Calax

Key words: They Got Killed. That's all that really matters. And Volo, the circumstances of the death for the faceless mass that is "9/11" victims has basically wiped anything they did in life out for most people so that no matter what each and every single one was a saint, patriot, and true american hero, simply because they happened to be in a specific place at the wrong time. They still deserve the same level of respect as any other dead guy, including Bin Laden, and John Paul II.

Indeed I can, it's just that I don't think that saying that nobody should cheer for the death of your friends, and then turning around and cheering about the death of somebody else is hypocritical. Death doesn't just wipe out everything you did in your life, and the dead deserve respect under any circumstances. Being the leader of an organization dedicated to the removal of another via force of arms/terror, or being a guy who earns 5 bucks an hour mopping floors, or a middle manager who sleeps around and steals peoples pensions makes no difference.

I find it strange that the celebration of the horrific murder of thousands of civilians is being compared to the celebration of the killing of a terrorist leader responsible for thousands of deaths. I'm just not making the connection. The people who said "You can't cheer about the death of somebody!" are now cheering about the death of somebody.

I do find it a bit strange that the same people who were so horrified that Bin Laden and his cohorts, as well as a few of the Anti-american islamic nations, were celebrating on 9/12/01, are now saying that it's perfectly ok for them to be cheering up a storm when Bin Laden is killed.

So is it worth getting? I'm still enjoying Warband, but there wasn't much of a jump from the original M&B and Warband. Is this a bigger change? Yeah. You no longer recruit men by just showing up at their villiage and asking "Yo! you all wanna be warriors?" Instead you have to go to a merc camp and hire them, and then you can also purchase uprades equipment wise for them at the same camp. Also the inclusion of fire-arms has made it seem much harder to grind those first few levels/prestige because the rifles can two shot you if they get lucky enough. Also you start in an automatic area that teaches you the basics every time, and you start with a firearm of some kind that is just ridiculous in terms of damage per shot but takes 5-10 seconds to reload every time. Sort of like crouched lances in previous games, but instead of being a mobile target all the time you are jerky stop-go all the time because of hte need for aiming. They also changed the quest system... You can do regular jobs, or you can do "special" jobs for people, and I think you can also create your own caravans. Admittedly I haven't gone very far.

Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword It's... certainly a deviation from before, I'm still trying to figure out the troop upgrading between this and Warband.

Ok, so you can't do it in combat >.> My screw up

And for some impressive visuals!

So, attached is another fight with the Planar invasions, this one was from the earth. Also making a guild by the name of Obsidian Society.

That's a tricky question. First off, you get three active trees at once. So right now I have two healing professions and an offensive casting one. But then you can create other 'roles' which are like specs, where you have other trees active. You can switch them on the fly. It also doesn't seem to be as gear-centric as WoW, although I haven't played far enough to confirm this. It doesn't feel like it, but then, like Hurlie, I'm also pretty low still. And by "On the fly" he means "as the fight continues around you, channel a cast to change specs no resources lost"

http://gizmodo.com/5797588/how-osama-bin-laden-was-found Apparently Mr. Bin Laden lived in a mansion that didn't have phone or 'net, and burned it's trash.

Seal Team 6 is a specific anti-terror team.

