Some more DA2 thoughts

Gotta love the blogosphere and the Bioboards these days. My my, emotions are cooking. Now, the main reason I waste some more time on the topic is hearing the same line over and over again:

"You are not entitled for an opinion unless you played the whole game"

Yo. That's my favorite. So, I want to let the developer and the publisher know that I don't like the current development by... actually buying the product? That's great thinking, really. After all, the publisher is only interested in sales. If a game sells good, it's a proven success, all the whining on the internet by disillusioned fans means absolutely nothing at all, as long as the product sells. Geddid? Is it that hard to understand? Do I need to buy the Farming Simulator 2011 too and play it from A to Z before I'm allowed to say "that's not my kind of thing"? And will anybody care once I've paid the money for it?

See, Dragon Age 2 might've caused a huge controversy, but yet again everyone buys it anyway, it's on top of the gaming charts. The only thing we as players can do to change their ways of thinking is to vote with our money, if we don't like the current development and want to change it, we don't buy, it's simple like that. Once we buy, nobody cares anymore what we write about it on the boards and blogs. Conclusion: I don't buy it, period. If someone gave me a copy to play and change my mind, sure, I'm open, but Bioware won't send me a copy and I'm not going to pirate that thing either to review it, so that's how it is. Now, the real question is, am I really not able to judge the game at all, because I don't own it? Let me recap the development from my personal view...

1. Mass Effect: I liked it. For it's presentation, not really the storyline. In all honesty, I've heard so much praise about Mass Effect's storyline, but for me it was the first time Bioware's storytelling started to annoy me a little. I thought it was stereotypical and aimed at a playerbase who still wet their pants about Star Trek-like honor and pride stories. However, presentation was cool.

2. Dragon Age Origins: I loved it. It had it flaws, I wrote about them, but it was still great. Again, it was not the storyline but the way it was told, the characters, and, that's a main point for me, in contrast to Mass Effect the feel of a real RPG with free character creation, all these Origin stories etc. More about that later.

3. DA2 announcement... Boy, that was fast. How much quality can DA2 have after such a short development? Remains to be seen.

4. Hawke. Okay, that was the first real downer for me. I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY HAWKE! I want to play my own personality. Shephard was enough, geddid? It's cool, have one game series with a set main character, but hell, leave me my choice in the other game, like you already DID in part 1. And why not? Only for the reason that some kids need a voiceover? I don't need a voiceover, quite the contrary. I want something left for my imagination! And that's where the dumbing down process starts. I actually wanted to write a whole post just about how a set character or a voiceover alone dumbs down a RPG, but it's not always as easy as that. To make it short, it depends on the game, and in Bioware's case it's generally not my thing. I generally prefer to play my OWN character, that's what makes a classic RPG for me. Playing Shepherd or Hawke is not giving me the feeling this is my adventure, it's the feeling like playing Bruce Willis through Die Hard and make decisions for him. The voiceovers are not what I'm saying deep inside that character, it's what the actor I'm giving commands to says, especially because the voiceover leaves nothing to my imagination anymore. To make it short, it's a different kind of RPG, and DA turned from RPG type one (classic) to RPG type 2 (uh... modern? Console? *shrugs*)

5. Dragon Effect. That dialogue wheel is not the greatest invention in gaming history! STOP F...ING using it in every game just because Mass Effect was a success. It didn't make Alpha Protocol a winner, and it doesn't make Dragon Age 2 a winner. Not even in Mass Effect it's cool to hear Shephard say some idiotic line you totally didn't intend to say, but hey, in Mass Effect the dialogue wheel has been sort of... part of the series, you got used to have it in THAT game. Do I want it in every other game too now, do I think it's an improvement for all RPGs just because Mass Effect was an okay game? No, for sure not. Mass Effect wasn't great because it had a dialogue wheel, so stop treating that dumb thing like the holy grail of all future RPGs. It's not, it's a Mass Effect thing and it should remain in that game.

6. Mass Effect 2. More of the same. Honestly, what's the big deal... it played faster than part 1, more action, less clutter, amazing... Maybe it was better than part 1, I honestly can't say. It was quite enjoyable, I admit, but it was play and forget, and a refined repetition of the same Bioware formulas. First time actually I wasn't interested in the romance subplots anymore. Why? Not because I don't enjoy romances in games, quite the opposite. But I'm getting tired of always the same formula... since Baldur's Gate it's always been the same steps, from the first dialogue choices that show some interest over the stupid reputation-point-farming to get on their good side, then the obligatory "make a choice" showdown, the naive kissing and FOX-save romance scene... YAWN... seriously, after a half dozen games it's getting old.

Anyway, nothing in Mass Effect 2 felt new and exciting anymore. Maybe, if I had to choose between 1 and 2, I'd take 2 as the better, more polished game, but that doesn't mean much.

7. Dragon Age 2 Lore/ingame scenes/community info... blablabla.

Lore: Seriously, I couldn't care less about the bigger picture of Ferelden. When I play a D&D game I don't care about the big world of the Forgotten Realms either, I care about the small world my character will see when I play. I'm not interested in the 5000 years of history or relations between the different states or why King soandso fought that war with state xy 300 years before... Let me be so blunt and say, everyone can make that up. It just takes some patience and detailing out from some hired geek who likes to write up lore. In most cases it's based on either Tolkien or the Forgotten Realms anyway, with some changes of times, names and places to hide the ripoff, and I wouldn't even notice because I honestly don't care. I don't read lore, I only care for the world my character will see and feel in a game. In real life, I'm no historican either and I don't need to know which tribes fought what wars an eternity ago to make my way around.

Ingame scenes: I don't care for fighting mechanics, sorry. The fighting is a minor part in following the storyline and getting immersed. I only don't like if it's looking more complicated than it has to. DA2's fighting scenes looked rather messy to me, a minor turnoff. Big turnoff: The dialogue wheel, again. Did I already say I don't see the point of adding it to every other game just because Mass Effect sold good /despite/ the wheel (surely not because of it)?

Community info: Oh jeez. Romance, romance romance romance. Let me repeat I like romance subplots. But the fuss on the Bioboards was ridiculous. And now every character has to be available for romances, every taste has to be catered. Character x is not bi? Oh my god! Political correctness outcry, what will the gay community think? No no, make him/her bi fast. Just make everyone bi, shall we? Also make them so outwashed that surely every taste is catered, throw away every personality and... oh right, do some market studies about the look. We have to make sure our teenage players get exactly the partner they're looking for!

