SteveThaiBinh

There's nothing wrong with incest, provided there's no procreation, as you said. Certainly, government has no business forbidding it. However, I've heard that many brothers and sisters who go down that route come to regret it, not because of society's reaction, but because of the damage done to the brother-sister relationship. I heard a radio programme a few months ago with several very moving accounts of this. I think this issue is linked with homosexuality in the very general sense of the state not interfering with individuals' choices.

Of course. (That's I'm, by the way).

Power to spell or punctuate would be nice.

Japan is not a US colony! Though of course, it was occupied and heavily influenced by that occupation. And influenced by European and other cultures, too. One of the best characteristics of Japanese people is that they openly acknowledge and celebrate these foreign influences; they don't pretend they invented it all themselves (unlike some). On a sadder note, with reference to the last page about deaths in sports, at the school where I worked in Japan, a student died in the baseball club because he was forced by the coach/teacher to train in boiling hot/humid weather without a chance to rest or take in water. My first duty as a teacher there was to attend his funeral.

The game is just as easy on the light side, if you're referring to the combat. To make it last longer, try increasing the difficulty level, or one of the rebalancing mods that people have made. If the force were real, you would choose the dark side because it has more power, you say. Power to do what?

Say 'Hi' to the Martians for us, and don't forget to have them sign the 'Restore the Kotor 2 ending' petition. Maybe LucasArts listens to aliens...

Describe, please?

I think the word 'soccer' was coined in the UK, to differentiate between Rugby football and Association football. The only other country I know of that uses the word soccer is Japan - well, 'sakkaa' actually, but the same idea.

Sorry, I'm a little slow today, but I'm not sure I understood... When it says "toss in an 'amusing joke'" at the beginning of the conversation, are you suggesting that there be a joke in your dialogue option, or that you actually select "amusing joke" from a list of options? Is this an overt dialogue battle, or just a description of the mechanics that would lie behind a more sophisticated way of implementing dialogue? Some familiar problems come up: 1. If your dialogue takes a turn you don't like, can you just end it and try again? That's how it works in the real world, and there is a drive to make games more realistic, but... 2. If you can't just try the dialogue again, you can't affort to put any important information in the dialogue, as too many people will miss it first time, and... 3. It's boring to have to keep reloading the game and trying to get the best possible outcome of a conversation, but people will do this unless you convince them that what they're getting are alternate pathways through the dialogue tree, none better or worse than the others. 4. Developers like their games to be perceived to be non-linear, but also to make them so that on any one run through, the player experiences the majority of content. If you put in a dozen different paths through any dialogue, most players won't experience them all, which means they won't fully appreciate the product they've paid for - and that's bad for business. Especially if all the dialogue is voiced as well. Nevertheless, I would like to see some alternative to the Kotor 2 dialogue tree system, where you just exhaust every possible line.

Better a poorly-implemented romance than no romance at all. Think of all the cool fan-art that Kotor has generated.

Baldurs Gate 1 : Haven't played Baldurs Gate 2 : Haven't played Icevind Dale 1 : Haven't played Icewind Dale 2 : Haven't played Planescape Torment : Haven't played Fallout 1 : 80% Fallout 2 : 85% Vampire Bloodlines : 90% Temple of elemental evil : 65% (Never buy from Trymedia. Ever.) Neverwinter Nights : 80% (Oddly unreplayable) KOTOR 1 : 95% KOTOR 2 : 85% (ending ) Morrowind 85% (loved the music, but too brown to be a classic) Dungeon Siege 40% Diablo : Haven't played Diablo 2 : Haven't played System Shock 2 : Haven't played Arx Fatalis : 70% (forgettable) Gothic : Haven't played Gothic 2 : 82% (Getting past the goblins was tough, but satisfying) Soulbringer : Haven't played Wizardry 8 : Haven't played Sacred : 60% (last time I take a risk on a hack'n'slash) Arcanum : 98% (loved it :D ) Jade Empire : Haven't played Dungeon Lords : Haven't played Deus ex : Haven't played Lionheart : 65% (Started well, but the story didn't go anywhere) Might and magic 9 : Haven't played Ultima VII: 90% Ultima VII: Serpent Isle: 95% Ultima VIII: 50% (Why???) Summoner: 80% Quest for Glory series: 95%

