The first two were actually pretty good and offered quite a bit of depth and complexity.

Mall shops synergize one another, so better placement tends to bring in more money. Put a shoe store next to a clothing store, and they both make more profit.

There was also a huge research tree dealing with things from maintenance to management to security issues which could improve your mall.

Depends... If you consider arming a nuclear device violence,
no. Otherwise yes.

That depends on how you go about it. If you use stealth and lock picking, you can arm the device without fighting anyone, but you're still going to nuke a bunch of burned out LA. However, if you talked with the Brotherhood of Steel doc about mutants and how they can't reproduce and your speech skill is fairly decent, you can talk the Master in to killing himself. That way, the Master sets off the device instead of you.

Geneforge also was pretty good about allowing a player to kill off bosses with a high speech skill, but Geneforge is way more combat heavy than Fallout.

Absolutely. But regardless, the SOE was first to the pc game arena. Its kind of like someone saying that the 3D Indiana Jones adventure game was derivative of TOMB RAIDER.

That would be Origin with Ultima Online. They made the first modern MMO for the PC.

How many people here own Sims games or the latest EA Sports crap? I hate EA and that's why I don't support them further by buying their unfinished crap and regurgitated licences.

I own The Sims 2, but I don't see how that invalidates my opinion that it would be bad to sell out to EA. Better companies than DI have been strip mined, gutted, and had all the majority of their employees cast in to the wind. EA's done it several times, and everyone knows that EA could easily just buy them, have them make a few games, decide the profit margain isn't enough, and just close their shop. EA still would get the Battlefield rights and other rights DI currently holds out of the situation, and the shareholders of DI would get EA stock out of it. However, the ones counting on their jobs there would be in trouble.

Talking about Maxis though, if EA decided they could just do sim games without the Maxis staff, which they could easily do, where would that leave the Maxis developers? Wil Wright and crew might be on the top of the world now, but without their SimCity and The Sims franchises to insure they have a future, they'd be in trouble. If they decided to do anything similar to those games, EA would most likely sue the pants off them as well.

All I'm saying is that if I were a developer, I'd certainly be against selling out to EA.


This comment was edited on Nov 15, 13:01.

I have to agree with many of the posters here. Getting bought out by EA may work in the short term, but when you look at all the companies that have been purchased by EA, very few are still around today. We're talking about companies that did have a good track record and all it took was one minor slump before EA wiped them out. Westwood had been around since the mid1980s, and had a number of good franchises and titles under their belt. Origin was the same way. Bullfrog had many popular titles as well. All of them hit a slump, which may or may not have been due to EA pulling their strings, and once that slump hit, EA was pretty quick in wiping those companies out and keeping their intellectual properties.

If The Sims stopped selling well as a franchise, I don't think Maxis would be around that long afterwards. I wouldn't be surprised to see an announcement on EA disbanding them within the next five years. The Sims will eventually run it's course, and Maxis doesn't really have anything else under their belts right now.

The shareholders of Digital Illusions will probably win from this, but the development studio won't win in the long run.

You forgot a zero. It's 130MB.

"I have absolutely no memory, but has there even been a [PC] RPG this year? Really, I can't remember a single one... And the only other one comming out by the end of the year is KotOR 2, wich shouldn't win any award for originality..."

A big chunk of what remains of Black Isle Studios (in my opinion, the greatest RPG developer that has ever graced the gaming community this last decade), so i wouldn't be so sure if i were you...

Refresh my memory on what BIS did that was original. They did:

Fallout 2, which was a sequel to Fallout

Planescape Torment, which was a good game, but it used someone else's engine, someone else's setting, and someone else's game mechanics.

IceWind Dale, basically Baldur's Gate with more dungeon crawling and lots more snow. D&D game using someone else's engine.

IceWind Dale 2, which was the sequel to the above - same D&D, same setting which they didn't create, same engine which they didn't create.

Now, you can say they made some great games, but you can't say any of them were actually original games. Just because something is good doesn't mean it's original.


