Console
It’s Thursday. Want some links?
- I personally don’t especially care about covers – I choose books based on reviews and previous work and I think most SFF covers are rubbish. But some people care a great deal. Here’s a post at A Dribble of Ink about the changes between editions of Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur. The comments are pretty interesting if you like that sort of thing, with all sorts weighing in, including Newton’s editor.
- Filming of the Games of Thrones pilot has wrapped. Now we wait to see what the chances of a actual series are.
- Sex advice from D&D players. Actually serious advice, not a parody.
- The AV club’s best 15 video games of the noughties.
- Next time you’re at a loss for PC or NPC, try looking up this print of Characters for an Epic Tale. (via Boing Boing)
- The BBC discusses committing war crimes in video games. (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
- The Times covers ‘adult gamers’. Shock, horror!
- And, finally, Kotaku celebrates World of Warcraft’s 5th birthday by finding out from people why they’ve never played it. The intro where the writer discusses how it just doesn’t live up to tabletop gaming experiences is the most interesting one to me.
Project Natal
Here’s a trailer for Project Natal – the full motion capture controller thing for the Xbox 360. It’s an obvious attempt to get to the casual/family gamer element – wii buyers who are apparently put off by the Xbox’s ‘hardcore’ reputation.
Colour me deeply sceptical – if it works like it says it will on the video (which would be amazing) I’m still not sure that a) programmers will figure out how to use it (the wii and the PS3 motion sensors haven’t done a great deal for game design) and b) gamers will like feeling like idiots as they jump around their living rooms.
I’m particularly sceptical of voice activation (what if I’m talking with my wife while playing?) and the video is a real play for the family element and I’m just not sure that most families actually want to sit around playing video games together.
Thursday LINK DAY!!!
- Does your barbarian or dwarf warrior need a more interesting weapon? Try this out.
- What war is really like.
- Rising star Mark Charan Newton interviews established tie-in writer Dan Abnett about writing tie-in fiction. I’ve you’ve never read Eisenhorn you should – it maybe a Warhammer 40k book but it’s also excellent! And very cheap now it’s in a omnibus format.
- How we write about the Apocalypse has changed in the last 20 years. And here’s an interesting piece about how Sci-Fi looked at the Cold War. (Both from io9.com which is now on my RSS reader)
- The Brainy Gamer get into why Dragon Age is filled with “RPG things”.
- Bioware on what they’ve learned from Bethesda.
- The AV Club keep up the good work with the latest Gateways to Geekery on Philip K. Dick.
- And, finally, The Times online has 70 facts you didn’t know about Marvel Comics in honour of Marvel’s 70th birthday. There’s a bunch of other articles there too.
Thursday Link Day
It’s Thursday link day!!!
- The Onion AV Club have done another ‘Gateway to Geekery’, this time focusing on H.P. Lovecraft.
- Critical Hits have written a pretty good piece on how to get most (and longest) bang for your buck with Game Workshop minis games.
- Apparently dreaming about games makes you better at them. Does that mean that if you dream about sex you get better at that too? (via Felicia Day‘s twitter.)
- Joss Whedon is bidding for the Terminator rights. Sort of. Background is here. (Via the A.V. Club)
- EuroGamer has a big, informative and pretty balanced article on the campaigns in Germany to ban violent video games.
Crap – console versions of Dragon Age lack isometric view (plus RPG info)
Well something had to ruin the party. According to Kotaku (and all over) only the PC version of Dragon Age will have the classic CRPG isometric view. And my PC won’t run the game! There’s rumours of other issues as well, including smaller battles.
Not sure exactly what I’ll do here – I’m planning on getting a new PC but it probably won’t be until next year and I don’t want to wait for Dragon Age. Stink!
In other DA news, there’s some details of the pen and paper RPG in a new podcast at the Green Ronin site. I haven’t listened but there’s details in this RPG.net thread. It sounds interesting actually – simple but with a stunt die sort of system called a ‘Dragon Die’.
1st DragonAge review
By Game Informer. It’s of the PC version when Soph and I will both likely get the 360 version, but it’s very good! 70 hours sounds like quite the time sink… As far as I can tell this is the first review, but there will be more!
A Ton of Links
I’ve been busy – what can I say? But I’ve been saving stuff up to post!
- Inquisitor – Another cool looking isometric indie RPG. I hope that and Age of Decadence come out!
- The Magicians – this book looks pretty cool and based on this interview, the author Lev Grossman is pretty cool as well! He’s also writen a great article about the improtance of plot in the Wall Street Journal.
- Erik Mona is doing a new blog – there’s no RSS but Erik Mona, Publisher at Paizo is going a blog over at ENWorld. The 1st entry is all about his history as a gamer.
- DragonAge‘s lead writer – here’s an interview with David Gaider! Pretty interesting stuff…
- A huge list of sci-fi – writen by people who aren’t white men.
- Tim Holman’s new blog – Mr Holman is the Publisher at Orbit. He’s writen some cool stuff including the state of the Urban Fantasy sub-genre and what gets onto the covers of fantasy books.
Phew.
Also in comic form
As has been mentioned here before Bioware’s new fantasy RPG, Dragon Age is coming out on PC and Xbox 360 in November. Also with the help of Green Ronin it will be a table top RPG. And now, through Penny Arcade it’s an online comic!
Check out the first 4 pages here, and check back every Friday (North American time) for a new page. It’s pretty cool and looks to be doing a bit on the back story before the game starts.
Alpha Protocol – ready to execute
it’s not long now till the Obsidian produced, Sega published spy-rpg will be hitting consoles everywhere. I’ve been pretty excited about this game since I first read about it and I really like what I’ve continued to read about it. Over at Game Spot there is a new impression article which talks about the way decision flow on from each other. The best part of the article, for me, was
You then have the option of killing or sparing her, and the player decided to let her live. As we returned to our home, we got a video message from her employer asking us to meet, and we found out that not only was Sis his bodyguard, but she was also a mute. By not executing her, the player was given an “I don’t hit girls” award, which in turn resulted in a 5 percent discount with all of Sis’s factions.
I’ve always wondered why spy/stealth games aren’t turned into RPGs more often. I’ve recently been playing Splitter Cell: Double Agent and there have been heaps of opportunities for roleplaying decisions already and I’ve only made it through 2 levels! So it will interesting to see how they combine the two. I just hope that they don’t sacrifice too much of either the more traditional shoot ‘em up stuff or the RPG elements in order to fit into some kind of box. It seems to me all that ever does is dilute the whole experience.
Read the whole Game Spot article here.
All video game characters are all the same!!!
Apparently someone has done some research which shows that ‘Video Game Characters Lack Ethnic & Gender Diversity‘
This was news to who exactly?
One of the things I like about increased customisability of game characters is that you can make a character that looks like you, regardless of what you look like. Story lines still don’t always allow for diversity however, even if you do look different. That seems to be changing as well – Bully, Mass Effect, Fable II and a whole heap of other games allow same sex relationships. But the vast majority of games still feature hyper-masculine white dudes with guns.
I’m a white dude and I know that games are largely wish fulfilment. But it’s interesting to play other people as well. And if I can play an elf, I’m sure I can play a black woman or a gay Asian man or whatever else.