Tigranes

Crusader Kings 2, February 14. I'm disappointed in you all.

It is tricky. I think the best would be, let's say, buy a small, fairly easy to build model that comes in parts (e.g. a ship with wooden parts) that I can build without too much tools or skill, then propping it up somewhere in the room. The problem is I really am terrible at this stuff. I couldn't design a cup for you, or paint in a straight line (though I apparently had just enough skill to design/paint one of those pre-fired tupperware). So I think I need to think small. Something that already comes pre-designed, and I can put together without reaching for hand drills or painting those tiny warhammer miniatures. I guess something between 'real' models/building and Lego.

As one part of a multi-pronged campaign to get a PhD and not Insanity, I have decided I need another hobby. I've always really wanted to make something with my hands, except I am unmistakeably horrible at doing anything of the sort. I can't draw, I can't put together IKEA chairs properly, and about the best I can do is build computers without more than an hour of sticking things where they don't belong. So that rules out painting, knitting, and several cool things with cool end products. To wit: I'm wondering whether there's anything out there re. building sets or models that don't require (a) a large amount of supplementary material and (b) can be completed by challenged urbanites like myself. E.g. one of those model ships that you piece together with premade wooden parts, or something. My only requirement is that (a) I want a finished product to serve as decent looking decor to give me motivation, so, say, no Lego (though I loved Lego as a child); and (b) no airplanes, trains, cars, or any of those 'manly' models. I'm not interested in cars and the like and would find them boring, though I stand ready to be proven wrong. This does not extend, by the way, to any war-related things that predate WW1. That I would be all over. Does anyone do any of that stuff? Do you know where I can buy some? What am I even looking for? I'm hoping there are some basic stuff I can get started on.

Hurlshot, I'm curious as to why you say Gingrich might be the best equipped to wade past the partisanship. I think when you look at American politics outside of America, and you aren't really into politics per se, it's really difficult to figure out *any* truth you can rely on, because everything is so up in the air and subject to wordplay. Now I'm in the US but it's still hard to figure out who the heck Mitt Romney is (beyond "The Mild-Mannered Winner"), for instance, without doing a loooot of reading. I don't know if Ron Paul should ever actually be elected because it just seems surreal - would he actually end up changing things completely, or what? But I tend to like (rather irrationally) the fact that he sticks to his guns. Apparently.

CW is, clearly, the third to fifth most watched show on the CW.

...then an arrow of Ogre Slaying. With all the bonuses, you can see even with an initial roll of 4, he hits the target. We continue to hit bags of XP, and mostly, battles go quickly and smoothly. I believe Wals and Gorth hit level 4 around this time, and TrueNeutral level 2; still far away, but soon good enough to contribute. Here we take out Cythandria, Sarevok's consort, and recover the latter's diary - an important piece of incriminating evidence that will allow us to denounce him later. The other MacGuffin lies in the Undercellar, a den of iniquity (and sex) where Slythe and Krystin, an assassin couple, reside. Sorophyx: And now we have assassins who think they're funny. Seriously, there's a massive quality shortage here. Maybe I should open up a guild... Gorth: Actually, they look pretty strong. We should- Gorth{/b] -make Tale stand at the back a bit. Take Two, we cover Tale and start beating up on the hasted Slythe... But Krystin pops out of nowhere invisible, and takes out Tale again with a single lightning bolt. If he weren't the protagonist, that would be the third and final death for our resident wild mage. Sorophyx: We should just lock him up in a cage or something, then wheel him around. It's not like he does anything. The third time is the charm, though, and the assassins are disposed of. We recover more incriminating evidence linking Sarevok to the assassinations of the Dukes, and also an invitation to the ceremony at the Ducal Palace. Tale: Remember kids, mirror image + minor globe of invulnerability is your friend! We also take the time to pickpocket a certain Cloak of Balduran from a frightened prostitute. You see, there is an elaborate quest wherein a mysterious but powerful man commissions the heroes to track down the famous Helm and Cloak of Balduran. They do this by tracking down some adventurers turned into stone, extracting information, then tracking down the respective items. The Obsidianites, with their powerful metagaming ability, have now independently located both the helm and cloak. All that remains is to return and claim our reward from the man that never gave us the quest. Sorophyx: In other words, you just can't be bothered screencapping all that, right? Nepenthe: You know, I think he's just getting lazy. I mean, we used to get to say a lot more stuff! Gorth: I don't even have a one-dimensional character profile yet. How will i know what to do in life? TrueNeutral: I haven't even SAID anything yet. Guys, guys! I've heard your complaints and agree wholeheartedly with them. In fact, I will act on them immediately! Just after we visit the questgiver, that is. Sorophyx: Why after- Sorophyx: -oh, right. We get to die here, instead.

