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- The team felt it missed the huge freedom of open-world games like Skyrim

- Proper mounted combat still being tested

- Currently not a definite part of the game

- Horses will be in, though, since they’re important for navigation

- Ships float on the water in true physics interactions

- Team has doubled in size

- No chapters, acts, or any artificial break-points

- Geralt can seamlessly cross from one end of the world to the other thanks to REDengine 3

- No loading screens while traveling in the open world

- Can explore on foot, by horseback, and via boat

- Pursue yor long-lost love, play the game of empires on behalf of the northern kingdoms that still claim independence, and thwart the nefarious Wild Hunt

- Fast travel: instantly revisit any discovered location

- Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz: “A huge goal is to keep the high quality o four quests, with all the cinematics and impressive events and moments.”

- Point of interest will always be in sight

- Players will be beckoned to explore dank caves, embattled villages, decaying ruins, etc.

- Over 100 hours of hand-scripted quests

- Quests: help villagers, engineer the succession of the Skellige kings, etc.

- Use monster hunting for adventure, incoming, and unique rewards

- There are mini-games based on the area of the world

- Ex: Skellige has knife-throwing

- Gain exclusive rewards from mini-games

- Don’t have to complete mini-games to proceed in the story

- Monsters, bandits, traders, animals, and more will attack anyone they deem hostile

- Enemies don’t scale to the player’s level

- Slaying monsters, fighting hostile humans in the different forms they come in, collecting items, leveling up are in the game

- World 40 times larger than the last game

- Three different aspects to narration

- Lowest level: free-form activities like monster hunting, crafting, individual standalone quests

- Second step: political situation and Nilfgaardian invasion is resolved through the core plotline of the major areas (Skellige, Novigrad, No Man’s Land)

- Each land has its own storyline

- Can abandon the storyline, but will have repercussions later

- Not doing a plotline is a choice the player has

- Main narrative: search for Geralt’s loved ones and conflict with the Wild Hunt

- Multiple branches of narratives that feed into each other

- Don’t have to do anything outside the main storyline to beat the game

- Could have help in a main-line encounter from an ally you gained in the Skellige archipelago if you’ve completed certain quests in certain ways

- Major events in the main storyline are “gates” for the state of the world

- Ex: village threatened by bandits might be abandoned after certain events if the player doesn’t help

- Weather effects are dynamically generated and fully modeled as real volumetric clouds rather than being simply painted on the skybox

- In contrast to the last game, Geralt encounters communities and individuals with monster-related problems that need solving

- There aren’t contract-like assignments this time

- Press the left trigger to turn on Geralt’s witcher senses

- Can glean information from a crime scene upon discovering it

- Within range of a scene of interest, the mechanic conveys clues to the player through the witcher muttering to himself and/or visual depictions of past events that represent Geralt’s reasoning

- Time of day and other conditions determine where monsters appear and their abilities

- Can strike critical areas in combat based on how much you learn about monster anatomy and tactics

- The team is deciding between using a handful of in-combat special moves for particular attacks and a slow-motion quick-time event style

- Monsters you defeat leave otherwise unobtainable alchemical and crafting ingrediants needed for making of unique items, potions, mutagens

- These allow Geralt to gain special powers and upgrades in the new mutation development tree

- These kills serve as the witcher’s primary method of income

Dvader said:

I found Bear at GS.

Yeah I have been lurking about and sulking about a grand I lost on Ebay, still trying to get it back money. And seeing some peoples comments on here made me stay quiet. Ebay  is really awful about refunding money, even though they decided in my favor they are dragging feet. on  refund. I have been crabby, even more pissy than usual. FUCK YOU EGG CRUSHER.

_Bear said:

Dvader said:

I found Bear at GS.

Yeah I have been lurking about and sulking about a grand I lost on Ebay, still trying to get it back money. And seeing some peoples comments on here made me stay quiet. Ebay  is really awful about refunding money, even though they decided in my favor they are dragging feet. on  refund. I have been crabby, even more pissy than usual. FUCK YOU EGG CRUSHER.

