Blarghagh

Thank the lord for that reload - that first battle was just sad for poor old me - ten levels drained within seconds! I much prefer dying in battle in wolf mode even if it meant my death and it looked like I might have survived the first - that would have been a survival filled with shame! Congratz on your hard won dragon kill, Tig. Who's getting thrown into the meatgrinder next? Throwing myself back unto the bottom of the list as a Half Orc Cleric / Thief. That one's possible in BG2 right?

They never let Uwe Boll in in the first place.

Fighting the dragon seems like a horrible idea so obviously you should do it!

Vet trip confirmed that my cat has bronchitis. Interesting.

Can anyone recommend some good horror titles? Since Amnesia 2 and the full length Slender game don't have release dates yet I'm feeling a little starved for a good scare.

Hah! Convincing synthesized voices? Fat chance. Pass the uncanny valley for the more easily fooled eyes and then we'll talk ears. Close to mimicking voices and appearance! People overestimate modern day graphics. It's easy to go "oooh" about something that looks cool but there's a reason everyone hates on CG heavy action movies - computer graphics are never convincing. And this is coming from a CG Animator.

I was really disappointed with John Dies At The End but that's mostly because I really enjoyed the book and the movie adapts maybe 25% of the plot and then skips to the end. The parts that were in there were pretty much spot on, but I saw two of my favourite moments from the book and the rest wasn't there. No random exploding dog, no FPS send up, no evil advertising, no Vegas.

Nevertheless the term honor killing is now most often used for and associated with cowardly acts.

There was Scotty. There was no science in his Transporter magic.

Ah, see, I was already starting to doubt what I thought honor killings were. A few years back there was a string of murders referred to as honor killings in the netherlands where young muslim men would kill their sisters or cousins for dating non muslims. No justice in that.

J.J. Abrams already did a Star Wars movie. It was called Star Trek for some reason though.

What wrong with honor killings? It's just form of justice in societies without repressive apparatus (police/jails etc). Anyway its better, when victim side make revenge, than delegate this right to government. What.

It's time to get Tiggy with it.

If they were fans of the graphic novel and didn't like it, they were probably purists. If they weren't fans of the graphic novel, they were probably bored out of their skulls. I couldn't appreciate the movie before I read the graphic novel - and in fact I think they should have changed much more because as far as transferring a graphic novel to the big screen it worked fine, but as a standalone movie I felt it was a bit of a failure. There's a reason filmmakers never just use exactly what's on the page - it's because comic books are a completely different medium.

Didn't it already work twice? Wasn't Heavy Rain a successor to Fahrenheit? I'm not sure, they're not my thing so I never checked. I disagree with the whole direction anyway - I'm sick of game devs who want to make movies. If you want to tell your story write a book or make a movie, in a game the player is your co-writer and you should allow them to make the meaningful choices as to where the story goes. You say that but in my opinion it's a new genre that developers are still getting to grips with and the moment someone makes one of these games with story and direction on par with a highly acclaimed movie or television show then the whole process will have been more than worthwhile. I think that when one of these games does include real branches rather than forcing everyone down the same railroad it's going to reap big rewards, but then again adventure games have almost always railroaded players and still manage to be loved by a sizable fanbase so I don't know if it's ever going to be vital. Another benefit not to be overlooked is that this is a genre that can easily work without any violent content and seriously delve into stories about romance, tragedy, comedy ect. in a way that other game types couldn't hope to. And the advantages over a film are that you can actually be in the story effecting things and you can actually see other ways the story can go. Some stories may work better as interactive games than straight-up-movies, I imagine something like The Thing where you're stuck in a room with a number of people and wondering who the monster is might be even more atmospheric for example. I think there's a lot of untapped potential and that it's worth exploring even if they're not for everyone. I think you're misunderstanding my point. At no point am I saying that I don't want games or interactive storytelling to delve into new territory. I applaud game developers focusing on making a game engaging and breaking new ground, and I love interactive storytelling. I just don't think QD is doing that. They might think they are, but turning games into movies with some pointless game elements pasted on seems like an enormous fall backwards to me. Personally, I feel that for interactive storytelling, especially for non "gamey" games that don't rely on frags or points or the loot machine, meaningful choice is all the more important. The problem with QD as far as I've seen (I hated Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit looked like more of the same so I have to admit I never bothered with it) is that there is no interactive storytelling. There is interaction, there is storytelling, but the two don't really intersect. You have your game elements, the interaction where you do what the game tells you to do and you make no real choices, and you have your movie elements where the storytelling takes place. It might be interesting storytelling but it is not interactive storytelling because you are not actually interacting with the story - that makes it a movie or a book that is pretending to be a game. In my opinion, Fahrenheit being a game detracted from it more than anything - I just wanted the damn thing to get to it and not make me jump through boring hoops to get to the next part. I ended up quitting and watching the rest on YouTube which was a far more satisfying experience. There is literally no reason why Fahrenheit should be a game instead of something else. I want to clarify that I have no problem with cinematic games, but obviously QD wants to make movies - that's why they want A-Listers, Mo-Cap, etc., but I disagree that this is the direction games have to go. Personally I loved another cinematic game, namely TellTale's The Walking Dead. I like it because I felt like my choices mattered. I don't know if they actually did, I never checked what the alternatives did, but the main thing is that it felt like they did. It also worked as engaging storytelling, judging by how I and many others had manly tears dammitat the end. It felt like your choices determined what happened to these characters, and therefore you were responsible for them. Instead of giving you obstacles that block the story from continuing such as Fahrenheit did it allowed you to be the one to drive the story forward. It succeeded as interactive storytelling where Fahrenheit failed simply because it provided meaningful choices and it didn't need fancy graphics or top notch voice acting to do so. I also disagree with the assessment that to make a game break new ground you need to make it more like a genre movie. Here's an example of a game that follows all the adventure game trappings yet still manages to be highly engaging and able to invoke powerful emotions: Frictional Games' Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The "plot" itself is railroaded and the puzzles have standard adventure game solutions, yet this game is widely regarded as the scariest game ever made. I feel that again this is due to meaningful choice, despite it not being so apparent. You follow the game story, yes, but since the goal of the game is to play with your emotions it places all the meaningful choices there. Do I run? Do I hide in the darkness? Am I safe enough to turn on the lantern? Am I going to risk going into the next room? Again, highly interactive storytelling, on an emotional level rather than a plot level, simply because of the choices you are given, and this game did not need masterful graphics to be absolutely immersive and terrifying. So yeah, I have no problem with games being more "cinematic" as long as they are still games. The interaction has to be meaningful and no amount of fancy graphics or convincing acting will turn a movie masquarading as a game into engaging interactive storytelling. Making these games more like movies will detract from them so if you want to make a movie, go make a movie. Player interaction should always come first in games, if you want players to experience your story as players then you should let them be the one allowing it to play out. If your goal is just to tell your story - if you want to see your story play out exactly as you see it, gtfo and pick up a goddamned camera. I hate it when forums suck me in like this and I spend until 2 AM trying to formulate my thoughts.

