SteveThaiBinh

I haven't seen any of the Rocky movies, but I think I've seen others with Stallone, none good that I recall. What was the last movie he was in where he actually gave a good acting performance?

Yes, I'll admit to having had that feeling. However, I think we have to take K2 on its own terms in this regard. It's a different kind of story, a personal journey, and the gamer has to fill in a lot more of the story rather than having it handed to us. When I arrive on Malachor as a LS Jedi, my Exile is a very different person to my DS Sith and has undertaken a very different journey. The dialogue in the game, particularly the last interview with Kreia, doesn't always reflect the different choices I've made, but it doesn't deny or unravel them either. K2 makes you work harder than K1 if you want to enjoy it - is that a weakness or a strength?

Cheating ruins the replay value of the game. It's much more fun to experience the different feats by role-playing the different characters separately. Or do you have a specific and novel concept for a character which involves a combination of feats from different classes? If so, please share.

We've read and talked about how rushed it was, and how Obsidian tried to do too much and ended up cutting large chunks that made K2 feel incomplete. They were clearly trying to make K2 a sequel that followed on naturally from both LS and DS endings of K1, yet was a wholly new story with new main characters. It was the right thing to do, they made a pretty good stab at it, but they didn't quite pull it off. It was always fun to play K1 and have the feeling that your choice to go LS or DS would change the fate of the galaxy. Having played K2, you know that whatever path Revan took in K1 had little or no effect. I don't think it detracts from K1, but it does change the experience of playing through K1. K1 and K2 are interesting to compare, because they're so different and the contrast shows up their respective strengths and weaknesses very well. They're an odd pair, but lots of fun.

I've never downloaded it and wouldn't use it. I always play through the tutorial in full, too. The longer and more epic the game, the better, and for me that means not skipping through sections just because they're at the beginning.

Trymedia offered legal games for download, and I thought it was a great idea and promptly purchased Civ3 and Temple of Elemental Evil. I still think it's a good idea in theory, because if your hard drive fails (mine did) you can just download the game again and again for no charge. It saves having to have the CD in the drive when you play the game, which is nice. However, Trymedia itself has too many issues for me ever to use it again - mainly, that you're stuck with the version you download, and any patches released later by the developer/publisher don't work with it. This was something of a problem with ToEE.

The forums are fine the way they are. WoT doesn't seem so hectic that you lose track of interesting threads, so no real need to split it up. I suppose that when more is known about PNJ it will split into several forums just like Kotor 2. By the way, the best thing about these forums is how quick they are. What's causing that? Is it software, the computers they're running on, the black background?

Arguably, atheists and agnostics are one and the same, or at least very close. I know that in common usage, they appear to be different, with atheists confident that there is no God, and agnostics unsure of whether there is a God or not. But if you dig a little deeper, there's not much difference between the two positions. Few atheists would say 'It is impossible that God created the world'. Instead, they would say 'There is no evidence that God created the world, and ample evidence that the world came into existence by other means, therefore I believe that God did not create the world.' This is not an outright denial, so technically those atheists could also be called agnostics. Agnosticism is not a middle way between atheism and theism, because the agnostic usually doubts and wants evidence. It is usually therefore closer to atheism, though an self-proclaimed agnostic might disagree. In any case, the agnostic inherently shares the scepticism of the atheist rather than the faith of the theist.

Atton and Mira might work as a couple if they could get past their 'attitudes'. It would never happen, though. Bao-Dur and Visas could live easily together, neither saying a word. Some of the best marriages are based on that.

It does. It never serves to take offense in this kind of discussion, because most people involved are usually struggling to understand points of view that are very alien to them. A Christian who suggests that atheism is also a faith may sincerely be trying to find points in common in order to further mutual understanding. However, to many atheists, referring to the belief as a faith is undermining a key part of the belief system, which is that evidence underlies what they believe. I don't really think that I'm taking a leap of faith in holding an atheistic belief, though that's an interesting discussion, too. Discussion of language are unavoidable in this kind of debate.

