2011 is gonna be one epic year.

[Silellak]

Part of me was convinced that the Codex became self-aware and killed itself yesterday, in order to avoid the release of DA2, ME3, and ES5 all in the same year.

Also, Support the Horse, bitches.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Also, Support the Horse, bitches.

This. It's NOT gonna be an epic year without Andyman.

The combat demo was SOZZY. Before you get all defensive and start babbling some rubbish about combat not being important and whatnot, VD thought it was important enough to warrant a dedicated demo.

But Kalos, AOD is an oldskool text adventure! Who cares what VD thinks?

 

[Jaesun]

• 
  Oh yes look how good Bioware and Bethesda are recycling their own work over and over again:
  
  With KotOR 1 Bioware improved upon NWN by delivering the very same plot as in NWN or BG2 or BG1 for that matter, with lots of teenage drama bullshit that, even though look good on a jRPG, have fucking nothing to do with Star Wars. And you're the dark lord of the Sith with no memory of anything, with every party member on your ship, with the exception of one, completely oblivious to whom you really are. And all of them had good reason to fucking hate your true self but in the end they forgive you no matter how twisted your choices through the course of the game were. Then you go to four planets searching for the four pieces of the Star Map much like in NWN's first act where you search for the four watercrapian creatures! HOW FUCKING ORIGINAL!
  
  Then came Bethesdurr with Oblivian. They took one quite good game (Morrowind) and guess where they went "fresh and interesting" with? They fucking butchered the lore set on previous titles, dumbed down the skills system and voiced everything with four people that speak in monotone throughout the whole motherfucking game, turning an otherwise interesting setting into a steaming pile of shit. Not to mention the piece of shit engine they've developed (more liked vomited) themselves to "powah" the gaem that computers from fours years afterwards still have problems running it sometimes. Bethesderp surely knows how to bring on the innovashun.
  
  Then with Jade Empire Bioware did it all over again, copying the same bullshit story they've used in KotOR and NWN and BG2 and BG1 and even their future titles, but the shitty engine on which it runs is still as shitty as ever with D3D wrapped on it instead of OpenGL to call it innovative. Do I have to mention the three different editions the game came with? With exclusive items and even combat modes exclusive to each one? Or is it not fresh and interesting enough?
  
  The Mass Effect series is another fucking joke that Bioware had lots of time to develop and they plain fucking failed. Instead of delivering an innovative setting and breaking free from their D&D shackles, they fucking copied everything from their previous titles and the game boiled down to finding the Protheangiughiauf ruins on guess: four different planets and fight the ancient dormant evil mecha-cthulhu. Besides, ME was such a dumbed down piece of turd that it got rid of dialog choices (OH BUT BIOWARE DOESNT EVEN HAVE REAL CHOICES IN THEIR GAMES ROFL xD) in favor of a dialog wheel that doesn't give you a fucking clue on what your fucking shitty voiced acted character will say. Do I have to mention the decryption mini-games or is it bad enough as it is?
  
  And then Bethesdurr shat FO3 on our chests and rubbed it all over us with their prolapsed anus. That piece of crap stinks as bad as Oblivian but is made of the remains of our all time favorite game, as if they developed that just to break our morale and troll our asses. FO3 is nothing but a Bethesda game with the Fallout name wrapped on it so that the Codex could hope for something good in the end and perhaps, finally, satisfy our needs for a Fallout game, albeit being exactly like Oblivion in the end.

1. Elder Scrolls 5. Recently announced. Fucking shit RPG with pretty new engine. It's fucking Bethesda!

2. The Witcher 2. I STILL have not played the first one, so no comment.

3. Deus Ex 3. 99.9% chance of fucking shit game.

4. Age of Decadence. YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH!

5. Dragon Age 2. Fucking shit press the A button Action game.

6. Mass Effect 3. YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHH! But it's not an RPG.

7. Dungeon Siege 3. George Zeits project. Can he pull off another MotB? Doubtful.

8. Risen 2. Still have not played first one. No Comment.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

AoD - The combat sucks. Next.

1/10

But it's true. The combat demo was SOZZY. Before you get all defensive and start babbling some rubbish about combat not being important and whatnot, VD thought it was important enough to warrant a dedicated demo.

What was wrong with it? It wasn't perfect and was a bit slow, but it offered a decent range of options, a fair challenge, different character builds felt different, and was an improvement over the likes of Fallout. All I really want out of it is party control.

