Tigranes

alan: it's not that it's 'useless', its just that it's telling them to run when they dont' know how to walk.

True, but it really ticks me off when the game doesn't let me do these kind of things. It's different from being forced into a sticky situation, which is cool, but something like not allowing thieves to wear Elven Chain Mail (cause, uh, I just love 'em elven fashion) or forcing NPCs into your party (which is why I would break Roleplaying laws 101 and cheat/exploit to get Minsc & Edwin together, for example... there are always plausible RP reasons for that, and god I am not taking Dynaheir around). I mean, they had a good reason to make you carry Imoen around as well, she was an important part of the story. Yet BG series worked with that, and even put in extra dialogue if you didn't have her in your party.

All universities have crap websites. Even, I don't know, Harvard. It seems to be just something they do.

Thankfully, they didn't *actually* make Imoen compulsory *cough* *shandra* *cough*.

theslug: Absolutely. The thing that gets me is, how are these people allowed to pass, and by extension get degrees, and by extension, get to actually work in these fields? The entire system is geared towards a passive acceptance of mediocrity, which gives people no desire to do any better. In fact, doing better in some cases becomes counterproductive. I am not without sympathy though. I am well aware of clear deficiencies in my own writing, and know that there will be people who look at my writing and think, "how can he bear to write something like this?". That's not facetious self-deprecation, that's just reality. Not only writing but in other things. My anger, or rather, a combination of righteous anger, despondent disillusionment, wry cynicism and sincere concern, is at the fact that our society is designed now to raise kids who live their lives without ever thinking about these things or learning about them, and that this mediocrity and lack is accepted and catered for. It cheapens all of us. Absolutely. You tell someone, 'be concise', but people have never learnt to analyse writing properly. They can't analyse their own writing, and work out what is 'being concise'. Writing is a craft, but very few take that to heart. It is exactly like woodcutting, football, organising concerts or learning the guitar: it's a craft. That means, IMO, even more than perfect spelling or grammar, it's about understanding what each word, turn of phrase and sentence is doing for your reader, and working to engineer a desired effect.

Absolutely, Wals. The heart of the matter is, our society no longer produces individuals which are disposed to write essays at all. I have tutored and looked at the living and studying habits of numerous high school students, and what really strikes me is just how bare their life is. You are a fifteen year old. You don't read. EVER. Your movie-watching is limited to action flicks and maybe internet porn. You're not likely to go to museums, art festivals or anything of the sort. Your consumption of music is limited to Justin Timberlake and/or Linkin Park. All of your conversation, writing, and thoughts, except for what you (sort-of) do in school, revolves around the familiar topics of friends, high school romances, the new cool thing, etc. It's a depressingly accurate, and unbelievably stereotypical, view of many high schoolers in our society. Now, if you have lived a life where you have never written ANYTHING on a regular basis (and don't need to), have never read anything on a regular basis either, and you have never thought about any philosophical questions, know nothing about politics, never thought about the way society works, so on and so forth - well, is it surprising you don't know how to write essays? I've seen people graduate universities with B.A.s without ever (a) planning an essay, (b) researching an essay, © drafting an essay. They just agonise about it (while doing nothing) for days and days, letting the stress get the best of them, then write the whole thing in 3 hours, then go to the library, pick out some random books with likely names, and conjure up a bibliography. And that kind of crap actually passes (because universities always change their standards to meet their students). Not saying everyone is like this, but there are many people like this. And that's because our society has produced a way of life which is antithetical to reading and writing. Hurlshot: That's a good point - from their POV, I would suggest that many just can't take it. It's not a question of arrogance, but it's a severe blast to your ego the moment you realise that you, a 24-year-old, will be handing in work that has the content of a six-year-old's picture book, with mistakes. I think many ESL students have trouble facing that reality. But then, you would think that they would actually be good at plagiarism. I think it's because while many teachers are good, some teachers are so lax, they just get fooled by it (or don't care).

Ah, yes. Fair enough. I'm hardly reading properly, I guess it's time to go sleep.

I'm sorry man.

Domestic economics suddenly become a lot more complicated when you throw in a long-term career and a family into the mix, though. It's not always feasible to keep up a positive balance economy. I enjoyed myself by leading two ladies through a pitch-dark wooden track at 9pm. That, uh, probably came out inconciliably wrong.

