With more RPG elements and pure 80 hours of gameplay!BAN me or something coz i am crying!I WANT!I WANT!I WANT!No bugs NEW AWESOME WEAPON with NWE AWESOME storyline!I WANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you will ban its ok.

well it's not exactly a secret that we would all love this
jsut wait for the sdk and create it ^^

Dont be to hard on Arkane. Not only did they have to go through UBIsofts bullsh*t but source is a very, well... mindnumbingly slow engine in the respects of doing kinda sorta anything. Sh*t even Valve in half-ass mode cant manage to come up with the next 6 hours of generic run n gun arcade cenima shooter that what was a mighty god of a game in 98 and now has fallen backward in gameplay even further than that.

Granted its got a lot of functionality as long as you dont mind the geometry having absolutly no natural feel and all in all possibly the worst engine on main street for rendering the outdoors, which is why as soon as the lights go out this game goes beyond kicking ass, but realy, an SDK release for a tiny little dev team from france on their seccond real game and mind you their first shooter, let alone action game, well, mabey if they werent working on a massive joint project* (The Crossing) with valve they might have the time but as far as this game is concerned, I would rather see what they do with the future than what they do to patch up the past, and I realy dont see bright and shiny futures these days with UBIsoft and Consolitus and generic **** that sells like halo, so when I do see a glimer, its bound to at least burn out in a spectacular ball of fire and pain and suffering, minimum, at best its what they say its going to be.

Also, as far as the horrid dialogue and acting, its a french game, translated into, well, American for lack of a better concept. Translations get the same effort as a Thai martial arts movie gets in dubbing, so its realy not there fault, unless the french vo sucked too, which I wouldent know about, either way its out of our controll, unless you speak french, which is allways good since theres a lot of potential in france as far as real PC games and even some decent ports go, and there is nothing like the original.**



*That valve is doing the writing for thank f*cking god, concidering that Arkane knows how to break genericy, and valve knows how to do dialoge (if only troika hadent gotten their blood sucked out the world would be like candy, the good kind not that juji fruit ****, but they did and world class f*ck up consolitus douches Bethesda are taking over fallout which means the world is a box of stale juji fruit pissed on by a transexual human ferret hybird on MDMA and a cocktail of other dextro-amphetemine salt combos chugging liquid asperigas and brocoli)
** Dont get me wrong I'm a total lazy f*cker and would never go one step out of my way to even try and learn a latin based language with invisible words and silent sounding, well sounds, so realy I'm not trying to be snobish or anything with the whole language thing, its just a fact that translations 90% of the time suck ass. Infact the only decent ones these days are the user created subtitles and re-acted anime you ocasionaly see online (the originals allways suck just as bad as the next but fans get that art shouldent be raped like that and occasionaly you see it set right).

quote:

Originally posted by ignition_one:
a mighty god of a game in 98 and now has fallen backward in gameplay even further than that

Jeezz man stop gaming, because games will only become worse to your opinion...

quote:

Originally posted by ignition_one:
Also, as far as the horrid dialogue and acting,

Are you talking about the same game here? The voice & acting is one of the many strongest aspects of Dark Messiah!
Could you name a modern game that you like?

People on the PC gamer forums all know better by now not to ask me broad questions as I can often some how manage to fit several pages of topics into my response, so, yay, rare treat (dont let that discourege you).

Look, before I go game listing as I just did on another topic no more than an hour ago (since I should at least try and format that), lets discuss this whole "The voice & acting is one of the many strongest aspects of Dark Messiah!" thingy. Hopefully we can get a thred going here since as a writer, and one who strongly believes independent devs like Arkane, Valve, Monolith, any remnent of troika (if they exist[PLEASE F*CKING TELL ME IF THEY DO, PLEASSSSEE!!]), GSC Game World, Ritual, Black Foot studios*, Bohemia interactive, Irrational (Kevin levine is my hero and if I were gay and he were just as gay I would take him in a manly fasion), StarBreeze, Sureal (ok there talent may be in question but their dedication isnt in the least), Rockstar North**, Remedy Entertainment, Quantic Dream, Piranha Bytes, Outerlight, Tripwire, IO Interactive, CryTek***... the list realy does go on, (just not nearly as long as it should) any how, I and pretty much any one who realy looks at how other creative industries have played out, both music and film which arent young like video games, It's very apparent that a vast near complete total of the quality^ in any single work is from the independent and passionate creators who arent doing what they do for the soul porpose of making cash or getting laid by underage groupies.

