Sunday, May 18, 2008

Inventory management

After last weeks brief intermission on DRM, its now time for another intermission before we return to our regular scheduled program. Just in case you've forgotten, I was going to give my impressions of GTA IV. However, GTA IV is the kind of game which you really need to play for a while before being able to give any useful response so instead, I'll talk about inventory management in RPGs.

As I mentioned before, I have been playing through the original Baldurs Gate (plus expansion pack) using the BG2 engine (courtesy of mods). In the game, I was just about to enter the city of Baldurs Gate when I went on a slight detour and started to play the expansion pack instead (Tales of the Sword Coast). More specifically, I'm currently inside Durlags Tower and boy, is there a ton of treasure! In fact, there is so much treasure that my gem bag, potion case and bag of holding are all full (I installed a mod which allowed me to buy those).

Which is a real bummer because inventory management is not one of my favourite aspects of BG. I play RPGs for the characterisation, the story and the choices which I'm forced to make during the game. And when I say choices, I mean stuff like choosing between whether to save the hostages or sacrifice them in order to kill the terrorist.

Choosing between which piece of phat loot to leave behind because I'm already carrying too much other loot is not my idea of fun.

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