Tigranes

Yeah. And it still happened in Civ4, just not quite as stupid. If you ask me the entire combat system is due an overhaul, it doesn't really work to Civ's strengths and it's not particularly entertaining. Either make it more of a grand army management thing with very basic supply lines and upkeep, and making large-scale strategic orders, or make the current model develop at least basic features. They're surely going for the latter with hexes and no-stacking, but I'm not sure how far they'll go.

That's right. A McDonalds ad doesn't go far enough - I mean, who cares what other people think it tastes like or where the stuff comes from? How does it taste? The ads should all be made out of edible synthetic material that tastes like a McDonalds burger. God, now I'm hungry, and it's like, midnight. Anyway, it is a valid criticism, but it's not realistic I think.

Yeah, it doesn't, I'm wondering what gameplay advantage justified it - maybe they'll provide a really big boost, and you can use them in a tricky spot? Good stuff, that's what the engine was made for. Hopefully there'll be some AI improvements as well for at least basic cover, grenading, flanking, etc and it'll be pretty fun.

Looks cool, though way too much shooting, but I assume that's just the trailer. If there's hiding bodies, double-dealing and such it's good, and they seem to have the style spot on.

Does ROK have anything like the art direction, branching nonlinear storyline and written-by-real-writer-ness that Betrayal had? I see some fugly 3D...

Btw, do we have actual eating/drinking in game? That'd be silly, even for Fallout. It'd be pretty awesome to be able to see people go around taking sips from flasks or gathering water from a well (or GECK supply or something) with the FO3 graphics/perspective though. Depends on how rebuilt Vegas is.

Ix-nay on the spam or magical volo will cry rivers of blood, thx

The meaning of verisimilitude is believability, as far as this is concerned. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying with non-flying cows, btw, but I assume you are suggesting that food problem is trivial. I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion, though, given that you do not seem to be applying a defined and appropriate standard to distinguish this. Ironically, flying cows, in certain gameworlds, would be a lot less weird than finding stores of perfectly edible food in a Fallout wasteland. Put simply, world of Fallout, predicated on several hypothetical premises as it is, can hold up various 'unrealistic' things without a problem, i.e. Brahmin, because (a) there is a plausible explanation, if not necessarily watertight (radioactive mutation), and (b) it is consistent with the rest of the gameworld, with obvious effects of synergy on verisimilitude (everything else is bloody mutated). Entering the big supermarket in FO3, for instance, and finding a buffet of food, fails on both accounts; (a) there is no plausible explanation given, in fact no explanation is given, and (b) it is not consistent with the rest of the gameworld when you've already seen people cry over food and water. Finally, some violations of verisimilitude might be trivial because (a) they are hard to notice unless you look out for them, or (b) they provide a clearly sensible gameplay benefit that excuses the violation - the 'food problem' does neither. Thus, it is an obviously weird and illogical piece of the game that breaks verisimilitude without providing any benefit. Thus we come to my conclusion, it doesn't have to be perfectly explained or hyper-realistic, it just has to be unnoticeable or paper-thin-plausible at least. edit: that's some horribly loopy writing, sorry.

Basic verisimilitude has been understood to be quite important to one's enjoyment of media forms... unless you'd like to apply your tirade more logically? It'd be nice if they did this properly, but I don't mind much unless it's blatantly weird.

Geez. Gaider's really going off the deep end, isn't he? Cross-media storytelling is all good but instead of using different mediums to add different elements to his narratives he just makes carbon copies of emo teenage sap romances. re: Morrigan - yeah, she's not the Morrigan in the game by any means, but maybe they wanted to do a different interpretation. That's cool. Pity the said interpretation is generic anime chick #1.

Wait, so what the hell does the game disk have? This Steam fascism is starting to bug the hell out of me.

I live on 5-10. If 50 is ****ty you're living with way too much digital content. Ironically, this means that King's Bounty, for instance, cost me as much in bandwidth as it did to buy it.

Ctrl+Shift+ESC = task manager

Okay, this is pretty awesome a game. I'm level 10 now as mage, normal, and it's like SOZ done full-scale (and, if you didn't like SOZ, SOZ done properly). I don't like how the game seems to demand you clear out every single area and eke out every last drop of xp in order to have a chance in the next area, which means I'm doing a lot of back and forth, but maybe that's just me missing something. As level 10 I haven't been able to finish a few of the toughest bits in the first continent ( ) so got myself to freedom islands to see if I can hack it there.

I want to talk about the new info, but Purkake will hit me with a stick and tell me I'm being stupid, so I can't. Wait, no, I will anyway. The party doesn't sound that appealing to me on a gameplay basis, but it can't be bad to have major NPCs.. as long as none are forced. Considering it's a Fallout title, I can't see that being the case, though.

Or, you know, not market the game. It was a nice trailer, actually. Can't have been outrageously expensive either.

You can play the expansion straight off the bat as an Orlesian Warden - that's what I'll be doing if I pick this up. You missed a crucial step, Mkreku Therapy.

Yeah, Alpha Protocol's the big one for Obsidian, and since it's also multiplatform, PC preorders numbers will actually have a big impact. Does anybody really care about Space Siege, anyway?

Just played the tutorial then had it crash on me, hope it doesn't become a habit. It feels really, really good though. Anyone know what the keypads are for rotating the screen, and whether keys can be remapped?

Given her involvement in a particular quest, I suspect that it's just a cover. Which is quite brilliant, actually, one of the places where I appreciated DA's writing.

Just two of the weapons Thorton has at his disposal.

To be fair, you could get even more brokenly OP in TOB - Time Stop + Improved Alacrity + Horrid Wilting, load up on contingencies, not to mention fighter whirlwind attacks and super-uber-loot. But then, it was actually quite fun. I had fun with MOTB combat too, somehow, it's not bad if you pretend Vampiric Feast doesn't exist. In the end I treated it like PS:T, The Longest Journey, Beyond Good & Evil, etc; the 'gameplay' is pretty subpar, but not that bad and the story is definitely worth it.

It's very odd. At direct2drive KB:TL remains pretty expensive, more so than AP. But at gamersgate TL is ten bucks and AP double that! I've already bought quite a few games this year, trying to keep it down.

Rise again, thread of the dead, and take over the worrrrllld! I finally grew my turn-based squad-combat itch to grab this for a nice ten bucks. Of course, it'll take about 2 days to download. Did anybody take to it here? I heard great things about it at the Codex.

Interesting. The dots surely have some significance, though we won't be able to go to them all... maybe the sources of some communiques.