Posts tagged rowan-kaiser 
Alpha Protocol is the new Deus Ex
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Alpha Protocol is the new Deus Ex. This may seem like a strong statement, given the original Deus Ex's regard as ...
2012: the year in RPGs
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. What a fun, odd year it's been for role-playing games. The genre in theory is looking as good as it has for over ...
How Morrowind and KOTOR defined modern RPGs
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. In the early 2000s, two Western role-playing games grabbed the genre and shoved it into new and surprisingly popul...
Kickstarting (and not Greenlighting) traditional RPGs
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. The rise of indie gaming has been fantastic for platformers, good for adventures and strategy games, great for puzz...
The controversial, unbalanced narrative of Dragon Age 2
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Dragon Age 2 is one of the most controversial role-playing games of recent years. Highly anticipated after the succ...
Diablo 3's long-term planning failures
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. The more I read about, think about, and play Diablo 3 at high levels, the more baffled I am by some of developer Bl...
An RPG fan's guide to the Steam Sale
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. It's the most wonderful time of the year to be a PC gamer: the Steam Summer Sale! For those of us who are fans of W...
Can Ultima Forever be a worthy entry in the legendary series?
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. If there's any video game on the planet that demands a remake, it's Ultima IV: Quest Of The Avatar. As arguably...
Voice acting in RPGs may be more trouble than it's worth
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Jennifer Hale, Nolan North and Troy Baker, among others, have become video game celebrities for their voice acting ...
It's all too much: Why Mass Effect 3's Extended Cut ending can't possibly fix everything
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. BioWare's free response to the Mass Effect 3 ending hoopla, the "Extended Cut" add-on, was released this week. In m...