Granted video games dont exactly fall under the wana-bang-you-cause-your-famous-and-can-bullsh*t-creative-effort-and-are-a-narcessistic-jerkoff-who-will-abuse-and-take-advantage-of-me-my-dad-wasent-around-growing-up-and-mom's-boyfreinds-beat-the-living-sh*t-out-of-me-and-or-sexualy-abused-me-cause-my-mom-was-sexually-abused-at-a-young-age-and-her-dad-was-never-there-and-she-is-attracted-to-the-same-ass-hole-looser-unavailable-abusive-people-who-abused-her-at-a-young-age-and-I'm-just-going-to-repeat-the-cycle-all-over-again-and-you-don’t-really-care-cause-your-one-of-them-and-I-wouldn’t-be-in-your-stretch-limo-paid-for-by-product-endorsements-and-obscenely-overpriced-concert-tickets-made-all-the-more-pathetic-by-your-lack-of-any-real-talent-or-originality-or-soul-in-any-way-cause-any-real-musician-wouldn’t-have-a-stretch-limo-nor-would-he-be-using-its-tinted-windows-for-statutory-rape-since-real-music-doesn’t-attract-groupies-cause-they-never-will-see-them-on-tv-or-hear-them-on-commercial-radio-where-they-will-like-them-because-other-people-have-deemed-them-likeable-and-or-mandatory-likeness-and-instead-they-are-only-heard-on-the-streets-in-the-clubs-and-on-public-radio-where-music-matters-since-there-is-no-corporation-or-advertising-or-heavy-rotation-playlists-or-generic-corporate-pop-or-rock-or-hiphop-designed-for-the-soul-purpose-of-popularity-for-the-advertisements-and-merchandise/chart-sales-that-if-sed-manufactured-music-doesn’t-reach-on-sed-manufactured-band-is-exorcised-from-the-machine-and-they-are-totally-screwed-cause-they-suck-they-know-it-and-they-cant-actually-do-anything-in-the-first-place-cause-their-spoiled-brat-losers-and-they-either-move-back-in-with-their-parents-and-go-to-3rd-rate-community-college-until-mid-40's-or-they-become-the-really-crappy-kind-of-homeless-people-not-the-cool-ones-who-say-interesting-things-and-sometimes-have-instruments clause and developers who are some one's b*tch dont make much money since it all goes to the b*tch maker, but the distinct lack of any effort, compitancy, or interest realy tends to make some damned mirror like similarities.

Any how as that may be, as a writer, its important to not only see what the minimum standards are, as they are very low its obvious for games, made ever so worse by kiddie generic consoles; but also to gauge the style and layout of what I write and how I deliver it when the screen play if you will is being constructed in finality.

You say Dark Messiah had strong VO acting, and I assume strong acting also co-insides with dialogue as I find them to be inseperible after they are put together, good dialogue must be equaly acted or it becomes bad dialogue, just a fact of life realy. On that scale, DM had rather standard examples of lacking both good dialogue and good acting, at least in the english version as I mentioned above.

