Anyone playing this? I got my pre-order on Friday and all I can say is the reviews do NOT do it justice - at least not the PC version. AI is pretty dumb, and there are noticable issues (stutter around load times for example), but nothing gamebreaking and certainly nothing to make the game deserve any less than 7-8/10 so far imo.

For those who have played an Obsidian game before, you'll know what to expect. Solid story that is not overly dramatic - instead choosing to be more serious and realistic. Characters are extremely solid too. The obligatory bugs are also present, but this being the first time Obsidian has actually developed their own gameplay (KOTOR 2 using KOTOR's, and NWN2 using NWN's) it's actually a damn good attempt.

Also, it includes what is perhaps the best boss fight in living memory. A Russian Arms Dealer named Brayko who's obsessed with the 80s. The fight takes place in his disco room, with him wielding gold plated SMGs. He can blind you with disco lights and snort lines of cocaine to allow him to get high - at which point he turns psychotic and chases you around the room with a knife. All the while, Turn Up The Radio is blasting out in the background. Just so epic when you experience it.

It also has an ending that will significantly diverge depending on choices (which, for the record, are REALLY well handled where things you decide have a massive impact on future levels and plot points). A friend of mine who has already completed the game read up on people's comments on the ending, and says they seem to be pretty wildly different to what he experienced. I am looking forward to completing it, then replaying in a different style to see how things could otherwise play out.

The console versions are the ones seeming to be getting all the reviews and getting slated, so I'm not sure I could recommend playing it on them. But the PC version is pretty great, and if only the AI were a bit smarter and more complex in terms of their pathing, it'd be a pretty much perfect game from an RPG standpoint.

 

I got the game last night at Best Buy. I had rushed and got there right before close. I sold it to gamestop a few hours ago and got Red Dead. Alpha was just a bad game. The only gun with any accuracy was the shotgun. From five feet away. The story was ok.

 

I had such high hopes for this one. Modern spy RPG made by the people who did KOTOR, which I love.

And it crashed and burned.

It just proves not to hope for want for anything, because people will find some way to crap all over and ruin a sure thing.

 

KOTOR(Bioware) > KOTORII(Obsidian)

/:

 

I liked them both.

 

Oh, so did I, don't get me wrong. I loved both of them.

The first one was better though. Mostly because it was actually finished, not full of bugs and quests that were missing planets to complete them on. /:

 

The thing is though is that KOTOR 2 is not really Obsidian's fault. IIRC they were under a huge amount of pressure from Lucas Arts to just kick it straight out the door which lead to that whole clusterfuck.

 

This. The fault with KOTOR 2 was LucasArts rushing it out the door then refusing Obsidian's request to make a patch for it.

This is intentional and both necessary and successful. The game is an RPG - you should not be able to walk in with a level 1 character and be a master sharpshooter with every weapon you touch. As you level up, you invest skill points into certain weapons to improve accuracy and generally make yourself better at using them. In a realistic way, not like games like Mass Effect that (whilst being great) strongly emphasised the FPS genre over the RPG.

I've beat the game now, and am already halfway through a replay. As far as I'm concerned, Obsidian hit the ball out the park with it. The only real problem the game has is the AI - it does not react well at all to 'run and gun'. They should really have made it Mass Effect simple should you try to run and gun - just find the nearest cover and stay there shooting forever. They also should have fixed the bug where some NPCs spawn without ammo meaning they have to run up to melee you. But if you play the game stealthily, which is obviously the way it was designed and optimised for, these are not issues at all.

I can certainly understand that it may not suit some people's playing style, but I do find it disappointing that many are unable to enjoy the game. One of the best story driven games ever made really, just because of the impact every little thing has upon the game. The whole final level changes based upon your decisions.

 

So much wasted potential... almost makes me want to cry.
Finished it twice but there was never the same fascination/obsession I've experienced with Kotor or Mass Effect.
The characters however were pretty awesome, as expected - milf-y stasi chick with a machinegun? Priceless.