Step C: Chunk Ogre. Ironically, now that we have picked up the Gauntlets of Dexterity (Grants 18 DEX), all of our low-dex party members are doing the samba in the afterlife. It accordingly goes to Nepenthe, who is now a walking loot machine sporting a fiersome -7 AC. He will need to play meatshield for our junior members for the next little while. But there's not that much quality XP to be found in the wilderness anymore, and the random encounters keep scaring the Obsidianites. We decide we are better off running various errands in the city. As the endgame approaches, the city of Baldur's Gate has changed a little. Flaming Fist officers now chase and arrest/attack on sight, while rumours abound of Sarevok eliminating potential opposition in politics before his election as Duke of the city. We are approached by Tamoko, Sarevok's lover, who pleads with us to spare his life, and leave open the possibility she might be able to help him turn back from madness. I think the comparisons here to Irenicus and Ellesime are interesting; with Tamoko, and later Sarevok's mage mentor (i.e. Gorion's counterpart foil), we see the sacrifice of those who remain loyal to or care for Sarevok even as he passes the point of no return; in BG2, we see Irenicus begin far beyond such a point, but ironically, struggle constantly with a part of himself he was never able to erase. Sorophyx: We still get XP if we don't kill him, right? In any case, it's time to storm the Flaming Fist compound. Sadly, the guards are pretty low on levels and XP. Aided by Walsingham's good old British diplomacy, we rescue Duke Eltan and avert 'accidental' death by poison. We also decide to pay a visit to the local assassins. Sorophyx: Wait, so they don't even come looking for us now? We go visit their HOUSE so they can try and kill us? Gorth: It's these emasculated city fellows. All about working from home. This fight is potentially tricky, if only because half our party remains useless. We kill the first ogre quickly enough, but there are three other ogre magi that begin invisible and buffed up. Remember the specialty arrows we'd purchased before? Well, now Greylord's bow and arrows pass on to Sorophyx, who first fires a dispelling arrow...

