Tigranes

I live in the US now, so that's one reason. But I'm interested in how things are going with Cameron, Sarkozy, Merkel, Putin, the Chinese power transfer and the Japanese political swamp, since they are all pretty important positions for a lot of things in the world. And then there's the fact that you're often going to get more info about Obama et al than most of those folks, even in non-US English media. American (actually, global) voters/media seem to always overestimate the actual powers of a president, sure, but it's still an important part in the system. Finally, of course there's the fact that the American electoral system has something very disgusting and disturbing about it, which I really wish was not there. But I don't pretend to think it's reducible to something like 'American sensationalism / stupidity'. It does put me off paying a lot of close attention to it, though.

If that's all he makes, we can simply ignore that. Man hasn't made anything fun in 15-20 years.

Mitsoda is already planning a kickstarter for Dead State.

SE-published games on the DS line have looked the most appealing, though I obviously haven't been able to play them. They really need a new FF Tactics...

Vagrant Story was a rather odd offering in Square's oeuvre to begin with, so yeah, pretty hard to replicate. Square really died with FFIX and the Playstation for me, that's the last time they were able to combine new technology and trends with the solid foundations of their old games.

I doubt MCA would have gone for this if he was planning to do his kickstarter, like, within the month. I think an MCA/Obs kickstarter was always going to come a little while later. Upgrading my pledge now, I'm sure it'll mostly be an inXile production but I'd love to see Onyx as the engine.

... I was already in university when I played BG1 (a bit late, in 2000, though). I now feel ancient. Thanks. If it helps, the people in university make me feel ancient now. Oh, wait...

I was 10! I was still learning Engrish!

I played BG after BG2 came out, so I don't think I know about that. Enlighten me!

Are you comparing the two games? Because the two paragraphs are independent...

My review of that idea: Decline.

Arcanum is a fantastic game, and I think if you really enjoyed Fallout and IE games, you are actually pretty well guaranteed to enjoy arcanum - if you give it time. It actually does some Fallout-y things better than Fallout, IMO, and unofficial patch has helped. It is a game with major broken bits and one that just isn't elegant in anything it does, but it has a world filled with more meaningful, memorable and clever quirks and encounters than just about any other game, it has a unique setting that is consistently well delivered, and the combat, once you learn some of the pitfalls (design flaws), can be fun enough. Certainly, I think it's more rewarding entertainment-wise to invest a bit of time on something like Arcanum and let it deliver, rather than just sit down into a puddle of mediocrity you can stand like Amalur.

There is already an amazing UI/widescreen mod for Torment and the game's camera is more zoomed in by default, providing larger and more detaled sprites than the BG and IWD series, which already makes it more suited to higher resolutions, so I'm not sure what they could do to "enhance" it further. I would much rather see them tackle Icewind Dale next, which has not received the attention its siblings have enjoyed in terms of engine conversion and UI mods. You know what would totally rock? Arcanum, Enhanced Edition.

I want to try a game where I start as a count in Northern France, then create some sort of Channel Kingdom from Cornwall to the Lowlands. But nobody has a dynasty name cool enough to strike my imagination. I don't want Herbert de Guines to be the genius remembered throughout history!

Not a lot they can do with PST, since it's unlikely they'll actually restore cut content from the original design document, and they sure as hell can't write new dialogue or quests. So I guess just usability concerns - PST on the latest IE codebase could be nice, as long as that's all they do. Adding some more abilities and AI scripts to enemies wouldn't hurt, either.

Finalised my flight schedule for the summer. To save on $, I will be flying a total of 40 hours, including layovers and ground transportation, to go from NY to New Zealand. Then I'll go to Korea. Then France. Via Hong Kong. Then Korea. Via China. Then NY.

There's at least one instance where traps can make a big difference (see below), and I've heard of a couple others.

Beat Assassin, Loremaster, now trying Mercenary with high block and hammer. Feel like I could actually take out the Raider Camp on my own with just that little extra. What I'm trying to do is go in there with a big tower shield and 50 block, which means 95% of the three bowmen's attacks are blocked, and get into a corner where I'm fighting the melee dudes one at a time. Alas, the axemen keep splitting my shields when it's their turn, wasting precious time, and no matter how impregnable you are 7 enemies is a lot to take down with 4 CON and 35 HP. Actually, that's the thing with AOD battles - they're really hard, but after a while you can see that you'd only need a little more to tip the balance over numbers-wise. The dodge assassin got a massive break when I discovered the power of two-handers, for instance. We'll see... there are also a few abilities I haven't really explored, like Traps, and it seems some skill use options only come up when you have sufficient skill, so I wouldn't know about them?

Still AOD demo, about two dozen characters, few of them went far but none have gone all the way. Engaging thing.

tilde for console, then coc <cellid> = instant teleport to location. Very useful for quick back & forth, though abusing it will suck the verisimilitude out of the game. From memory, Skyrim cellids are all pretty matter of fact, e.g. dancingstallion or whatever. You can find them in the wiki. Edit: also, player.moveto 0001DA41 should take you to Devin Mallory.

I think we can simply continue the discussion in the other ME threads now. All good that you wanted to avoid spoilers Arkan.

Already there with Tutu. Of course they have to do it, this edition needs to do everything mods do and more.