 

Im playing this now and Im loving the hell out of it, I also have to agree with Anubis that it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that you can't just pick up a gun and become a crack marksmen with it. You actually have to work at it and invest in it, if you actually put some points into the skill you can peg a guy in the eye from 100 feet back with a pistol.

I'm also loving the storyline right now, I just picked up my copy, finished the training, Saudi Arabia and am now playing through Rome which is awesome. This game gets a 5/5 from me.

 

I'm halfway through my second playthough, and I love this game so much. Graphically, it's nothing special. The AI has issues, and there are a couple of bugs. I've heard a lot of complaints about the weapons and accuracy, and I've noticed none of these problems. The story is great. Nothing else to it.

Can't wait for the sequel.

 

A friend let me try it out. Any tips on hacking? I can't do it. My mouse is either too sensitive or not sensitive enough - once I find the stupid code I can't line up the codes together fast enough. I've only done the training mission and I don't want to imagine what it will be like in a real mission. People attack you in real time while you're trying to hack.

 

Put a couple of points in Sabotage Chime. I think the second point along gives you a skill that allows you to disable terminals with an EMP grenade. Easy way out if you're having trouble

 

Beat the game. The ending was super lame. The choices of your actions did manifest to how you could play the final mission, but

Spoiler

they didn't effect the end of the story much, which was a bummer. I think there are only 3 major outcomes you can get.

After reading some of the apwiki, I found that I got the best ending actually. High rep, got all the dossier info,

Spoiler

Mina + boat, SIE & Albatross/Sis lived, Deng lived, Halbech got exposed, AP was dismantled

.

The game was okay, but it was very sloppy at points, and the story failed to WOW me, hell, none of the

Spoiler

the characters had their histories delved into much, I think Mina was the only one who had any full backstory, and even then, it was pretty shallow

...

And oh god, the hacking/alarm dismantling/door opening. I just never had enough EMPs for the later levels.

But overall, it was a playable game. If they had polished the stealth mechanic (with max points in it, you're basically invulnerable, you can go invisible in a room and insta-kill right infront of everyone, clearing whole rooms in 20 seconds or less) and made direct combat less unwieldy, and maybe spruced up the ending a little, I'd be tempted to say it was a good game.

 

I am pretty disappointed with the game - as an RPG it fails when it comes to conversations, character advancement is pretty basic and, as far as I saw, choosing different background for the PC doesn't affect anything beside few conversations.

Endgame spoilers:

Spoiler

When I played the game, I thought my choices would actually matter - when I decided to stop the riots in Taiwan, it didn't affect anything. When I saved Madison, instead of the bombing, she disappeared and Marburg showed in the last location (I don't even remember if I killed him), when I was presented with a choice of saving Mina or getting files, I decided to get evidence, but in the end it doesn't really matter.

Can you even completely fail the mission so the World War III is started and Halbech gets away with everything?

They concentrated so much on arranging difficult choices for the player that they somewhere forgot that it's consequences that matter - it seems like someone decided to imitate Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but at least there it matters what kind of choices you make. Lame.

Sneaking is so easy that I wonder how can someone market it as an espionage game. *facepalm* You can take out dozens of guards with a silenced pistol and as long as they don't see the body, or the guard getting down, nothing happens - if only bodies didn't disappear and enemies actually got interested when guards from adjacent room seem to disappear.

Maybe because I played entirely stealthy character with tech skills mixed in and my only combat skill was a pistol, I hated the fucking combat.

Spoiler

The amount of time I spent trying to defeat Brayko, Omen (fucking invisible ninja) or make sure that this retard Surkov survives (after a dozen tries he finally decided that hiding on the roof while I take down attackers with a sniper rifle was a better choice than running into attacking soldiers).

On the other hand fights at the last location were way too easy - Shadow operative to get into position, maxed out Chain Shot, Brilliance, repeat.

Just like Chime?? said, it's a playable game, but I already deleted it and don't plan to install it again.