The greater dopplegangers, we know, are dangerous if left alone. We now face two - one on the bottom left side manned by Sorophyx, one on the pulpit on the top right. (The monster in the middle - I have no idea what it is, but it soon dies off.) Tale: Come on guys, everyone on the dopplies. We should be fine if they don't cast confusion or hold person. Nepenthe: GO FOR THE EYES, BOO! Wals: Hang on, you've hardly done anything the entire battle! Why can't you take it down with your magic? Tale: It's on greater invisibility, I can't target with any spells. Wals: What about some more monsters, then? We can just pepper it from range. Tale: Oh, come on. They're pretty much dead anyway, let's not waste consumables- Wals: Great Persian Gravy! That thing's just about frozen my nutbags off! Tale: Wait, why the hell does it have Cone of Cold? I don't have cone of cold! Sorophyx: Greylord and the new guy are dead! I actually don't remember greater dopplegangers, or even these mirror fiend versions, ever casting cone of cold. In fact, I seem to remember the mirror creating clones of the party rather than these strange fiends. Since I didn't install any mods I hadn't previuosly tried, and left out various spell related mods, I'm not sure what happened here. In any case, Walsingham was lucky only to be hit on the fringes, or he would probably have snuffed it, as well. Thankfully, we're able to take down the dopplies with no further surprises. We have defeated the demonknight, and survived Durlag's Tower, but have lost half the original party in the process. Gorth is revived after his first death, but for Greylord, the Badass, it 's all over. Greylord: *sniff* I'll miss you guys. Greylord was responsible for a staggering 62% of all the kills in the party since day one - played solo, he would have amassed enough XP to hit 9th or 10th level. But now is the time to look to the future. TrueNeutral, a rather severely minmaxed shapeshifter, enters the fray. (The portrait errors when you add new portraits while the game is running, but soon fixes itself.) Shapeshifters have some powerful, well, shapeshifting abilities like the werewolf later on, but cannot wear *any* armour. This should be interesting. I should note that at this point, I'm using Ctrl+R & Ctrl+J to revive characters without bothering to carry all the loot back to a temple, and to avoid walking all over the place. In any case, the ghost of Islanne, Durlag's wife, sends us back to the surface; surely, a revolutionary dungeon design only rediscovered later with NWN2. Durlag, by the way, is unable to see Islanne, his eyes clouded by his emo guilt; thus even though we are able to free the tower of the demonknight, we cannot free Durlag's spirit from himself. *poignant* But what is truly important is that we end up with no less than 66,496 gold pieces from the Tower. We immediately decide to reinvest most of it on a fully recharged Wand of Paralyzation and of Monster Summoning. The reason is that we now have very little we need to buy from shops, and with 100 charges, these will last us until the endgame (and make Tale a little bit less useless). We do leave enough gold for a Crossbow of Speed from Beregost; with it, Gorth should over time be able to fill in for Greylord. Tale: Hey, wait. You realise I'm still wearing a Traveler's Robes? You promised me an Archmage's Robes when we got rich! Sorophyx: Quit whining. You're Good, right? I think Thalantyr at the High Hedge is Good. Tale: Yes, I know. He sells the robes... Sorophyx: ... but he's also wearing 'em. So all we gotta do is sneak in at night, lop his head off, and it's free robe time! Tale: We can't do that! He's Good! Sorophyx: That's the point, you idiot. We can't do it with anyone else, the robes are restricted by alignment! Well... we'll see about those robes. For now, our mission is to engage in a high-speed montage of wanton murder and destruction. Gorth and Wals remain at level 2, TrueNeutral has zero XP; we cannot face Aec'Letec or Sarevok in this state. First up: the wolves that chased us all over the map near Beregost in Update 2 (or 3). It's debut time for our new wand of conjure meat. We also stab some red wizards. (Interestingly, if you have Edwin in the party, they simply remind him of 'his task' then wander off, something never followed up in the game's canon. Open-ended plot design! From Bioware!) We also oblige with the Gnoll Fortress, at least some of it. Step A: Charm Ogre. Step B: Ogre kills other Ogre.

12. We At Durlag's, Part Three With our newest members, Gorth and Wals, we stomp ever deeper into the angst-ridden halls of Durlag's Tower. Stone Golem: Answer where blame has fallen. Tale: Everything... is your fault? Stone Golem: YES! EXACTLY! FINALLY SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS MY PAIN! Tale: Whoa, hold on there. I didn't- Stone Golem: It was my fault daddy lost his job. It was my fault he left mommy for an unsuccessful career as an oyster tradesman. IT'S ALL MY FAULT AND FINALLY YOU UNDERSTAND! Tale: Well, uh... Stone Golem: TELL ME I'M HORRIBLE! TELL ME! Tale: Uh... you're horrible? Stone Golem: SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT! HARDER! LOUDER! Tale: YOU'RE A HORRIBLE MOTHER- We do understand you, Durlag. You were just a few black eyeliners short of your true identity. For mysterious and totally not contrived reasons, the demonknight's sanctum is not accessible until we have completed the extended therapy session. Durlag now opens the way for us, only to find that some other adventurer's been camping the spawn spot for months. She's pretty messed up at this point, but gives us some useful advice for the battle ahead.. But first, the last trapped chest of Durlag's Tower. We manage to pause fast enough to let Sorophyx dodge before she expires. The demonknight is one of the most powerful opponents the Obsidianites have faced thus far, and so we break out various spells, scrolls, potions and traps. Nepenthe steps into its line of sight, but immediately fails a diplomacy check. Nepenthe: My diplomacy only works on the fairer sex, I fear. Yeah, about that. Now that Deraldin's bust, we're probably going to abandon the whole unrequisited virgin subplot. Just so you know. Nepenthe: What? But I only got on this gig so I could get some hot stuff! Mea culpa. As the battle starts, Nepenthe strikes the mirror, shattering it. It conjures hostile clones of all visible in the room, but shattered, creates twisted mirror fiends that pretty much function as greater dopplegangers and assorted monsters... including a second demonknight. We quickly retreat to the upper area and block the stairs with a wandful of monsters. As planned, the demonknights begin to face off against each other. The real demonknight gets mightily chunked by the clone without a scratch on the party, and a few arrows later, the clone too lies dead. Nepenthe: Truly, with my tactical brilliance and courage we have won the day! Not quite. You see...

