Ratty said:
This one has been in development for a couple of years now - an unusually long time for a SLAM DUNK! title.
A project of that scope needs at least 4 years, which includes a rigorous QA cycle since it's supposedly including commercial quality development software. So did the last one claim that, but we know how inefficient and stupid BioWare's programmers are, and that turned out laughable.
Considering it's BioWare and the alumni of Interplay that used to suck their ass even while at Interplay...
WHAT QA?!
My main concern is Obsidian's
rather liberal approach to DnD 3.5 rules which have been altered a bit to make the game more accessible to masses.
In other words, Lowest Common Denominator, to further dumb down what BioWare had already started.
I am not surprised that Obsidian is sucking more ass than BioWare, since they've been firmly lip-locked onto BioWare's sphincter for YEARS, longer than Obsidian has been around.
What else can you expect of shit-eaters but recycled shit?
I know that's harsh, but it's reality. BioWare started with Baldur's Gate. What did BIS do in response to it and in the same engine? Make the crappy Asswind Dale dungeon crawler that was inferior than Baldur's Gate as a game, with writing talent so shitty they had to rip off R.A. Salvatore, and that's not too hard. Then repeat that for an even crappier sequel. Then, they took KoTOR and made the shitty munchkinfest of KoTOR 2 that wasn't even finished, not even with a courtesy patch afterwards, but instead an obligatory "patch it to silence most of the gripes of crashes", and with a story that was trash compared to the original - which is simply shit because it was highly derivative of the original, but with far less evident talent put behind it.
Again, PS:T remains the only good one, but it didn't do well because frankly neither marketing nor Feargus could wrap their little minds around un-munchkinish concepts that required reading.
BioWare/Obsidian are simply the EA of the RPG genre, and have dropped all pretenses of being CRPG developers in lieu of making action-combat trash that appeals to the Lowest Common Denominator. Kind of like D.W. Bradley.
Here's a suggestion to all of them - maybe you will have better sales if your work didn't suck outside of media hype and brand-name fanboyism. As long as they have the Drizzt and Lightsaber Kid munchkin crowd, they are happy to pander to fanservice and media hype instead of getting to work and do something remarkable in the genre.
A dumb move considering that unlike KotOR, NWN II doesn't target the retarded X-Box crowd.
You do realize they were developing with BioWare and Obsidian staff in mind, mostly the management, right? It has to be dumb and simple enough to play itself for them, and have voice acting because they like having the illiterate as an audience, because that's essentially how they develop. Throw in lots of "cool" shit and expect it to design/develop itself through overhyping the media, as per usual in one of Feargus' idiotic development cycles.
J.E. Sawyer sounds just about ready to disown the game, which says a lot... especially since he is the lead designer. Poor J.E., destined to forever work on projects he hates.
Funny,
dope kid seems to keep putting himself in the position of suck jobs. No, I don't care if he feels like he can't do anything else, he still puts himself in the same position as always, which is usually under someone's desk.
He's Captain of the S.S. Shitsville under Rear Admiral Fear-Gut, sailing o'er the Munchkin Ocean. Again. Did he seriously think he could do better as Romero's bitch?