Before anyone comes with the homophobic stamp now: I played a F/F romance in Origins too, it was enjoyable. I absolutely love how the gay characters in New Vegas are done. That's not my point. My point is washing out every originality and edges.

Was there any other topic on the Bioboards, besides some chest hair? I must've missed them.

Let me recapitulate now. So far there was nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing I saw as any improvement over Origins. Everything I saw was taking away things I liked in Origins, and putting nothing in it's place that made up for it, only things I consider unnecessary or even bad decisions.

Then came the demo. You've read my post? What's there to say... come on, people on the boards even defended that one and said it cannot be used for judging a game... it's old, based on an earlier build of the game, uh... should not demonstrate any aspect of the final game... err.... are you kidding me? It's a DEMO! It's supposed to be a demonstration of the final game and it should make me buy a game, no? There, it failed. If a Demo of a game fails to impress, I don't buy a game, isn't the world like that? Now I'm told I'm supposed to ignore that demo and buy the game anyway, because I should've known that the demo is not, in any way, supposed to be a demonstration of the final product which will be a completely different experience?

I'm sorry, but that's a logic that completely escapes me.

Anyway, all my past prejudices towards DA2 were not only proven right, but even increased by that Demo. Not only all the points I listed above, it got even worse. They made the dialogue wheel even more dumb, to the point I'm honestly thinking "how retarded does Bioware expect me to be, if they even give me icons that show me that the asshole answer is not nice?".

The few cutscenes were cringeworthy at it's best. How much more stereotypical and, unintended, funnier can it be? I'm sorry, but there was no drama there, it was "headdesk" only.

The sugar on top was the graphics. I don't expect Bioware to come up with something breathtaking like The Witcher 2 or Skyrim, don't worry.... we all know Bioware games aren't meant to be next generation graphics, but...

...Are you kidding me?! This is an AAA game with 90+ scores?

For the shameful rest just look at my past rant. Some people still call that an unique style, I call it shit. Crap. Worst of the worst. There's nothing, absolutely nothing stylish or of unique beauty there. You can load up a game from 1999 like "Alice", THAT is a unique style with lower polygons, even by today's standards it's Art. Dragon Age 2 isn't art, it deserves a headslap for the graphics. And I've not even started about the breasts yet....

Okay, that's up to the point of the demo. I'm still following the reviews of the game, and especially Mat's at his Rotted Rose blog. This is by far not the heated, hateful perspective you see from many other sources, quite the opposite, and I'm absolutely not expecting Dragon Age 2 to be such a pile of crap like some Metacritic scores by users make it appear to be.

No, what I expect it to be is actually yet another Bioware standard game, but not of highest quality. If I played it, I'm sure I wouldn't give it a total thumbs down, because I know Bioware's formulas work. At some point it'll be the same as Mass Effect, the presentation will catch me again, the formula will invade my mind and I'll want to see the end. Just like Mass Effect 2. Just that Mass Effect 2 didn't have the "woah, awesome" effect on me anymore it has on most other players, simply because I'm already bored of the Bioware stereotypes. And after all I've seen, Dragon Age does not have the polish of Mass Effect 2. No, with my prejudice in mind, but also knowing how the games can catch you, I'd expect me to give it a score slightly below 80. Which means, it plays okay, but I'll probably not play it again. Just like ME2. It was okay, but one time was enough.

However, there's another point why I support the massive outcry of half of the community, and why I like seeing those metacritics scores: Because it's damn right the only way to stop Bioware to do it again. Everything else, like going out, buying it and playing it anyway just to be able to make a more detailed review is sending EA and Bioware the signal "Just go on, simplify and homogenize your games even more, we'll still buy it". No. I'm stubborn like that, I still believe in quality having a niche in all this multimillion dollar business. I think after all I've seen of DA2 so far I have the right to say "no, it's shite, I don't need to see more", and I want Bioware not to do the same thing again in DA3. Which they will do if Dragon Age 2 is a success, and sadly, the sales figures speak for themselves - it's on top of the game charts, and I'm losing my hope it'll get better again.

Now, the last thing for this long rant is a quote from the Bioboards that summarizes almost everything about the dumbing down of Dragon Age 2. It was in reply to someone mentioning the fact that you can't put armors you find on your way on your companions (doh?)...

Stanley Woo wrote...

You can find armour upgrades for Fenris that "would be perfect for Fenris." All games have limitations. We can't cater to every individual's imagination.

Not sure if there's anything more to say. Guess I've said enough.

'tis so frustrating....

The mysteries of 3D design. I can't describe how dumb I feel when I look at any 3D design program. Long ago, I mean, really long ago, I learned some basics of Cinema 4D at my art school. "Learned" is a little bit of an exaggeration here, I managed to import some models and combine them to a scene, and that was it. In the meantime of course I forgot even that again, and it doesn't really matter anyway, because Cinema 4D is probably the least commonly used program for what I'm attempting to do. So far I've only seen it at advertising companies, used by artsy Mac-Users to design toothpaste tubes and boxes for ads. Fascinating.

No no, the whole world out there uses the Autodesk products, and mainly for game stuff you actually can't avoid 3dsmax. I have absolutely no clue whatever to do with such a thing, and it's a bit hard to get my hands on it too, given the ridiculous price. 30day trial you say? In 30 days I might learn how to navigate inside a scene, but surely not how to do the stuff I want to do. Okay, scratch that.

There's also Blender. Blender is actually an incredibly powerful tool, it's free and can do pretty much everything the other big players can do too, as it seems (see movie still above), at least for my needs... but... Jesus Christ, I'm crying like a baby once I look at the screen. What the hell are all these things for? This is nuclear physics, no less.

Okay, paddle back... Why am I doing this? Because I'm sick of hitting walls in my attempts to make some custom content in NWN2. "Make" is a little bit much, I'm mainly just retexturing things in 2D. It took me an eternity to get the basics of NWN2's normal maps, alpha channels in texture maps and all that already, but I managed, at least I was able to make my reskins for Jester's nudes and create some undies for them by manipulating textures of preexisting clothes. But I'm hitting a wall. Some things I totally want to do are just not possible with the models I have access to, also, some texturing work never turns out to be satisfying, mainly due to doing normal maps not in a 3D application or having a too plain base.

Often when I have no inspiration for Middleforest like now, a little custom content work got me back to it. You know, having made a nice new outfit you want to see it in game... you open the toolset again and load the mod and think 'ah well, now I added the blueprint, could as well make a new shop'.