I'm actually pretty ambivalent about Diablo 3 at the moment. It all depends on whether the multiplayer works well - and whether some stupid decisions like stats have a big impact on the MP gameplay or not. It's the only mindless grinder that worked for me back then, so may again.

Good news: we made it out of Durlag's Tower. Bad news:

Lay on hands heals like, 4 HP. I have no idea why it's so useless in BG1, or is that how it really is? I'll put some points into axe for ya, Wals. If you live.

Oh, Oner, we hardly knew you. And... seriously? Ten kills? You've been with the party for half of the adventure and you have ten kills? You've killed an average of one enemy every six days? I mean, you've killed ONE thing in the entire Durlag's Tower! Two new Obsidianites ride the magic elevator down the tower to join our beleaguered heroes. The first is Gorth, who is here to challenge Greylord's existing market share in Badassery. Just to diversify, I've made him a crossbow specialist; we only have one light crossbow Sorophyx currently wields, but we can get hiim the Light Crossbow of Speed in Beregost if he's alive by then. The second is Walsingham the Third, descended from the great Walsinghams that saved Icewind Dale. Twice. Because we're currently swimming in two handed swords, Wals is assigned the role of the party phallic symbol. The newcomers' first task is to brave the second Q&A session while the party cuddle and comfort each other. I have decided not to do any cheating or cheesing for now; the two newcomers start with zero experience, and we will try to survive the remainder of the tower nevertheless. About half of this level is filled with creepy subterranean cave networks that are mainly populated by ghouls, carrion crawlers and acid goo. They should provide good XP. There's a tricky moment when Nepenthe is on low HP and paralyzed, but Tale paralyzes a Ghoul with the wand, while the party takes care of the other one. After about a dozen kills, they've levelled up. Maybe this won't be so bad, after all...

Then the King decides to walk all the way over, so we spam it with fire. I can't believe I wasted potions of heroism on this! And finally, the fourth and last (and the biggest) level of Durlag's Tower. Durlag's ghost has, apparently, been chilling out here for a few hundred years. Our main task here is to knock some sense into the emo Durlag by visiting several key locations, answering some questions to statues, and in the process learning more about Durlag's past and his angst. In short, a dungeon representation of dwarven psychoanalytics. First, we trace the path of his fear. I really like the writing in Durlag's Tower in general - the actual lore of the place is nothing complicated. We don't find out any conspiracies about the dopplegangers, or that Durlag is not what we thought he was, or any stupid crap like that. It's a very simple story; through the doppleganger invasion, Durlag is made to lose the very thing he dedicated his life to defending, and he loses it through the very fear of losing them. See what you can do when you don't try to write freaking 'twists' into every storyline? The next Q&A session is scheduled in a room with some spiders. These are usually a walkover, but for some reason, they seem to do pretty high poison damage. We pop out some antidotes. Oh, okay. That's not good. Holy crap! Okay, so before Deraldin accuses me of negligence, I did have everyone pop down antidotes - but these spiders keep teleporting around to attack various characters, and they seem to poison everyone with pretty much every hit. Poison does ~5 damage twice a turn, not once, and we can only pop one antidote every turn (during which we can't cast healing spells or drink them). Now Deraldin is dead, and Oner has retreated bt the poison is building up... The spiders are all dead, but Oner remains in critical condition. After the last screenshot, he took a healing potion; but now he's back again at 2hp. (Yes, it would have been smarter to take an antidote instead, but Deraldin had kept them and Oner didn't have enough time to walk over to his corpse and pick them up.) Tale, through the Bhaalspawn dreams, has two cure light wounds per day; this is his last. But as soon as Oner is healed, the poison hits again. Tale picked up the potions, so Oner's on queue to drink an antidote once his turn arrives again, (all this is pretty much one turn = 6 seconds) and I call over Nepenthe, who has a pretty useless Lay on Hands ability but it remains our only other form of healing... But he doesn't make it. Moments before he's able to quaff an antidote potion, our fierce, anarchist philosopher-Barbarian hits the dust.