 

[Brakiri]

He's legit. I didn't liked TW2 too among some other Codexians here.
You know not everyone enjoys playing shit. :D

Well that's why we play TW2 while you play shit....

If he had legitimate concerns then ok, but no interesting NPC's or no good story can be leveled at 95% or more of all RPG's and I guarantee that for most RPG's he doesn't use the same rule of criticism.

Ah, i see.
So to be taken seriously i've to bash a few more games?
Ok.

I loved Planescape:Torment..BG2..not soooo much.

Dragon Age annoyed the shit out of me. A lame LotR story with a beard so long it can be looked at in the cellar. AND the game tells you the story after 2 hours! The next 20 hours you burn with "helping" the old alliance members. How entertaining.

The shallow and awkward rules "light", the generic and uninteresting world, the pseudo-deep Morrigan etc. The thing that really pissed me off was the combat. So boring, so time consuming and so less fun, i couldn't believe it. 80% of this fucking game is nonsensical combat! I can not fathom why in the world they moved away from the D&D-system. At least for combat.

Everybody was spitting furious about the level scaling in Oblivion, but did any reviewer mention that these fucking Ulu-Kai..sorry, Darkspawn, also get better in respect to HP and armor? Nooo of course not! Because its Bioware, and they can do all the shit they want, and still get 90% reviews.

This game is so fucking annoying, and nonsensical. Why kill the knight? Because he refused to do the initiation ceremony? Oh and yeah, you will die early, because of this fucking blood you just drank, welcom to the grey stupids!

And hey, while we are at it: Elves, listen: I will remove your litte problem and as reward i only need a few hundreds of you, to stop the great dark army. How does that sound?

A few scattered elves without the power to get rid of their small problems..how could they be of ANY help fighting a big army?

What else..oh Mass Effect 2:

Did not finish it. Sure the dialogs are good, and some of the characters are pretty good, but the strange sandbox-feeling of these recruiting missions...the mission-"system" overall was strange. It didn't feel like a real story. Just small modular parts put together. How can their be any suspense, if i can think:" Hmm..maybe a can still do more recruiting..yeah, the bad guys have to wait". The citadel has been reduced to a small supermarket. Most of the places are tiny, and they make NO effort at all to establish the setting a little bit more. They just "consume" what they build up in the first part.

That's weak. After the mission on the enemy ship i stopped playing.
Just to much combat and not a very convincing story.

Someone already said it in another thread. The good old times are over. The only stuff we get now is casual action stuff for the masses.

Last thing i played was New Vegas. Was ok, but Obsidian proved one more time, that they have no skills whatsoever in regard to good programming. The script bugs in the quests are so numerous, take a look at the wiki. Its just horrible. Oh yeah and the fucking Gamebryo-Engine still crashes every few hours. Great!

The faction system is half-baked at best, the survival-skill is useless, making ammo is pointless, and there are so many unneccessary barriers in this game, i almost wanted to scream.

It's more of F3..thats all. It has more quests than F3, but thats it.
The companion system has been improved, but it still feels like an unneccessary addition to the game. Not even the main story was significantly better than in F3.

I knew that Obsidian had no good programmers, but not even the content was close to that what i expected. Disappointing.

My hopes rest with The Witcher 2.
Dragon Age 2 will be more crap and more action. Yeah..action..the thing this shitty game needs most..more boring and senseless combat, nagging on your nerves and stealing your time.

Grrrr..

 

[bloodlover]

Risen 2

I can't wait to play that game

 

[Brakiri]

Risen 2

I can't wait to play that game

Risen was ok. The last 2 chapters were really bad, because there was no content. 2 loot-searching quests, and hacking through 200 Lizardmen.

It is sad, that they were unable to keep up the content-density/quality of the first 2 chapters right up to the end. Oh and the end boss was horrible.

Did anyone notice that Risen was just a mediocre Gothic 2-copy? Island, Harbortown, Cloister of Mages, Lizardmen..

I REALLY hope they put some more effort into Risen 2.

 

[bloodlover]

They will. I have faith. And yes, Risen in a Gothic 2 copy but in the end that is what made it so good. It's the closest thing to the first Gothic games and all fans of the series acknowledge that.

 

[Brakiri]

They will. I have faith. And yes, Risen in a Gothic 2 copy but in the end that is what made it so good. It's the closest thing to the first Gothic games and all fans of the series acknowledge that.