Well, lately both Middleforest and custom content were more frustrating than ever, everything I did was pretty ugly. The module scares me off with all it's details that don't work, and with clothes I hit the said wall where it's no fun anymore. Mainly because of the lack of model bases, and me being horribly scared of 3D stuff.

Okay, after a long time of avoiding it I thought I'd at least give it another try, if only for converting stuff from other games. I tell you I have no clue what I'm doing, one day was already wasted on getting Blender and the import/export scripts to work (wrong Blender releases, wrong 32/64bit version, wrong install paths, outdated scripts, etc.). Inspired by a sour comment of Mr.Nixon on his fallout blog, I thought I'd stubbornly try to get an outfit from Fallout to work, actually a splendid idea because there are so many outfits and other models at the Oblivion/Fallout Nexus vaults that just wait to get used.

Using two different versions of Blender (older, stable 2.49 32bit for using the .nif import/export stuff and a newer 2.55 64bit - 2.56 is again unusable - for using the .mdb plugins... headache anyone?) I was at least able to get everything into one scene, and with some pointers from Jester's tutorial included in the .mdb plugin, even managed to apply the textures. Hooray!

So... here we are. I have a body base from NWN2 (that's one of Jester's) and a nice outfit from Fallout 3 right next to it in one scene. Hooray. Uh... what now? Yes, that's it. I have no clue what now. I probably have to... make it fit, combine somehow with the Fallout outfit fitting the base nicely and making use of it's skeleton... avoid clipping... uh... clean some stuff up... uh... figure out how to control polygon counts... I... I have just no idea what to do.

At this point I'm again wondering if I should use a 30day trial of 3dsmax because apparently everyone knows how to use that one. That they know does absolutely not mean they are willing to share though, let's face it, the few people in NWN2's community who are skilled in 3D are locked away in their ivory tower and only sometimes throw an awesome model out of the window down to us mere mortals. No bad feelings, they are busy with the serious stuff... just saying... :)

And 30 days for all the stuff I'd like to do? Can I even save useable files? I have no clue... mastering Blender is a dream, oh my god, what could be done if I had any clue what I'm doing in this... (at this moment it takes me 30 minutes to find the right button to change the view). Or... just forget about it, drop everything because I'm just too dumb to use this?

*cries like a baby*

Edit: Oh, and Happy Birthday mom.

That new Bioware thing

Yeah, I want to join the Cool Kids Club too and talk about my impressions on the hyper-hyped Dragon Age 2 demo like everyone else. So forgive me for not talking about that corpse of a NWN2 module there under the table... But no worries, this'll be short.
I admit, my expectations weren't that high, and Dragon Age 2 wasn't on the highest position on my shopping list so far, but of course trying the demo was obligatory. After all, Dragon Age: Origins was a really great, great game I thoroughly enjoyed. It had it's faults, of course, my past post about it covers that, but still, played it 4 times, money well spent.

Anyway, now to the demo of that new shiny thing that makes it all ten times better. Know what, just enjoy the screens.


So, we have breathtaking area design again... again? No, it puts even DA:O to shame. Sense some irony? Silly reader.

We have masses of darkspawne! No really, Bioware, how did you know that Darkspawne were the part of the first game I really enjoyed most? Thank you! Give me those Hurlurks, Ogres, ...


Ah! Finally less to read and more action! I always thought Mass Effect's dialogue wheel made things much easier, especially turning off the brain completely and focus on... um... Miranda's.. err... Isabela's chest or something. I totally need to know what's the friendly answer and what the unfriendly too.. because I can't read that much text, I can't read at all, but your neat little colored icons for good, funny, bad fixes that. Thank you!



Ah, more drama. Even in the demo we have shockingly dramatic cutscenes. This woman breaks my heart, no matter her ridiculous look and texturing, clumsy movement (game's set in old times, Mass Effect in the future after all, so of course Mass Effect's cutscenes look more modern and Dragon Age's outdated. Makes sense.) Actually, it worked without me even listening to the dialogue, because I knew already what was happening! Isn't that great?

Ah yes, Flemeth... she looked like an old swamp hag in DA:O, of course that had to be changed to something more 1337. How unoriginal is an old woman in the swamps who's secretely a witch when you can do something awesome like a dragon (gasp) landing in front of you and shapechanging into a super-cool looking MILF with an extremely sexy and exotic outfit? Haven't seen that before in any other game, great new turn, Bioware.

Ah yes, Bioware, you noticed that the gap between Miranda Lawson's legs was probably not the best idea.... because too few people noticed it, maybe? Now that's fixed, everyone will for sure notice this yummy pair. Well thought out. And for the searchers of secrets, there's surely still enough to discover further below on Isabela's hot little outfit.

(wanna bet below that outfit will be another set of those laughable "avoid a FOX scandal" undies that already made me spit my coffee over the table in part 1 and Mass Effect 2? ;-) )

Variations available, covered in blood, honey, chocolate...



Seriously now, folks. DA2's demo has finally turned me off. There's almost nothing I like about it, beginning with the choice between a male and a female Shep.... err... Hawke, over the backstories of the same that totally don't remind me of Mass Effect of course, over the dialogue wheel because we're too stupid to read text (or Bioware being too lazy to write it) etc. etc.

It goes on over the cutscenes in the demo and the apparent storyline that was again so generic and so "Bioware" that I already have the feeling I played DA2 three times before it even got into the stores. The sloppy area design and graphics that seem even worse than DA: O's (maybe proud owners of DirectX11 cards see something awesome, but I only see shite with my Ati 4870) does the rest. Sure, you get some cool new combat moves, more action, instant reaction on click, and as an alibi for the geeks you can again configure the AI in tactic slots.... blabla. Details that don't make the big picture any better.

The only thing that reminded me a bit of art was the new style for the narrated scenes. That was okay, but seriously, I've seen better.


Well, here I am, voice alone in the dark while the rest of the world runs into the stores to push yet another Bioware "instant classic" on top of the game charts. Personally though, I'm getting bored of Bioware's more and more generic game design. I'm even more interested in Dungeon Siege 3 at this moment, and that means something.

Edit 24/2: Look what happened, here I thought Bioware was at least creative enough to name that pair of walking boobs "Izabella"... wishful thinking, it's just plain and simple Isabela. Edited. :)

Custom content, LOTS and LOTS.