This comment was edited on Oct 12, 07:58.

Interplay has released some of the most cherished games I've played in my 20+ years doing so and I was always impressed how they generally released solid, well-tested, bug free products unlike many other successful publishers

You're kidding, right? Interplay's last few years, they've released some of the buggiest, unfinished games out there. SFC2 was shipped in a disasterous state with it's key new feature completely missing to be added on in a later patch. Giants was hideously crash prone when it came out, almost as bad as Quake 2 was when it came out. Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics were both racked with bugs, included parts of the character system that didn't exactly work. Baldur's Gate was no picnic either if you care to refresh your memory by looking at the changelog on the first patch. Ever played that RTS game they made? Star Trek: New Worlds? No polish at all, pump and dump.

I think the only three titles Interplay released over the last five years that I was happy with out of the box was SFC:OP, Planescape: Torment, and Descent 3.

Anyway, Steve, you're a n00b, d00d.

This comment was edited on Jun 5, 13:19.

Brian Fargo's the only reason the company survived as long as it did. When the board of directors sold it out to Titus, they are the ones who completely ruined them and kept pushing them to making console games.

Uh, no, Fargo was the one that wanted to push towards console games. He even said recently in an interview that he thought the problem with Interplay was that they didn't get in to the console market soon enough. Of course, Interplay hasn't had a lot of success in that market, so I'm not sure they would have done better if they had gone that route earlier.

Also notice that Fargo's new company's first game is a console game, basically. Sure, they're also porting it to the PC, but we're talking an action RPG using the Dark Alliance engine here.

Heck, you didn't even have to level up. That was done for you as well. If the game moved for you and shopped for you, it would be a screensaver.

Black Isle may not be technically dead, since it's a brand name. Sure, all the people are gone with the exception of two people, but Black Isle exists only as a brand name now. Even after games like Lionheart, I'd say most people actually will remember Black Isle for games like Fallout 2(BIS wasn't around when Fallout was made) and PlaneScape: Torment. That means that Interplay can make a really crappy console game, and slap the BIS logo on it hoping to sucker people in to buying it because they remember that name and logo with fondness.

Those two people mentioned are most likely working on Fallout Enforcer 2(aka Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2), since it has yet to be announced but is in production. Interplay recently laid off a good chunk of the developers working on that game as well. The reason they can still make Fallout Enforcer 2 is simple. They decided that rather than make one decent lengthed game, they chose to make TWO half length games and sell them at $50 each. That way, they don't really need those extra developers since a lot of the work has already been done.

In fact, one of the reasons Fallout 3 was cancelled in the first place and all of BIS was laid off(except the two console developers) is because Interplay kept pulling developers off Fallout 3 in order to get Fallout Enforcer out the door faster. Then they did a review on Fallout 3 and decided it was going to take longer than originally expected. Well, duh. Of course it would, they kept pulling people from it - but that's why it's cancelled.

So, that's basically the situation here. Black Isle basically exists because of brand recognition, but there really aren't people working there. Fallout 3 was cancelled because they wanted to get Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel out faster and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel is only half the actual game for full price - but you'll be able to buy the other half for full price later on. Sounds like a bargain at twice the price, doesn't it?

So, yeah, Interplay truly sucks.

Actually it sounds like a Confidentiality Agreement built into his contract and others. Happens all the time in highly-competitive markets.

The loophole there is that Interplay hasn't been competitive for quite a while now enough to even be considered in the market. Anyone care to look up when the last time Interplay made a quarterly profit from selling *games*, as opposed to selling off licenses, development houses, or dev house contracts?

Monday, they said that the patch would be out Friday, which would be tomorrow. It's done, they're just putting in the copy protection.

Prince of Qin was in this setting, and made by the same people. It can probably be found in the bargain bins now, and is worth picking up. However, the demo that Strategy First released for the game *sucks* because it's basically an alpha tech demo of the engine.

