Tigranes

Great. The more options, the more things I can turn off and hope the game runs.

Kensais actually get pretty damn powerful in BG1 Tutu. My Fighter/Avenger was pretty useless in the grand scheme of things throughout the whole game, sort of disappointed with that. At end game i had enough Xp to be level 7/8 or so and had good THAC0, but just didnt have enough meat on him to duke it out melee, whether in terms of damage or HP. Losing Kagain actually made things really difficult for me, as I didn't want to take Khalid or Minsc - Shar-Teel eventually chunked due to her low HP and Yeslick's inability to use any magic items (including potions) also hurts. And Tiax is useless, even with a gauntlet of ogre strength & +2 Warhammer. In the end Kivan had something like 500 kills and the tankers were just shieldscreens for the sniper of doom - then Imoen, dualclassed to mage, and Edwin, would dish out malison, confusion, horror, etc. With SCS/Insane, it's actually mob fights that get really difficult in the endgame. Chapter 5 Iron Throne was incredible with the invisible thieves able to chunk people with one backstab, unholy blights taking out Kivan in one go, etc; also had to time the disabling spells just right for the 2 cultist battles before Aec'Letec. Had to reload the Ogre Mage ambush several times until the PC could get the dispel magic off right. Deraldin, early-game this time I didn't actually die that often - finding that small boosts in saving throws make a big difference, and also not being afraid to use wands and potions (since you get bucketloads of them later). Bless, Sleep and Charm Person can get you past most places on Insane (and later, hell, I would Charm my own party members if they got dominated). The pre-buffs are powerful, but to compensate SCS now lets you cast breaching spells on semi-invisible enemies, and dispel magic is much more powerful. Thinking whether to continue with BG2, but also want to play Arcanum again and of course there is TW2.

I'd recommend some party-based D&D RPGs if you're looking for that kind of stuff - DS3 for good or bad is from the outset very different, but DS1/2 were designed off, and are derivative children of, the BG / NWN serieses, etc. that are still out there for playin' if you haven't yet. It takes a lot, lot, lot, lot more than a script, unfortunately. System changes require everything else to be changed.

You don't get an autosave after Imoen talks to you? I always did... and these days I always make sure to install the skip candlekeep component (I think it's in SCS or BG2Tweaks or something). Just finished my BG1 run, Improved Sarevok had to be LOS / Wand of Monster Summoning cheesed to all hell. The kicker is that not only are his 4 lieutenants more powerful now, they explode on death and turn into those powerful skeleton warriors - the explosion killed me a few times. Pulled out all the stops with scrolls of greater malison, Spell Thrust, potions of invulnerability, and of course all the late game cash spent on arrows of dispelling and piercing. If Kivan could use Wand of Monster Summoning he could probably take on anything in the game by himself. Overall had Montaron, Xzar, Kagain, Shar-Teel chunked + Yeslick, Tiax dead at final battle, but lived to tell the tale with Edwin, Imoen and Kivan. (Aec'Letec was bloody annoying, too, but Kivan > *)

Yeah, you've repeated this 3 times, and there's never been any shade of doubt in the answer. Of course you can.

I don't expect much from DS3, to be honest, not in the way I do from titles like AP or TW2. DS lore was generic high fantasy to begin with and this game is built from the start to be a fun co-op hack & slash action RPG loot-a-thon. I'm just expecting that with Obsidian writing, the story segments will finally not be a pointless waste of time like it is in 90% of action RPGs but something worth the time spent on. Obviously that's very different from the roller-coaster ride of dialogue webs like in AP, where half the game was playing dialogues.

I've played with some bad control schemes and I've always gotten used to them after a few hours. They've also never detracted from the game, ultimately, if the game was great. Can't be worse than Gothic 1/2 or NWN2.

You don't have to play with a gamepad. Mouse/Keyboard is developed separately by OBS for the PC. Currently we hear that it uses point&click, though that may not be the only option available. Gamepad on a PC is just another option that a lot of people appreciate.

