matrices

I don't know what everyone else thinks of the BW co-founder's blog post, but as someone who looks at language every day professionally, it read as an internal PR statement as much as an external one, if not more so.

It sounds defensive, grudging, and slightly condescending. He frames it as a matter of "artistic integrity" as if waving around the "artistic" card actually means that you deserve some sort of immunity or that you're automatically acting with integrity at all times. Then, only within that framework, will we get "clarity" and not just closure but "further closure" - as though the ending thus far provided any closure whatsoever or just needed a little clarification, like a pristine sentence with an inadvertently misplaced comma.

Maybe he is just understating things so that he doesn't embarrass or shame his own staff publicly, but really, anyone at BW who isn't already shamed at the current ending needs to get his or her head checked.

I mean, if nothing else, did they even playtest this thing? Or maybe it was such a priority to prevent the full story from leaking that no regulars played the full game to give feedback? Like I said before, a post-mortem is really needed.

In any case, the indoctrination theory is the only thing that makes any sense of the end of ME3.

@plbelanger

Haha, this.

And here we learn PR lesson number one, which is that if you don't have anything honest to say, you sound and look like a complete shit saying it.

This is a really solid game, to be honest. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Certainly cured me of my "if it's F2P it's going to suck" skepticism.

None of which explains why the chairman resigned. Something's off there.

The better thing to do would have been to just punch everyone in the face, so that when they play on this pathetically low-end hardware, they will convince themselves that it looks anywhere near good.

A 6670? Seriously? That's not even a midrange card for gaming today, and it will be garbage two years from now, and most definitely will not enable what should be standard for next gen: 1080p, 60 FPS, solid antialiasing.

Just beyond disappointing.

This guy is very cool. An episode of Psych featured him a couple years ago and he was equally chill on that.

It's all navel-gazing without proper definitions. What defines an RPG? Stats and perks? Inventories? Crafting? Dialogue? Choices? I think all those characteristics, which exist to some degree or none at all in many games that many people call RPGs, have one central element in common: freedom.

If you have the freedom to impact the story, to mold the character's personality, to choose her or his gear, and to select allies, you're probably playing an RPG.

Others can waste 10 pages and their lives navel-gazing about whether Skyrim is an RPG, etc.; I'll just spend my time enjoying it, thank you very much.

I like the Eve Online model best - $15 per month, no separate cost for the game or expansions.

Anyone who thinks the F2P model can fund all varieties of polished games with high production values is beyond clueless.

Agreed. Valve has burned goodwill with me, anyway, apparently they can buy off most everyone else with hats.

It's too late to make an EP3. The gaming world has moved on. I suppose HL3 is theoretically possible, as a newly conceived thing, but I'm skeptical that we'll see anything until the next console generation, if at all.