Basically the idea behind rift's story is that centuries ago there was a war that the gods fought in and helped the mortals win (by having a few of the mortals ascend into higher beings, among other things). The victory came when the first ascended of each "soul" (sub-class) helped imprison the various enemy gods/dragons, and seal the planes. Then the gods set up a defense system to keep the other planes from intruding and to start making more ascended should the Blood Storm re-create itself (basically it's an inter-planar army led by the 6 dragons/gods). Fast foreward several centuries and you find an ideological divide start between the Defiant (who believe that the gods have abandoned the planet and are using tech to try to counter the blood storm... although they are playing a bit fast and loose) and the Guardians (who are the faithful to the gods, dogmatic and a bit overbearing... also have a distinct dislike of tech), but both sides are able to work together under a single unifying leader. In the Guardian starting zone you're 20 years prior to the events of the game proper. You were killed and chosen to for ascension because you were extremely powerful in life, as you go through you learn that the "current" king has gone a bit crazy and used some of the defiants machines to rip through the Ward to access the other planes, allowing the rifts to start opening in the lands once again. Zone ends in a fairly massive "Boom" and you pop back into the world 20 years in the future and learn about how the world has gone since then. In the Defiant starter, you're brought back to life as an ascended via techonolgy, in the end of days. Literally, the blood storms invasion has basically won because, according to the defiants, the Guardians were so focused on wiping out the Defiants and their tech that they didn't have enough forces to beat back the Storm. So your staring quests are basically activating a fail-safe device the Defiants built that flings you back in time to the period of the game to alter the future. Both stories are told HEAVILY slanted against the other side.

It's not really. Upper left is "me", and right next to that is my target. In the right corner from left to right is my buffs, and below that (if I had any) would be my debuffs, then the mini map. Below the mini map is the notice that I'm in a rift event area (the guy I'm sending spells at) and below THAT is the description of what I need to be doing in the event. The yellow text are my quests with my bags at the bottom. I currently have four action bars up that you slowly fill with abilities so it never really seems complicated, bottom left is every panel you'd need to pull up (character, inventory, guild, talents, pvp, support, main menu, social etc) with the chat menu above that and the raid/party frame above that.

And another one of the same fight. Was figuring out how to do screenies.

A shot from the final "boss" in the second zone of the Defiant chain of zones. For one of the invasions anyway.

Well, the frats and sororities behind my building went NUTS ripping off fireworks, blasting music and driving around with American flags. Good luck for me getting to snooze much for work

According to the Presidents press conference, it was a hit (basically) carried out by US forces within Pakistan territory (with permission) that resulted in a shoot out during which he was killed and we made off with the body.

They've confirmed in GI that Liara, Garrus, and either Ashley (who got a visual update) or Kaiden will return. In the demo they had they saw/heard Mordin, Wrex, Legion and Anderson.

Some do when the story is dragging you along with a sense of urgency that you must complete your Quest.

What I was getting at (and greylord too I believe) was that RPG's in generally should always have a pacing that allows for some periods where the player isn't on his toes trying to rescue the princess from imminent danger. ME did take the entire thing a bit to far, but it still shows that there is that need for logical points in the tale that we can feel like we can set everything down for a moment to go live life. Otherwise you end up in the Total War/Civilization trap of "Just... one... more... turn...!" because you just know that there is something BIG around the corner, and you just can't get out of the game. From an artistic standpoint this is fantastic and somewhat from a commercial standpoint, but the ability for a game to be accessible in smaller chunks is a very good thing to provide to people (it's one of the reasons that WoW has become so damn popular).

Dumbed down? No. Unless you think that I somehow managed to say that I wanted the game to have a story so formulaic that I could call the entire thing all the way along the line. I want a tale that SHOULD I decide to drop it for the night, there is a natural place for me to do it. And similarly I want a story that should I (for whatever reason) put it down for a while, when I pick it back up I can easily find out where I was and what I should be doing.

The onus is also on the developer to make the game accessible at any point that somebody should decide that they need a break. As in they're able to pick it back up, and pull something up that gives a quick recap of wtf is going on. Having lulls in the story is a good thing, it provides the player a moment to breathe. The issue here is that that ME2's story/gameplay design left it so that the main story was very minimal in comparison to the various sidequests. You had 5 "story" missions (intro, previously stolen colony, Colony being stolen, derilect, and finale) but 8 side missions that were each as big as a story mission. This may just be me but I'd think that the story should take up more time and gameplay than the "gathering your friends" segment of the game.

Yes. Ezio just... feels almost to perfect. >.>