There are three main paths to the other side of the level; the one we take is full of giant sculptures. Essentially, we touch one, and the spirit of the warrior returns, dire charmed, to fight for our cause; but if any remain standing after a while, they will turn on us. We are meant to use them strategically to defeat the other enemies on the level. Of course, this is not a huge deal for us, because the wyverns eat through the warrior spirits like butter. Tale: Wait, does that mean... Deraldin: Yep. Giant wyvern corpse. Nepenthe: It might have been fun to fight that one. Deraldin: Fun? It would kill us all in one turn! Nepenthe: Not necessarily. You could get a cutscene where I jump up and stab it in the eye or something. Blood everywhere. Me looking brooding and dark and heroic. That would be so AWESOME. Deraldin: Yeah. Nothing impresses the ladyfolk like exploding your enemies, right? Well, actually... Beyond the three corridors, we have the four rooms of elemental themed challenges. Yeah, the dungeon design gets pretty screwed up on this floor. First is the ice room, which we greet with multiple fireballs. Then the acid room, where slimes split upon death if not killed with fire. Greylord delivers fire. Greylord: Badass Fire. Air is the most challenging, because there are 3-4 invisible stalkers that come out of nowhere, and do hefty damage. We manage to have skeletons soak up most of the damage, while Deraldin goes nuts with the wand of the heavens. Finally, the fire room is pretty easy if you have an archer - just get them down from a distance to avoid the fireballs. But you will notice that in the meantime the party has been buffing up. That's because immediately upon completing the four rooms, you are.. ...transported into a game of human chess. In the full SCS version, this would probably have wiped our entire party within 3-4 turns; enemy bishops and queens cast some pretty high level spells, and the rooks are as durable as battle horrors. Here, our trusted meatshield + fireball combo does pretty well. We silence a bishop before they're even in view...

11. We At Durlag's, Part Two Here we be, at the second level of Durlag's Tower. We've only died a couple of times, so far, so all is well. Oner: And that's exactly why governments are the problem. Once you have the power of life or death over many, it becomes easy to dispense with individual lives. At least we're not in Jagged Alliance 2. Initially, all doors are locked, save one filled with various stone sculptures. (This game really looks good... well, better than the KoA demo, at least.) Manipulating a few statue-heads, we are able to get some doors opening... ...and get to this one. You may note that we get some seriously phat loot in Durlag's Tower - pearls, silver necklaces, magical items, magical arrows, the lot. Hell, I think we picked up 14 antidotes or something from one chest. And yes, everything, I mean everything, is still trapped. That room alone has 5 traps on the ground. The third room has some freaky apparition of Durlag that teleports around longing after his wife, Islanne, before turning into a doppleganger and attacking us. I've done a bad job at focusing on story/plot throughout since most of us have played most of the game, but basically, by this point, we are told the basics of the tale of Durlag's Tower. Durlag was a dwarf adventurer who amassed some phat loot throughout his career; but he longed for a home, and not to die alone like his father did after his adventuring life. Thus he built this mighty fortress as a home for his family and clan. But its splendour eventually attracts enemies, and for some reason or another, dopplegangers end up invading his home. Durlag manages to defeat his enemies, but only by striking down dopplegangers that have taken the form of his friends, wife, son, everyone. And since then, Durlag's Tower has been haunted, filled with traps and monsters too daunting to be breached. And so in the next room, we find another apparition longing after Kiel, his firstborn son... just as we pick up Kiel's helmet. We send a gnoll ahead to find some traps. It does. Sorophyx: I'm gonna need like, a hundred gnolls. A doppleganger of Islanne, who was hiding out god knows where, suddenly reappears at this point and attacks us. Of course, it decides to cast a lightning bolt.... facing directly south. It rebounds about seven times and fries her good. That, by the way, is why we haven't been using Deraldin's special ability for a while. It's impossible to aim those right. Beyond that, the second floor is actually fairly comfortable, as long as you keep searching for traps. There is an optional challenge in the Dwarven Doomguards - an even hardier version of the battle horrors in terms of style, four of them lie dormant here unless you try to attack them or rob the chest. We're going to wimp out of this one - they pretty much eat through summoned monsters like butter (I think around 2.5 attacks per round, they can one-shot gnolls or skeletons, make good saves versus Web and other disabling spells, and have 100+ HP each.) Level 3 greets us with a room of fireballs. One explodes every couple of seconds, just enough to time it and reach the other side.

Yes, there are half a dozen or so in-City spots I haven't hit, as well as the Gnoll Fortress, the Red Wizards encounter and a few other things in the world. I'll reassess and see what to do after Durlag's Tower - hey, we might all come out alive! (Heh.) Again, if you want me to go somewhere, just say so and I will. Update... sometime in the next 24 hours, I think.

