Thoughts and commentaries of a quiet little mod from her corner of the internet.
Initial Reactions to E3: Electronic Arts
Posted 06-01-2009 at 04:18 PM by Aqua-chan
Okay, okay. We all know Electronic Arts is the evil bastard of third party developers. However, this is the monster company who's presentation I am able to sit and watch because I am not actually working. As such I decided on the fly to keep my jumbled thoughts throughout the progression scribbled down somewhere. Just as well be here, right? 
We all know that the trailers look about 110% better than the actual final product that you buy in stores, but wow the opening with Dante's Inferno has me kind of excited. I don't usually do the morbid-dark theme, but there's something that seems so off the wall that grabbed my attention right off the bat.
The Sims3. Real people living the lives of fake people. Never understood it, so I can't say I'm too thrilled.
Need for Speed: Shift, the presentation of which was lifeless and unexciting, comes off to me as being way too technical. I get that the objective is to create the feeling of driving a racecar with the "gamer profile" view (in which you see the interior steering column, dash, roof, ect. But, jeeze, that perspective is so twisted. It seems your actual range of view is too small to effectively drive. And all this about being a "clean" or "dirty" driver, precise or ruthless? Mnugh, no thank you.
Dragon Age coming October 20th. Now I feel less ridiculous for fully preordering without knowing when the damn thing was coming out. But man, how much longer are we going to hear about how DA: Origins is going to "revamp" the fantasy genre? Promises are easy to keep. BioWare is really playing up the dark, gritty side of DA which is nice and all, but for crying out loud it's starting to wash out of appeal to me personally. Murder! Sex! Betrayal! ...I can watch that on TV.
It's not hard to figure out that I'm a sad fan of Mass Effect. It's pathetic what an addict I am to the Aliens/Starship Troopers/Star Wars/Star Trek ripoff. I can't help it. That said, the complete trailer being released makes me depressed. It looks like the Normandy really does bite it, and even though those looked like escape pods being deployed, I doubt much of the upper deck crew is fated to survive (Joker! Nooo!) On the other hand, the plot makes me depressed in not the good way. Suicide mission that you're not supposed to survive? Well, like that's never been done before. And damn it, where's my romance interest?
I had never heard of Pandemic's Saboteur before this. While I don't get the fascination we have with WW2 in our games, I am kind of intrigued by the stylized darkness and acrobatics. Strikes me as very reminiscent to the wall scaling and stealthiness of Assassin's Creed. ...A few minutes later, yeah, Assassin's Creed. Tactical planning of mission objectives, the hurried escape, the hiding in plain sight? I think I've played this game before.
I can't come up with anything cohesive to say about Brutal Legend. I was giggling too much throughout most of the showing.
Wow, Old Republic! MMOs usually scare me off, but fully voiced by thousands of dialog lines? Man, I'm starting to wish I had a stronger PC for that. The trailer is a nice little hook, but I see this quickly becoming a mosh pit of 16-year-olds intent on ruining the experience from everyone. And yeah, if I get my hands on it I'm totally playing a Twi'lek. Just so you know.
Okay, that's my myriad of garbled thoughts. What are yours?
We all know that the trailers look about 110% better than the actual final product that you buy in stores, but wow the opening with Dante's Inferno has me kind of excited. I don't usually do the morbid-dark theme, but there's something that seems so off the wall that grabbed my attention right off the bat.
The Sims3. Real people living the lives of fake people. Never understood it, so I can't say I'm too thrilled.
Need for Speed: Shift, the presentation of which was lifeless and unexciting, comes off to me as being way too technical. I get that the objective is to create the feeling of driving a racecar with the "gamer profile" view (in which you see the interior steering column, dash, roof, ect. But, jeeze, that perspective is so twisted. It seems your actual range of view is too small to effectively drive. And all this about being a "clean" or "dirty" driver, precise or ruthless? Mnugh, no thank you.
Dragon Age coming October 20th. Now I feel less ridiculous for fully preordering without knowing when the damn thing was coming out. But man, how much longer are we going to hear about how DA: Origins is going to "revamp" the fantasy genre? Promises are easy to keep. BioWare is really playing up the dark, gritty side of DA which is nice and all, but for crying out loud it's starting to wash out of appeal to me personally. Murder! Sex! Betrayal! ...I can watch that on TV.
