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Also I think the kings voice would work much better if he wasn’t so buff. When I first him doing the voice over to the last trailer I was hoping for a frail Paul Atrieds style boy king. Not Fabio.

Still Baldurs II had almost no voice acting and was fairly ok. Well one of the top 10 games ever made.

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Most of the absurd things people did with 3.5 were due to power creep in books, the unbalanced wizard spellcasting, and the somewhat-broken class system itself. My group was totally fine with it until it expanded a bit and people decided it was actually a good idea to use those forum-created nonsense builds on characters that were total ciphers. My point is that these things can be more artfully restricted in a single-player game by the design itself, rather than by something as blocky, for lack of a better term, than a class.

I understand the preemptive strike about the old “it’s not roleplaying anymore” line, I wasn’t about to trot it out. 4.0 is pretty much an even mix of good and bad for me, but the game I’m in that uses it is going pretty well.

As for Dragon Age: I would love for that to be true. I can’t say, as I couldn’t find any articles that would commit to something other than the party attacks, the spell interactions, and the whole Origin idea. I’ll certainly give them the benefit of the doubt, but I’d really like to see more specific news about the mechanics. Does it use weapon skill or attack bonus + weapon proficiency for attacks, do the spellcasters uses slots or spell points, etc. I suppose that more waiting is in order.

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I’m more worried by the shear volume of generic fantasy bullshit on display. I’d had the impression that Dragon Age would be a bit more modest on this front, but the amount of references to demons, dark spawns and Apo’Stro’Phe is rather galling.

As for silent PC characters, I’ve always preferred it because it helps put me into my character’s boots. As good as the performances of the Shepherds in Mass Effect may be, I find myself treating them like other people’s characters rather than my own.

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http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/40693

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Heh, I’ll have to try that. Nevertheless, I’m a little saddened that Bioware haven’t taken the conversation system from Mass Effect – by far its greatest asset. Even if the acting quality was to be below-par (in voice or animation), the simple pleasure that comes from not knowing /precisely/ what your character will say until after you select it is a great boon (and yet the fact you know /approximately/ what you’re going to say makes it more satisfying than, say, the obtuse system used in games like Sam & Max Hit The Road).

That being said, the game does look pretty, and I haven’t enjoyed a heroic-fantasy themed RPG since Morrowind, so I’d like this to be good.

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Also, I quite enjoyed NWN campaign.

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