What I understand about this is closest to what TN describes - the real problem is that it opens up a lot of legal spaces in which we can eventually get big problems for things like Let's Plays, youtube amateur productions, other works of parody and pastiche, modding, and the millions of other things that play in the pool of fair use / diffusion. After all, the legal grounds for a lot of such online culture is very loosely defined. It might not be perfect but I support Wikipedia and other sites going 'black' in protest.

Difficulty doesn't change much outside the tutorial. And I don't see it changing a lot more because (1) there is no AI, they just take turns to slowly walk up to you and do their one move, (2) the combat is premised on you being able to chain a lot of cool combos on an essentially inert and helpless enemy, rather than dynamics of blocking and interruptions a la Gothic/Risen, etc. So it's not about difficulty, it's about chaining Cool Stuff!!!!!111, from what I can see. There do seem to be interesting mechanics there, and I enjoyed putting traps down as my finesse character, but that all goes to waste if the monsters are all dumb and indistinguishable. The only real enemy of note was the wolf in the first open area of the game. Might be good later on a $5/$10 sale.

If anybody dies now, I'll have to replace them - I'm not yet sure what I'll do, if that happens. I could start them off at, say, level ~4 so we have a fighting chance, but I'm not so keen on doing too much more in BG1 at this stage. I expect that Durlag's Tower + Endgame will take 3-4 more updates. Though maybe we should visit a certain graveyard for an explosive easter egg...

Gave it another go before uninstalling, generally improved opinions but still mixed. It does get better once you get out and go around exploring and questing, though it seems pretty similar to Div 2- run around, kill things, do some quirky quests - just without Div2's difficulty. In fact, apart from the cool charging the wolves do, the combat remains far too easy (even for Normal) and downright broken. As a level 3 guy wearing pretty much starting armour and some quest reward daggers I took out the entire town with no difficulty, mainly because (1) they slowly lumber around then might decide to attack you one by one, (2) they get stunlocked if you jsut sit there and mash attack. Environments also look better and better outdoors, but still retain some terrible draw distances and other oddities.

I don't recall anybody throwing a fit about LPs, of all things, unless anyone makes $ off it. Obsidian's pretty reasonable, I don't see any problems at all.

You can get it through Steam. It still wanted me to log into the EA crap, but I discovered you can just opt-out and play anyway (something they don't tell you unless you actually try to exit the window. Idiots.)

The holding-door thing was a fairly important thing in the feminist movement, AFAIK - the idea being that individual men are jsut trying to be nice human beings holding doors open for women, but it was borne out from and reproducing underlying ideas. E.g. it is the man who is the dominant figure in this social situation, so just as he would introduce her to other people at a ****tail party, he opens the door for her and she enters as part of his entourage. Obviously, a lot of people were bemused/annoyed that what they saw as an innocuous or well-meaning gesture could be criticized, but now, it's become a lot more common that people will just hold the door open for other people, man, woman, womyn, etc. So it's not quite so simple as saying "crazy feminists" (or its opposite). The irony being that the ultimate aim of a feminist wouldn't have been to stop men from holding doors open for women - it would have been that women can hold doors open for men, and men can hold doors open for women. So at this point, I don't think it's productive for any woman to be offended if you're nice enough to do it. It would be silly if we were too afraid to be nice to women (and that is sadly true in some cases). But a man who argues "bloody feminists, I like to hold doors open for women and lot of women like it, so it's all nonsense" isn't really seeing the whole picture. For the argument at large, I think it's much more interesting to look at Lewis' assertion on its own, because when we tie it solely to the specific case of gender / sexuality we get mired in this huge amount of existing pet peeves, sore spots and hashed arguments (as we've already seen, it's pretty difficult for us to talk about holding doors open without falling back on a not-very-constructive polarity of Kill the Patriarchy vs. Crazy Feminists). There are certain foundational pillars for contemporary Western society, and they are being challenged more cnosciously and actively than at any other point in history. I actually think one of the biggest aspects of this process is our loss or devaluing of ritual. Ritual doesn't necessarily just mean sacrificing animals or praying to God, but what we've done is devalue and discredit some rituals as 'religious nonsense' or 'superstitious / nonscientific nonsense' (or both), and then refuse to admit that the other rituals we partake in are rituals (easy one - nationalism). Separate from whether all religion is crap and stuff like that, which isn't my point, there are important social functions fulfilled by rituals, and we are in the process of denying or destroying our rituals without fully understanding those functions, how we might replace those functions. Put simply, we are seeing major transformations in the way we build solidarity, we build common definitions of ideas and values, and we participate in shared experiences - or, even when those ways stay the same, people often no longer recognize them as important. (And God help me if someone responds with "Religion is stupid and should be eradicated", because that's uh, nowhere near the point.)