Have we all survived the winter so far, yes? A while ago I actually thought I'm a winter person, lots of thoughts and inspiration during the dark season. In fact though, I couldn't get myself to even open a single area during the last month (good riddance, December) and spent most of my time with long rants, as the blog proves. What I managed to do though was updating some haks and cleaning others, and only now I'm actually starting to make use of the new stuff.

Speaking of that, and my older post about autodownloader problems, I need to rant a little again. When you read through the various Persistant World-related posts at the Bioware boards, one of those things you constantly hear is that you should go with the times and use the autodownloader-ready haks from the vault as is, so players don't have to download the same content twice. Sounds fair enough, but the reality looks more like builders having to manage a neverending list of haks (who wants to assign, say, 72 individual haks to their module?), having to find out which content overrides which, and if the next of tiny hak #57 update won't conflict with larger hak #62 below. If it does and, say, a new model in hak #57 suddenly overrides that awesome model in #62, it's time for fixing. But hold! And that's the problem number two, you can't fix the original hak, you need to pull the content up into a custom hak, because the next time the autodownloader is used the fixed hak would be overwritten again...

And that's the next problem I already ran into sometimes... a good example is Heed's PC Tools. The original hak has a bug, and there are two different fixes for it. One is a fix within the hak itself, the other is a fix in the script. Now, both fixes seem to work, so some builders used the hak fix, the others the script fix. The result is, if you go server hopping, chances are good the PC Tools are downloaded and replaced over and over again, or even worse, if you come across a server that doesn't use the ADL, players suddenly can't use their PC tools there anymore (because they played a different server before) and can't figure out why. It took me a long while too to figure out why all of sudden my PC Tools in Middleforest stopped working, even though I was sure I fixed them... after a long time I remembered being serverhopping and found out I had a different version, but hell, that took me some days. Anyway, fixing these things is a major headache because more often then not you first have no clue why things suddenly go wrong, then you need to track down the culprit.

Next thing is, bloat. I shouldn't really rant about bloat, given the size of Middleforest's current hak set (it exceeds old 3C). However, that doesn't mean I just grabbed everything fancy out there and made a giant compilation, no, I DO care about the content and it's quality. Some of the largest haks I use are armor compilations for instance, and a huge amount of outfits in, say, Aleanne's or the Always Summer clothing haks simply neither fit the setting nor do they meet my quality standards anymore, they are bloat. I recently cleaned up all the clothing haks and was able to reduce the size by over 300MB, plus making room for other outfits again.

Last but not least, I do believe that a 500MB download or even a Gigabyite (hey, I'm not there yet!) is not too much for a PW anymore. These days kids download Gigabytes of Free2Play games all the time only to install them once, try them out and delete them again. Singleplayer modules are a different matter though, if I made a singleplayer game, I'd carefully choose every single model and only add what I definitely need in this or that scene. For a PW project though, I think it's important to have a good base which gives you much of building freedom right from the beginning, because you intend to use it much longer. A PW admin doesn't try to attract players for a single quick playthrough, but for a long-time game with an open end. I think players who are really interested in a certain Persistant World understand that and don't mind a single huge download, especially in times of terrabyte harddrives and broadband interwebz. But massive hak changes later, while the server already runs, that's much more painful.

Anyway, that's why I decided for a custom Middleforest hak set. Mainly because I don't have to manage more than a dozen haks, because I know pretty well what content is where in case of trouble, no sudden hak updates that break something, and because I can decide what of a hak's content I want to use and what not.

Moving on to what's inside the haks. So, why has nobody ever told me that there's a NWN2 conversion of one of my favourite NWN1 tilesets at the vault? Tsk. Now that's one of my latest additions, and even given it's higher fantasy content, I must say I'm quite pleased with how good some of the buildings fit into Rungholt's elven quarter (and not only there). I love Tupoun's City hak, but as nice as it looks, a whole city only built with it doesn't offer that many surprises anymore. That's where the CODI buildings can really make a difference, I think.





There are some minor problems with them though, that's why they need to be used with care. First, they are not tintable. Not such a big deal because the City Hak buildings are and can be adjusted to match the CODI buildings. The next, bigger problem is that the buildings apparently don't block the line of sight, which can lead to game mechanical issues. There's also the point that they don't fade the same way as the NWN2 buildings, I'm not sure if that will lead to big camera troubles or not - in the toolset it was a little strange though because they fade out at some angles and I'm always scared I accidently deleted one... anyway, still a wonderful addition.

The next thing that kept me busy last weekend was skyboxes, and that's not a success story. Initially, I got very excited about them - they are very easy to make technically, and Google helped me to find some panorama skies that look great in game.
Before you know-betters ask, no, it's not the fact that Obsidian decided for some utterly silly double-image-wrapping thing... what's that, the non-know-betters ask? Oh, the image is used TWO times on the skybox in game, so if your image has a sun or moon or tower or other landscape feature, it'll show up 2 times in game, once in front of you, once behind. Yeah, silly. It's okay with a mountain, but not so much with a sun. However, no, I found images that work well enough.

No, the big big problem is that the stupid skybox doesn't change in game. You might have a skybox option in every single day/night cycle stage, but nuh-uh, if you want to use different skies for different times of the day, forget it - the game only uses the default one. That's not the worst, the worst is that the game has no options to actually darken or brighten the image, so if you have a bright blue sky picture during the daytime, you'll have the same bright blue sky picture during the night. Bye bye immersion.

As you can see below though, I found a way to darken the scene during the night still. It doesn't look like midnight, but at least like nightfall, say, 9pm. But, this is only made possible by using the bloom options and lowering them a lot. That means, a player who doesn't use Bloom doesn't see any of it and still faces a bright sky. Plus, lowering the bloom options that much not only darkens the sky, but every highlight in game, including all light sources like torches, fires, the nightvision effect. Long story short, it's unusable for a PW, a weekend wasted. Anyway, just to show you what could've been:




Yeah, I shed a tear about that... the default sky now looks so terrible to me...

A last thing I found at the vault recently is not a hak, but some scripts. Thanks to my excessive Fallout playing, I grew fond of the idea to have a realistic resting system that, doh, uses beds. Yeah, no "I feel so exhausted, let me kneel down for 10 seconds" anymore. Na... I like the idea of having to look for a nice place to spend the night... a free bed, a rented bed or a simple sleeping bag. Additionaly, (I admit I got that from an adult mod in Fallout, but liked especially that functionality) I want to animate the process properly. Not just click-rested-done, na, a proper animation has to go with it. And, if you use a sleeping bag in the wilds, the chance to get disturbed by a thug.