Never knew of Drizzt until I encountered him in BG2 - knew immediately that he was a flaming moron and had to be killed. Chickened out of fighting him this time though, the BG1 Drizzt is hard enough without Insane & SCS. Already got enough party members chunked. Nearly lost my beloved Tiax in the Durlag's Tower chess battle last night.

Those with a marked yet appropriate and definitely not unhealthy interest in the video game known as Gothic, of course. Get with the program.

I'm in Spider's camp. IWD was great, I wanted to like TOEE but, at least nearer the time of releaes, it had such bad production values at every level - UI, responsiveness, controls, etc - and the story/quests/dialogue is gutter, which defeats the point of Troika making it.

Certainly Hurlshot, but at the moment we effectively have, well, not a lot of censorship at all. A little bit couldn't hurt, especially with the sexualisation of infants, for instance. With airbrushing and such in particular, it's fun to note that (a) it has been around for decades, and (b) it really changes a lot of things you wouldn't expect - it's not just about making breasts perkier and getting rid of stomach fat, and thus it affects our ideas of beauty in various ways. For instance, see the before and after of vintage pin-up models: Anorexia is definitely another problem in the sense that we are quickly getting a lot of social stigma associated with it - if you have anorexia you're in a right rut. You sort of want to be thin like everyone else but you feel so much more guiltier about it, and at the same time you want to try and cure your anorexia, you feel the need to defend yourself from people thinking you're just a crazy dieting chick, etc.

I continue not to see a huge deal in this. As Gorgon said a trial was out of the question - a live capture then protracted discussion over what to do with him would have quickly become problematic, risking giving Bin Laden a final legacy in the form of a giant soapbox and raising all sorts of questions about international law, US' position, justice/revenge, etc. The US took a calculated risk and said any uproar from going in and shooting him in the face is better than that in all areas, and they are right. The Pakistani 'agreement' is not a huge surprise either. It was the most sensible way for both governments to actually get something done about the situation without attracitng needless public outcry. They needed to hunt down Al-Qaeda and bin Laden. It would have sent a stupid message to the US, terrorists and everyone else if they said "oh we can't follow ya there". They simply used, well, diplomacy to ensure that the focus was on the elimination of security threats. Of course there is the disturbing spectre of sovereignty but it is only just that, a spectre. International relations are dependent on soft power and deals made on the basis of soft power. Privacy and individual human rights are the much greater concern - to me the processes behind bin Laden's death is pretty agreeable compared to the chucking of random Arabs into CIA custody at airports.

I played G2 for the first time earlier in the year and it was excellent for a good few 20-30 hours in the first half, then like all PB games, devolve into linear battles for the last chapters. On the other hand, I remember trying Divine Divinity and never getting out of the first area, feeling a bit like a clunky mediocre action RPG - only getting back into it because I enjoyed Div2 and already have G2 / Realms of Arkania pack. But yeah, downloading was insane, got 9gb in about 3 hours.

Woohoo. Got Divine Divinity. Download's going at over 1000KB/s, which is as fast as can be in my crappy NZ connection. Good times.

Bah, no preload for me I guess

TW1 was definitely a bit too long. I enjoyed my 2nd playthrough but only because I knew enough to minimise the back-and-forth, especially in the swamp, which can be done with really fast if you do the logistics. 4 hours is midnight, I can wait.. love the early preload as NZ broadband will probably take 3 days to get it. I'm expecting 8gb+.

Tuesday is nearly over in NZ. WHERE IS MY PRELOAD?

Absolutely, but what is the solution - i.e. what does it really mean to grow up? Does it simply meant to say "fine let's just embrace our society's love with porn, photoshoped ladiez and whatnotelse"? I think it's really dangerous to believe that, because in part, the way we currently treats pornography, beautiful airbrushed ladies, etc. is a reaction to or otherwise concerned with those 'puritan views'. So if we're thinking let's move on from this denial and such, good, but we need a better idea of where to go. Wishing I could share your optimism - but don't you think in a significant number of individual cases, actually, it's more likely that people will over time either learn to internalise and agree with the idealisation, or at best live in silent apathy and mixed feelings? That's why activism always has a tough job - it's not easy to mobilise people who agree with you, much less persuade those who have already been convinced another way.