Stick it out, the town opens up in the familiar way you recognise after that fight.

Alright, started as an assassin with 39 dagger and 10 DEX, died in the very first fight, though I nearly killed him. Got through on the fifth try, not that bad, then several characters followed who didn't last very long in general. I've now fiddled around for a few hours and tried a few characters, though never 'finishing' the demo. Generally, a very fun, quite polished game that has its own style and delivers on the kind of experience it promised. Still clearly needs some touching up, though. Writing and Quest Design The writing in general seems fine. Nothing silly, nothing stupid. Occasional grammar errors or awkwardness but not enough to break the mood. I haven't seen anything that's really impressed me or made me laugh, but it does its job well, and there is plenty of flavour text that is really important for the gameworld. The quest design is generally interesting, makes sense in the world, has multiple choices that are not obvious, and at least at the start, seems to have a design where different characters and different factions often show different sides of the same event or mission, which is great. I don't know if it's *more* reactive than RPGs we know and love, but it certainly seems to do a good job of all this in the confines of the demo. Several people, in the beta and now, have raised the question of whether it's a good thing to cut out the 'fluff' of walking around and fade in/out straight to action. It's pretty surprising, and jarring, when you start; I tried assassin, mercenary and praetor, and in every case it's a lot of read, click continue, fade, teleport. Sure, it cuts down on the 'pointless' exercise of walking to the next building or opening a door and going in to talk to someone, but actually, that 'filler' can be a positive thing when used in moderation. I don't see why the game has to zip me through from an audience with my boss to the next quest dude instead of letting me walk there and take detours. If I wanted to do it quick I'd use fast travel and it would hardly take any more time than now, and if I wanted to I'd do it the slower way, still not waste that much time due to the compact town design, and feel like it's actually a world and not a flow-chart. Now, I expect this is related to the idea that there is no filler combat, the typical thing inserted in such walkways. I don't think the 'teleporting' should be eliminated, but right now it is too much, at least at the start - it does feel like there's a little less of it later on. But the set piece combat design, which is good in itself, means that you're never really experiencing that sense of approaching a new/hostile area, scouting things out. Character, Combat and Gameplay Doesn't seem overly difficult, but then I toiled through the combat demo so know what is what. I think the opening fight could be a tad easier, as in the long run making that hard is not really doing anything for the hardcore players, and it can just frustrate newcomers who haven't had a chance to learn the system yet. It's not a question of stupidity, it's a question of not yet knowing what each weapon does, etc. In general, though, I thought the battles weren't that difficult, and work well. Hard to say too much about the character development system in the demo, and I haven't finished yet.But every skill seems to have a reason to be there. The one downside perhaps is that often you end up hoarding a few skill points to use to solve the next text adventure quest - e.g. in the one I don't know how many multiple solutions there are, but it all seems to come down to do you have enough points in this or that skill. Not a 'problem' per se, but we'll see how it all pans out. Graphics, Sound, Interface Looks somewhat like a mix of early 2000s first person 3D RPGs (say, in interiors) and late 2000s advanced lighting, grass, textures, etc. elsewhere - fine, works for me. The portraits are excellent, but we knew that already. Music is forgettable but doesn't seem to get in your way so much. The interface is generally pretty good. I'm not a fan of the fluorescent solid colours used in battle grids and such, especially in combination with the stone and brick feel of the rest, but the opacity on the grid can be turned down. What interface is there works well; would be better if there was a bit more of it, e.g. a button to highlight interactibles or in-world tooltips. Small Suggestions and Fixes As others have said, an alt/tab button to highlight everything you can interact, short tooltips on characters when you hover would help. Also, something to replace that terrible, terrible neon green blob when you click to move. The Take All button in looting should automatically close the window, too. Or have an option for it. The minimap really needs a here-i-am. Bugs Playing on 1200x600 Windowed, 32bit Windows 7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570. The weird tooltips / buttons in char screen bug happens on 1280x720 windowed. Switched to 1333x768 (i think, the next up 16:9 ratio) and all was well. Not to mention the fonts actually got bigger and better! The known bug that after several deaths to the first enemy, you just keep dying immediately after the first convo. This actually seems to happen later in the game too. In the opening fight, if I knock the opponent down on the far corner with the vase, even though I have 95% chance I missed 5 times in a row. Either bad luck, or some kind of bug. The AOD cursor seems to change into normal cursor in some places like death screens, main menu and character menu. One crash with Visual C++ runtime error, after lots of playing and reloads.

Bought the first novel in a long while, The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. Sold me when page 3 named a character's indigestion-driven habits Tridib's Gastric. Indian writers tend to be a bit of hit and miss for me, sometimes the books really work well in turning all the Indian-British minutiae into a powerful illustration of ambiguities, other times I just feel like I'm reading more Indian we-are-postcolonial blargh. I felt the latter about The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, while I still really want to try A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, which had a very good first 50 pages. In university, one of the more interesting things I recently read was a chapter on French folktales in 17/18th centuries - how earlier versions of well known tales like Little Red Riding Hood often involved things like the wolf tricking the girl to eat the grandmother's flesh, then jump in bed with the wolf dressed as grandma, take off all her clothes, then get eaten by the wolf.