And hooray, it's already been done long ago by Patcha! Isn't that nice... now, the problem is, Patcha's system contains a little too much, I only want some of the basics really. I know many players cringe when they hear "bedroll", the first thing coming to mind is HCR with the mean resting restrictions. I don't want that, I'm no friend of rest timers, rations, partial or no spell/feat/hitpoint refreshment and all that. I just want something more immersive than kneeling down for a few seconds, that's all. Anyway, yeah, that's the plan for the near future, I hope I can use Patcha's scripts as a base for something more simple and convenient, however knowing myself I'll cry for scripting help again as soon as copy and paste won't do it anymore.

Well, so much for now, as you can see I haven't given up building completely yet.

P.S. I almost forgot, after all my Fallout tallking lately I must point you at Mr. Nixon's project here. Looks awesome, I'm sure I'll keep an eye on it.

Story depth, sexism and equality

"Jeanne, next time just keep the long hair, ask nicely for that breastplate and bring your girlfriend too."

(Edit 21. Dec.: to avoid any confusion, the blog entries and comments I quoted have now disappeared)

Ah, reality check today. This is going to be long again. A few days ago I linked you people to Alazander's community check during my long Obsidian rant. Who would've thought it'd stir up the trouble it did? I don't ask you to read it all, instead I'll quote a few passages that lead to the argument. It raises some interesting thoughts really.

"I see 300+ page threads dedicated to an upcoming companion's chest hair, and I wonder if the earnest D&D or RPG enthusiasts of the past are now huddling in a corner staring in slack-jawed terror at the teenage girls who have taken over the establishment."

Aahh... my my, bad mistake. Seriously, in the whole context of that long post I didn't stumble over that one, or let's better say, I got the bigger meaning without assuming he's actually blaming girls for the downfall of all roleplaying communities. It was a cynical remark, irrelevant. Let's hop into the comments section now...

"But I'm sorry - the problem with the RPG community today is that teenage girls have "taken over"? Are you serious?"

Other points made in that comment are totally valid, it was just that I hadn't read the same into the post as this person did... moving on in the comments it's getting too much to quote really, people got really upset about this one line and that Alazandar called The Witcher's gritty setting "refreshing" compared to Bioware's "we cater everyone" policy.

"I always like to use The Witcher as a good example of game that sails close to the edge to present a believable world, at the risk of offending or alienating significant groups of people. Not that I think that is a good thing in general, but it’s a breath of fresh occasionally."

That was apparently just feeding the fire and even took it over to other blogs with statements like...

"I think I’m most amused/bewildered by the claim that political correctness is so rampant that games with sexist/oppressive settings and content are a “breath of fresh air”. Like tossca said, I… really don’t know where to start. :/"

"I think statements about how misogyny or other sorts of oppressiveness are “a breath of fresh air” are a bit indicative of what the person in question thinks the world should be like.
Which is clearly indicative that nobody should take them seriously, because that’s really self centered thinking and yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t seem to have caught on."

"His breath of fresh air stinks for everyone else."

Now, short break here, to get that part out of the way. Up to the point where the first person argued about the truth behind the "teenage girl" statement I can agree that the words weren't exactly well chosen. The "girls part" was meaningless to me, I think those of us who stare in awe at the Bioware Social Community all get the bigger meaning... those boards appear like a chatroom with so much babbling about nonsense like, cough... chest hair... that one's getting close to a seizure. I was following the boards when Dragon Age was new and yes, they changed faster than lines in a chatroom, with the most frequented topics being about character look and who's the cutest bunny and that.

It's not important if it was teenage girls or males who started those, although we all know girls chat faster ;-) (yeah, joke, but call me sexist now if you like). Moving on to the part about male sexism on those boards and teenage males opening dozens of threads about boob size... all valid, sure, teenage males are horrible, teenage girls too, can we move on? The point is that more serious modders feel a bit lost in the kindergarden, not if it's teenage girls or teenage males who started it.

But, since the sexism topic came up now, let's stay there and look at Alazander's new post.

I don't want gaming to become the equivalent of Mass Effect's medi-gel and omni-tools: all-purpose, all-inclusive, homogenized. I refer to the mechanics, yes, but also the stories, the characters, the themes. This is particularly important for RPGs because they form so much of the experience. When one comes along that doesn't knowingly dull its edges to avoid potentially offending someone -- and even BioWare's games do, on occasion -- I'll stand and applaud the artistic integrity instead of screaming blue murder.

Phew... so much for the background... you might've noticed I left a comment there already long enough for a blog post.

Let's make this part short now. Yes, I agree completely with him and I think the Witcher is a great, great game, to a large part for being so different to the homogenized rest. What are we really looking for in a fantasy game? A truly medieval feel or rather a game that caters everyone at the same level? If the latter, how many opportunities for a great story are really there and how many lost? A matter of taste maybe?

So, if I want to make a commercially successful Middleforest, I'll make sure that the world feels all the same to men, women, lesbians, gays, probably a few more. Yes, that's the Bioware recipe. Modern canadian liberal political correctness, as Alazandar called it. May I add.... boring?

Yes, I think Bioware games get more boring lately. I still enjoyed Mass Effect 2, but I don't feel the urge to play it again.
Dragon Age was great, and I especially loved it for the origins, but it dulls out a bit after those.

Let's not forget by the way that DA:O was years in development, they started long before being bought up by EA. Now, the latest developments though don't really spike my interest anymore. I don't care much for Mass Effect 3, and for sure not for Dragon Age 2 which appears to be just a medieval Mass Effect. And may I add that I have my doubts that these games can be really deep and epic anymore with only one year of development and always following the same successful recipe?

No, a game I want to make would be closer to the Witcher's world than to Bioware's standards now.
Do you read into that that I want to make a world in that only heterosexual male players are catered, that female players, or homosexuals or whatever fun you have in your life, characters are not welcome? No, dammit, they should be strong in numbers! But please, don't expect the same treatment. Why? Because it's absolutely unrealistic, it's boring, it ignores so many opportunities for great stories.

Even Bioware was still doing it at one point - play the female City Elf origin in Dragon Age: Origins.
Sadly, they didn't continue this way throughout the game... but even without the gender now... how many people thought it was a brilliant idea that elves or the lower born dwarves are the outcasts, the scum, nothing but slaves in that game and had to fight against all the odds?

