Well, seems like they actually put some thought into this and didn't just start cropping things out wholesale, so good on 'em. Can't really argue with CERO, so minimizing the edits shows they're at least trying instead of saying "screw it" and going at the game with a hatchet just to get it out the door.
I guess I'm old but I'm way more used to their games getting censored for content when they come over to the West.
I guess I'm old but I'm way more used to their games getting censored for content when they come over to the West.
As has been pointed out int the comments by a few people, this kind of stuff isn't actually as hard as it looks. Instead of "hours and hours and hours" one of those combos would probably take maybe 15 minutes or so to learn in practice mode -- which is still a lot more time than it sounds like, sure, but isn't this disgustingly mind-warping task or anything.
The big problem here is that the way these combos are laid out is intimidating; a whole bunch of abbreviated buttons with colors on them and phrases like "OTG". Makes sense to fighting game fans right off the bat, but I'm sure this thing comes with a glossary for those unfamiliar.
What would make it a lot less intimidating is having pictures or videos, and maybe have it broken up into stages instead of this one big-ass string of inputs. That's usually how combos work. It isn't some billion-input monster, but rather a series of quick 4 or 5 (or even 2) hitters that are linked together by positioning yourself a certain way or quickly dashing forward at a particular point or whatever. Learn the combo in stages, and practice against the computer. When you get good at one portion of it and start to just do it on muscle memory (doesn't take long), you add to it.
Like, look at Wolverine up there. Crouching Light, Standing Mid, Crouching Hard, Standing Hard. That in and of itself is kinda tricky but not impossible, so just start there. Once you're used to that, check the guide for the next string of 3 moves or so. After an hour-ish of practice, voila. The hard part comes later when you're actually trying to use it in a fight.
The big problem here is that the way these combos are laid out is intimidating; a whole bunch of abbreviated buttons with colors on them and phrases like "OTG". Makes sense to fighting game fans right off the bat, but I'm sure this thing comes with a glossary for those unfamiliar.
What would make it a lot less intimidating is having pictures or videos, and maybe have it broken up into stages instead of this one big-ass string of inputs. That's usually how combos work. It isn't some billion-input monster, but rather a series of quick 4 or 5 (or even 2) hitters that are linked together by positioning yourself a certain way or quickly dashing forward at a particular point or whatever. Learn the combo in stages, and practice against the computer. When you get good at one portion of it and start to just do it on muscle memory (doesn't take long), you add to it.
Like, look at Wolverine up there. Crouching Light, Standing Mid, Crouching Hard, Standing Hard. That in and of itself is kinda tricky but not impossible, so just start there. Once you're used to that, check the guide for the next string of 3 moves or so. After an hour-ish of practice, voila. The hard part comes later when you're actually trying to use it in a fight.
Yessssssssssss.
Although I hope they'll reuse some of the themes from the previous two games as well, like the Exploring Space theme from ME1 that also showed up in 2. Having some musical consistency running through all three games would be neat.
Still though, again: Yessssssssssss.
Although I hope they'll reuse some of the themes from the previous two games as well, like the Exploring Space theme from ME1 that also showed up in 2. Having some musical consistency running through all three games would be neat.
Still though, again: Yessssssssssss.
Stinks for Germany's gaming folk but also isn't particularly surprising. Games that openly court controversy over violent content are essentially guaranteed to be banned in the Deutschland and it's been that way for years and years whether they deserve it or not, overt fantasy elements be damned (like anyone is ever going to actually try to mimic Bulletstorm -- good luck blowing out some guy's ass with with an assault rifle, I guess?)
Oh well. Like it was said in the article, Austria! Import away!
Oh well. Like it was said in the article, Austria! Import away!
@Female Orca: I wish it did too!
I made way too many of these.