This is absolutely true. Also, if you want to talk about ridiculous commands in a Holy Book, Christianity has God ordering the massacre of defenceless women and children (Jericho, in Book of Joshua), the implicit consideration of slaves as a natural part of any household or society, blah, blah, I mean, it's all endless. My (tentative) take on it? All holy books are a product of their time and age, and coloured by the social thoughts of that age, because they were divinely inspired, but ultimately written by humans for their use in their time. Not quite "god's word straight to paper" (which wouldn't really work anyway, would it?). That doesn't invalidate the bookie religions, but it changes things. Who knows?

It's a terribly unreal photo - looks like it was lifted right out of, hey, GTA. It's really got to suck.

I can talk about some first-hand experiences, since I am an immigrant myself and have had contact with many. Personally, I have never had a problem, but I came here when I was 8, so you pick up things quickly, and the demand isn't as crushing. I also have an affinity for languages, or did, anyway. But I've seen many people who, for example, would never have got their BA without their more English-literate boyfriends, someone in their last year of the undergraduate degree who writes idiotic things like "I have to should the..." in their essays (he was, yep, my group-work partner. He still passed!!), so on and so forth. Now, some of them, definitely, are just lazy. You do have to feel sympathy for anyone who lives in a country where you dont know the language: it is a very difficult thing, not only because it is inconvenient or whatnot, but because it really undermines your strength. This happens to everyone. You become unwilling or afraid to talk to people: to follow up on services or ask questions: you feel like everyoone is scrutinising you, and so forth. But that is, for most of them, a challenge they have accepted and I find it a moral lack to find anyone who even considers cheating / writing services as a solution. To my mind, you try your best: if your best isn't good enough for a certain mark, then you suck it up and take it. That gives you the kick and drive to do better. I must note that a lot of the time, though, buying essays is not just because the English is difficult: it is also because essays are difficult. Koreans, for instance, don't need to write a western-style essay until Masters level (though it's starting to change now). At best, they just need to do short reports. They have never learnt how to write essays, and never learnt what essays are about, what kind of research, structure and style is needed. I am not excusing them for buying essays, but it's important to recognise that it's not just because of, say, grammar difficulties. But that's exactly why I feel that it is a socio-cultural by-product for not only immigrants but for native speakers as well. Don't delude yourselves: whether you are in New Zealand, USA or England, the quality of the 'essays' many of your native undergraduates write are absolutely shocking. There is bad grammar, a small range of vocabulary, no sense of structure, flow or purpose: there is no sense of good research. Above all, there is a serious and absolute lack of ethics in academic work all over the world, not just amongst immigrants. For many, native and immigrant, writing essays, or writing in general, is just a mechanical chore where they just touch the bases, and I think you will see writing services really spread to the 'natives' as well once there is a local instance to make it catch on. i.e. It will take just a few isolated instances where some natives are introduced to it, develop a taste for it, and you will see it become almost as endemic as it is among foreign students. So many students never ask themselves crucial questions such as what is the purpose of my essay? Why am I writing it and what good will it do? What is writing and what is the purpose of my writing? How should I write? It just doesn't come up. Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons that academia, especially in the human sciences, appears more and more parochial and 'ivory tower'. There are many exceptions of course. But I would not be surprised at all to see 'writing services' spread to a huge proportion of natives in the next couple of decades. Heck, we are starting to get basic spelling and grammar mistakes in official government, bank or whatever documents (e.g. their/they're). You know, for a rant about writing essays, this post is so unfriendly to the reader. Heh. edit: nice post by steve while i was writing. Let me add that while we are all (rightfully) worried about the standard of essays some immigrant / exchange students come up with, and the value of their degrees, we should be equally worried about that of the natives. I've seen work from undergraduates and postgraduates in US, Canada, NZ, , , Korea, and well... there are a lot of UGs and even PGs that I wouldn't ask to write my letter to my mom, for fear of embarrassment.

A few things. THere was that 'crying pipboy' screenshot, which was pretty nice. The collector's edition goodies are confirmed (bobblehead, lunchbox, book, EP soundtrack, I think). Other than that, I expect that they will use E3 as the point in which they start a new round of PR, with hands-on gameplay for the press at the show. I wonder if that's when we'll see some dialogue, huh.

Oh, the Tom Chick stuff? I don't have anything to say about it that wouldn't get censored, so I won't.

