yahto

They've all been selected to run EA.

I recall watching a quicklook of Bignic's Zombies where Patrick and Brad lauded the soundtrack, after which I went out and got it on bandcamp, having no other contact with the game from other media outlets. I went back to look for the quicklook (before the new site launch) and couldn't find it anywhere, only Hamst3r's videos. Is this a case like the notorious 50 Cent Blood on the Sand quicklook? Am I going crazy?

Supposedly this year we're getting the new Brothers in Arms, although I don't know how to feel about the style they're going for. I'd much rather an influence from Band of Brothers, not Inglourious Basterds, but for the Bulletstorm/Borderlands gameplay they're going for, it does make some sense.

I'm sure this is largely for roleplaying reasons, but I could only justify something like this if there is some tangible benefit or has some influence on reactions from NPCs in a town. If it's like the maid in the Skingrad player-house that's essentially a pie and drink dispenser, I can do without.

Well at least this whole fiasco is getting them some reactions from the community. Now if only they'd listen when it comes to things that actually matter in the game.

@Storms: And I think Skyrim's NPCs will be an even bigger step that Fallout 3. The quality of the NPCs is really amazing for the volume, I just hope they steer away from methods like letting Radiant AI handle conversations between NPCs which breaks the illusion when they say disjointed things to each other. It probably won't be disappointing this time since they really touted the AI before Oblivion's release, but since they're being quiet about it this time, they must have spent the time to really flesh out the system and make it believable.

They couldn't really brush over this, being one of the first big releases in the latter half of the year. It would be nice if Jeff could talk about the content in the preview build a little more at length considering other press have covered it. I know I liked it, but I'd like to know if he thinks the rest of the game is consistent with the quality of that build.

The mile-long pages are difficult to navigate despite the contributors doing a great job of organizing the information. TF2 is one big one, some other pages like Morrowind have a lot of class info which is extraneous and overwhelming to someone just trying to get the gist of the game, but should be accessible for users looking for that info.

Also, if someone goes to a page looking for character info or something, they usually end up scrolling by a plot synopsis with end game spoilers staring them right in the face.

Jeff mentioned on a recent bombcast that he has been devoting time to filling out Credits information recently, but I don't think he voiced any concerns about the system. I agree that it could use some changes for easier input though. The main reason it's done this way, as you said, is probably so there aren't hundreds of pages devoted to people that only ever work on one game and are irrelevant to the bigger picture of the industry.

Maybe if a person with no page is credited enough times they could then become eligible for a page? Only for people in senior roles, of course. This would eliminate up-and-coming people in the industry not being able to be credited until someone just decided they deserve a page, which isn't a really objective way of doing it.

You see a lot of credits for people who aren't in senior roles getting pages here just because they were on a Bombcast.

I've never played a coop game that personally led to an immersive experience. As soon as you introduce another person into a world full of NPCs, that in Bethesda's usual case are not even convincing on their own, the glass shatters for me. Despite the Elder Scrolls' history of robot NPCs it's still a better experience to be surrounded by them than having another person sticking out like a sore thumb as the two of you walk around the world like you're visiting a wax museum.

Does only one person take the quest? Only one person becomes the head of the Mages Guild? Skyrim has 60000 lines of recorded dialogue, do they need to pick through them and record twice where the number of players being addressed is spoken? And Mods, another huge part of the game, are a headache to manage for one person, but two people with exactly modified games would be worse.

There was a coop mod for Morrowind, albeit a very primitive one, and the person I played with immediately started stealing every piece of clutter that wasn't nailed down to sell off. I would imagine an MMO being a world of barren houses with dead NPCs everywhere. As soon as you change those mechanics to fix it, which I think Bethesda would be capable of doing with a lot of time, it's not Elder Scrolls.

To everyone who says 'coop would be sweet' I'm not arguing against that, but you need to consider the logistics of it. If people keep clamoring for it as they've done in the past, and continue to do so as TES gets more popular, Todd Howard might change his mind on the matter and we'll have a gimped unimmerisve coop game in 15 years.