Rise of the Argonauts Developer Diary
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Menus, or why you don't need the clutter
The next time you're playing an RPG (other than ours), get a buddy and set him or her up behind you with two stopwatches. When you start playing, have your friend turn stopwatch 1 on. Only turn it off when you stop playing. Stopwatch 2 is for menus. Every time you go into any kind of menu - including the main one and the character creation screen - have your trusty associate turn on the second one, and turn it off when you go back to playing.
You'll be surprised at the results; we were. Assuming that you're playing normally and not trying to avoid going into the menus for the sake of proving me wrong, you will discover that you spend at least 50 percent of your total gameplay time in one menu or another. The effect is similar to playing D&D with your eyes closed, imagining your character doing something cool, then opening them to look down at your smudgy character sheet to erase the number 35 in the hit point box and replace it with the number 29. It takes you out of the world.
The article already contains four new screenshots, but you'll find six more over at Voodoo Extreme, too.
