DeadYorick

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True, but considering the fact Mass Effect 2's production started before Mass Effect 1 was completed, it can be assumed that EA had less creative control as the project was underway already. EDIT: Accidentally put "post" before production

EA Bought Bioware when Dragon Age Origins was done, and when Mass Effect 2 was nearing completion. Then we get news of Dragon Age 2 being a fantasy Mass Effect.

Who would you rather knocking on your door at night?

Outselling the development cost is the primary goal when a game is first released. If a game doesn't it is very likely it will not get a sequel. TFU did so and then some.

I had to lol at that pic. It's far more comical to see Jar Jar frozen in Carbonite

Cairn had begun to grow restless simply sitting in a tree. The darkspawn horde bellow him had grown strangely melodic in their speech patterns. The same grunts seemed to repeat themselves between the shorter and taller ones. Great... I am beginning to learn their language. The prospect of talking Darkspawn aside, Cairn was still fearing for his life. Twice now he suspected one of looking directly at him. Every so often he would hear their growls stop for a few seconds, and resume shortly thereafter. While he was hearing the cacophony of Darkspawn symphonies, he began to hear something else through his knife-like ears. In the corner of his eye he spotted a large burly black bear. Foraging in the bushes, and for some reason at night when it was supposedly hibernating. The confusion came to mind, yet Cairn formulated a plan rather quickly. He stood up as best he could, and whistled toward the bear. The Darkspawn gazed around, looking for the source of the sound they just heard. But found themselves distracted by a bear rushing toward them. Cairn jumped for the tree as he watched the Darkspawn go to attack the bear. He aimed to jump on a tree adjacent to him. However, as he attempted to do so he felt his hand slip on the branch. The air underneath the elf was unforgiving as he crashed down to the ground bellow him. He scrambled to his feet suddenly, noticing they were still distracted attacking the beast, and ran. The adrenaline flowing through his veins eventually ran short, and the elf noticed he put quite a distance between himself and the camp. But as he looked on toward the camp, he saw something else. What looked like two, unrecognizable figures moving about. His distraction was short lived as he went back to fleeing the scene as quickly as possible.

Yeah but then you have to deal with the fact they are frozen stiff with a look of horror on their faces... Okay never mind, that might make some readers actively campaign for "Collector Rights" just so they might get a chance to put some swarms into action.

I am finding it a little odd they are intending to stop planning for a sequel to a game that hasn't been released yet.

Speaking in hypothetical of course. If there was another Jedi Knight game, would you purchase it? I am asking this as over the years the major theme of Jedi Knight fans is they want another Katarn centric game by any means necessary. Even if it means removing everything they liked about the series to begin with. Jedi Knight isn't exclusive to this either. Some fans would adore a dumbed down sequel to Grim Fandango or Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, and some think the Max Payne series died with the second game. (I am one of those people). So much so they refuse to even try the sequel game simply because of their feelings toward it. So if there was another Jedi Knight game. Even if it lacked dedicated servers and a released SDK or was horrendously consolised (the most likely thing to occur), would you get it simply as a predisposed notion of "loyalty" to the franchise?

Somehow I always imagined EA as being an enigmatic alien race from beyond the Omega Four Relay

If they are the "best military/semi military personnel in the galaxy" what use would an assassin be? Thane isn't supposed to see active combat, he's supposed to use stealth and kill a single target for money. Yet what Bioware projects this as is using him as a combat ready soldier archetype that uses guns in a firefight and biotics. If anything Kasumi's use of tactical cloak was much more like an "Assassination" technique, and she was a thief.