It's not hard to figure out that I'm a sad fan of Mass Effect. It's pathetic what an addict I am to the Aliens/Starship Troopers/Star Wars/Star Trek ripoff. I can't help it. That said, the complete trailer being released makes me depressed. It looks like the Normandy really does bite it, and even though those looked like escape pods being deployed, I doubt much of the upper deck crew is fated to survive (Joker! Nooo!) On the other hand, the plot makes me depressed in not the good way. Suicide mission that you're not supposed to survive? Well, like that's never been done before. And damn it, where's my romance interest?
I had never heard of Pandemic's Saboteur before this. While I don't get the fascination we have with WW2 in our games, I am kind of intrigued by the stylized darkness and acrobatics. Strikes me as very reminiscent to the wall scaling and stealthiness of Assassin's Creed. ...A few minutes later, yeah, Assassin's Creed. Tactical planning of mission objectives, the hurried escape, the hiding in plain sight? I think I've played this game before.
I can't come up with anything cohesive to say about Brutal Legend. I was giggling too much throughout most of the showing.
Wow, Old Republic! MMOs usually scare me off, but fully voiced by thousands of dialog lines? Man, I'm starting to wish I had a stronger PC for that. The trailer is a nice little hook, but I see this quickly becoming a mosh pit of 16-year-olds intent on ruining the experience from everyone. And yeah, if I get my hands on it I'm totally playing a Twi'lek. Just so you know.
Okay, that's my myriad of garbled thoughts. What are yours?
Total Comments 7
Comments
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It seems despite the notoriety of EA, they still haven't managed to completely tarnish Bioware's image. All the 3 bioware rpgs/mmo you mentioned look promising enough. Can't wait to get my hands on DA:O and ME2. Hopefully my pc can handle em, if not i suppose the time will be right for an new rigPosted 06-01-2009 at 05:34 PM by Loki[D.d.G]
![Loki[D.d.G] is offline](http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/images_gb/misc/blog/status_offline.gif)
- Who needs to tarnish Bioware's image, when their own games ever since BG2 have sufficed to accomplish that? Can't really say I've enjoyed any of them--but then, it's not the same company it was back when the small group of Alberta-based physicians who liked playing D&D on long, winter weekends decided to set up shop and do the game they liked for a computer.
Now, they're a big part of the Games Industry, with new people in charge. Shiny big company does not equal Alberta's weekend D&D fanatics.Posted 06-03-2009 at 11:08 AM by fable - While I do not dispute the fact that games are no longer "what they used to be" (God, I sound old to myself), I still look forward to the new releases. Does DA: Origins trailers get annoyingly flashy in the so-called "risque" theme? God, yes. Is ME2 going to be a step away from the RPG half and closer towards being just a shooter? Probably. BioShock2? Not holding my breath for award winning writing on that one. But I will still play games because there is always something about them that I enjoy. I even found entertainment value in Fallout 3, the most anti-RPG RPG in the history of recent RPGs.
I get where you're coming from, Fabulous. There's no reason why we as gamers shouldn't hold devs to high standards. But the only thing I find even less enjoyable than encountering old plot devices or cliched characters is languishing for games of times past. I can't be happy comparing everything to PS:T, BG2, FO 2, System Shock 2 or whatnot. The old stuff was great, but I'm ready to get into new themes.Posted 06-03-2009 at 05:14 PM by Aqua-chan - Only game I'm interested in right now is TOR.
The tidbits coming out of E3 have tickled my taste buds quite a bit
I just hope Bioware have the guts to follow through on what they've hinted at with the choice/consequence aspects. That could be a large leap forward for MMOs.Posted 06-04-2009 at 12:05 PM by Xandax 
- Alan Wake - Looks like a mix between Max Payne and Resident Evil 4 in terms of the gameplay, somewhat, but not bad nonetheless. The story and the setting struck me as interesting. Too bad I have to wait till 2010.
The Sims 3 - Well, I liked the previous Sims games, so no surprise that I am looking forward to this one. A little bit worried about performance issues, given PC Games Hardware's verdict that a fast dual core processor is required to run it smoothly.
Dragon Age: Origins - Not looking forward to it. Reminds me of Neverwinter Nights with a facelift and it isn't helped with the slew of tasteless trailers and the excessive bragging about it by both Muzyka and Zeschuk.
Mass Effect 2 - A bit apprehensive at the moment, but I'll reserve my judgement until I finish the first game. Muzyka and Zeschuk's explanation also to blame for making the game sound a bit off-putting after calling Shephard a 'baddass' (A famous line commonly used by Cliff Blezinski when it comes to Gears of War and its sequel).
