Tigranes

Yep, Tolkien's original dwarves, from i.e. Children of Hurin, are actually quite different from what we visually associate with him now through fantasy games or Jackson's movies. I dont' think they were ever intended to be "gruff" as much as stubborn and clipped; intelligent and cultured as much as powerful and smithy-inclined. I see them as a very cultured race, but their idea of cultured doesn't stray into dandyism, but rather controlled gravitas; very grounded fellows. In that sense Gimli of the movies woudl be something of a weird aberration. Of course, having said that, Tolkien did make the Hobbit's dwarves very lackadaisical, perhaps because of the tone of the story itself.

There is SOME info, but yeah, CG isn't far wrong in saying that 'no one has any idea'. I've been following this for af ew reasons and check various places including Beth forums, and well.. yep. CG's right. The decision not to release a demo is pretty stupid as well. There is no way in the world I'm giving Beth my money then, not until I've borrowed the game off a friend or something and played a substantial amount of it. Their excuse doesn't even make sense, they're just not trying. Anyway, I read the Eurogamer preview mkreku, it is a regurgitation of the old press release in terms of info but it isn't quite as bow-down-and-worship as the others, I guess. Still, it seems that the minute everyone's seen the cake conversation they're raving about dialogue being awesome now, but we really need to wait and see.

Oh yes, but even at the start of BG1, you can afford to buy hundreds of arrows from the very start. Scarcity is usually not really a factor. Now, it's fun when she runs out of arrows, it switches to that next slot with 2 detonation arrows and you're in Cloakwood mines narrow corridor OHGOD

Yeah, I'm weird because half my friends are in the 25-30 age bracket. It's okay, my miniscule height and ugly-baby-face balances out the old man inside. Come now, Gromnir, puberty's over.

ANZAC Day sucked, we gathered for food in Island Bay but the bloody supermarkets weren'ta llowed to open till 1 so we had to have our breakfast-lunch then. Hap Birfday.

Yeah, it's funny how, in the end, you sort of miss it. One thing I don't miss is the stupid 40 arrows per stack rule. It's not fun organising 30 stacks of normal arrows around in your inventory. CLUAConsole():CreateItem("arow01",9999)

20. I wonder how old people think I am. Probably either 13 or 40.

Yeah, the best was when I was in the US showing my friend IWD2... then when I clicked on a default dwarf to move somewhere he went "DOO IIIT! DOOO IIT NOOOOW!" Instafad :w:

First post updated.

There's not much info to go around, so sometimes the forums can be slow. Don't worry, it's pretty random how that goes. It's bloody 3am and I've written 2,000 words in a maddening rush and I've approved the poster for citywide distribution for our fair and as someone not very fond of alcohol this particular Martini turned out rather cleaning-fluidish, so I'm going to go sleep, but lets throw this one out there: I think bronzepoem's best point is that players are very canny, and although devs in the last few years though putting tangible, immediate consequences like xp or gold for your actions is important to make the players feel like choice matters, it ended up becoming farcical and exploited - and it just contributed to the munchkin numbers-game. He is absolutely right that consequences should not be consequences for the meta-character, for the game, for the stats; it should be choices in the game world = consequences to the game world. Although big consequences to the game world often has big consequences to your stats/loot, so it is hard to distinguish like that in practice. But I think if you make the game-world consequences big enough, and well-presented enough (i.e. you decide to extort a shopkeeper; due to the shock, injury or extortion he has to close shop. Not only does htis mean closed doors and inconvenience for you, other shopkeepers are pissed off at you, or just talk about how it's a pity that has happened; passers-by gather in front in curiosity; you run into that shopkeeper somewhere else drinking away his sorrows; etc. These kind of consequences become delightful rewards in and of themselves no matter what path you take, and if the player is more eager to see that kind of thing than consider the extra 50 gold, then you've succeeded.) Of course, that's a lot more work. Why did I write so much!? It's a ramble, too. Sorry. Will come back to this in the morning. Gah.

The box-art was utterly stupid in the sense that it was horrible marketing and it put many many people off the game. Personal opinion may differ, of course. For example I was neutral towards it. But it was indeed not the best move to make for the marketing dept at IPLY.

That wasn't by choice, actually. I believe the devs were forced into the silliness because WoTC wasn't happy with allowing you to kill Drizzt and have him remain dead foreva, and for you to keep his stuff. Thus, Harpell implies that he has simply revived Drizzt, and having recovered the loot, Drizzt will continue on as before, no harm done to the canon. I don't know why they didn't have to do that in BG1, but yeah. That's the price of using these characters, you can't kill Elminster either, can you?