The story was fine, cliche aspects were re-worked or adapted to add a seasoning of originality to what should be standard fare fantasy. Other aspectes were well orchestrated and in that not only did it feature an open-ended story path set up^^ but it had several goal oriented points in order for the player to change the outcome, rather than saying, hey dialogue tree, ok tell me what your going to choose, it went with the shooter format and seemlessly presented oportunities for better or worse. Not that I have anything against dialogue trees, untill there is something better I prefer them, but then this wasent realy a full all out rpg, it was a shooter with rpg elements and as much as I like Tom Chick (CGW), you cant A. review a game on a computer with out the reccomended hardware, which if you did you wouldent have the source stuttering, nor any other game stopping bugs, and this is prior to the patch and my comp isnt even fully up there in those specs. B. Review a shooter as an RPG, or an RPG as a shooter, that should be obvious and every one knew this was a shooter from the get go as it was announced that way before they threw in the stat system many months, hell over a year ago. To suddenly pull RPG people onto a shooter and expect the same guy's who just fine with Oblivion's lack of gameplay beyond super generic slow and repetitive and dont mind top down click fests like Dungeon Siege, which is realy a black mark in our short history of interactive software, well, they may not quite get it. A shooter functions a little differently than the action RPG we have come to know as its managed to clone itself and also not actualy advance in any respect since DiabloII. People who gave Quake 4 a 7 or 8 out of 10, and then turn around and call DM pathetic are a tad hipocritical if not deranged and in that, I realy cant do anything but b*tch about it cause it happens all the time. But also, that dosent change the fact that DM did have very poor dialogue and acting.

Look the reason I liked the game, and ill get to that list in a little bit; is because the action and gameplay was incredibly well thought out, openended, and pretty much original in itself. Granted melee had been done, kicking or smacking had been done, stealth pop and run, had been done, spell book blast and cycle had been done, and interactive enviroments had been touched on as each source game has used some form of it so far... no one game has put it all together in such a seemless manor. And I should mention that no game has truly made enviroment interaction as openended or essential, not even HL2 with all its insulting little physics puzzles to make up for the generic outdated run n gun **** it consisted of otherwise.

But dialogue and voice acting????!!??? I mean, and its hard to use written word to discribe spoken sh*t as at least in a book every character is a good actor; well lets just go from the ground up.

Sareth, you, ok its been worse of course but thats not saying much, granted it wasent nearly as nail graiting as the 3 Prince of Persia games, 2 being pretty much the king exponentialy in every way, even the poor acting and cleche dialogue for the prince was countered by one of the most skilled and spectacular actresses to ever grace the stage (or in this case mic), Monica Bellucci, dispite poor dialogue writing on that respect, only saved by a rather decent story. But in any case its very much so along those lines, hell they even sound alike, wich makes me feel bad for the actors as there are multiple people with that voice. Course for the character of sareth, not only was the acting poor and the voice agitating, it was horridly out of character, acting should be smooth, you shouldent have a Mike Tyson complex with a character unless specificly written that way for story purposes. His side of the Xana banter was poorly instrumented, hell even Bunji managed to come off standing with their half-assed banter (thank god the actress who did Kortana moved on to better things, namely SiN, where they actualy make an effort to get actors at the very least in the same room for the dialogue); It wasent so much the quality of how it was said, more that what was sad just didnt fit, what was brought up, what was b*tched about, what was oddly left unchecked, dispite all evidence so far of character development stressing that he should be going off about cirtian things or at the very least feeling rather uncomfortable and makeing a note of it.

Leanna was probably the light sucking blackend star of this thing. Not only was her character either written by a man, or at the very most a unic, the actress playing her realy sounded like some one who had been abused at a young age; severe trauma like sexual abuse in childhood often arrests women's voices at the age of the abuse, it's allmost like clockwork (though of course child like voices can occure naturaly, but its not going to be a likness of an 8 year old or such). Whoever did Vo for leanna not only cant act, she probably needs to see a therapist, regularly, for a while. While I'm sympathetic to any hardship in her past as a basic human being, 8 year old bubble gum voice was again, a starke contrast from the character she attempted to play. I do hope that these were issues with translation because some of it dosent make any sence for people like Arkane who actualy take pride in their work. It should however be obvious how poor leanna as a character was done, outside of a skillfully rendered model of a large chested pretty girl, it was pretty much the worst of the negative factors in this game.