((I hope Ty doesn`t want Archon to edit.)) If he had to name one thing in particular Cairn enjoyed the most about Ferelden would have to be it`s trees. Not the quality in what he remembered during his childhood could be attributed toward this. Such as easy to climb stature, or something along the lines of that. Nay, even the Sylvans rarely payed too much attention to him climbing their trunks. But, the principle thing he enjoyed in a tree now were it`s branches. Specifically their gnarled features in which he could hide himself. Darkspawn were a tricky game for the elf. Contrary to the tales he heard of them as a child, they were not a roaming demonic dwarven problem. Rather, they proved quite the challenge the first time he had seen them, in the Brecilian Forest. Cairn had taken to setting simplistic ``traps`` if they could be called that. Really, they were more set up to alert him of whatever he hunted. This worked on Werewolves before, but not on Darkspawn. He still remembered the scars received during the battle that followed. This encounter he suspected would just be the first of many, and through his paranoid mind the idea of simply watching a band of Orlesian soldiers. He had heard of the recent trials and tribulations occurring within the government of Ferelden. During the odd chance he would find himself wandering through a town big enough to have a tavern. Even then it was hard to search through the bias illiterate farmers tended to have. In the end throughout all this he did eventually manage to find one. It wasn`t that hard considering the Darkspawn corpses littering the ground around their campsite. Likewise it particularly easy to climb a tree and inspect as he so pleased. This went well for several hours, the day nestled into the night, and he observed the campsite carefully. When the drunken foray into foolishness did occur as expected, Cairn felt his motivation of simple thievery start to subside. Shortly after the only female of the band walked off, he suspected for firewood or something similar, he heard noises surrounding the campsite. "Hey Brythe, whazzat sound? It sounds familiar..." Cairn heard it as well, a twig snapping just underneath his tree in fact. Paranoia gripped the elf for a few short seconds, as he grabbed the dagger sheathed at his waist. The dagger he rarely found a use for in combat. Before long the panicking started with the rest of the group. "Shut it...Can't talk and vomit...*Bluuureh*...At the same time!" The act of repulsion calmed Cairn down for a few short seconds, and his breathing lowered to a steady inaudible pace. "Do you hear laughing, Brythe?" That was surprising to Cairn, something he didn`t hear. A tear of sweat drizzled down his neck as he held the dagger out fully in front of him. He didn`t have a chance to react as he heard one of the soldier`s scream. "Quiet you two! There's something in the..." Cairn watched as one of the less experienced soldiers stood up, drawing his claymore. Walking out of the lit sanctuary of the camp. His footsteps stopped abruptly as he screamed once more. "Andraste!!! Dar-aaaaAAAAAHHHHhhh..." and before he knew it, Darkspawn poured out of the trees around him. So many Cairn could barely see the ground anymore, much less the soldiers now butchered. The amount of time he spent stalking rabbits by hiding in trees he felt payed off. In some horrific and surreal way. Cairn watched on as the Darkspawn continued to kill, and observed one in particular gripping both a mace and a sword. He observed as it stood over one of his fallen comrades, killed by one of the actually alert soldiers. With no possible idea of escape coming to mind. Cairn waited, his dagger in his hand, observing the Darkspawn. He did not have enough room to unsheathe his bow without giving away his entire position.

On my first runthrough of TSL I boosted the difficulty directly to hard. (Mostly because I beat the original Kotor on hard only a few days before in preparation). I found myself having to return back to easy to finish the first playthrough. I don`t think it makes you weaker per-say, but I did notice the enemies being much harder to kill. This mod called: Tactical Rebalance is advertised toward making combat in TSL harder. http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/KOTOR2_Tactical_Rebalance;114797

Red Dead Redemption`s development was far different then Mass Effect. The same with Grand Theft Auto 4. What they did was their development team worked on both designing a large world the player would explore, and then setting and characters. If you compare RDR or GTA4`s missions they are exceedingly linear with very little variations except for a different line here or there if you failed it already. Mass Effect is an RPG and it isnt a sandbox game. Bioware designed large, but officially still boxed in maps the player would go through. With Red Dead Redemption all they had to think about would be what would make this part of the world interesting. That brings things like minigames to light. Online multiplayer would just require scripting and coding and I can still imagine Bioware doing it. (Look at the links I posted previously). Also I have to mention this, but budget is a big issue as well. GTA4 cost 100 million dollars to develop, and had a much larger development staff at it`s helm (roughly 1000 people). A longer campaign also removes other features from the game. Bare in mind that they do have a limited disk space and budget, and the campaign drains that heavily. So a longer campaign could result with drawbacks such as less weapons, less subquests, re-skinned modules instead of new ones etc. You can`t have both a long campaign and a large amount of good quality subquests. That IS to much to demand because it is too strenuous on both the developers and the game. The reason why Mass Effect 1 had a whole bunch of subquests that were basically exactly the same to one another was they just modified things in a txt file. (Like change the mountain size here and there, add object to this area of the map, etc.) Mass Effect 2`s subquests had a lot more depth, but there were significantly less of them. There is rarely a balance struck in this, and a lot of the times game developers have to make sacrifices. Mass Effect 2 was put on 2 disks for the console, and gamers ended up hating that.