It was a minimum-requirement game to get back on their feet. After the Gothic 3-desaster, in which Piranha Byte was not so innocent as most of the fanbois would like you to believe, they needed a break, a reset, a "back to the roots".

I really hope Risen 2 will be more than just another bad copy of the old Gothic games. I don't need innovative or "cool" or mega-graphics..i just want the soul back, that made the first Gothic such a good game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Risen was ok. The last 2 chapters were really bad, because there was no content. 2 loot-searching quests, and hacking through 200 Lizardmen.

Did anyone notice that Risen was just a mediocre Gothic 2-copy?

I really hope Risen 2 will be more than just another bad copy of the old Gothic games.

You have now become my least liked newfag. I hope you're feeling ashamed

 

[Jaesun]

Fuck. Now I am going to have to finally play Risen. I got it on that Steam sale a while back.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Elder Scrolls 5: You are the dragonborn.
Dragon Age 2: You are the dragonborn... eh analborn.
Mass Effect 3: You are Commander Shepard.
The Witcher 2: You are Commander Geralt.
Deus Ex 3: I wear my sunglasses at daylight so i can so i can enjoy the fucking bloom

As for the rest, they have the actual potential to potentially not be utter shit.

 

[KalosKagathos]

What was wrong with it?

All I really want out of it is party control.

This is what was wrong with it. All the differences between various weapon types are nice, but I don't see the combat system supporting much variety if all encounters are balanced for one character. Fighters will want to have two weapons: one for fighting armored dudes and one for fighting unarmored dudes, and that will probably see them through most battles. Besides, the spears' special ability just screams party-based combat to me.

 

[Serious_Business]

AoD - The combat sucks. Next.

1/10

But it's true. The combat demo was SOZZY. Before you get all defensive and start babbling some rubbish about combat not being important and whatnot, VD thought it was important enough to warrant a dedicated demo.

What was wrong with it? It wasn't perfect and was a bit slow, but it offered a decent range of options, a fair challenge, different character builds felt different, and was an improvement over the likes of Fallout. All I really want out of it is party control.

Half of it is based on random rolls. Single-character turn based combat is kind of a bad idea. One mistep and you have to reload. In a game with disposable characters, all this randomness makes a lot more sense - you decide if character X wants to take up the risks, and then you put his possible demise into your strategy. The fact that you said "All I want is party control" isn't a minor point, it's the base to why AoD's combat is so fragile.

But then, having bad combat in a rpg is, as always, a moot point. /c&c faggot

AoD isn't coming out in 2011 tho. More like 2012, at best.

 

[Needles]

DIABLO 3

In 2011? Kinda doubt it.

 

[piydek]

TES V - Remove level scaling, give more combat options to fighters, improve the dungeon design, don't fuck up the lore, and it can actually turn up surprisingly decent.

Oh if it was only this . It surprises me how people nowadays fail to see what a remarkably huge fuck-up Oblivion was in every single department. Aside from level scaling, everything you mention is absolutely minor compared to a shitload of other fucked-up stuff in that game.

It's way more cool to shit all over Dragon age today, but aside from Bioware's love towards cut-scenes and epicness, Dragon age is nowhere near the fuck-up level of Oblivion.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

TES 5 - Could actually turn out decent. While Oblivion was , everything Bethesda has done since has been other then writing. I'm wondering whether Obsidian has raised the bar a bit with F:NV and will force Bethesda to at least make the writing bearable, if not on Morrowind levels. If they are actually using a new engine (instead of renaming the old engine after a few changes), and it preserves the same mod capability then we could end up with a good game.

The Witcher 2 - I have hopes for this, but CDP has only released one game so far and while TW1 was pretty good, it remains to be seen whether they can keep up the quality or whether the first Witcher was just an aberration.

Deus Ex 3 - Could be good, could be shit. All I've seen are prerendered cutscenes and a bunch of talk about how deep the game is. Eidos hasn't had a quality game in some time and Square Enix helping them is just lol-worthy.

Age of Decadence - I'm sure it will be great when it comes out

Dragon Age 2 - Bioware making an action game? FPS was hard enough for them and it takes some major skill to screw up FPS combat. There is no hope for this. Expect Jade Empire except the plot is dumber, the characters more annoying, and the filler combat 40 hours longer.

