It would be to your benefit to play the first installment of the franchise before you move on to Fable 2. Firstly, it is a very entertaining title, and you will get accustomed to the gameplay mechanics that are present in both games before you dive into the sequel. With the aforementioned knowledge you can focus yourself on the pure gameplay and story of Fable 2 instead of having a much uneeded increase in learning curve.

Secondly you'll get to see how the title has evolved, as the first installment didn't quite live up to the hype that was presented for it (although, it is still a very great title). Fable 2 is what Fable was supposed to be, in my opinion, and I am very excited to see how things have fleshed out.

I'm pretty excited about this; haven't played a PC game religeously since Diablo 2 waaay back in the day. Looks like the hobby will, err, re-ignite itself, for lack of a better term.

As for the cartoony graphics, I think they suit the game. They look great, they get the atmosphere across, and they shouldn't be too demanding on your system when so much is going on compared to if everything was made to appear completely realistic. I think they are going for more accessability with an audience over pure visual appeal, which is a smart choice in my books. We shall see with the final product, however, and with higher resolution shots over a low-res stream.

I'm also excited to see you can finally pick your gender. I'm not sexist or anything, but, I really couldn't stand the sorceress in Diablo II and it was one of the most entertaining classes to play. Hopefully there will be customization options for your characters physical features beyond gender, like hair colour, skin tone, build, etcetera as well that will let people seperate themselves from the crowd.

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied from what I've seen with Diablo III so far, and I'm sure we're only scratching the surface here. I'm crossing my fingers for some very thought-out, unique class abilities, as well as classes themselves.

Thank you Blizzard!

What about shipping everything to Canada, including duty fees, etcetera? The only reason I went with a mainstream PC manufacturer was to avoid those kind of problems. $600 is a lot to save, however, and I would definitely want to do so.

Aside from that, how well would you think this system would hold up? Would more thank likely be plenty for at least a full year on 1280x720, correct?

I'm in the market for a new gaming PC pretty soon here I believe. My roomate just bought a new computer and gave me his old one with a P4 3.2GHz and an 8800GS 512MBm which will do for now (believe me, I know it's crap). Anyway, priced something up at Alienware, was just looking for some suggestions and feedback, thanks! Also, keep in mind that this will be running through DVI onto my 50" 720P DLP display, which obviously limits my resolution choices for games, however a monitor just isn't really an option at this point, nor a thought.

Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz 6MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Power Supply: Alienware® 750 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
Graphics Processor: Dual 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT – SLI Enabled
Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 x 1024MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA® nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Operating System: Windows Vista® Home Premium with Service Pack 1
System Drive: 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200RPM 16MB Cache
Optical Drives : 20X Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW) w/ LightScribe
Sound Card: High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio

The system itself is $1,972.00CDN before taxes.

G012M: You are right about the 7GB of space, I don't have Crysis installed anymore and forgot the amount of space it actually took up and so decided to look up the storage requirements for installation, silly me. However, this only further pushes my point to those whom are confused on this issue.

I do agree with you about compression and loss of quality, however as you also stated, the GPU is where our limitations are for texture quality. At this point in our current generation however, I do not believe we will ever need more space due to the limitations current GPU's offer, since texture quality will always be contained by such limitations. People also forget about other tools like dynamic lighting engines and various mapping techniques that lend a lot to visual style and quality which will not require a larger storage medium. Do you not agree?

[QUOTE="brujagio"]

[QUOTE="Twisted-Ice-God"]this thread is just pointless dribble since the basis is flawed... bluray doesnt make for better graphics, it won the war because of its size, bigger size means longer before they have to move on to next technology.... the gpu is what does the graphics and 360 has a wonderful gpu, an external blu ray is unlikley since sony owns blu ray and that takes away from them...a55a55inx

Uh.. correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure more disc space makes room for better/improved graphics (among other things). Also, just because Sony owns blu-ray, doesn't mean Microsoft couldn't profit of an external BR player.

yeah, more storage would be needed for more graphics/physics simulations, however, as of now, it's not needed... if i'm not mistakin' Crysis is even on 1 DVD9...

How much space do you people honestly think is required for compressed textures, mapping, etcetera? BluRay makes graphics better, are you kidding me? GPU architecture is what makes better graphics due to the fact that more computing can be done at any given time to meet the demands of the software. Storage medium does not and never will mean "better"graphics in this generation.

As for Crysis, yes, it is stored on DVD9. When installed, however, it takes up 12GB of space. Does this mean that on a console (assuming consoles had enough horsepower to run Crysis at its high graphical settings) Crysis wouldn't be able to run unless stored on BluRay? Of course not; why? Compression, data streaming, etcetera; the same techniques being used currently to make games that are larger than 9GB work on DVD9. Let's give an example, Gears of War for PC requires 12GB of space for installation, however it only takes up 6.43GB of space on DVD9 due to, you guessed it, compression.

When will people stop the misconception? BluRay is not required for gaming in this generation, and never will be on the 360.

Definitely buy a 360, there is a lot of great software on the system that should be experienced by everyone. Disc scratching is not an issue in my opinion; I've never experienced it nor has anyone I know. A lot of the time discs are scratched due to inproper handling of the system.

I will not dismiss the fact that some 360s were reported as scratching discs (this has happened to other systems as well, let's not forget), however a lot of the time people bump, even move (god forbit) their console while a disc is in it, which can throw the alignment of the disc spindle off, causing it to ever-so-slightly be out of place and come in contact with internal pieces of the hardware. If the console is running while someone moves or bumps it with a disc spinning inside, expect the chance of disalignment to increase a lot more.

All in all, you don't have anything to worry about, and if you do, that is what warranties are for, and most retails are pretty good with them. Don't miss out on a great experience.

There is no need for BluRay discs on the 360, period. Everything can be compressed into the space that DVD9 offers, which has been and will continue to be done. The 360 has enough memory to allow for fast uncompression of data, combined with the faster read-spead of DVD9 for streaming, to not even think of needing BluRay for a storage medium.

BluRay doesn't offer any benefit for gaming on this system, and the only reason it is beneficial for the PS3 is due to the fact that it's memory cannot support as much uncompression going on while also computing tasks demanded by the software, also in conjunction with the slow read-spead of BluRay for steaming data. The PS3 was designed around BluRay as it's storage medium, hence it requires it to operate (due to the reasons listed above), whereas the 360 was designed around DVD9, and can perform the tasks required of it's software quite easily without the need for more capacity.

Will the 360 ever need more storage than is already offered for it's software in it's lifespan? Very doubtful. As for those whom will point towards Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon and disagree, we are looking at many minutes, perhaps even extending into an hour, of prerendered highdefinition cinematics, which are massive hogs in terms of how much memory they take up on their storage medium. Sakaguchi has always used prerendered cinematics in his games and probably always will, however this is not necissary, especially when you consider how life-like in-game visuals are becoming. This is his art style, and changing discs as you progress hardly comes as a fault to the system or the creator of the software, and DVD9 limits are definitely not making games like Lost Odyssey or Blue Dragon worse or being put on the chopping board for content when in this context.

Sorry BluRay, you will be needed next-generation (more than likely), however for the 360 in this current generation for gaming, you just don't have a place.