That's true, BG2 practically forced the ring of human influence onto your hands. Silly decision. I generally import IWD series portraits to use, I have long given up on finding any good portraits online. Since I only play thief/mage, constitution is my dump stat. Hah! Yeah, my mages die in one hit when the stoneskin runs out.

Ah yes, Instant Classic. I loved it, but then he disappeared, and wrote that Genre comic which was crap. Good to see he's making a comeback.

rn: -> Yeah, I do have high lag tolerance - I plan to buy an entirely new PC next year though, then I can finally finish The Witcher. I figure it's about time if I even want to think about playing FO3 (Yes, I will try it out), Alpha Protocol, etc. -> I was getting a bit tired of Liches at that point, so I actually got the Vongoethe quest, then left Amkethran - tow hich irenicus commented, 'good, we have better things to spend our time on anyway'. I suppose that didn't do so much good. Your talk of reviving Chapter 6 dream and stuff utterly confuses me though, that never happened at all. Hrm. Anyway, to the priest debate - yeah, since nobody ever wants to take Anomen (hahahahahaha), it's a tossup between Viconia and Jaheira. For Viconia, I usually invest in Ribald's Frost Giant Strength Belt relatively early, which balances things out - and at least you can give clerics the Flail of Ages, or a good warhammer (there are a lot around, even before Crom Faeyr). But she's still not that good at getting into melee combat. I don't know, I've never been able to utilise a priest character to full efficiency, I think. By Throne of Bhaal, Viconia just helps with Chaotic Commands before battle, runs around casting True Sight / the anti-paralysis spell, and casting Heal on the fighters - then, when she has the leisure, casting some high level offensive spells like Implosion. If you're fighting someone like Abazigal, neither Viconia nor Jaheira seem to be able to stand on their own toe-to-toe long enough to be of any use.

I have to agree with Tale that Morrowind 'feels' like the better game in almost every aspect, except for the revamped stealth, which is probably the best CRPG stealth I've seen (of course I'm not counting Thief, my precious). Yeah, that doesn't say much about stealth in most CRPGs, but still. Morrowind actually had atmosphere in almost its entire world, even the wind-swept, barren areas you had to trot through. Certainly the grass and trees and whatnot are a joy to see in the first few hours for Oblivion, but then you realise that (a) all the cities are the same, (b) everything looks like generic medieval fantasy, © it's hard to get a sense of verisimilitude when you notice how blatantly close different dungeons and encounters and events are spaced out - it's like you're not walking through a real world but constantly shifting through space-warp zones, like the world was actually twice as big but compressed 'for your playing pleasure'. The first mods to fix level scaling were absolutely horrid for me, I recall early versions of OOO where you'd get mobbed by 7 or 8 bandits. Good in concept, but Oblivion can't handle combat with more than 3-4 enemies at any one point. Everyone collides with each other crappily, the AI can't handle the pathfinding and the combat mechanisms suck for group fights anyway. Never mind what happens if you stand on a hill, they all end up circling around Forrest Gump-like. The newest OOO, I tried a little bit, appears to have become more sensible.

Ah, so it's not just me! I can deal with a lot of lag (like, uh, playing all of NWN2 at 5OC), but the game hanging for 10-20 seconds every time an enemy spawns, every time a contingency fires or at random spots during the battles - well, not exactly my thing. Also, I really appreciated most of the changes SCS2 made, especially with the thieves who actually have invis. potions now, but the invisible mages were really getting me (as well as being the chief source of lag). We'll see, next time. It's still a very good mod, yes. Much better than Cheesetactics. BG2 is just about the only thing where I enjoyed some of the fanfics, back when I was in high school, anyway. I don't think I can bear them anymore. I do find that fanfic / character mods which deal with exisitng characters, like longer road or banterpack, are much better than ones that create new NPCs, which tend to come with atrocious, out-of-place Fantasy portraits, bad quality voiceovers that sound like rusty frying pans on a blackboard and inconsistent writing. He wanted Abazigal's, and I had to guarantee him Balthazar's to ensure that he didn't do it then and there. When that dialogue ended, Irenicus did say he reserved the right to be persuaded to leave all souls until the end, and implied that I would have a chance to give one last shot at it. I did not, and that's where I thought there might have been some skipped talks. I did do Watcher's Keep in TOB, and did the Deva quest - an interesting conundrum, I ended up picking the merge beings option (I would have let them decide, actually, but there was no such option). I was not quite sure what Irenicus thought of it, though, but yes, he is very clever. WHen I tried to leave him out of hte party for the Balthazar combat, he picked up on it and made a snide comment! The music was crap, yes. But that's what happens with fan mods. I won't pretend that I am a D&D guru of any sort, but I found that due to the shortness of weapons, she was never dealing that much damage or able to soak up a lot. Shapechanging becomes not as effective in higher levels, and she was quickly relegated to a back-line spellcaster - for which Viconia, etc. are superior. I am sure it's me doing something wrong though. As for her personality, I do agree that she has a fantastic companion quest, and she is level-headed; looking back I guess it's just a case of me becoming jaded with Jaheira. I must have completed the game at least 10 times with her in the party. Still not sick of Minsc and Edwin, though.