Yeah, quit picking on _Bear dudes.  He's a consumer, he's got a right to bitch about Nintendo.

Now that I have a 3DS I get that right as well.

That sucks about your grand _Bear.

SO. VERY. PISSED. at Nintendo right now! I've been DYING to play Fire Emblem for weeks and weeks now! I have a total of FOUR copies pre-ordered across Long Island and New York City at various GameStops because I didn't know where I was going to be yesterday and today and didn't want pre-orders to run out before I could get mine reserved.

Not in the city today due to weather cancelling an event I was going to be involved in --AND-- according to all the Long Island GameStops they don't know WHEN they are getting the game. "Most likely the earliest would be Friday."

Best Buy doesn't list a release date on their site anymore and all Store Locators show it as "Unavailable." Walmart is saying it will be available 2/11.

Started checking Targets yesterday night because they ALL said they had it In Stock, according to their website. Keep in mind, Nintendo has been advertising "IN STORE FEBRUARY 4th" for weeks!

________________

First Target I went into: "We have one copy. We can't find it, but we'll call other Targets for you!"

Second Target: "I told you on the phone we didn't have it in yet." (I didn't call.)

Third Target: "Yeah, I wanted to buy mine when I came in to work today too. We have it, but Don said we can't sell it until Wednesday." (Fuck you, Don!)

Fourth Target: "We don't release games until Tuesday. You can try back tomorrow morning."

________________

Got up at 5:30 this morning for some reason and killed some time until 7:30. Threw on some sweatpants, and drove (in the snow) to the Target that said I could try this morning... My god, the entire staff of this particular Target is made up entirely of horny, middle-aged women, who have no problem at all staring at your wang even as you look them directly in the eye... or try to, at least. I made my way over to Electronics, skirting around 4 similarly dressed, college-aged dudes, planning the same thing as me, where --TWO-- copies of the game sat in a display case. Got the attention of a young goth girl who intentionally avoided the Nerd Herd coming her way to help ME. She rung the game up for me... Mission Accomplished!

I promptly went to the Mens Wear section after that, to purchase some Boxer Briefs, vowing never again to walk into Target in sweats while wearing ordinary Boxers --EVER-- again.

________________

While this makes for an amusing story... WTF NINTENDO? W T F ? ! It's more than a little suspicious you would advertise so heavily for this game, set an in-store date for said game and then release it in extremely limited quantities. Sorry, I don't buy the "Demand was greater than we expected" excuse. Pre-orders stopped a LONG TIME ago now, so they knew EXACTLY how many copies they needed to get to the market! This statement only makes me even madder:

"Nintendo makes every effort to make sure its games and systems are available at retail stores nationwide on launch day. Sometimes, because of the variables of shipping, different retailers receive their shipments on different days. Fire Emblem Awakening can be purchased right now from the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo 3DS."

With the state of Wii U right now and the general LACK of consistently great titles on the 3DS, you would THINK they would go the extra mile to make fans happy. Nope, instead they employ the old "Limited Quantites" tactic, and encourage e-shop purchases instead. Not cool! VERY NOT COOL ! ! !

________________

END _BeaRant!

Since when am I stealthy about my giant wang?

Dvader said:

Leo's post is actually a stealth post about his giant wang.

travo said:

The thing is, Leo is the ONLY one who minds if the cougars stared at his wang.

Dvader said:

His copy of fire emblem has a red lipstick kiss on, his receipt has the chicks phone number. It's horrible these things happen to him.

Actually, goth girl wasn't interested in the slightest. She chose to help me so she wouldn't have to deal with the four "over-enthusiastic" geeky dudes at 8AM. Funny thing is, they were all talking about the game, quite loudly and excitedly, so I assume they were ALL there to get it...

I got ONE of the TWO available copies! Wonder how the FOUR decided how to get the ONE remaining game?

**YOINK!**