friend joins and we play. Played just last night for 2 hours straight with no problems and have done the same multiple times before. Maybe the netcode was problematic early on but it works great now.
– Xaroc
edit: Fixed fat finger error.
Agreed. I don’t know what wacky problems Mr. Module and quatoria are having, but I did lots of MP NWN on a LAN and online, when it first came out, with zero problems. I’m not saying they’re not there, but I didn’t experience them.
-Tom