Seriously, though, I've been complaining for years now about how bad most game box art is. It doesn't have to be! In fact, a lot of times it isn't in its native country but then it gets replaced for far more "traditional" stuff when it makes it overseas (this happens both ways across numerous countries, but Japan to North America is a pretty common one -- Check out the Japanese cover for Silent Hill 2, then look at what North America got).
I wish more publishers would make their box art interesting. Music album artwork has traditionally been a place where the musicians can make a little extra added statement to go along with their sound, and sometimes this gets taken to cool extremes like Led Zeppelin III with its rotating cover, or Tool with Aenima's hologram effect, or even Mastadon's Crack the Skye limited edition which came with this big old gatefold production that had a ton of hidden stuff in it.
Or another example, the Lost collector's edition, which was just loaded with loot.
I'm not asking for all that necessarily (although it would be nice) and this isn't to say that nobody ever does this for videogames (the collector's edition of Oblivion came with a COIN! And a full-on book!) but for god's sake, publishers, maybe put a little thought into your covers now and then? Just make something that will have people asking questions and make them curious. You don't have to break the bank on it, but at least get some decent graphic design in there.
I made way too many of these.
Seriously, though, I've been complaining for years now about how bad most game box art is. It doesn't have to be! In fact, a lot of times it isn't in its native country but then it gets replaced for far more "traditional" stuff when it makes it overseas (this happens both ways across numerous countries, but Japan to North America is a pretty common one -- Check out the Japanese cover for Silent Hill 2, then look at what North America got).
I wish more publishers would make their box art interesting. Music album artwork has traditionally been a place where the musicians can make a little extra added statement to go along with their sound, and sometimes this gets taken to cool extremes like Led Zeppelin III with its rotating cover, or Tool with Aenima's hologram effect, or even Mastadon's Crack the Skye limited edition which came with this big old gatefold production that had a ton of hidden stuff in it.
Or another example, the Lost collector's edition, which was just loaded with loot.
I'm not asking for all that necessarily (although it would be nice) and this isn't to say that nobody ever does this for videogames (the collector's edition of Oblivion came with a COIN! And a full-on book!) but for god's sake, publishers, maybe put a little thought into your covers now and then? Just make something that will have people asking questions and make them curious. You don't have to break the bank on it, but at least get some decent graphic design in there.
@Upchucknorris: It's there instead of a "C". If you've ever seen any films published by The Criterion Collection, they do their covers in the same way, so I just made "The Paradigm Collection" as a parody.
I made a bunch!
I made a bunch!
Totally uploading my own photoshopped stuff here, but! Relevant!
@Praetor: It's a reasonably significant gap, yeah. On many other games this won't matter quite so much because as long as the CPU isn't bottlenecking the GPU you're fine; on games with lots and lots of soldiers moving around all doing separate things, though, the CPU horsepower starts to matter a lot.
Mass Effect 1 and 2. Got my ex and current girlfriends both to give them a shot.
The ex was a huge Morrowind/Oblivion nut so she dove right in, but the extent to which she did was alarming. She's got something like 500 hours racked up between both.
The current girlfriend, who would've fallen into the Lapsed Gamer category, I was expecting this to go over like a lead balloon. Her previous gaming experience consisted almost entirely of DDR, Maple Story, and Ragnarok Online, all of which are sort of the "traditional" geek girl games. She said she disliked science fiction anything, didn't like single player RPGs, and didn't like action games.
After the first hour of Mass Effect, virtually all of this went right out the window. The character customization was the initial hook, the plot kept her playing, and she at some point came to the realization that, in fact, she *liked* action gaming, and the reason she disliked RPGs for so long was that picking "Fight" from a text box was dull and too divorced from the actual gameplay for her.
Now she plays games a lot more, and she's upgraded to Borderlands for her action fix. She's even been eyeballing the Modern Warfare games.
Dunno what it is about BioWare games, but they seem to re-convert people every single time.
The ex was a huge Morrowind/Oblivion nut so she dove right in, but the extent to which she did was alarming. She's got something like 500 hours racked up between both.