I'm a major fan of OOTS, it's one of my favourites - but so far I am very disappointed with Erfworld. The pacing is very amateur and puts you off, and the setting so far seems like a random smorgasboard of stuff - which makes the decision to replace 50% of strips with 'diaries' that explain the world and its combat rules very, very boring. I still read on though, since I keep checking back for OOTS. It's still in its early stages, to be fair. My favourites: Sinfest: Went through a bland Disney crap stage the last couple of months but Tatsuya seems back on track again, its range of memorable gimmicks are truly grand. Sam and Fuzzy: A weird story comic with humour, though not of the laugh out loud or outrageous kind. The art is simple but quite clever for B&W, once it gets past the early 'sketchy' periods. His storytelling is quite good. Order of the Stick, as mentioned above. The quintessential D&D comic, IMO. I also enjoyed DM of the Rings that someone mentioned, but the author's follow-up D&D comic has been nothing short of atrocious. Just really, really, really bad. Gunnerkrigg Court: Harry Potter, except less Disney and fantastic, with more pseudo-science, and unDisneyfied humour. I don't know. I really enjoy the art. Goblins: Uh... the other quintessential D&D comic? Told from the goblins' point of view. The early ones are pretty funny, but it's still good when it gets into 'serious story' later. I don't enjoy the lengthy gory fight scenes, but I'm someone who doesn't enjoy fight scenes in anything, be it Star Wars, martial arts anime or whatever. Snail's Updates though. Minus: Has to be seen to be believed. The Abominable Charles Christopher: Again, uh, take a look. It's peculiar. Lackadaisy: A beautiful comic (what do you call this kind of tone?), but updates something like once a month. Uh, animals in 1920's American gangster life? Sort of?

Anime with accent is a kind of resin. Anime without accent is the Japanese animation. Now stop jabberin' or we'll get even more OT. I haven't seen any mention of the punk girl, but yes, there does seem to be a lot of confusion about the exact tone of the game. Which, really, isn't quite what you'd want from your first thrust of PR. I wonder if we might get some clarification in the near future?

Good response times, Patrick. Get me a coffee while you're at it. I wonder what determines whether he tries to shoot or wants to run for help? For example, two guards, you shoot one of them to pieces, the other is more likely to run away depending on his particular personality? Now that would be cool.

Agree with everyone else that graphics are 'good but not mind-blowing', but I never wanted 'mind-blowing' graphics anyway. I'd much rather a game which has good graphics, great art direction and is able to run on more computers without looking like a horrible, crippled shadow of its real self (cough cough Oblivion). This one really gets me though, the guy being shot at looks really bad. His standing posture is bad to begin with (who stands like that?!), it looks as if the blood effects and stuff are 2D plastered on several feet away from the man, etc. Perhaps a bad capture, but I always wondered why any PR machine would release bad-moment captures.

I would be surprised. I mean, the first thing they are hyping about it is the touch-screen. I don't think their idea of 'lean and fast' is the same as our idea of 'lean and fast'. I think by 'lean and fast', they are going for an extremely streamlined and opaque OS where if you, say, touch 'Word' it will do everything it can to bring it up quickly and have a selection of things available to you, but customisation within particular selections or major fiddling with the OS will not be appreciated (if anything, for 'security'). That might overall increase compatibility, at least, but it depends on whether they approach the entire Windows architecture with a very different philosophy than they have in the last ten years. Certainly it's XP for me until Vista becomes useable.