Mass Effect 3 - Almost certainly shit, but we don't exactly know much about it yet other then that the plot is going to be , so I can't really make a judgment.

Dungeon Siege 3 - Don't know anything about it other then its made by Obsidian, which gives it a 50/50 chance of being decent.

Risen 2 - I have high hopes, but haven't seen anything. If they can keep the quality of the first 2 chapters of Risen throughout the game and don't have such a stupid final boss fight then we could have a winner. I'm hoping that the reason for the lackluster 2nd half of Risen was simply money and time, and now that they are on the sequel they hopefully have enough of that to make a real gem. Hopefully they get someone who isn't shit to do the console port so they actually make money off the game as well. The only reason Risen wasn't in the running for GOTY by most major sites this year is because the 90% of people who played the console version ended up with utter shit.

 

[Ruprekt]

DA2 and ME3 will be fucking awesome.

Everyone of you will play these games and talk about them for a whole year.

I still haven't played ME2. Nothing in this universe can compel me, not even photoshop.

 

[KalosKagathos]

Aside from level scaling, everything you mention is absolutely minor compared to a shitload of other fucked-up stuff in that game.

Like what? TES games are dungeon crawlers with nice lore. A good TES game needs:

1. Fun dungeons.
2. Fun enemies.
3. Fun ways to kill enemies.
4. Fun loot to find after killing enemies.
5. Fun reasons explaining why dungeons, enemies and loot were there in the first place.

It's not rocket science. Sidequests and a Daggerfall-like branching MQ are welcome, but they aren't what makes TES TES.

 

[Gragt]

epic

 

[oldmanpaco]

DA2 and ME3 will be fucking awesome.

Everyone of you will play these games and talk about them for a whole year.

I still haven't played ME2. Nothing in this universe can compel me, not even photoshop.

I just started ME2 again. If you go into it realizing that it is in no way, shape, or form an RPG it is not really all that terrible. A shooter with a story – nothing more or less.

 

[piydek]

Aside from level scaling, everything you mention is absolutely minor compared to a shitload of other fucked-up stuff in that game.

Like what? TES games are dungeon crawlers with nice lore. A good TES game needs:

1. Fun dungeons.
2. Fun enemies.
3. Fun ways to kill enemies.
4. Fun loot to find after killing enemies.
5. Fun reasons explaining why dungeons, enemies and loot were there in the first place.

It's not rocket science. Sidequests and a Daggerfall-like branching MQ are welcome, but they aren't what makes TES TES.

The only thing that's potentially good in a TES game is the atmosphere/hiking in interesting environment part. Most of your points revolve around the combat/loot, which is ridiculous in a TES game.

1. Dungeons in a TES game can't be fun because combat in TES games sucks and loot is completely irrelevant, just like everything else. Plus, Bethesda was never good at pacing or providing a good measure of anything so their dungeons, aside from the generic feel, always seem to be dreadful, bland grinds.

2. Fun enemies? Why, it's not like the combat in TES games is any fun in itself or that it has any point outside of itself.

3. Fun ways to kill enemies? What are you talking about? Are you going to pull out Todd's interpretation of bloody mess perk now?

4. Fun loot - well, i can accept it's interesting to maybe get a new weapon type for the first 30 seconds after you find it.

5. This is OK. It's part of the lore and atmosphere/hiking part that can be pulled off well in a TES game concept.

The thing that TES games need the most is half-decent and half-interesting gameworld design. Furthermore, they need the story, writing and quests to at least not stand in the way of hiking. While before Oblivion dialogues and quests were mostly either non-existant and poor excuses for wandering around or completely bland, in Oblivion they were downright retarded and got in the way all the time.

Alongside the enemy/loot scaling in Oblivion I'd put its extremely bad world and geography design, disneyland art-style, horrible voice-acting, mini-games, downright retarded and childish quests/dialogues/attempts at humour, interface, quest compass, fast-travel as game-breaking retarded intrusions before any of your points other than the scaling.

 

[KalosKagathos]

The only thing that's potentially good in a TES game is the atmosphere/hiking in interesting environment part. Most of your points revolve around the combat/loot, which is ridiculous in a TES game.

Played Arena and Daggerfall much? As vast as their worlds were, environments were incredibly repetitive, making their quality as hiking sims rather questionable. TES didn't start with Morrowind, you know.