Ah yes, as long as it's just a fantasy race, it's a great idea... but telling a story about a woman who has to fight against the odds in a realistic sexist and gritty world is no good idea? Or a gay warrior who has to keep his orientation a secret in a world that would burn him for his sin? That wouldn't make fantastic stories?
Well, just look at literature and real history. Who'd give a damn f*uck what Jeanne d'Arc has done if every second soldier/knight in the army had been a woman during that time? She'd surely not be holy by now, she'd be forgotten.
Would Mary Read and Anne Bonnie still be remembered? What for? There were more successful pirates at the time, they had no males to fight against, and since female sailors/pirates who dress like males and have a same gender affair are considered utterly normal and plain boring...



"Just a snapshot of some average girls in their day job, nothing to see here."


In my comment I took "The Pillars Of The Earth" as an example. Did this book cause an uprise among female readers (who apparently bought it) for treating women not politically correct? The women in this book are usually treated like scum, most of them raped at least once, and yet they are the most memorable characters... because they fight against all odds.

The Witcher created a world that is not even that gritty, but surely closer to medieval society than Bioware's games are. And yet, most players still remember most of the female NPCs clearly because they stood out. And not for their boobs. It's just been three months since I played Mass Effect 2, I barely remember the storyline or the characters anymore. Sure I remember Liara-cutiepie still, but honestly, isn't she just a sweet little modern teenager with not much depht at all? I wasn't really impressed by any of those characters, and if there's anything I remember of that Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect 2, it's surely her rearside and a suit so detailed that I'd call it more sexist than the whole tarot card collection in The Witcher.


"Miranda Lawson (Mass Effect 2) - modelling that gap between her legs was surely a necessity. Honi soit qui mal y pense."


Triss Merigold though, I surely remember her from the Witcher, and I'm sure her character would eat any of the Mass Effect chicks for breakfast.

Last, because I'm only rambling again and will probably edit every 2nd sentence later for making sure I'm not misunderstood - Michael has posted a great blog entry a (long) while ago, he's a much better writer and much smarter than me anyway. Make sure to read all of it, not just this little quote that should conclude this post.

"We can't solve the ills of society in a little blog post. But, by extension, neither can we solve them in a game. And really, should we? If conflict is the center of storytelling, isn't the base conflict of woman versus the limitations of society compelling? I've seen character backstories by the truckload that deal with a woman being driven to a life of adventure to escape the chains of an arranged marriage, and nine times out of ten, the conflict stops there. Women in fantasy, it seems, are only chained by society at some distant point in the past. They make a decision to not be the puppets of men and then everything is roses from there. Surely, fantasy is a wondrous thing!

(...)

Being a woman in S&S takes strength. Being a woman and an adventurer, doubly so. The conflict that births that strength should be played up, not down; such resolve in the face of injustice is the thing people tell stories about long after things have changed... if they ever do."

There are no words...

.. to describe all the feelings this message causes in me.
Seriously... I want to go on a killing spree, I want to break stuff, I want to...
What the hell do you want from me, autodownloader?
Yes, I admit I've been a bad bad Casa and decided to clean up my Middleforest module. That means, I exported all areas, made a new module by the same name, with all the scripts and blueprints and stuff, reimported everything, used the exact same module properties, used the exact same settings for the autodownloader, assigned the exact same servers, assigned the exact same files to them... WHAT THE FUCK?!

Seriously, I hate hate hate hate hate this thing. It cost me 4 hours so far, all the settings are the same as in the old module and all the files it wants sit on the server just waiting to be used.

Rant day: Obsidian, Fallout, Communities, Influences

It's time for some long ramblings again, please forgive me. I should make some general games blog someday, but there are too many of those already. However, this is sort of NWN2 related again, and also very much to my Middleforest, because believe it or not, I'm getting a lot of influences and ideas from other games, even if they seem to have nothing in common with NWN2 or medieval fantasy.
Like, say, Fallout.
Well actually, Fallout has a few things in common with NWN2, first off it's a Roleplaying Game and last but not least the developers.
And that's reason number two for my rambling today, Obsidian. The first one would be talking about the game itself, and the last reason is a post by fellow blogger Alazander over here.

Now, how do I get all this together? So, Obsidian, where do I start?

Over in the Dammendrech chat, they're usually called Obtusian or Obsidiot and whenever something goes wrong on the server, the first line is "It's an Obsidiot game, what do you expect?" and they are generally called incompetent. Well, there's so much truth in that, but the point is, Obsidian is actually a likeable little studio with a lot of potential and a lot of flaws and bad luck. And Fallout New Vegas is an ideal example for this.

Let's first look at Obsidian's game list, maybe over at the Wikipedia because that's my bridge.
That list isn't long and as we all know, mostly sequels. What had all these sequels in common? They were kind of... lacking. What were they lacking? I'll come to that.

The other thing we see is that Obsidian was founded by and employs people who made some legendary games, last but not least the original two Fallout parts (Black Isle/Interplay), Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate together with Bioware etc. Also not to forget members of Troika with now legendary flops like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines or Arcanum. Today all veteran roleplayers still start drooling over these names.

So... what the hell is wrong with Obsidian? They always seem to make "okay" sequels that are said to be less good than the first part, and they are legendary for their game bugs.

But let's be fair and objective for a moment, because I'm getting a bit tired of all the Obsidian bashing. Their games have some serious flaws, but also a lot of strenghts, and with Fallout New Vegas I've found the best example. It shows both sides very well, and the comparison with Bethesda's original Fallout 3 works incredibly well. Because this time, fortunately, Obsidian didn't try to reinvent the wheel on the engine side like in NWN2.
That earned them some bad reviews and "outdated" remarks, but actually, I guess it saved their arses. At least they couldn't mess it up completely. Because yes, it's true, they aren't good at making a smooth engine, not at all.
But the main thing they aren't good at is another, and I think this is what earned them their reputation. It's not the programming, but the Art. I think Obsidian is made of geeks, geeks of the sort like the old veteran roleplayers who claim at some game forum that they don't care for anything else than the text in the game. They still enjoy their text-based RPG from the late eighties and don't need visuals at all. Unfortunately, they have to go with the times, try and... fail.

But now, let's get to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. First off, they are both very high in my favorite games list, but one's the clear winner.
All you need to know about the difference between the two games is the two opening scenes which were also used for trailers. They tell almost everything. So, lean back and start with Bethesda's.