We had a lengthy discussion about all of this a while ago. Personally I don't like to use the word 'faith' with science, because 'faith' implies belief without the need for evidence, whereas 'belief' is a more neutral term which includes the possibility that what you believe is supported by evidence. The evidence may not be complete, but it is there, and its presence is something that is important to atheists. This explains why many atheists react negatively to the suggestion that their belief system is a faith.

As far as I know (and my knowledge is rather out of date), scientists don't know exactly how the initial spark of life came into existence. We know how to get from the big bang to a planet on which all the chemicals needed for life exist, and we know how to get from a single cell organism to human beings. It's just the bit in the middle that's lacking. Some would argue, reasonably enough, that this is a pretty big hole in the atheist's explanation of the universe. Others, myself included, would express confidence that since science has been so successful in explaining phenomena that could previously only be attributed to God, it's reasonable to expect that the spark of life will soon be explained and understood as well. Here's a link to a page about Pasteur's experiment, and an important quote from the end:

See, I would have read that and interpreted it in a completely different way. Isn't it more likely that they were joking with the interviewer? These LucasArts people must get asked variations on 'I hear there's a rumour you're developing a new Star Wars game featuring the Teletubbies' around twenty times a day.

I think it's more commercial advertising that's the problem. Every so often we get a silly link to some great new product or other accompanied by phony advice from the poster/bot. Promoting a site out of interest should be OK, in my opinion, as should linking to a commercial site as part of a discussion of their products, rather than as an overt 'Look at this and buy!' post.

Amazon.co.uk is still saying October 21. I appreciate that gaming sites will have widely differing dates some months in advance, but is it normal for this to continue so close to the possible release date? I'm still hoping for my copy next week. I'm fairly confident that Civ4 will be a fun game, though the learning curve is another question. Streamlined or fiddly? Time will tell.

I suppose the ideal path would be to teach yourself to enjoy doing the things that keep you alive longest. Asparagus is an acquired taste. I know the feeling of having a really long lie-in on Sunday mornings and thinking that when I'm 70 I'll regret not having used my time more productively. However, I suspect this is nothing more than my genes driving me to get out and have more sex in order to reproduce. I will not live as a slave either to my genes or to my fear of death.

Great site, thanks.

It's a blurry image, in the grand tradition of alien hoaxes everywhere. If that's the alien menace that's about to invade us, I reckon I stand a pretty good chance with my hockey stick.

Pointless. I think they realised halfway through that the design of the areas made it irrelevant as a transport device, but didn't want to cut it out because they were short of events that granted influence with NPCs.

First time through, it was all my NPCs on their solo missions, because I didn't take the trouble to build them into strong fighters by themselves and didn't even know that you could jedify them. Atton vs. the Twileks was toughest. Poor Atton. He must have got through 10 melee shields before he made it.

Yup. Although that's sort of connected to why I chose it.

Presumably once the game had been made and the $10,000 prize awarded, he would immediately demand that the game be banned and every copy burned. And isn't $10,000 a bit extravagant? Surely the average computer game can't take more than $5000 to develop, $6000 tops.

Too many RPGs don't take the trouble to put an interesting spin on the fantasy or space setting, leading to a feeling of their being overused. Gothic 2 was a good example of a game that just felt to me to be too generic. Looking down that list, I could suggest others. The Star Wars setting is getting that way, as the Star Trek one did before it. Since this new movie Serenity is very successful, perhaps we can expect an RPG based on that universe in the near future. If that turns out to be PNJ, I'd be happy.

I'd say that it doesn't give the government a distinctive personality - it's too neutral. You need to find a voice or style for your fictional government, and then phrase the definition of terrorism in its own terms, perhaps exaggerated a little for satirical effect. For example, our beloved Leader Tony Blair is fond of certain words in his speeches, for example 'new', 'values' and 'hardworking families' are buzzwords at the moment. So he might define a terrorist as 'An individual who denies the values of our great society, endangers hardworking families and threatens our project of building together a new and peaceful age'.

These people are heretics and splitters, cast out of the church of the One True God, the Flying Macaroni Monster. His supremacy is so self-evident that we don't even need to teach about him in schools. Besides, evidence just spoils it for everyone.