Autarkhos

So, has anyone found the spellbooks mentioned here or are they not in game yet?

Is it possible to make magic that can transform a character or a trigger that does a similar thing? I'm thinking of the ability for a sovereign to change themselves into a dragon.

I have to say, the AI is way too hard for it's own good on low difficulty levels. I don't think the AI's AI changes at all into higher difficulty levels, I think it just gets bonuses. :| Still, though, all you have to do is Blitzkrieg with your sovereign and everything's good.

Another (major) trouble with the cloth map (which I've been playing in since it's not nearly as resource intensive) is that you can't see where cliffs enter the sea.

I don't know, after playing the release, it seems like beta ran considerably smoother (at least early beta did, by which I mean 1-3), was less resource intensive, not as buggy and had gameplay which made the most sense. Release seems just... Worse than beta, for some odd reason.

Custom sovereigns appear to not have life or death magic. Can anyone tell me if this is true?

[quote who="OMG_blackmage" reply="241" id="2698249"]I honestly can't wait to see the amazing games you all come out with, I mean you can criticize bioware so harshly that means you can damn sure do it better. [/quote] That has to be the most pathetic defence for anything... Ever. Seriously. I consider myself a good designer, but I don't have a clue how to program. Then again, I might like diminishing returns far too much. :

[quote who="Sola_III" reply="228" id="2697551"]Pausable real - time combat in DA IMO is a great compromise between true turn - base and RTS.[/quote] I loved the way Bioware talked this up as something new, when it'd been in BG, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment etc.

[quote who="Savyg" reply="226" id="2694798"]Holy crap I'm going about life all wrong! The past is like moldy cheese...it stinks and I wish I could throw it away [/quote] Don't we all?

[quote who="Polynomial" reply="162" id="2683712"]Autarkhos, I've been trolling since like page 2.[/quote] Since Polynomial seems to have started posting again, I just wanted to post this...

[quote who="Brillig" reply="177" id="2684841"]Angry? No. Personally, I think Bioware has been on a downward trend for the last couple of years. But explain this then. How is "going to four areas" a cliche? It's not. It's just a common element in Bioware games, and a totally arbitrary one at that. You have to neglect large portions of the games to say that there are only four areas in each game. For it to be a cliche, there have to be l

[quote who="Brillig" reply="174" id="2684771"]That "cliche chart" is such a load of carp. Yeah, I said carp. Stinks to high heaven. Clearly, it's put together by someone with an axe to grind. Why didn't they list having a BioWare screen in the opening credits as a cliche? ZOMG, all their games are so formulaic, they have the same logo in the opening credits! Puhleeze.[/quote] lol. Come on, man, you're just angry because you can't poin

[quote who="Nesrie" reply="170" id="2684662"]Autar, what exactly are you expecting. It's an RPG. You want to play a slum brat who spends 20-40 hours working his or her way up to a farmer? I mean the whole hero save someone, something, someplace is standard fair. It's not just standard fair in RPG games either but fantasy and sci-fi movies as well. There is only so many variations a story can do to bring someone from something to nothing. Because Bioward loves a cast of companions, and f

[quote who="aeortar" reply="165" id="2684526"]No, it's not half their games. I've already been through 4 of their games which have different storylines, and the best you can still come up with is 3 and then say that 3 is half of their games - it doesn't add up. I'm also starting from BG2 because that's where I started playing bioware games. I haven't played BG1 or earlier games. I'm also not commenting on mass effect because I've not played it (yet). However out of all the games I

[quote who="aeortar" reply="158" id="2683586"]They're hardly the exceptions when they're the majority of the games Bioware's released - from BG2 onwards their 'big release' games have been BG2, NWN, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect 2 (unless I've forgotten some other one as well). It's a feeble argument that says 'their games are all the same...oh, except for the majority of their games which are actually different'.[/quote] KotOR, DAO and ME have pretty mu

[quote who="Polynomial" reply="156" id="2683505"]No, he's definitely right. 3D graphic accelerators came out and graphics were such a huge push because of that. When was the last time since Crysis we saw one of the biggest selling points be graphics? None. Crysis was the peak of our modern graphics line. We've flatlined since Crysis. Did Dead Space ignore gameplay for graphics? No. Mass Effect 1 and 2? No. The Call of Duty's? No. Halo? Certainly not. Red Dead Remption? No. Heavy Rain or Alan

[quote who="OsirisDawn" reply="154" id="2683276"]So your complaint is, that a game isnt exploring themes as good as a book, or a whole series of books? Really? I have never played a game whose story i havent read or heard of or even played in my P&P RPGs before. And much better at that. By that reasoning all games i ever played must be utterly complete shit, because i already knew it all. My first computer game was Ultima 3, just so you know where i started. Your exp

[quote who="Polynomial" reply="148" id="2682802"]Adam Sessler agrees with me about late 90s graphics. http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/703720/thefeed.html[/quote] He is... Actually completely wrong. Just because reviewers focused on graphics does not mean dev teams did. He's also ignoring the fact that game companies are focusing more on the graphical quality of their current games (I mean, it was one of the selling points for Crysis, as an example) instead of content.

[quote who="Polynomial" reply="140" id="2682625"]Bioshock changed the whole light story FPS concept we used to have. You seem to say all the critically acclaimed games in recent history are terrible. I know, we can never hope to achieve the quality of games back in the late 90s and early 2000. You know, the period where devs spent more time on graphics than anything else.[/quote] Except, it didn't. That's what Half Life, Deus Ex, System Shock etc did years beforehand. Did you play any

[quote who="coreimpulse" reply="132" id="2682541"]No, bioshock was a cheap rippoff of system shock 2, stupified for the console crowd.[/quote] Can't deny that, man. :p Still, though, they went over completely different themes. [quote who="Polynomial" reply="134" id="2682546"]Do you like any games? Bioshock was an important game for the industry and one hell of a good game to boot.[/quote] It wasn't really. It's not changed the industry or the way we view games.

[quote who="aeortar" reply="130" id="2682485"]You've not played enough Bioware games. They are the exact same story. Every. Single. Time. BG2 has a different story to NWN which has a different story to Jade Empire which has a different story to Dragon Age. They're not even close to being similar.[/quote] Good job on choosing the exceptions that I mentioned in the first post. I was thinking, "Oh, don't worry about putting in a paragraph explaining that sentence, and about how I

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[quote who="Nesrie" reply="124" id="2682359"]Any games you don't like you consider art?[/quote] Heavy Rain and Bioshock are two off the top of my head examples, as well as some of the really art-y flash "games" (interactive movies, really, but that's a different discussion) that you see about.

[quote who="Polynomial" reply="120" id="2682173"]Those games are virtually unplayable today. In terms of hardware and controls input. Sorry, but BG and Planescape are games that do not age well. And sorry, even Mass Effect's wikipedia article even says it explores themes![/quote] And that's why we have modders, who've fixed a lot of stuff. I played it a few years ago for the first time and it was perfectly alright in terms of graphical and control quality. Mass Effe

[quote who="OMG_blackmage" reply="113" id="2681931"]First off games are being seen as a art form and will continue to being seen that way for a very long time; so I don't know where you get this bs about people not seeing games as an artform. 50 years ago that statement might have been true, but in this day and age that statement is so false a lie could take lessons from it. Secondly let me repeat myself, if you don't like bioware then don't buy a damn thing from them. Bioware has done decent