The current girlfriend, who would've fallen into the Lapsed Gamer category, I was expecting this to go over like a lead balloon. Her previous gaming experience consisted almost entirely of DDR, Maple Story, and Ragnarok Online, all of which are sort of the "traditional" geek girl games. She said she disliked science fiction anything, didn't like single player RPGs, and didn't like action games.
After the first hour of Mass Effect, virtually all of this went right out the window. The character customization was the initial hook, the plot kept her playing, and she at some point came to the realization that, in fact, she *liked* action gaming, and the reason she disliked RPGs for so long was that picking "Fight" from a text box was dull and too divorced from the actual gameplay for her.
Now she plays games a lot more, and she's upgraded to Borderlands for her action fix. She's even been eyeballing the Modern Warfare games.
Dunno what it is about BioWare games, but they seem to re-convert people every single time.
Hey Atlus! Hadn't bought this yet, heard about the cut-off, figured I wouldn't bother after all.
Extension has changed my mind, copy bought. Thanks guys!
Extension has changed my mind, copy bought. Thanks guys!
Any word on what parts they actually used for the stick and buttons?
One of the reasons people tend to go for Japanese sticks over others isn't just the convex buttons or the ball top stick, it's because these parts last an extremely long time, can take a serious beating, and are very responsive. It's not like just any Japanese parts will do, either, but usually from one of two different companies known for making parts that are designed to be beaten up day in and day out and still work well (Sanwa and Seimitsu). Fighting game fans are finicky about this enough that MadCatz went out of their way to advertise the fact that their sticks used these parts, and the Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 was actually re-released with Sanwa or Seimitsu buttons and sticks pre-installed because so many people were purchasing the HRAP3 and then swapping out the Hori parts that Hori just decided to sell it like that right out of the box.
That aside, you could certainly get (or make) high end parts that aren't necessarily from those companies.
The big thing that gives me pause here is that, from what I can tell in that picture, the MK stick uses the same parts as the American X-Arcade sticks. If you look close, the buttons and the stick all have the same switch. That little beige rectangle is the actual switch itself and they just arrange them either under a spring-loaded button or in four directions around the stick to make the thing work.
Now, this technically *works*, but it doesn't work particularly well, and doesn't tend to hold up to wear and tear anywhere near as long as even mediocre dedicated parts do. I found this out the hard way, going through two X-Arcade sticks. After having to crack those puppies open and manually fix the sensitivity on them by bending the metal switch prongs upwards of twice a month, I know all too well what those switches look like, and I know that I never want to buy them again. If you're anything more than a light player of fighting games, you know the kind of abuse a stick will go through over the years and those X-Arcade bits simply don't last that long.
Hopefully I'm wrong, because like every single other thing about this stick is a smart idea. I love the easy access to the guts, the memory foam is a brilliant idea, and for MK fans the attempt to make it resemble an American arcade machine is a nice idea. If they're using the parts I think they are, though -- which at the end of the day is by far the most important part of a stick -- then that's taking all the thought and effort put into the rest of it and tossing it right out the window.
I can't really imagine that this much consideration was put into this stick and then they'd go ahead and cheap out on the actual guts of the thing, but...
One of the reasons people tend to go for Japanese sticks over others isn't just the convex buttons or the ball top stick, it's because these parts last an extremely long time, can take a serious beating, and are very responsive. It's not like just any Japanese parts will do, either, but usually from one of two different companies known for making parts that are designed to be beaten up day in and day out and still work well (Sanwa and Seimitsu). Fighting game fans are finicky about this enough that MadCatz went out of their way to advertise the fact that their sticks used these parts, and the Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 was actually re-released with Sanwa or Seimitsu buttons and sticks pre-installed because so many people were purchasing the HRAP3 and then swapping out the Hori parts that Hori just decided to sell it like that right out of the box.
That aside, you could certainly get (or make) high end parts that aren't necessarily from those companies.