I disagree that the promotion of education, alternative options, and such 'positive' methods should mean that censorship and other reactive measures are not necessary, or cannot be helpful. I think realistically, we need to consider both part of the toolset for reaching the solution. Talking very broadly, our society is geared in such ways that when the commodity logic has pushed a certain idea or practice into the mainstream, it is very difficult to use conscious means of education, etc. to roll it back, or to fight it on its own turf (i.e. media commodities) and win. Crudely, pornographic sex sells so much better than gender / sexually conscientious products sell or campaigns persuade. As LOF says, establishing censorship measures on impossibly doctored and hypersexualised women (and men) doesn't hurt anyone. Such measures also help justify and lend weight to more positive programs - it's hard to convince some people that such campaigns are worthwhile, feasible or even beneficial, in the face of the current media landscape. Censorship and other prohibitive legal measures should always be approached with caution but when used right they complement more positive actions and they should not be ruled out. (Obviously someone will yell FREE SPEECH, I don't want to get into that big tangential can of worms... I guess one thing I might note is that money, peer pressure, discrimination, commodity logic, investment decisions - those things are barriers and manipulative factors to 'free speech 'just as much as laws and legal enforcement might be. It's burying your head in the sands to say let the market sort it out.)

i remember this book, it's called House of Leaves. i would not go inside any building that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. But... how will you know unless you enter?

I have Gothic & ROM, will get Divine Divinity. GOG > *.

Having some great fun on Insane with SCS, customised NPC classes & a few other mods for AI/difficulty. A new component made kobolds deadlier, and the Nashkel Mines were insane with a level 1/2 party - the commando fire arrows were one-shotting Xzar and Kobold Guards were poisoning with every hit. Had to pull some kamikaze poisoned backstabbing with Imoen (Assassin), then Mulahey's mob pretty much dismantled my party - in the end only the PC Fighter/Druid was left fleeing some skellies back to a lower level, running into a ghast around the bend, running round some more, then finally winning out. Abandoned Montaron/Xzar corpses there for the sake of $. Continued on recruiting Kagain (Berserker), Kivan (Archer) and Edwin (Conjurer), with some close shaves, but eventually Kagain got chunked by the ogrillions in the Firewine Bridge - with the mods there's an Ogre Mage, normal mage (with two lightning bolts memorised), 3 ogrillions and 2 kobold commandos, and the mages with contingency buffs. After that the party was so knackered they had to run away from that halfling that turns invisible upstairs in the home, lest he backstab and chunk Edwin. Grabbed Shar-Teel (Barbarian) to replace, but with her 9CON she only has 42hp at level 5(ish). Just finished off the Bandit Camp, which is probably one of the hardest fights in the game with SCS - when you're sighted the bandits actually raise the alarm and the leading party inside the big hut comes out to see what's up. Cheesed it little by backstabbing Taugosz to start off with - the insanely hard to kill walking tank - with Imoen then gobbing an invis potion, making everyone nearby gather to that spot to see what's up, then as the enemy party comes out from the hut Imoen lobs an oil of fiery burning on them all then just makes it out alive. The incoming mobs are then covered with double web, every potion of explosion the High Hedge was selling, and every other kind of disabling spell while Kivan snipes them down. Made it only on about the 5th try - big thing was using Algernon's Cloak to charm Taugosz, who then became an armoured pincushion for all those bandits with their biting arrows.

You know, every time you do that, I need to click on it, fearing that it will have naked monkey orgies or something....

Well I may build a new desktop when I move to the US this fall, but I'm spending enough cash moving halfway across the globe already. I know I'll succumb, though. Enoch, I don't know how I manage to play RTW, MTW2, ETW and now Shogun 2, each time on a PC that can barely pull it off - scroll lag in the campaign map, +3 minute end turn times, 10fps battles, etc. Shogun 2 is actually quite good at scaling itself down - smaller map & less factions means end of turn goes fast, too. Only problem is manipulating unit cards gets really annoying with lag, and, well, the battle map looks just like RTW. Hell, I know I'll complete TW2 at least once before the upgrade, and it'll probably take 20 hours more than everyone else just because of the low fps...