Tigranes

Okay, so as usual I get the game later than everybody else and nobody wants to talk about it, but I DONT CARE *huff puff* Only played for about a couple of hours, half of that spent getting a party. I have a human fighter (weaponmaster-to-be), a gray orc favoured soul (doomguide-to-be), a halfling rogue/swashbuckler and a yuan-ti sorcerer (possibly red dragon disciple-to-be, however weird that is). Obviously I just wanted a balanced fun party while trying out the new things. Didn't fancy Hellfire Warlock as I never liked playing with Warlocks, anyway. Just wasn't much fun. They're all evil-ish/neutral and I will probably go that route, which is unusual since I usually do the 'Good' route first. Haven't done much at all; just crash-landed, visited Samargol, came back to the crash site. I love the look of the place, and they got the jungle feel done real well. If the voice acting was as good as it was in, say, Mask, it would have been a really immersive feeling - but Volo seems to have trouble reading some of his lines, Sa'sani is similarly a bit flat, and some of the lines for the Samargol guards are terrible. Hassle us not = Steel be with you = *cry*. Overland map looks nice and feels nice, but we'll see about the apparently high encounter rates and the tedium of loading. Loading is pretty quick at the moment, though. Is it just me or have some textures, including the faces, gone through subtle upgrades?

I don't care if Torment isn't the BEST EVAR, it was awesome enough to be awesome. Awesome!

You're on the right track Walsingham. A nation or other group was never defined by its geographical proximity, or even, in essence, by its shared history / language / etc; it's the shared context and, to an extent, a shared normality (social norms) that developes, usually, from these shared histories and such. Now the question is, will that ever develop in a worldwide way? I kind of doubt it for a century or two atl east.

Again, it only makes sense to cop out. It would have been suicide to do anything else in the current climate.

Honestly, I've got no problem with atheist *or* religious adverts, as long as they don't directly incite hatred or are focused on negatively portraying 'the other side'. Atheists have just as much right to claim that there is 'probably no God' as, say, christians have to claim his certainty; they have just as much right to imply that a religious life is not an enjoyable one (which is a stupid and illogical train of thought, but never mind for now) as Christians have to imply that a faithless life is without direction and morality. But I also understand what the driver would feel like essentially being the man that ensures the message gets across town, so I think it's well handled by him and by First Bus (who know better than to get mired into the debate by posting anything other than bland neutral comments). Some westerners get really up in arms about that. Never mind that the date was chosen to drown out Saturnalia at least, as you mention. Australia this Christmas got absolutely furious when some Post Offices didn't have decorations up - radio caller-ins would imply that this was because the Post Office franchises are mostly owned by "the other lot", "the folk who don't celebrate Christmas and instead celebrate... whatever they celebrate". Going hyper-PC on Christmas is just as stupid as bigots that get up in arms about that PC.

But that was delightful! YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH.

Only 3 hours' sleep because I got absolutely addicted to that free video game company sim. Gah!

Why do you have such an agenda? Why are you so intent on making other people admit to your assessment? I have never considered that quest that way, and as such, never considered it a 'flaw'. There *are* flaws with PS:T, for instance the relative blandness of its combat; but I would argue that those quests and dialogue DID add to the feel of the game and the experience. I"ll happily agree with you if you're just wanting to prove the mythical "PST=GOD" crowd wrong, but I have to reject your strongheaded mindset here.

But what if they did enjoy the vast majority of the lines? I know I did. Some of them weren't as great as the others, but they all contributed to the atmosphere, and none made me groan.

People who disagree with your assessment of a game are not necessarily fanboys... Morridor is very slightly better than your normal CRPG fedex quest. Wouldn't miss it, but no reason to hate on it.

If he is clearly promoting Mormon values in his novels, that is not necessarily wrong, it's just something interesting to know about. Which I think Calax was getting at.

Going to try Ultima 7 for the first time. Also, a free game called Gamebiz II, which is a video game company simulator - absolutely brilliant. Being free, the graphics look absolute crap, but hey, it's a sim. Can't wait to try it.

Corelli is on my to-read list.