I'm hoping this game will have much of what I liked in PoQ, item crafting, the Five Elements system, the Chinese wisdom/ettiquette stuff, and so on.

I think the point of his message was the money and resources they dumped in to Fallout Enforcer probably could have been spent making Fallout 3 better.

Not to mention that UFO: Aftermath isn't even turn based.

Actually, Space Empires I-IV were 4X games like Master of Orion. Damned fine ones at that.

Space Empires: Starfury is the first CRPG set in the universe. Pretty nifty demo once you get the hang of the controls and figure out that you can scale time.

> You'd be the one to talk huh?
> Take a look in your profile,
> every message you've posted has
> consisted of:

You willing to pay me $50 for it?

I also have to agree with Thera. I'm not sure why I should buy this one when I already have Homeworld. I loved the first one and also played it non-stop, eating all my free time, for about a month. But that's the thing, I've already played it, and this feels like nothing new.

As for Cheese's PR stuff:

> #1-An innovative 3D engine generates
> cinematic-quality graphics,

What? Cinematic-quality graphics? Late 1980s Babylon 5 looked better than this. It's got good graphics, for sure, but cinematic-quality my ass.

> The sublime vistas and otherworldly
> splendor

The "subline vistas" would be space.. Space.. Yet more space.. Oh, and for variety, there's space. Putting rocks in different locations and changing the background graphic doesn't change the fact we're talking about a big cube of nothingness here.

> In-game cinematics flow seamlessly
> in and out of gameplay

Granted, the cinematics are cool. Then again, you can get two to three DVDs for the cost of HW2.

> players command their armada around
> eerily beautiful phenomena of deep space

It's a big cube of nothing. "eerily beautiful phenomena" is drastically overstating what we're talking about here.

> including giant asteroids

It's got bigger rocks.

> massive derelicts

Rocks with more polygons and better textures.

> gas clouds

Provides something for fighter pilots to chatter about.

> and nebulae light years across

Not only is this hype, but it's rather silly hype. You know how boring it would be if a map were literally "light years" across? You'd have to build a fleet, then send it out, and pass the game down to your kids to watch the fleet, then they'd have to pass it down to their kids, and their kids' kids, and so on. The motor in the harddrive would give out long before you got even a percentage point of the distance.

> #2-In the dynamic 3D universe of Homeworld 2

What's dynamic about it? Other than the rocks disappearing as they get sucked up, nothing changes in the universe. I see no comets, no orbitting planets moving, no asteroids moving, etc. It's hardly dynamic.

> awe-inspiring phenomena of deep space

So, point #2 is a rehash of point #1?

> These fully interactive phenomena

Fully interactive? Can I put thrusters on these rocks and use them to ram in to the enemy cap ships? Can I burrow them out and plant traps in them? Or use them to hide ships?

You seem to like the word "phenomena" a lot, but we're talking about free floating rocks here.

> #3-Two all-new customizable battle fleets

All new? Mothership, fighters, corvettes, resourcers, repair ships, frigates, cap ships. And one of those fleets is pretty much the same as last time. Sure, there's a few new ships, and all of them have new models - but they sure as hell aren't "all new". Perhaps you mean, "all re-hashed"?

> Players can now group ships in
> strike formations that move
> together into combat.

Didn't Homeworld have this?

> while capital ships have subsystems

This is a nice touch, I agree.

> Ok ok All New

I don't see much "All New" here, certainly nothing that couldn't be done with an expansion pack to Homeworld.

> 2. Black Isle has made Fallout 1/2 and
> Plancescape: Torment. Bioware only wishes
> they could do something that good.

Black Isle wishes they made Fallout, but they didn't. Fallout was released in 1997 and developed by people who left Interplay around the time BIS was founded in 1998.

Oh yeah, and BioWare does make three things better than BIS; hype, money, and excuses.

Oh yeah, and to #30.. It's funny you're complaining about how alignment is handled in IWD2 and at the same time praising BioWare.


This comment was edited on Aug 21, 09:44.