Just tried a fair chunk of the demo. It's very... up and down. Most importantly, there appears to be the basics for a fun and enjoyable game, though it's unlikely it'll be memorable or innovative in any way. There's a decent enough character development system, a decent array of auxiliary features and things-to-do a la real shops, thieving/pickpocketing/gotojail/etc mechanisms (even attacking friendly characters, though I haven't tried this properly yet), alchemy and reagants, blacksmithing, etc., etc. The combat itself is pretty boring at the moment but at least some of that is due to the tutorialness of the whole thing. The writing is better than I expected (i.e. not terribly boring and retarded), though that's even harder to tell, yet. I don't think it's a Day 1 buy unless I'm really bored, but perhaps later on. More specifically, combat is the number one since it's an ARPG, right? Your character is pretty responsive, though actually attacking things is not so fluid. I think it will improve once players get more comfortable and you learn more skills and combos - right now as a Level 1 dude you're just smacking left button. Bows are really boring though, as you stay in third person view where you can't aim anything and you simply autotarget. I've never seen the point of that, from memory Div2 did this too and it didn't work there either. A lot is going to depend on just how dynamic the combat gets once you get some levels and have more options. The enemies are far too weak and far too stupid (mainly lumbering around really slowly), but you can only play Normal and it is the tutorial, so that's not conclusive. There appear to be some interesting features - i.e. some kind of special state you enter into when you take enough damage (or do enough?), essentially the same as TW2 but from earlier levels. The writing seemed to have enough there for me not to start skipping stuff, yet. Voice acting is a bit up and down, and equally, the writing slips between rather well composed lines and awkward ones, almost as if the script is still in draft stage or something. The concept of being revived and having no predetermined fate is cool, but who knows where it will go from there. It's hard to tell how lively towns are and how many quests you get, though... I was trying out thieving, got sent to jail, got caught escaping and died, before I could really look into the town. It's also impossible to tell how big/open the world is yet - the tutorial dungeon was obviously a series of corridors. The visuals aren't as terrible as I thought from the videos, but again.. I have no idea how to put the finger on this, it feels really weird. Technically speaking, the game looks dated by several years; washed out textures, etc. I don't really care about that so much, but here that combines oddly with (1) there's clearly some sort of HDR/Bloom going on in here, but it looks different from Oblivion's superbloom; (2) they tend to go for really bright, really distinct colours; (3) characters get a very crisp, even leathery/plasticky, kind of treatment while the rest, especially the ground, is a washout of bloomy bright colours. So everything just doesn't look stable, and it doesn't help that your character skates around the ground as well. So I guess a kind of washed out Disney fantasy land. But I was a lot more impressed once I left the opening dungeon and came outside - it's still washed out and bright, but with more space it manages to achieve a more coherent and better looking landscape. The UI/usability is pretty terrible. It has 'blocky' turning, similar to problems some people had with Alpha Protocol's mouse smoothing, where you don't really turn/rotate camear smoothly, it goes in big blocks, and so you're always swiveling around. Combine that with the fact that although you can move the camera, really, there's only one camera angle that's playable - it's much worse than Dungeon Siege 3, where you could at least choose from 2 views. Here you can't zoom out to any degree, and essentially you have to play in the KOTOR-view to see anything. Sometimes the game zooms out the camera a bit for you, but only when it wants to. So restrictive close-up camera + lurchy turning + washy visuals = not good. Moving on, the interface is OK. Looks-wise it looks pretty bad, mainly black background and white text and it just feels like someone forgot to make half of the UI; you need to click a lot of buttons to get to some things (Menu -> Inventory -> Primary Weapons -> Equip); but for the most part it won't get in the way, and works fine. All in all rather mixed, I'll probably wait for impressions once it comes out. I guess big plus is that it seems to have a solid core that it might build on, and the big minus is that it's pretty clunky and the blurry bright mess is sometimes hard to look at.