Mringasa

The hypocrisy of the various faction leaders is at least true to real life. They sound their virtues for the world to hear and shove the reality of their methods under the carpet for the most part. "We love creations! We want them to live and reproduce! Now go out there and assassinate this person and that person. Oh, and while you're at it, do this to introduce an even nastier creation into the world. Thanks and have a nice day!" But at least their message is happy.

I had issues like this myself, with G5 at least, on the 8 yr old XP SP3 machine I use. Things I did: Disk Cleanup Defragment Run Chkdsk at startup (Full with checking disk sectors) Virus scan Adware/Malware scan Apparently this cleaned up a bunch of stuff that didn't get caught or slipped through cracks somewhere. G5 works fantastic now on the highest settings.

Thank you for the link to Abandonia, Masquerade. I've been looking around on the odd occasion for sites that might host public domain games for download. My old CD with a bunch of the games I love broke in my last move so I lost a number of old favorites. Any other places I might hunt around on for various games? Specifically, if they are public domain now, the old Pool of Radiance trilogy. I used to play that one for weeks at a time on my Apple II GS as a kid. Such good times!

I would love to see more difficulty in the games to be honest. Tone the HPs down some and add in some interesting tweaks like: You must use a combat skill, potion or spell against this enemy before it can be hurt. Some sort of defense weakening you acquire through other quests. Make it on some side quest(s) so the main story isn't too hard for new players. More "real" puzzles. Not so much lever-pulling or button-pushing, which can be fun, but needing to find answers by reading things in-game and knowing the story and background. Say the answer doesn't show up on the choices without having read the material. Maybe a few "escort" type quests. Keeping an NPC alive, please give it an intelligent AI, would be pretty interesting even though it's been done to death in the mainstream. Overall though, the only complaint I have is the HPs. Everything else is easy to understand and abuse as needed.

Ahh, that's right. Thanks for the fast answer. Guess I'll decide once I clear to the Plains if I'm going to be a foaming mad rebel or a lovable, caring type.

Playing through once again while I wait for a release, and I can't remember if I am allowed to waste all the Shapers with Litalia's faction. I know I can with Ghaldring's, think that's one of the quests, but I can't remember for the Trakovites if this upsets them or not.

You definately don't need linear plots for balancing, but it cuts down the amount of work necessary to produce the game, and thus the costs. There could be a dozen plot trees to start a game, based on choices made at the very start, and each one branches to a totally different endgame. Each one would exclude portions of the others, be it in quests, areas or persons met. Then finish each one off with a completely different endgame. Your choice of massive battles with the other trees' components or maybe a diplomatic mission to each one. The complexity of a system like this would be horrifying, from a design and programming perspective consisting of one person. Say an average SW game takes 100 hours to setup a plot tree. Then something of the sort outlined above would probably take 10000 hours for a solidly balanced story, difficulty and finale. It's possible, but the costs incurred, and probably hair replacement treatment after Jeff pulls it all out due to "issues", would be astronomical. The best part about this though is that SW games, GF in particular, have more depth and nonlinearity than most large company produced products. You may move from section to section, or town to town, but in any SW game it's the journey there that gives them their replayability and enjoyment value.

There are very few games that don't have a linear plot. Especially in the modern RPG world. What they do have is a pile of sidequests, guild/faction employment and completionist type questing (I love virtual shinies). Avernum and Geneforge both have a bunch of these things, but almost all of them are seeded along the main plot, so there's no real exploration necessary to find them. Without that exploration, the main plot/areas seem much more linear than say something like Oblivion where you can bypass the main story completely and spend hundreds of hours in sidequests, guilds and exploring the gameworld. Since SW games aren't sandboxes, there is a very limited amount of non-linearity. GF5 has done it best so far imho, with multiple factions and the various missable quests if you align too strongly towards one or the other. This gives it an excellent game environment that reacts to you to a certain extent, thus reducing the linearity. In any event, I have yet to see a good RPG, with a good story, that is totally non-linear. TES, Wizardry 7/8, and a few other good ones come to mind for non-linearity, but you still end up getting the same information/completing the same quest events, just with some minor modifications or differences depending on alignment, faction, or killing sprees.

G3/A4 were my introductions to the world of SW software, so the "new" encumbrance was a blessing. Having to go back to a safe spot, drop what I wanted to keep, then return to where I was at was a bit of a change from my usual gaming. My absolute favorite change was the updating/upgrading of the graphics for G4 and G5. Eye candy is a bonus, but the smoother feel and all around better look made those two games my absolute favorite ones from SW so far. And with G5 being my absolute favorite, being able to be a "real" Shaper was good stuff. Instead of pigeonholing myself, there were any number of good paths in the creation trees to make me happy whilst I looted and pillaged from one end of the game to the other. One other change that was great, to me at least, was the side quest system in A6. Being able to explore and not burn myself on rewards was an excellent addition to the game.

Think so. That's the one that is in the lab you can access once you pass through the power room iirc. I have had 0 luck getting that canister because I am horrible at stealth. The Trall one is at the north end right after you fight/leadership the Drakon, and it's really simple to get if you have enough tools, which you should at that point. Think I tried 10 or 15 times to grab the gazer canister and always got caught by that servile that walks back and forth.

I've been using battle creations for every one but my first playthrough. Once you get past the borers in Hatra, you can ditch all your creations and eat every bit of the exp from quests right up to the canister in G-Uss. Just need a little Leadership. And with the excellent benefits of keeping creations around for as long as possible, it makes for a strong group as you gain essence through the rest of the Chapter and into the final. Decided to go with Fire creations. I really dislike the magic tree for G5, although I fell in love with Wingbolts in 4 and was hoping to wreak havoc once more with them, they just don't cut it this time around though, imho. I figure Cryoas and maybe a Roamer for the DoT acid on occasion should get me into Perikalia, and with all the cash I'll be saving not having to train/buy the 3 spell types. I'll have plenty of cash to pick/choose my training without doing anything special to reduce prices at that point. Just praying the lack of mental doesn't burn me. I've played 2-5 and every one seems to almost require daze/strong daze or some other form of mental manipulation to make Torment smooth.

Excellent, thanks for the quick assistance. My last one on Torment was too easy, thus the dropping of spells except for healing. Level 51 Shaper with 1200 essence and a group of 3 RotDs and 3 Tralls turned the final portion of the game into a rompathon. Limiting myself to battle creations only for the whole of the game did nothing to increase the difficulty, although I haven't hit the challenge area yet. Debating on going with only fire creations (probably as easy as battle only) or doing the magic creations only, which should be a pretty good challenge.

After going over the Ess/HP/SP formulas, I was wondering if a level 20 ST will have the exact same Essence as a Level 20 Shaper? I'm going to start my 7th playthrough, and wanted to give myself a bit of a challenge. I decided playing a berzerker-style character, all melee with only Healing spells used, on Torment should provide me one last round of enjoyment, for now at least, from this fantastic game. How harsh is this going to be with my forsaking mental/battle/blessing magic and turning those points + Spellcraft points into melee oriented skills? No ranged weaponry other than the occasional entangling/lightning/flame AoE. Also, I was hoping for a couple suggestions on how to spend them. I was going to buff str/end heavily (in relation to how little I spend on them normally) but would welcome suggestions to keep me alive easier.