Love those minor differences in how the locations can look. I think that more developers should utilize such techniques more often. They can't be that expensive or resource intensive and yet, they can improve the atmosphere and enhance the feeling, that the choices actually do matter, quite a lot. And I am not even talking about bigger choices that can affect who will live or die or objectives or even the whole campaign in the game.Bravo, CD Projekt ! Good luck in future and also, hopefully, more X box fellows will find their way to this impressive game.

Even if downvoted, on Team Liquid HotBid's request: [spoiler] :P [/spoiler] JK of course, the coverage was really good. I only miss the interviews with IM_Nestea and IM_MVP, probably my 2 favourite players. Otherwise, it's good to see GS trying to get involved more in e-sports. IGN has already big lead with their IPL. Either way, thanks for the coverage and good luck in your new job! ;)

[quote="CalamityKate"]As for things such as overheard conversations, I love that stuff too. One of my favorite bits in ME2 was walking around the spaceport listening to the various conversations play out and realizing that, though they all seemed to be about different things (what gun to buy, what to get as a souvenir, contract terms, etc.) they were all actually about the tensions within the asari community regarding family structure.And none of that was in a combat scene that would have been affected by a skip button.[/quote] I was speaking more in general. Again I would help myself with Deus Ex or some stealth sections in Witcher where the enemies were patrolling and sometimes had something interesting and in Deus Ex' case even relevant, to say about the story events. But I suppose, this could be solved by separate skip buttons for every single enemy or something. Though again, when it comes to ideas like that, my level of scepticism starts to raise again. Either way, it's good that we have somehow managed to turn this discussion from talking about some over-reacting people to something more relevant to gaming - i.e.

[quote="CalamityKate"]Second, the same info contained in the combat sequence could be included as a combat cutscene - prerender the relevant portion of the combat using the game engine to give the gamer a sense of what happened, and voila, those who play it get it during combat, those who don't as a cutscene. My point is that there are ways to include both.[/quote] ... Speaking of which and that is where we actually disagree... I understand that there are ways how to solve the issue. I am just pessimistic that developers would create some kind of alternative automatically played section completely controlled by game's A.I. or separate cutscenes for people who want to skip the combat, if they could just create separate combat and separate talking parts and make them both skippable separately. I mean, maybe studios like CD Projekt or Eidos Montreal which sometimes work more than 4 years on a single title could do something like that, but I am doubtful that most of the studios which have to make games within cca 2 years would bother with that. After all, most of the studios are not utilizing such storytelling even now, when the combat is somewhat obligatory. But like I said, it's a question of faith or optimism vs pessimism (realism :P), so if you you feel like some devs could and would be willing to do it, don't let me talk you out of that.

Well, this might be a little bit longer -_-, but I like to take my time and address point by point properly. So, whoever decides to read, including @CalamityKate, good luck.:? [quote="CalamityKate"]@SciFiRPGfan: I've not played the games you cite, so I can't comment specifically on those. That said, the idea that skippable combat would discourage developers from putting meaningful game developments into combat sequences is perhaps the first argument against including such an option that is based on actual reason, so I have to give you props on that. That said, I still disagree.[/quote] No problem. Agreeing on everything would be kind of boring anyway. And given, how this is more of a question of believing whether the developers would do something or not rather than anything else, we probably won't at all. [quote]There are ways to deal with this other than putting everything into cut scenes. First, skipping combat doesn't mean all story development happens in cutscenes - much, if not most of the dialog portions of modern RPGs are interactive, not cutscenes.[/quote] As much as this is true, this point is little bit irrelevant. My point was not about whether there are good means of telling the story outside of combat or not or how much they are used, but whether the developers would actually try to tell part of the story during / inside the combat itself, knowing that they have to make it skippable as well.

[quote="CalamityKate"] How does someone else choosing that mode detract from your gameplay experience? How does the existence of an option you don't use hurt your game?[/quote]I by no means want to defend the people who caused all this uproar, but since you asked how such hypothetical "skip combat" button would affect for example me... Well, I think it would E.g. in Human Revolution or Witcher 2, when player fights some of the bosses - Fedorova, Letho, part of the discussion and potentially story revelation is done during the combat itself. And I like that. It adds to the immersion and makes combat more dramatic, when player can actually learn something about his opponent. Or think about all eavsdropped info that has been revealed to players during the gameplay sections in some games. I want the developers to utilize such methods more in the future.