Windows

Planescape: Torment

Chris Avellone decided to reveal some more information about Torment, since he is nearing his death.

About Ravel

White and Nerdy forever fellow fanboys.

EDIT: Non-fanboys who fear spoilers, stay away!!!

Strolling through the Chris' blog was a nice antidote to those interviews at NMA. It's good to see that while those Fallout guys predict the future of RPGs as "MMO with lots of cool features", Chris is talking about writing off romances with the examples from Lost.

I can't think of any singleplayer RPG development team worthy of Obsidian right now. BioWare is too busy with their "revolutions", and after a disappointing Jade Empire I don't hold too much faith in them, and nobody should take Bethesda as a serious RPG developer anyway.

But... but.. Mass Effect is SO extreme, isn't it?







Then again, these mock pictures actually hinted of a greater game than the new gameplay videos I saw. Too much like Kotor. But I'm still keeping my eye out for Dragon Age.

On the other hand, Jennifer Hale voices the female Player Character. Best game ever.

The root of my skepticism lies in my acquaintance BioWare latest Jade Empire. It bombed you initially with cheap wow-effects like Chinese setting and Kung-Fu RPG system but then it turned out that there is no game inside. They've created a cool idea but lacked an effort to create a world to support it.

Only two locations for an RPG portion of the game and no character development at all is simply laughable for a BioWare game. And even in those small portions the number of self-citations is very displeasing.

It seemed that BioWare forgot that you can't make a good based only on your talent and ambition. It takes a bit of simple effort and boring work too.

So, the way I see both Mass Effect and Dragon Age is that the initial reaction will be very good but the more you'll get into the game the more obvious the flaws would become. Of course, that's only a smart-assed presumption. I'll be glad to be proved wrong.

However, I really don't want to bother myself with these two for now, since it'll take years until I be able to lay my hands on either of them.