Tigranes

Amalur is boring, too. I'm holding out for Risen 2 for my RPGness, I'm sure I can get the European release somehow.

University student in Korea, fake suicide note then goes into hiding. The police and media are called and he is eventually found somewhere in the labyrinths of Seoul. He is said to have chided the policemen, saying they ruined the joke and made such a big deal out of it when "they do even weirder things abroad". Note that for Koreans, 'abroad' means America 90% of the time. Apparently he cannot be charged, as he is not the one who called the police.

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.