Alpha Protocol - Not looking forward to it either. Pales in comparison with other stealth-action titles like Hitman and Splinter Cell to name a few. Also, it looks a bit dumbed down for a stealth game.
Homefront - Somewhat interested, especially the Freedom Fighters take on it, even though the premise behind it is rubbish (North Korea invading the U.S. Gee...).
Brutal Legend - Interested, even though it is a console exclusive (X360 and PS3). I liked Tim Schaefer's work on Psychonauts, so it is of no surprise that his second effort piqued my interest. Not a big fan of heavy metal myself, but Schaefer's writing is really funny and witty plus the voice cast is really good (Jack Black really suit the role of Eddie Griggs in the game itself).
Hope there will be a PC release.
Modern Warfare 2 - Looking forward to it, given that I liked the first game. A little bit surprised to see the main character in the first game, Soap, taking the role of a CO but still good nonetheless.
Splinter Cell: Conviction - Unsure at the moment. It looks interesting, but I lost interest in the Splinter Cell series after Pandora Tomorrow.
Singularity - Mildly interested and I liked the time-bending abilities, but given Raven's history of pretty average games, I'm not too sure how good it will turn out to be.Posted 06-07-2009 at 04:17 AM by DesR85 - In terms of the discussion about nostalgia for old games I find myself a bit caught.
I am one of those people who has oft lamented that games like BG2 and PS:T are not made any more, and I have bemoaned that newer titles simply do not match up.
Yet, I am very conscious of the fact that our old favourites are history, both literally and metaphorically. The reality is that games such as this are not made any longer, period. The RPG gaming industry, for better or worse, (probably the latter
), has shifted focus, and it's very unlikely, outside of indie developers, they will ever return to that golden heyday.
So, the question becomes, "what to do?"
There is a limit to how long even I can keep playing BG2 with different mods. (not to say I won't ever play it again... but... )
Thus, do we reconcile ourselves to the realities and move on, or do we just stop gaming completely?
I really don't know. Thankfully many games have a well established modding communities... For example, Oblivion would, in my view, be unplayable without mods...
Yet.. still.. where does it go from here?Posted 06-08-2009 at 07:44 PM by dragon wench - Des- For the most part I agree with all your comments (and in some cases, apprehensions). I don't normally do the metal subculture thing, but I have to admit, Brutal Legends might just have piqued my interest.
DW- ...It's really hard to post a response to that. God knows I have sat down and written entire blog entries about the "old school" RPG players and their interpretation of the new generation of games being released, but... I'll go ahead and say it. For one thing, this conversation came from a discussion about BioWare, and I am biased towards liking the company's games - I'm not sure how my opinion can be weighted in this matter because I'm obviously not impartial. Second, it's really hard to talk about this without potentially ruffling feathers.
Fully realizing the extent of my hypocrisy here (as I recently did so with BethSoft in a previous blog entry), maybe it's time that we stop bitching about how things used to be and cede that, yes, many of the old RPG companies are going down different roads. I apply this to myself as much as I would anyone else. I am not saying this to piss anyone off. However, above Loki mentioned his interest in BioWare games, and Fable made a remark that the company has fallen out of its "golden age" of development. Later on in the News forum Loki made a post - I'm thinking ME2 or a Dragon Age thread - where he made a comment, but then remarked (in what I interpreted as trying to defend his opinion even before anyone said anything about it) that some people may feel that BW has changed in quality, but he still enjoys their newer stuff. He felt he had to justify his stance because of something said here.
That kind of gave me some perspective. Yeah, we can all sit here and thumb our noses at the way the RPG gaming genre is being warped (I had a guy try to tell me that BioShock's plot was the "best story of a game in the past five years" - I laughed in his face), but it doesn't change anything. When we constantly harp at some companies because the old stuff was so good and it's long gone we're not hurting them - though we are affecting the next generation of gamers that come onto this site looking for people of similar interests. People who liked Fallout 3 and ended up here on the forums aren't going to be impressed when they see a bunch of posts about, "Ugh. Bethesda sucks." "Yeah, I agree. The old games were so much better!" "Somebody should take BethSoft behind the barn and shoot it." They are going to be turned off, and I think this can make our community as a whole seem snobbish and nitpicky.
As I stated earlier I am biased. I enjoy the newer games coming out (if not so much for the story, then for other aspects for them). I WISH Dragon Age was going to be a true "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate", but it's not. However, this does not mean I can't still appreciate and enjoy the game. I have nothing to gain by always looking back but disappointment.Posted 06-11-2009 at 01:02 PM by Aqua-chan