The big thing that gives me pause here is that, from what I can tell in that picture, the MK stick uses the same parts as the American X-Arcade sticks. If you look close, the buttons and the stick all have the same switch. That little beige rectangle is the actual switch itself and they just arrange them either under a spring-loaded button or in four directions around the stick to make the thing work.
Now, this technically *works*, but it doesn't work particularly well, and doesn't tend to hold up to wear and tear anywhere near as long as even mediocre dedicated parts do. I found this out the hard way, going through two X-Arcade sticks. After having to crack those puppies open and manually fix the sensitivity on them by bending the metal switch prongs upwards of twice a month, I know all too well what those switches look like, and I know that I never want to buy them again. If you're anything more than a light player of fighting games, you know the kind of abuse a stick will go through over the years and those X-Arcade bits simply don't last that long.
Hopefully I'm wrong, because like every single other thing about this stick is a smart idea. I love the easy access to the guts, the memory foam is a brilliant idea, and for MK fans the attempt to make it resemble an American arcade machine is a nice idea. If they're using the parts I think they are, though -- which at the end of the day is by far the most important part of a stick -- then that's taking all the thought and effort put into the rest of it and tossing it right out the window.
I can't really imagine that this much consideration was put into this stick and then they'd go ahead and cheap out on the actual guts of the thing, but...
@Jon Knitter: @Jon Knitter: I dunno about saying the point of "every" game is to be fun. Yeah, the name is video "game" but it's called that because we just flat-out don't have a better term for it.
That's kind of like saying the point of every comic book is to be funny because it's got the word "comic" right in there. The name's really just a holdover from when the medium was in its infancy.
Of course, most games do aim to be fun because they want to sell, and most gamers ultimately want to spend their time and money on something entertaining, not something that's going to legitimately depress, sicken, or upset them. This holds true of movies and books as well; I'm not exactly quick about busting out the DVD of Night and Fog when some friends drop by for movie night.
But for all that, there's still films, books, even popular comics (who hasn't read Maus?) that approach subjects like the Holocaust with an appropriate sense of gravity while still being fictionalized tales meant to, at least on some level, entertain the audience, and there's no reason a video game can't pull this off. The reasons relatively few (any?) companies have attempted to do this in any mainstream fashion are numerous. It'd be a thin line to walk, you'd need to be very careful with your PR, and it would probably be enormously expensive...All to create something that very likely would be condemned regardless because the subject matter is deemed inappropriate for a medium most people still don't think is capable of allowing the same kind of gravitas a movie or book can maintain.
So, that's where I disagree. Not about Sonderkommando Revolt being inappropriate, because of course it is, but the reaction coming forth from a lot of people along the lines of "We must never have a video game about this" is disheartening. Gaming is still waiting for its Schindler's List; that doesn't mean it's never going to or can't happen, it's just going to have to wait for the right visionary to come along who has the financial clout and the past successes to pull it off properly.
But! If the reaction to Sonderkommando Revolt is any indication, even if a Schindler's List of Video Gaming were to be made properly, it would still be shouted down nearly sight unseen because "the Holocaust isn't an appropriate subject for videogames".
I think the industry is ready; I don't think the rest of the world is.
I mean, come on. Sonderkommando Revolt is from some random team who likes monkeying around with the code to a videogame from 1992. That's really all that thing is: A tech demo, a way to say "Hey look what we can do with something from 18 years ago!" Is the subject matter dumb? Yup, and in incredibly poor taste, too. Did the team probably spend a whole lot of time thinking about it? Prrrrooobably not. And I bet they're regretting it now and wishing they'd made it take place in space or whatever instead.
The fact that the ADL even weighed in on this at all is kind of eye-rolling, the PR equivalent of dragging out an elephant gun because there's a fly buzzing around. It'd be like having them issue a statement about some Film School senior's student movie depicting the same basic plot, which he only made in the first place to show off these awesome blood squibs he learned how to make. Still, it's why the ADL exists so if someone (*coughKotakucough*) approached them for a statement, of course they're going to say what they did. What's more depressing are the comments from other people echoing that sentiment and then applying it to the entire rest of the medium.