Xana was a good character, the standard radio headquarters voice in the head thing who talks at you while your trying to do things, and repediatly yells at you when you dont go a cirtian way cause its the only way and your looking in the wrong place factor, that part I can say is not included in the whole good character thing of course, rather it was probably a publisher factor forced in for game balancing Politicly Correct style, I wont get into that cause there's no light at the end of the tangent, specificly that one.

I liked the, well, ok for all intents and purposes Xana has another name where she's a blond in one particular Dr./Ex-President of a cirtian 12 colonies head, which is on a cirtian sci-fi show and is much better acted and written****. It's not an original piece, but if your going to steal themoligy, steal from the best, and in that they also rip off manhunt in the character merge as Xana is a taunting antagonist who I am concidering replacing the audio files with blank ones the next time I play through the game.

Granted it would be funny if the sareth character aka you said things back in a relivent, or just plain sensible manor as obvious to her dialogue, or the situation surrounding as I mentioned above, but it isnt, and the character is rather wasted. One of the best things about Six is her interaction with Balter, him being a mouthy narcessist, it makes for sharp and refreshing banter, and thats not counting the phisical aspect to the sequences, which o so adds a whole new life of its own. Xana is allmost a one way street, granted Ive only played the part where you kill her so dont tell me what happens if you dont please, but even if so, it dosent make up for the majority of the game. While an interactive character like HL2's Alyx SiN's Jessica and Elexis would have been impossible to realy do well given the style of the gameplay, it realy was unexeptable to go so far but blatently stop short of the neccesary distance, given the distance traveled.

Arantire is by far exponentialy the best acted and writen character in the game, almost to the level of quality, but then again you dont realy make a habbit of hanging around him much so the breif sence of a real live person saying things is gone before it can sink in truly. I guess its the exeption that makes the rule or some such.

The NPC's, well, it probably would have been best if they stuck to less cleche or corny ambient stuff, but its not particularly poor all things concidered, and with Oblivion having set a standard so low for that, realy all you can do is go up from there on as far as the fantasy games go. The Orc's were ok, the Goblin's were actualy pretty funny at times, and they had the most complex character implimentation as an adversary which was all the better, the black gaurds sucked horribly. Ill leave it at that, since ambiant b*tching has a high standard as far as shooters go and thats all they do.

The Necromancer's had a bad sounding voice for the semi-characters played, but I understand why they used what they did and it wasent bad for what it was. Unfortunetly outside of Duncan and mabey one or so other voices, the good soldiers were terrible.

The ambient civilian NPC's were ok, breifly implimented but none the worse for ware and fortunetly there was only one or two instances with dialogue from the wizards cause they hurt my ears and my brain.

So, as a break down of the character acting and dialogue, I truly dont quite understand the whole strong part of the sentence you said, infact it makes no sence. There has been good acting in games before, as in A++ movie quality acting, Max Payne (1+2) Riddick, FEAR, NOLF (1+2), GTA (3,VC,SA, HL2, SWAT4, Fahrenheit, MANHUNT, and of course the crowning achievment and easy top of any writing or acting in any video game Vampire the Masqurade: Bloodlines, so when you say strong... I mean you used that word in a manor as if you ment it, well I can say all I just said, or I can sum it up with three words... what the f*ck??

As for the games that I like, and also I should mention that my point with hl and hl2 is that hl2 fell down the stairs and passed its predicessor; games are by far advancing, slowly now expecialy with kiddie consoles causing levels of static advancement and genericy, and in that real developer's arent getting the funding they used to back in the 90's so its a bit harder to do something good, but they do, they care about what they do and when that happens generaly what comes out of it is quality and we go from there.

As for names, FEAR, RVS, SWAT4, FarCry, GTA:SA, Condemned, Cold Fear, SiN (Emergence), Riddick, VTM: Bloodlines (top o the list), Fahrenheit, MANHUNT, Max Payne (1+2), Painkiller, Dark Messiah, BF2, STALKER, I cant think of any more modern one's as there hasent been much output in the past few years, but its more than one and thats all you were holding me to.

