1. Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising





2. Alpha Protocol





3. Risen





4. Dragon Age: Origins





5. Borderlands

What's Risen about? It doesn't look fantastic but maybe it makes good on gameplay.

Opflash: Given the sheer suckiness of ArmA 2, I may look into this but i think ive been fatally disillusioned.
alpha protocol: screams console casual
risen: trailer looks cool.
dragon age: insta-buy probably
borderlands: Mmmm, looks ok.

Conclusion: I'll probably end up sit tight and get Dragon Age.

Risen, well the story goes like this. There is a quite succesful IP called "Gothic" that has three installments and one expansion or something, not really sure what the hell it is. The original Gothic was planned as a triology and when the 4th expansion or spawn or something was forced out the two companies behind it split and went their own way. One went and developed the Risen IP and the other one went and developed the Arcania IP. The games are very similiar, hell they are so similiar that if one looks at the pictures it would seem it is the same game just a different area.

So the real successor to the Gothic series is the Arcania IP because the hero from Gothic is the tyrant king in the Arcania game and Risen is just a spiritual successor to the gothic series, bearing only the visual resemblence and with a new story and setting.

Check out the Arcania and Risen separate topics for more information.

EDIT: Derf, you need to do some more research on Borderlands, it has cell shaded graphics and other stuff which you usually react negatively to.

I see. Since Arcania is the vehicle of JoWood (the publisher of Gothic who owns the rights), that's the successor to avoid, and Risen is the successor by the original developing company.
It's a good thing those guys severed their ties with JoWood. All I know about that company is that they release games far too early so they're buggy and incomplete.

Doesn't that describe all games nowadays?

Anyway, certainly Dragon Age is something I'm watching carefully. I would really, really love for op flash 2 to not suck like Arma 2 did. I wish they would've just cut a lot of features in order to make a more playable game.

Not sure about the rest. I won't say no to them, but I certainly won't be rushing out to buy em. If Alpha protocol is anything like hitman, I'll be getting it. I may have mentioned this in other threads.

Dragon Age for me too (even if the marketing campaign has been absolutely horrific so far) as a must-buy...Alpha Protocol perhaps. It's Obsidian so that's usually not bad news, but it just doesn't seem like my sort of game.

The rest I'll probably only buy if a) reviews are through the roof or b) we adopt one of the games as "hot new shit" in co-op, something Borderlands might warrant.

Also Peltz, the English version of Divinity 2 will be released in October.

Divinity II: Ego Draconis

I know what you guys mean, I notice the same issues in fairly recent games (Satis, the issue is also brought forward in the preview on Eurogamer). I don't really care all that much if the game is awesome anyway, but I do find it bizarre that there are some super-polished franchises out there (like ME) that are the extreme opposite, making this an issue stands out, which would lead one to think they can't afford doing stuff like that. Guess they can.

Oh Dragon Age has similar problems - not in the normal gameplay but the dialogue close-up 'acting' is pretty awful when it comes to texture detail. Major difference from what you see in ME or even HL2. Of course, just basing myself on trailers and preview vids here so might get better.

I think a game like L4D is perfect proof that you can get away with textures that aren't perfect or ultra-photo-realistic while building a great game. It's all about finding a middle road and omitting the glaring texture accidents.

Well, there's a difference between bad textures and simple textures.

...your mum is a bad texture

(sorry, I just felt the uncontrollable need to say that )

Yeah, being mature was never my strong suit either.