Happy New Year!

[Friend_Bear]

Happy New Year all!!

So, big question!! What are the games to watch out for this year?

I know Mochan is dissing Oblivion a lot, and proberly with good reason if they are taking out what made Morrowind good, what other games besides Oblivion and NWN2 will be this years big names?

[silversparrow]

Happy New Year to you Bear, and anyone else here on PCGR. I wasn't too keen on NWN or Morrowind, so my excitement about NWN2 and Oblivion is not as high. The games I'm looking forward to this year are Gothic 3, Stalker and Dreamfall.

[moya]

I know Mochan is dissing Oblivion a lot, and proberly with good reason if they are taking out what made Morrowind good

Yup, they've cut levitation and spears. The game's gonna suck. For real.

[Aku]

In spite of the nervous rants that have been going around, I just can't believe that Oblivion is going to suck. Fortunately the spear was never my weapon of choice. I'll really miss leviation tho.

[E.T.]

Definitely Gothic 3.

Some rumors for G3:
[1] The world will be 3 times bigger [G2 was too small, esp compared to Morrowind].

[2] New terrain types including deserts, jungles & snow covered lands.

[3] You will be able to hire help for $.

[4] Six races available.

[5] Shields [cant believe G2 didn't have 'em!].

[6] Staffs for Mages [as above].

[7] You start as an experienced fighter [not sure that would be a good thing, initial struggle was good in G2]

[8] Rag doll effects.

[9] 64-bit version.

[10] NPC mugs are said to be more realistic then in Half-Life 2, & increased daily activities.

[11] New combat system.

[13] Pixel Shader 3.0 technology

The one rumor re: G3 I don't like is the released date being delayed till fall '06 :mad:

[moya]

In spite of the nervous rants that have been going around, I just can't believe that Oblivion is going to suck.

Your irony meter obviously malfunctioned a bit there Aku ;)

I certainly don't think it's gonna suck at all. Or at least, the evidence seen so far doesn't prompt me to go wailing from the rooftops about a couple of minor missing features...

[Mochan]

Happy new year peeps! Although I'm like 4 days late. :)

Oblivion's dev team is just making a lot of questionable cuts to the game, it pisses me off to hear the stuff they are cutting. I feel like they are compromising the game a little too much. Hopefully the advances they will be making in other areas make up for it (graphics, AI and combat).

I mean, some cut features are relatively minor (though granted they seem to take away from the world's richness) like spears, werewolves, crossbows, etc. Some other choices though like mounted combat, levitation, taking a large chunk of skills out, etc. are a bit more concerning. Taking out levitation for instance could be a significant issue; it may have been done in order to limit your movements, thus making the game more linear like Fable was. Imagine not being able to climb over those mountains/hills or go over those city walls. If this is the case I would feel extremely confined in the game, it just wouldn't be Elder Scrolls that way.

The other big games in my book are:

Stalker
Gothic 3
HOMM5 (dubious of this one, it will probably have Star Force)
Ghost Recon AWF

Bunch of others I just forgot right now.

Silversparrow, what is Dreamfall?

[silversparrow]

Silversparrow, what is Dreamfall?

It's the sequel to The Longest Journey.

[moya]

It's the AI (in Oblivion) that I'm most looking forward to and will hopefully be the most ground-breaking element of the game. If the radiant system is as good as they say, we could be looking at the first truly "emergent" gameplay.