Tigranes

Happened to me a lot in Vivec's lower waistworks, when you're trying to jump left and right to squeeze past the Ordinators in the narrow corridors. In my last playthrough though, I'd eventually end up in the water and I'd be able to swim back to the realms of the living.

It happened to a degree in MOTB, with the special feats you'd gain that directly affected your combat performance if your influence rating hit the milestones. edit: I think I'll go to work early, so I can watch the combat vid without suffering the home internet.

It was? I never took a lot of companions because the combat gets crazy. I guess it depends on how overboard (or not) they go. PC VOs aren't bad in and of themselves, I just hate the way, just like NPC VOs, people come to expect it as a standard.

It could, or it could poison your heart... FOREVER. All the games I'm waiting for will take at least 6 months from now.

My Witcher, Arcanum and Thief 2 CDs are all at home so it's IWD2 time. I'm getting pretty bored of ETW because the AI is so passive, and you just feel like in 30 years of truce with Austria they've done absolutely nothing. No thanks.

I think without addressing Bulock's very specific points about challenges unique to this particular activity ('real' CQC), you are jumping to much more generalised statements - in which case, the vectors of thought simply aren't meeting. For me his descriptions about those specific challenges are pretty convincing, unless you were simply expressing your wish for some new game that really tackles that issue in the face with a crowbar - in which case, fair enough. I think it's all mocap.

Try the Witcher EE or Arcanum with high resolution mod? Hrm.

That's sort of what I mean. With the possible exception of WOW that I've never played (though I doubt it'll prove an exception), no Blizzard story is actually any good as a story. They're just generic mediocre stuff. Put Starcraft's plot next to FO3's and... okay, yeah, Starcraft's plot will still be better because it actually makes sense, but uh, let's move on. What SC did well was use those briefings and such to really deliver that story well. What I guess I'm trying to drive home is that it is Blizzard's excellent direction of voice acting, art style and cutscene editing, as well as making good choices on when to tell the story, how much, and when to shut up (as opposed to overindulgent Hollywood wannabes a la FO3 ending and Guild Wars cutscenes, which were actually hilarious if you looked at it as a parody of generic fantasy). And I think their writing itself gets overhyped because of their ability to deliver. With Boyarsky on board for Diablo 3 and such I am quite interested to see what happens when Blizzard's ability to deliver stories meets... a well fleshed out and complex setting.

Shining Force is excellent.

What you say doesn't really touch on Bulock's central point, though - that unarmed fighting a la 'real life' would present serious technical challenges in its implementation that would require, at the very least, a much bigger focus on it from the ground up.

I've never understood this, myself. Some people rave on about Starcraft but it was just your generic Monster Race vs Human Race vs Super Alien Race filling in archetypes and duking it out. Diablo and Warcraft have utterly generic stories as well, though I don't know if WOW has advanced the latter beyond, say, Guild Wars-style "Tons and Tons Of Generic Fantasy Fare That Is Just There To Fill Its Position". It's just that Blizzard has always been excellent at delivering those stories (e.g. Diablo 2 movie clips were amazing).

brb sum1 got r0bbd lolz

I played FF games so I'm not one to complain about JRPG combat, but it seems pretty generic. Or is story supposed to be the thing that keeps you going?

No, the number would be much larger. It probably means either NWN2 on its own, or NWN2 and its expansions.

I need to listen to broadcast items so I can't. Yeah, these games take a while... they are awesome though.

You won't need to - devs will probably start coding every romance opportunity possible before release, soon.

I've heard the name a few times but know little. What's the key gameplay attraction?

I can probably get them to work on a mine or something.

Wellington's awesome. I figure I will either spend my final years down here, or somewhere in regional France. But it's undeniable that in many ways it's a small city with a small town mentality, and you need a balance of experience. Also, I'll never get married if I stay here because of your love monopoly.

It definitely takes the proximity and relative size of your armed forces, the strength of your and their alliances, the current diplomatic relations and the progress of the war so far (in terms of won/lost battles and regions) into account. e.g. Allies will refuse to join you if the opposing alliance is deemed to be significantly stronger; state gifts can pave the way for peace more effectively than paying $ in return for peace can; having bigger armies on the border does have an effect. However, the way majors and minors think seem a little different, since majors often act prudently as per above parameters (sometimes TOO prudent; e.g. you can basically grab flanders then immediately peace with Spain as the dutch), but minors will accept nothing unless they are truly left with nothing. They utterly failed to implement it in RTW and MTW2; and it took one game a months-late patch, and another one the expansion pack, to put it in the game (and even then not very robust). Which, along with the bugged landbridge in vanilla RTW, meant... utter tripe.

I'm back, but I had very nice sausages instead of walsausages, so I'm not sure if it did anything. Mostly I wanted to live in NY as well as go to NYU. When you spend 11 years in Wellington, New Zealand, you realise that certain parts of your personal development are crying out for a Big City . Not to mention that for my degree (Media) NYU *is* good. Cliches are not always cliche. I'll probably turn to a Canadian university, which are less stupid with the money, and maybe make the jump after for work or PhD. I'm only 21 so there's plenty of time. I agree with you guys that the specific skills you pick up and experiences you get on the way are important. My aim is to look at things like conferences and published work, as well as more independent projects, since I already have work experience in the field. Also, theslug continues to put me off living in the yoo ess.

It was meant to be a sound/CTD/etc tech 'hotfix'. Though I'd consider the ship stats a 'hotfix'.... We'll see exactly what they deliver on that next 'content' patch. Naval invasions, AI, Ship stats, artillery not listening to orders, freaking reinforcements, etc. In my Prussian campaign I found that as usual, you can NEVER make peace with a 1-state minor if that minor garrisons his entire army. Victory means annexation; doing nothing means they think they're strong enough to resist. Go CA.

"No" just makes the computer sound blast it out :/

Well, I can't play it at work because it wont' shut up with the music.