And here comes Obsidian's:



Okay, do I really have to explain it or is it obvious? Does nobody else have this "Meh" feeling after the New Vegas one? They use the exact same game engine and tools, but... is it just me, or does Obidian simply have no clue how to do arts? Atmosphere?
Bethesda's is spot on with the atmosphere, it's rich in detail and sets the dark, gloomy mood for the game. And the music by the Ink Spots was the best marketing move anyway, although I hear kids hate it.

Obsidian though, you just get the idea they try to compete... but they can't. And they fail miserably. The very first seconds are okay, but then the camera moves to the New Vegas Strip and poof... immersion gone. There's no detail, nothing... a perfectly clean, plastic Strip that cries out "I'm rendered!", then comes that soldier guy who's there for the same reason as the one in Bethesda's: "I need to look totally badass so the kids buy the game". Nice try, he's okay, but after all that plastic look of the Strip he can't save anything anymore. Only nice touch: The headshot. It's sort of funny, and that actually is the point where they did something right. But then... I just have to post a pic...



That's the point where they probably lost the young ones completely. Are we watching Toy Story (1)? Obsidian, please.. before you do something like that, don't do any cinematics! You scare off the whole gamer crowd who buy graphics cards beyond $70... it's not that it's not high end, it's that... it's just bad! And let's remind ourselves this is a pre-rendered scene, not ingame graphics... the point is, ingame the characters look actually more realistic than that. Let's move on...


Do I have to say more? This area up there... how can you use it for the intro that is supposed to get players into the mood, how can you use this camera angle, how can you NOT throw some Photoshop filters over it or just use artwork... seriously, I'm not saying that Obsidian should use high end graphics, not at all, that's not the point... it's just that you can get better and more immersive screens in a 10 year old game. And really, it's not nitpicking on one pic here, it's the whole trailer, isn't it?

Lastly, let's take a quick look at Obsidian's recent first own development, Alpha Protocol. As everyone who's a bit interested in games or in Obsidian's doings outside NWN2 should know, this game flopped. Badly. And that was my first impression right from the first screenshot I saw... that it will flop badly.
Ingame graphics are not everything, I agree, and a good game surely doesn't need high end graphics. But there's a certain point at which the bad art design actively ruins the game... the story suggests a serious moment, but the graphics are so unintentionally comical that you actually have to laugh about it.

As an example for small mood-killers you might have seen too... Dragon Age, romance scene... it was supposed to be a really romantic moment, and the game is so well written you were really in the mood. Then they start this "sex" cutscene in those ridiculous undies with rather weird animations and I actually snorted my coffee over the table. Now, in Dragon Age's case it couldn't ruin the game, it was just a bit funny.

The problem with Obsidian's games is, they are worse. And according to all reviews I've seen about Alpha protocol, I think that was what ruined the game completely - the bad marketing surely didn't help too, nothing from the ads to the game box was in any way atractive. All of the reviews said the story's quite great and the game is surely worth playing... if you can ignore the horribly outdated graphics and the comical animations. Most said that some combat animations were unbearable. Reminds you of another game? Maybe NWN2? Let's look at the Alpha Protocol trailer for completition, there's some ingame scenes at the end that don't look totally unbearable, but by no means unique either.



Now... would you say this trailer gets anyone into the stores? Even to a torrent site?
To tell you the truth I was almost praying for Obsidian that this game wouldn't flop, that there would be people less picky than me who'd buy, play and enjoy it. Didn't happen. I was even expecting Alpha Protocol to be the nail in Obsidian's coffin. Glad that didn't happen though, not yet... maybe New Vegas saved them... but who knows how much of the cake will actually be left for Obsidian, given the first big name on the box is still Bethesda.

Now, enough of that, onwards to New Vegas. Maybe I'm an oracle or something, but my gut feeling has yet again not failed me. I like my guts, they always tell me the truth, and they did about this too.

Because, surprise, I totally loved the game. Obsidian failed to ruin it, quite the opposite, they made it a small masterpiece and definitely better than Bethesda's Fallout 3. And that was the first feeling I had when I heard they'd develop it. Why?

1. They have an engine ready and can't screw up by making a new one, so that's out of the way.
2. They don't try to change the graphics, pheeeew.

Game magazines gave them worse reviews for keeping the old engine, and yes, on metacritics Fallout 3 scores better than the successor. But hell, well done Obsidian, keep your hands off things you don't understand and work on your strong side. That's the writing. And hands on, on the storytelling side, Bethesda cannot compete.

Fallout 3's wasteland was a great place to explore with so much atmosphere and detail and stuff to do that it outshone the big failure it was on the story side. It had stories and quests, sure... but my, most of them were really lacking. They were short, didn't have much detail, many of them were not much better than your usual Fed-Ex quests.
The main storyline was linear and could be completed in a rush, it offered, wait... one or two choices at the end, and your general influence on the world was quite black & white.. either you do the good thing and earn something good for it, or you do some bad thing and be a bad person.

Bleh.

Now, my personal Fallout 3 trauma is this person, she's called Clover:


Clover was my favourite companion in Fallout 3, and I hate travelling alone. Not because they add to the firepower, just because I like company. I loved the dog too, but the dog didn't speak, so I ran my Karma all the way down to being horribly evil just to get this "crazy slave girl (ingame advertisment)" as a companion. I mean, who wants to travel with a Paladin in heavy armor, please...

Now, the actual trauma is, I could've sticked with the dog.

Miss Clover here could've been a really rich person... she's a little masochistic, very sadistic and was the private slave of the big badass slave trader in the game, one of two girls (Crimson & Clover, haha). She could've had stories to tell you can't imagine, or just doing random fun stuff that actually fit her "crazy" reputation.

She doesn't. She has exactly three one-liners as voice-overs and the same amount of dialogue options to adjust her companion AI. She's a robot. A dog.
Actually, the dog barked more than she had to say. And don't think it was just her, no... all companions in Fallout 3 are that "rich". They are.. aimbots? Meatshields for lazy players? Something like that. It was just sad, but it's one major point of Fallout 3: Even though being a RPG, it's clearly aimed at the shooter crowd a little too much.

What I was hoping for when New Vegas was announced was that Obsidian did exactly that: Leave the working base alone and work on those parts Bethesda failed in. And Obsidian delivered.

Here's one of my favourite companions in New Vegas, Veronica. Veronica is extremely nice and a little bit silly, babbles a lot, even unasked. She has a long background story including a girlfriend (another companion is gay, in both cases you learn it just from a side remark they throw at some time and nothing else follows, which just adds to the realism of the fleshed-out backgrounds). She has her own long questline just like all of the eight companions you can choose from, and was generally a pleasure to have around. She wasn't Clover though, but still, she was fine.