1. Dungeons in a TES game can't be fun because combat in TES games sucks and loot is completely irrelevant, just like everything else. Plus, Bethesda was never good at pacing or providing a good measure of anything so their dungeons, aside from the generic feel, always seem to be dreadful, bland grinds.

Fuck you. Both Daggerfall and Morrowind had fun dungeons, albeit for different reasons. Daggerfall's procedural generation resulted in dungeons that looked like they were designed by someone positively insane. As bizarre as they were, they often allowed you to use climbing and swimming skills and the levitation spell to get around. Navigation and figuring out just where the hell you were supposed to go often was incredibly fun. Morrowind's dungeons were easy to navigate, but had nice environmental storytelling in them, like notes of dead adventurers.

2. Fun enemies? Why, it's not like the combat in TES games is any fun in itself or that it has any point outside of itself.

What? You spend most of your post demanding a hiking game, then you suddenly object to visually interesting fauna inhabiting the place? How does that make any sense?

3. Fun ways to kill enemies? What are you talking about? Are you going to pull out Todd's interpretation of bloody mess perk now?

Actually, I meant polearms, throwing weapons, crossbows and staffs usable as melee weapons.

4. Fun loot - well, i can accept it's interesting to maybe get a new weapon type for the first 30 seconds after you find it.

I'm talking about unique items with some backstory to them that make you feel like a hero for just owning them.

The thing that TES games need the most is half-decent and half-interesting gameworld design.

How the hell are dungeons, their denizens and stuff found inside not a part of the gameworld design?

Furthermore, they need the story, writing and quests to at least not stand in the way of hiking. While before Oblivion dialogues and quests were mostly either non-existant and poor excuses for wandering around or completely bland, in Oblivion they were downright retarded and got in the way all the time.

True, but at worst, quests can just be ignored, if the freeform exploration is solid enough on its own. Oblivion didn't fail because of its quests, it failed because it couldn't provide anything interesting even outside quests. Especially outside quests, in fact.

Alongside the enemy/loot scaling in Oblivion I'd put its extremely bad world and geography design

What was the problem with it? Other than changing the rain forest setting to temperate climate, I mean, which I file under lore fuck ups.

disneyland art-style, horrible voice-acting, mini-games, downright retarded and childish quests/dialogues/attempts at humour, interface, quest compass, fast-travel as game-breaking retarded intrusions before any of your points other than the scaling.

Simply forgot to mention those. They definitely should be fixed/removed, although I wouldn't place them as high on my priority list as you appear to.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I need to play Daggerfall again. Pimpin' my paperdoll was probably my favourite activity in that game.

 

[Sceptic]

at almost everything in that post.

I'm talking about unique items with some backstory to them that make you feel like a hero for just owning them.

Daggerfall was great about this. You had to WORK to get those artifacts. Just being able to contact the right daedric lord took some work, but then getting the item itself usually involved a lengthy crawl (with the exception of the non-dungeon quests, but those were rare). Morrowind managed to do this quite well too, with each artifact being quite hard to get to, especially the more powerful ones (Spellbreaker or Ebony Mail anyone?). In fact Oblivion could have done this just as well, except this is completely and utterly shattered by the very very idiotic level scaling of the artifacts themselves, which negates any sense of achivement from getting them.

True, but at worst, quests can just be ignored, if the freeform exploration is solid enough on its own.

As a general rule I agree, but that's not how I played either DF or MW. Yes, most of DF's quests were in fact "go into this dungeon and kill monster/retrieve item but the dungeoneering itself was great fun, so I don't see this as bad quest design (unoriginal maybe, but not bad), especially with the added faction system. As for MW, again most of the quests were after the same pattern, but there were some nice variations, such as the Morag Tong assassinations usually requiring a more circumspect approach if you wanted to get the best reward, and the cross-over between faction questlines (especially Hlaalu/Thieves/Fighters) was a nice touch. Naturally Oblivion mucked all this up to.

What was the problem with it? Other than changing the rain forest setting to temperate climate, I mean, which I file under lore fuck ups.

Extremely boring geography, IMO. Compare Morrowind, where going from the Bitter Coast into the Ashlands felt like a true landmark in your exploration of the continent. Also compare the radically different city designs between southern coastal, Hlaalu, Redoran, Telvanni and Imperial. Even DF had a very different visual design for High Rock vs Hammerfell. In Oblivion? all geography looks the same, all cities look the same. Part of the disneylandification.