Top of that list is probably VTM: Bloodlines for obvious reasons that if you arent aware of them, get it now so you are; RSV holds my heart even still as I have of consecutive time, probably spent over a year of my life in the years its been out since the beta, online with it (back when Clancy wasent a trip of generic to be avoided, you know like the movies) and I probably will untill something that does what it did is done better, as it hasent happened yet; Riddick and FarCry are deffinately floating around the surface as they were both revolutionary in gameplay advances (Riddick was also an example of damned near perfection in characters, dialogue, animation, and acting); STALKER is just aw-inspiering, concidering my need for tacticle shooter control complexity (which DM has btw, well not in mp), and my love for true openended enviroment simulations with story lines equaly openended, if you havent picked that up your life has that much less meaning each moment that passes untill you do as it takes what oblivion tried to do, and kindasort actualy does it in a non-agitating and embarasingly kiddie and imature way as bethesda I guess wanted to make friends with the console market or something, such a fall from Morrowind and the others; FEAR and Condemned are pretty much precursurs to DM's general play style, and FEAR happened to be probably the best cenimatic shooter next to Riddick so far.

Its that games that are so good, that makes me dispise the games that are so bad, and with the dialogue in DM, well, it shouldent be acceptable any more to be that sh*ty, and in that I'm not going to overlook it entierly on account of its phenominal gameplay. One of the reasons Console ports are often pretty much all levels of **** is console gamer's dont have the standards that we PC gamer's have, now that those **** shoots are thrown into our mix, devs may think they can get away with things because the games that do it right are many, but still numberd compared to the flood of **** designed from the ground up with out passon to sell like f*cking water pistols or happy meals. Eventualy it has to stop, even movies have a general sence of decency these days, no matter how crappy they are so often are. It's time that happened to games goddamn it.

****(though its hard to compare them since both accounts of writing and acting are easily if not towering on the pinacle of cenima as a whole. I'm not trying to be a broken reccord any more than the player makes the needle skip, so understand that on this I'm not b*tching for a change)

^^(which is realy what we should soley define ROLE PLAYING GAMES as a liner clickfest with stats, and mabey dialogue tree's with no options to change the story in any way, even with sidequests that are liner too as par for the course; well there's realy no ROLE PLAYING, there's role following, path tracing, event ariving, game finishing, but no rpg stuffs. Stats are a facter in role playing but they are hardly neccesary as the important part of the ROLE PLAYING thing should be your ability to play out a character role, or create a character for a role in which you play out as you would. These generic hack/slash crapfests like Dungeon Siege or Fable^^^-(below statment as marked)> that have little or no realy differenciation in the role factors, are essentialy shooters for developers who cant actualy program a shooter, and gamers who have no skill whatsoever so they literaly speed click their way through the repediating genericy, not roleplay, clicking, speed oriented clicking, possibly some tapping for saving and such if you are even allowed to.

^^^-()>(fable had so many issues but its function offering had no impact whatsoever on the very poor and horridly written and very, very, short and liner story that macks a dark light split kinda sorta at the end, where even a solid shooter like Jedi Knight at least made something of that tred through, something tangeble, also known as substance, its kinda important to have it or you waste away into nothingness)

^(film has exeptions, music rarely ever does)

***(provide EA dosent blindside them as they have a nasty habbit of doing)

**(there not realy independent but they might as well be since Take Two lets them do whatever they want, whenever they want or feel like doing it, and you real cant tell a Scottsman to do anything he dosent want to do, well you can but at your own risk, remember they figured out how to make a pie from blood)

*(not sure if I can talk about them on UBIsoft forums as they all were formerly employed by RedStorm, and made a strategic exit when the corperate equivilent of a Go'uld burrowed its way into the brain stem of the team, no fingers being pointed or anything at any logo's of particular douchebag rapest mega corperation publishers that might be anywhere)

I see what do you want but how do you want?Can you help it?I think yes coz you know what you want but are you going to help?

Do you really have to write an essay just to convey the point that 1 sentance can say?
We're ALL upset about the unfairness of it all.