Wow, that is gorgeous, and double for the instrument.

Didn't it already work twice? Wasn't Heavy Rain a successor to Fahrenheit? I'm not sure, they're not my thing so I never checked. I disagree with the whole direction anyway - I'm sick of game devs who want to make movies. If you want to tell your story write a book or make a movie, in a game the player is your co-writer and you should allow them to make the meaningful choices as to where the story goes.

For me it wasn't a bad movie, but it had enough stuff to keep me raging about it for quite a while if I wanted to. For me personally it was both a bad movie and it had stuff to keep me raging. I wince whenever someone mentions it. Too bad because I recently read an earlier draft of the script and it was great. Almost all of the flaws were introduced in the draft written by Lindelof - and then the guy had the balls to denounce the movie and say the previous versions were even worse. The exception is the random, unneccesary and never again mentioned zombie attack in the middle of the film which was in every draft. I saw Hotel Transylvania which had fantastic animation and a few smile worthy jokes, mostly involving the werewolf, but the movie on a whole was a travesty.

Shiny.

I have the same thing, except the diminutive form of my first name was pretty much my name for the first 12 years of my life, so nobody calls me by the diminutive form of my name except for my close relatives. Then again, my actual first name is a rather simple English name... that a lot of people in the Netherlands just can't seem to pronounce and turn into the weirdest things. Now that annoys me.

Can it be on the way back?

I'm conflicted, on the one hand I'd say go to the Umar Hills first because it'll possibly allow me to survive longer... on the other hand, deaths are hilarious and the Planar Sphere is more fun. I don't know! Then again, my character always wanted to see a dragon and if he goes to the Planar Sphere first I probably won't get to. Umar Hills it is!

What was your source? Box Office Mojo isn't the most trustworthy site so I could be wrong.

Well, I wouldn't call it solid - 200 million domestic gross on a production budget of 150 million plus advertising isn't that much. Batman Begins definitely owes its sequel to DVD sales. On the other hand, Dredd seems much less likely to do so. Production budget of 50 million and a worldwide all time gross of barely over 50% of that? Very few films have failed that badly. They said they needed at least 50 million domestic alone to even start thinking about a sequel. EDIT: 90 million? Box Office Mojo said 200 domestic for Batman Begins. Pretty sure it made at least 70 million opening weekend.

Well at least he came from that story. It's just that this time around he survived the battle at Moria. If I recall correctly, his son is even in the book. It's a fairly minor change and it gave the bad guys a face. In theory he worked, just in practice he looked a little too uncanny valley. I kept switching between "wow, this guy look great" and "wow, this guy looks fake". As far as I remember, Radagast wasn't even mentioned in the book, was he? I thought he was mentioned briefly in Lord of the Rings and that's it. Now that's a transplant. So you do think it could've been better? Well no, because then they would have gotten a ****storm from the purists. They were damned if you do etc. from the start. That's what I meant. I was a bit unclear.