That's kind of like saying the point of every comic book is to be funny because it's got the word "comic" right in there. The name's really just a holdover from when the medium was in its infancy.
Of course, most games do aim to be fun because they want to sell, and most gamers ultimately want to spend their time and money on something entertaining, not something that's going to legitimately depress, sicken, or upset them. This holds true of movies and books as well; I'm not exactly quick about busting out the DVD of Night and Fog when some friends drop by for movie night.
But for all that, there's still films, books, even popular comics (who hasn't read Maus?) that approach subjects like the Holocaust with an appropriate sense of gravity while still being fictionalized tales meant to, at least on some level, entertain the audience, and there's no reason a video game can't pull this off. The reasons relatively few (any?) companies have attempted to do this in any mainstream fashion are numerous. It'd be a thin line to walk, you'd need to be very careful with your PR, and it would probably be enormously expensive...All to create something that very likely would be condemned regardless because the subject matter is deemed inappropriate for a medium most people still don't think is capable of allowing the same kind of gravitas a movie or book can maintain.
So, that's where I disagree. Not about Sonderkommando Revolt being inappropriate, because of course it is, but the reaction coming forth from a lot of people along the lines of "We must never have a video game about this" is disheartening. Gaming is still waiting for its Schindler's List; that doesn't mean it's never going to or can't happen, it's just going to have to wait for the right visionary to come along who has the financial clout and the past successes to pull it off properly.
But! If the reaction to Sonderkommando Revolt is any indication, even if a Schindler's List of Video Gaming were to be made properly, it would still be shouted down nearly sight unseen because "the Holocaust isn't an appropriate subject for videogames".
I think the industry is ready; I don't think the rest of the world is.
I mean, come on. Sonderkommando Revolt is from some random team who likes monkeying around with the code to a videogame from 1992. That's really all that thing is: A tech demo, a way to say "Hey look what we can do with something from 18 years ago!" Is the subject matter dumb? Yup, and in incredibly poor taste, too. Did the team probably spend a whole lot of time thinking about it? Prrrrooobably not. And I bet they're regretting it now and wishing they'd made it take place in space or whatever instead.
The fact that the ADL even weighed in on this at all is kind of eye-rolling, the PR equivalent of dragging out an elephant gun because there's a fly buzzing around. It'd be like having them issue a statement about some Film School senior's student movie depicting the same basic plot, which he only made in the first place to show off these awesome blood squibs he learned how to make. Still, it's why the ADL exists so if someone (*coughKotakucough*) approached them for a statement, of course they're going to say what they did. What's more depressing are the comments from other people echoing that sentiment and then applying it to the entire rest of the medium.
@BGFUSAB: You hit the nail on the head in the last paragraph. One of the recurring phrases you see in a lot of reviews for FF XIV is that it seems like it was "developed in a vacuum".
It's a very Old School Japanese Business approach where you act -- both internally and externally -- like your competitors simply do not exist, with the idea being that your product is the best, and the trendsetter. Other companies should be catching up to and adapting from you, not you from them, and so there's this curious refusal to acknowledge any other companies whatsoever. This includes pointedly not making any of your design decisions based off of what the other guys are doing.
Where that falls flat is when your end product comes out and is already years behind the competition, which is exactly what happened here. It's showing in the bad reviews and the lack of player enthusiasm and subscriptions, and Square simply can't afford to just pretend (like they did with FF XI) like everything is going smoothly.