The companion example is just the most obvious one, but Obsidian really played out all their writing strenghts in New Vegas. As for the setting, the Mojave desert, it's not as detailed graphics-wise (surprise!) and hasn't as many "Oooh" effects as Fallout 3, another thing some reviews mentioned, but it's certainly not ugly and still has a lot of surprises.

You really just have to force yourself over the badly done intro and the first hour or two, and suddenly, with the first sidequests, you notice how rich the world is, and how incredibly well the writing is done. Main storyline? Ah, forget it, the sidequests are rich ones. There are some that are just told in a few computer logs and scattered pages, and yet some players put up movies of them on youtube and go on about how great they are.

Some places tell the sad stories just with a room and scattered placeables, you walk in and imagine the big story behind it. But not to forget NPC dialogues... even the small sidequests are often told like a main quest in any other game, characters you meet all have a unique personality and feel truly alive. And last but not least, there's one thing only Obsidian could do: Bring the humor from the original Fallout series back into the game.

That's not to say Fallout 3 didn't have any humor, there were some funny parts in it too, but most of it was actually in the area design, not in what you actually experienced.

New Vegas though does it spot-on, and I can even see Obsidian's writers leaning back with a huge grin thinking "see kids, that's how it's done". There were many parts that were incredibly funny, but yet again told in a way you take the whole story still serious. Fallout 3 had cynism too, but it was too gloomy, too serious. New Vegas is more lighthearted and yet more immersive and realistic as well, never silly.

That's one thing the trailer actually transported well, the one point. Both have the martial looking guy in armor, made to attract the shooter kiddies I guess. But Bethesda's trailer is just gloomy, while, well... the headshot in Obsidian's is sort of funny, and everything is a bit more colorful, and I assume it's meant to be.

Both games have the same violence level and animations, but in Fallout 3 it feels worse because the game feels too serious. In New Vegas there's always that slight hint of humor and being over the top on purpose. Fallout 3 takes itself damn serious, New Vegas doesn't.

I could go on and on about how much Obsidian improved things here, like the unforeseeable consequences of your doings that are at least on par with The Witcher, and in this case it outshines all the negative parts. A few hours in the game and the miserable trailer is forgotten. The area design is not on par with Bethesda's, but since they mostly use the same stuff, it's not bad at all, and lastly, it's different enough to clearly set the game apart from it's predecessor. Where Obsidian tried to retexture things (like, new outfits), it actually is bad, mostly. Not bad enough to ruin it this time though, and there are already mods out that fix these things.



Fallout 3 needed armies of super mutants to scare you, in New Vegas you should better be scared of these little buggers or giant insects...


Now, as for the Obsidian part, here's some sort of conclusion.

Obsidian needs a big brother. Like Bethesda, Bioware, whatever.

Or they really really have to work on their Art and Programming department, although, I think art is the real problem. Yes, Obsidian's games are buggy, but hands on, Fallout 3 was and still is a bug-ridden crashy beast too, I'd call it much less stable than NWN2... just that it runs smoother as long as it actually runs is a major advantage.

New Vegas is of course buggy as hell too... but really, most games are. I played Stalker, I tried to get others to run that failed completely, Obsidian's games are certainly not as clean out of the box as Bioware's latest, but they are not the worst I've ever seen. What they really really need is atmosphere, players are much more forgiving if the crashing game looks immersive and well designed... see Fallout 3, it crashes like crazy but people are forgiving because they're soaked in.

Now, the big news of the weekend was Bethesda's announcement of The Elder Scrolls 5, ask Ben.
While I'm not that much interested in it really (never got warm with Oblivion, even though I tried multiple times), it means one other thing - Bethesda will probably not work on Fallout 4 for a long time, even though it's an extremely successful license.
Now, but since Obsidian already made a successful New Vegas, and Bethesda has a new engine ready for TES: V... one can dream, no?
In fact, I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if Bethesda and Obsidian would cooperate for a much longer time, and if Obsidian's in trouble as a studio, why not even buy them up? A fusion would be good for both sides, together they could do awesome things. Wouldn't surprise me at all if that happened.

Last. I mentioned Alazander's Blog entry above, and I'll get back to that now before I fall from my chair after this monstrous post. The different communities and why we should stick with NWN2. After exploring also the Bethesda modding sites, I think that fits in here well.

Agreed, on everything. NWN1/2 is a special case in this whole modding community pool, and even if we forget about multiplayer, I don't see any alternatives. Even more, I think NWN2 has matured a lot and it's a great base for everything.
Seriously folks, and I mean you, NWN1 veterans, you dropped off way too soon and never really gave the game a chance after the second patch didn't fix everything. Give it a go again... the game is a very good and stable base, it has remaining bugs, but hell, NWN1 has too.

The overcomplicated toolet is actually easy to use once you get the hang of it - I tried The Witcher's Djinni, Fallout 3's Gecko and Dragon Age's toolset so far and everytime I ran back to NWN2 quickly. For multiplayer, I don't expect any alternative anymore. In the long future.
Atari is in the middle of a lawsuit over DnD, so forget it, and all the others will never give us Co-op and PWs for free. The future of commercial online games is only in MMOs with micropayments, I don't expect anyone to throw us a bone anymore.

I wish people hadn't given up on NWN2 so fast, it offers the same modability as NWN1 and much more freedom in design, and now, 4 years later, everyone should be able to play it fine on lower end hardware.

And there's the communities Alazander talked so much about... there's none comparable to NWN's. What he says about Dragon Age is what I also see over at the Fallout and Oblivion modding sites. Take my complaints about Clover up there... I bet if NWN had had such bad companions, it would've taken a few months and someone would've put up a mod that adds dialogue to them. At the Fallout Nexus you will find mods that make them better in fights or turn them into japanese lolitas, but anything that adds immersion and story? Forget it. Don't get me wrong, there are some great and good mods for all these games, but they are all weapon stuff, technical, retextures... an immersive, playable module? Same thing as Dragon Age. Technically possible, nobody bothers. They want some ultra sharp textures, naked Anime companions and a cool machine gun (I'm not opposed to good technical mods nor some nude skins *cough*, but really... anything else?).

Anyway, in case you wait for the next big thing to come, better stop... everything after NWN2 failed to deliver so far, so why not look at this little diamond in the rough again?
And if you ever had the same impression as me - NWN2 looks just ugly... that's Obsidian's area design, they have the tools, they can't use them. But you can.