Yep, you had to do a lot of run-and-shoot, and pausing. He had such a bloody high AC and THAC0, and he was on some sort of super-crack so he would get like 4 attacks per round. If you stood still to fight him, even with some of the best armour in the game it was chop chop chop chop *miss* (that's you), chop chop chop, game over. Massive magic resistance as well. You just had to stock up on +2 arrows and pepper him from all directions while running around in circles. That, or abuse the Wand of Summoning.

Not entirely, but definitely partially. Everyone is so used to this 'voting on instinct' thing by now that cynicism has turned to acceptance. Nobdody really minds enough to buck it up.

Hillary will obviously win, something like 3/4 of the democrats are old. The question si by how much, breaking the 60 barrier is not impossible at the moment but less than 10% are counted.

Agree with mkreku that sometimes, a variation from 'save ze world' would be welcome.. but otherwise, agreed with bronzepoem. Although, seeing as AP has our man as an established agent, a 'special' agent at that, we probably are going to see some special treatment and kow-towing.

Absolutely for most of your post, Pid, but what do you mean by the first point? You'll have to explain this to me, as I don't really see it. Certainly, the decision on what weapons to use is mainly for the sake of coolness. For some that comes from realistic weapons (or realistic contexts for weapons), for someone like me, not so much. But I can imagine that with a title like AP, there will be a lot of people who want realistic weapons and imagine that in their heads, any 'fantastical' ones of a very logical and tempered sort.

Easiest way is: 1. Use the aforementioned plug-ins to lift a .flv directly from the Youtube clip. 2. Use some form of audio converter (look one up online) to convert the .flv into some format that your video editing software will recognise. 3. Import the converted clip into the software and cut, etc. This is the simplest way, but of course, depending on the format you convert into, and because of the original quality of those .flvs, they will look pretty horrible. But you wouldn't be looking at lifting youtube clips if you wanted good resolution, you'd be looking at acquiring the originals from a library or something, I suppose.

McLuhan may be dead and discredited (sort of) but yes, simple technological changes can herald big changes in the way we live and think.

How the hell does the fire alarm trigger the burglar alarm? I remember when I put water on the pot on the stove for noodles, then came here to post. It was a religion debate or something so that took me about 30 minutes to post, and the cats suddenly go psycho out the door and smoke alarm is ringing Basically, we still have the pot, but looking on its bottom is like looking at a cross-section of Venus, complete with rough terrain.

There are fans of Viconia? Ugh. I suppose after Bastila and Aribeth, anything can happen. But yeah, I would recommend Tutu and BG2Fixpack to *anybody*. Ease-of-Use as well. Because you can select what options to install and what not (go Weimer), you can use them all and still end up with a very purist, 'unmodded' BG2 experience; they're basically patches, and very useful. I can't remember all the nightmares I had of You must gather your party before venturing forth before. After that, it's all up to individual tastes. Tactics is a must for me, but a few battles I consider to be so artificially beefed up you have to cheese to win (well, I do. I'm pretty good but not very good with IE battles, and I don't plan my builds that much). There are some promising total conversion / new content mods out there too. I remember enjoying Dark Side of the Sword Coast, even if it was a bit munchkin and had low production value. I've been wanting to try Check the Bodies for a long time, but the installation always seems to screw up for me.

No, we want sequels and originals and cream pies. I actually think a PS:T sequel or any game that piggybacks its name would probably sell a lot better than the original. The original was kind of crippled by crap marketing and crap cover design, as well. The Torment name has achieved quite a lot of status by now and it would probably have a more positive effect now, ironically. But this is surely a not-gonna-happen-anytime-soon.

I don't know, after doing AP and Aliens (and one more, was there?) surely they could come back to it as the smaller of their three concurrent projects. I think the devs are somewhere between maybe and likely for an IWD spiritual sequel. Of course, if Obsids ended up doing K3 (gah) then it would be going overboard.

Egads! BG1Tutu is an engine conversion pack or something. Basically, you play BG1, in BG2's engine! However, you can retain BG1 loading screens, BG1 GUI, BG1 music. Basically, it's all BG1, except you can use higher resolutions, you can pick kits and such from the very start, and so forth. Other than that, you are able to keep it as 'authentic' as you want, or just change a few things like walking speeds. It also facilitates exporting/importing between the two games. You need both games installed on your HD to make it work. Check out the page at Pocket Plane Games. Get BG1Tutu and the Fixpack. Follow the instructions closely. It is a bit of a pain to install, but not difficult and I assure you it is worth it to play BG1 at 1024x768 resolutions, for example. Also check out BG1/BG2 unfinished business and banter pack from the same site. They are high-quality, polished mods that will feel like patches, or I wouldn't recommend to anyone and everyone.

Holy crap. Icewind Dale would look pretty damn good on the Jade Empire engine. Well, they'd have to tune down the bloom or you wouldn't be able to see anything.