The fact that they're being shockingly upfront about the game kinda...well, *sucking* is pretty bizarre. It means they're either genuinely willing to change direction and are affecting a paradigm shift in how they go about their buisness, or they've been forced into doing it because Things Are Looking Very Grim Right Now. I kinda doubt it's the latter because the Enix side of things is still printing money from DQ9, so...Maybe this is the start of Square deciding they need to listen to their fan base and learn from their competition? The fact that they removed the two guys who were presumably responsible for the old-school we-have-no-competition approach is a good sign.
It's a very Old School Japanese Business approach where you act -- both internally and externally -- like your competitors simply do not exist, with the idea being that your product is the best, and the trendsetter. Other companies should be catching up to and adapting from you, not you from them, and so there's this curious refusal to acknowledge any other companies whatsoever. This includes pointedly not making any of your design decisions based off of what the other guys are doing.
Where that falls flat is when your end product comes out and is already years behind the competition, which is exactly what happened here. It's showing in the bad reviews and the lack of player enthusiasm and subscriptions, and Square simply can't afford to just pretend (like they did with FF XI) like everything is going smoothly.
The fact that they're being shockingly upfront about the game kinda...well, *sucking* is pretty bizarre. It means they're either genuinely willing to change direction and are affecting a paradigm shift in how they go about their buisness, or they've been forced into doing it because Things Are Looking Very Grim Right Now. I kinda doubt it's the latter because the Enix side of things is still printing money from DQ9, so...Maybe this is the start of Square deciding they need to listen to their fan base and learn from their competition? The fact that they removed the two guys who were presumably responsible for the old-school we-have-no-competition approach is a good sign.
Pretty sure Rockstar isn't even going to waste a yawn on this one, but hey. Amusing story, at least. To echo the sentiment, good luck with that one, Shagg!
@Icon57: I was thinking exactly the same thing; this guy *is* a decent actor (The Man Who Wasn't There would not have been the same movie without him), but he's openly full of himself, likes to talk out of his own ass, and throws a big whinge whenever anyone disagrees with him or he feels he's been slighted -- like in the above clip, where he wanted to talk about his music and the host had the audacity to ask Thorton about his far-better-known acting career.
Not that this kind of pissing and moaning is anything new whatsoever, but it's kind of funny to see people who are so convinced of their own taste (not to mention relevance) that they'll get up on a high horse all proudly and defiantly and then proceed to make themselves sound like an out of touch has-been without a touch of irony.
Not that this kind of pissing and moaning is anything new whatsoever, but it's kind of funny to see people who are so convinced of their own taste (not to mention relevance) that they'll get up on a high horse all proudly and defiantly and then proceed to make themselves sound like an out of touch has-been without a touch of irony.
@Master_Soda: I'm waiting for someone to jump on this before Valve does. If they did, that'd be a hell of a feather in their cap.
'Course, the problem is that so many modern games use Direct 3D in their PC ports, so "port it to Linux" has to be done on the developer side to get it set up in OpenGL, not the retailer side; if an attractive enough platform emerged for this, though, who knows?
'Course, given that Steam has come to the Mac, it's probably already in the works for Linux, so it might be too late.
'Course, the problem is that so many modern games use Direct 3D in their PC ports, so "port it to Linux" has to be done on the developer side to get it set up in OpenGL, not the retailer side; if an attractive enough platform emerged for this, though, who knows?
'Course, given that Steam has come to the Mac, it's probably already in the works for Linux, so it might be too late.
"But there's a reason Steam is so dominant: it's the only service that's doing things right."
Yes, thank you.
To any industry folks bitching: See above. Valve gets my money because their service is *excellent*. Period.
Don't cry when your customer base votes with their wallet -- that's a sign telling you that someone is doing something better than you are. The solution isn't to decry the thing they're flocking to, it's to try to win your customers back by improving and offering something attractive to them.
Sour grapes indeed.
And as for brick and mortar stores? Cry me a river. All those years of giving me $11 in store credit for those games selling for $60 on shelves and pocketing the difference hasn't really endeared GameStop to me. The money I save buying games off Steam has pretty much eliminated the need to sell my old ones, so hey.