 

The bosses were impossible. I did Taiwan first and was screaming into the night when I got to the boss. I couldn't even get out of the scaffolding room. WTF kind of a stealth game MAKES you fight hordes of enemies at melee range? Yeah, I ended up hex editing my save file to give me infinite health (you can't memory edit AP, it crashes the memory editor .. DRM I guess). I was unable to defeat any of the bosses without it. I went Assault Rifle - and it was decent enough for melee and ranged combat (reason I took it over pistol, could never get used to using that thing), but it was terrible on boss fights (you need to be able to sit and let it aim).

I really liked the options you had in the game, the choices they gave you were pretty provoking (unlike ME's or DAO's, I felt the choices in those games were pretty straight forward), but like when

Spoiler

you decide to give / not give Scarlet that "data" you have... I knew she was a spy, yet I decided to give her the evidence (I still don't know what evidence it was I gave her) and then Henry laughs in your face and says Scarlet gave him the evidence ... and it does nothing. Nothing I know of. It doesn't even change the little debrief at the end of the level. You can kill Scarlet or you can forgive her, but you would have done that anyway. Henry can still just be killed at the end. It's stuff like that that's disappointing. And I read the bit about Madison, glad I didn't save her.

Still, there are some moments I liked. Like how you could join a few different kinds of organizations, etc. As far as I know, you always win at the end, I don't know of an ending where you can "lose" even if you make all the worst choices.

Spoiler

The most deviating ending is where you get Henry to trusted then agree to join Halbech and are tasked to kill Mina, which you can do or betray him later

 

Yeah, the choices itself are pretty good, but consequences are kind of lame.

Spoiler

What completely destroyed my faith that choices actually mattered, was the moment I chose to sacrifice Mina in order to get the evidence.

I romanced her, but still had rather good rep with Scarlet, so when I got the choice of either saving her (and repeating the situation with Madison), or completing the mission, I decided to not repeat another Rome. So during the ending I end on a boat with Scarlet without any sort of memory about Mina and why she died. It's like she never existed or something.

Funnily enough, I also did Taiwan first and had little to no problem with fights (I relied mostly on critical shots from a silenced pistol) outside of damn Omen - he completely owned me time after time and I needed something close to fifteen reloads to take him out.

But definitely the worst mission was trying to go through the Embassy in Moscow, since the ammo was incredibly spare during that level.

I wonder if anyone encountered this bug: during the fight with Brayko for some reason he frozen in the middle of the room and it's the only reason I was able to defeat him. Probably in any other game I would reload, but here every time I had to fight I was like: 'Fuck, no...'.

The problem with fighting was that nearly every time I fought a boss I felt extremely cheated - the game was supposed to be about sneaking (at least it was my impression from the training and the beginning of the game), but then you come across characters you can't take out with a sneak attack, but have to fight on their terms.

Spoiler

Despite all the bad things I write/think/say about this game, I must say that executing Leland was extremely satisfying.

 

Yep, he was the only one I didn't arrest. I never actually talked to Scarlet at the last mission, I missed her somehow. I was abusing shadow operative too much I think. Could leave whole rooms full of enemies if I wanted to. What difficulty was you game on? I did hard / recruit with absolutely no +HP items/stats and like 50 endurance, so Taiwan's enemies took about 50% of my health per burst of rounds and I was forced to kite them and abuse angles where they couldn't fire at me.

 

I did Hard/Tech Specialist, with something like 60 endurance. If I didn't carry with me Shock Traps, Epinephrine Spikes and First-Aid Kits, I would probably drop dead every time I got into a fire-fight.

To be more precise, I avoided fighting two or more opponents at the time, since most of the time it made me dead, but, thanks to the AI, luring one guard to a place, where other enemies didn't see him and filling him full of lead worked most of the time.

 

Funny, but I was happy being able to make decisions according to the way I was roleplaying on the particular run-through (holy shit roleplaying options that aren't the usual Jesus/Hitler contrast!). Given how every conversation is fully voiced, they weren't going to be able to whip up a cutscene for every combination of choices. Just use your imaginations, you ungrateful bums.