I'm not sure how, but I read five or six Jordan books. I couldn't stand Salvatore or those other big names, though. The way I read them is, I read them really quickly. On the 'small scale' their writing is often atrocious - there are no delicious play of words, there are no ironies or commentaries of worth, and yes, they play it too straight, and to boot a lot of them are prone to throwing in sickening crap about freedom or democracy or multiculturalism or whatever, as if they were Universal Values of Good. But I enjoyed Jordan just for the fact that if I skim-read I could watch a massive, massive narrative unfold. Of course, the said narrative stopped actually going anywhere halfway through the series - I think in the latter books it was following 5-6 characters which had all split and done different things, and for one of them, in a 500 page novel, the only thing she managed to do was do some emo pondering about pregnancy and cut her hair, which somehow Jordan turned into a massive political event. Lord of the Rings I loved as a child, precisely because Tolkien knew what the point of these books were: to provide a detailed, massive world, history and setting. The point wasn't to freaking introduce soul-searching and righteous anger and angst for Aragorn. The characters were merely representations of facets of the world. I tried Terry Pratchett, and I wasn't really impressed. He does take stock fantasy and tries to make it wacky and weird, but that can only be entertaining for so long. Just like you can't sit and read a Salvatore (or similar) after another, you can't sit and read Pratchetts. Any true 'influence' from different settings ceased a long time ago, and I think that's one of the reasons.

"Oh, I'm dead. I better just lie still." Interesting. I always thought that you would actually persist in blinding pain for quite a few seconds after 'death'.

Ender's Game was a very entertaining read, if quite anime-y. The next 2 books are pretty different, a lot more to do with alien civilisations and religion. I read them just because I wanted a bit more Ender after the first book, but otherwise, they're not especially remarkable. I did think that Card handled a relatively original concept very well though - i.e. of actually being a powerful and independent explorer. Most stories focus on when you are developing (like Game), or part of some major conflict - in these books Ender is basically done with all that and doing the kind of stuff that you normally hear of in game/story endings. That was nice to see. Wasn't aware there were other books out there, but I imagine they would get pretty 'plundered', as Aristes says.

You know, Final Fantasy's writing isn't bad either, if you look at it from the perspective of constructing plots and delivering those set pieces in the right order and in the right way. In fact, some FFs are quite excellent in that presentation, delivery and construction of the narrative. The actual prose is nothing to write home about (and mostly, nothing to bash your head about). And if you're searching for any deeper meanings, ironies or good commentary, you'll find a terrifying void. I judge Gaider's book chapter and many games in the same way. I'm not interested in nitpicking because in writing, inane nitpicking can always make anything look bad. He's got a few clangers in there (like "run he did") and in general, the chapter gives the impression of run-on sentences and buckets of similes and adjectives. But really, who's looking to find delicious prose in Gaider? That was never his strength, and judging by the style he has chosen here, he's not intending it to be the strength. What would be the selling point would be the overall narrative and the characters. Usually it's not bad enough to bother me, and I wouldn't read this kind of book very carefully anyway. They're meant to be subway filler. Unfortunately, thus far, Maric is completely boring. His effort to inject energy into his character and flesh out his motivations ends flat for me because it is so utterly boring a concept to begin with. Wah, heir of dynasty, mom is rebel queen, mom died, i'm on the run, but i'm only young and i'm so scared, wah. Geez. I can't care about the betrayal of the Orlesians or the whoever it was if I don't know anything about them. Expecting people to retroactively understand Maric's anger for these Orlesians just doesn't work. We're expected to immediately empathise with Maric by the sheer virtue of the fact that he's running away from something and his mom is dead; we're expected to identify a hatred of the Orlesians based on one sentence about how they're, again, another set of bland, uninspired 'arrogant nobility'. That's what disappoints me more than, I don't know, "run he did", or the fact that his fighting the armoured pursuer was too drawn out. What does the chapter makes us look forward to? Probably Maric working out what he can do to get back at the Orlesians and restore his kingdom. Loghain will probably, after some soul-searching, ditch his background (maybe his dad will die, too) and join Maric. They'll pick up an elusive love interest on the way who is either connected to the Orlesians, the dynasty, or harbours a secret related to that. At least one member of Maric's band of misfits will have been an Orlesian collaborator in the past. There will be a raising of an army later, and the discovery of some dastardy plan on the part of the Orlesians or some other villains.... In other words, it's your average fantasy novel. Uninspired. That's really the problem I have with it. If, on the other hand, I turn out to be wrong and the plot and characterisation and situations are a bit more interesting, the prose itself won't be much of an issue IMO.

You have too many female friends, give me some. Then all your money.

It *would* get an A in high school writing class.

See http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=26591 for best Torment UI mod so far. Looking forward to playing PST on full screen again when I do a replay next.

You're right, the radiation has changed their exoskeletons.

-HOW CAN A MORON TALK SO MUCH?!

From what I've seen, it was because it was competing for shelf space with FO3, Dead Space, Left for Dead, Legendary, Red Alert 3 and other supposedly "big" titles.

North Korean MBAs are very prestigious. I would argue with Volourn about this issue, but I don't have any confidence in emerging victorious, so I'll just RUN LIKE HELL Also, is EA's ownership of Bioware total? I think it is?

He already wrote fanfic for KOTOR by the way. Now that was.... well, that was like watching the Casavir romance scene in NWN2 OC.