Long as Valve doesn't screw up, I'm not buying anywhere else until "anywhere else" proves more attractive.
Yes, thank you.
To any industry folks bitching: See above. Valve gets my money because their service is *excellent*. Period.
Don't cry when your customer base votes with their wallet -- that's a sign telling you that someone is doing something better than you are. The solution isn't to decry the thing they're flocking to, it's to try to win your customers back by improving and offering something attractive to them.
Sour grapes indeed.
And as for brick and mortar stores? Cry me a river. All those years of giving me $11 in store credit for those games selling for $60 on shelves and pocketing the difference hasn't really endeared GameStop to me. The money I save buying games off Steam has pretty much eliminated the need to sell my old ones, so hey.
Long as Valve doesn't screw up, I'm not buying anywhere else until "anywhere else" proves more attractive.
@rodrigues124: I'm not entirely convinced he knows what a videogame is, either.
If the next caller had been a concerned mom talking about the horrific things she witnessed her kid doing while playing that Sony Playbox with the Grand Theft Car Game...Well, really, what do you think Rush would've said? Would he have jumped to the game's defense and told her she was a bad mother for letting her kid play it in the first place? Or blamed it on anyone Blue-state in finger-wagging range and held it up as a prime example of the degradation of the country's core values?
Gee. I wonder.
Gonna take more than Rush making a token pass at a cause I believe in to win me over (or even remotely convince me he's not an opportunistic parasite). Sorry Rush!
If the next caller had been a concerned mom talking about the horrific things she witnessed her kid doing while playing that Sony Playbox with the Grand Theft Car Game...Well, really, what do you think Rush would've said? Would he have jumped to the game's defense and told her she was a bad mother for letting her kid play it in the first place? Or blamed it on anyone Blue-state in finger-wagging range and held it up as a prime example of the degradation of the country's core values?
Gee. I wonder.
Gonna take more than Rush making a token pass at a cause I believe in to win me over (or even remotely convince me he's not an opportunistic parasite). Sorry Rush!
My favorite thing about Dragon Age: Origins was easily the setting, Thedas (which apparently stands for "The Dragon Age Setting". I can't decide if that's lazy or clever.)
I'm a fan of the more "serious" fantasy settings in books, but it's rare to see them this well represented in a video game. Usually it's either High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Dungeons and Dragons stuff (Oblivion), somewhat-cartoony "fantasy" Fantasy (Fable, World of Warcraft, etc.), Japanese Fantasy which is like the fantasy Fantasy except everyone is 15 years younger and has better hair, or Ultra Mega Grimdark settings that are so relentlessly bleak that it laps itself and seems more silly than anything else.
Dragon Age: Origins got it right. It's pretty much that and The Witcher for high-grade settings that don't seem to come with a gimmick, and The Witcher had the benefit of being based off of a book series. BioWare's worldbuilding is peerless and I can't wait to tuck in with DA2 and see where else they take it -- for good or bad, come to think of it. Wonder how much I'll like the tweaks they've clearly made once I get to put it through its paces...
I'm a fan of the more "serious" fantasy settings in books, but it's rare to see them this well represented in a video game. Usually it's either High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Dungeons and Dragons stuff (Oblivion), somewhat-cartoony "fantasy" Fantasy (Fable, World of Warcraft, etc.), Japanese Fantasy which is like the fantasy Fantasy except everyone is 15 years younger and has better hair, or Ultra Mega Grimdark settings that are so relentlessly bleak that it laps itself and seems more silly than anything else.
Dragon Age: Origins got it right. It's pretty much that and The Witcher for high-grade settings that don't seem to come with a gimmick, and The Witcher had the benefit of being based off of a book series. BioWare's worldbuilding is peerless and I can't wait to tuck in with DA2 and see where else they take it -- for good or bad, come to think of it. Wonder how much I'll like the tweaks they've clearly made once I get to put it through its paces...
WOAH. Need.