I'd be interested to know your source for that, and some more about it. What did the Earth look like when carbon dioxide levels were higher? Would it have been able to support the kind of human activity we see today? Part of the problem is also that the rate of change now is so great. While the Earth may be able to adapt to slow, steady changes, that doesn't necessarily mean it will do as well with the very sudden changes that we're bringing about. If global warming causes the Gulf Stream to stop, and the temperature of the UK drops by several degrees suddenly, can we sue the US government?

If having one guy do all the dialogue makes their stories more coherent and interesting, I'm all for it. They might have been a little more probing with their interview. "What do you think of the mixed reaction to Kotor 2's ending? How many women designers do you employ?"

Hilarious. The testimonials were excellent. "...it would be great to have a video camera."

What happens when it reaches 10000? Does someone email it to LucasArts?

A few did, and posted the link here a while ago. I filled it in without being asked to do so - who knows if it will count?

Not backwards, I think. We're taking a new path, and we have more control over our own destiny than any previous species. Instead of 'survival of the fittest', we can aspire to 'survival of all kinds'. More diversity=good in my book.

What worries me most about genetic engineering is that it's a distraction which doesn't really solve any of the world's big problems. The cost of taking our development out of the hands of God and/or evolution could be larger than we think. My first exposure to these ideas was in the movie Gattaca, I think. What psychological price is paid by someone who has been created to be another Einstein? To have that burden placed on you, and be unable to live up to it... We could be one of the last generations whose destinies weren't chosen for us by our parents. Perhaps future 'humans' will look back on this as the end of the Evolutionary Era.

Well, it won't make them happy. I don't know if any technological advance has ever really altered the relationship between rich and poor. And I'm optimistic that in societies where social cohesion is still considered important, even though it may be under threat, many of the benefits of genetic engineering will be widely available to most people.

Will we (humans) continue to evolve in the future? Surely with the advances in genetic engineering, cloning and so on, Darwinian evolution no longer applies to human beings. Are we able to shape our own future development as a species, and are we responsible enough to do this? What follows homo sapiens?

No, they're being very cautious, but they're giving progress updates, which you can get here (if you haven't already): http://magestrix.com/K2End/about.html I'm probably looking forward to this more than to any new game release in the next few months (Dreamfall apart, of course).

OK, a Hutt as a party member, yes, that could work. It would be a challenge for the writers and programmers, but it would be a good selling point for the game - I think some people would buy it just out of curiosity for how this could be done. He/She/It could move around on a hammock suspended between two GO-TOs, for example. As a player character, perhaps that would be a little tricky.

Liverpool is a lovely place. I know this for a fact, having seen many episodes of Brookside (a now defunct soap opera set there). They had a massive parade through the city tonight. It looked like loads of fun. Plus all the partying to follow, of course.

The mining thing I don't know, I'm afraid. The Hsiss thing is on Korriban, in the temple where you have all the visions of Malak, Revan and so on. There's a Jedi corpse somewhere that, when you click to 'open' it, automatically spawns two Hsiss monsters, which you can then kill. You can repeat this as many times as you like, resulting in massive experience gains, especially if you spawn 30 at the same time and dispatch them all with a couple of blasts of Force Lightning.

I'd still like fewer, but better developed, party members. Maybe a total of 8, but you could only get a maximum of 5 due to alignment - I prefer to have as deep and involving a story as possible, and too many possibilities for NPCs could be a restriction on involving them in the main plot. Still, if they can manage to pull off twenty extremely well-written characters, then we're both happy. Part of me would love to have the old gangs from Kotors 1 and 2 back, but part of me is very worried about how well the writers could make it work. Unless you start Kotor 3 from the moment Kotor 2 'ended', there's no reason for such a diverse group of people all to be together.