Tigranes

Localisation for FFVI was pretty horrible; you really had to get past the truncated and poor nature of the writing, and look at the plot and characterisation as it unfolded. In that sense, I thought it did a very good job of giving distinct and fairly interesting personalities to such a wide variety of characters, and have an interweaving story that accommodated them all without being too weird. Certainly, Terra was yet another "Oh Woe Is Me" FF protagonist, and Kefka was awesome only for the name, but the supporting cast is often the highlight of FF anyway. Again with FFVII, the story and characters were pretty good. Sure, they were quite shallow and typical, but they were very well made and represent the best that can be done with the 'mainstream', rather like Oblivion in some ways. BG2 really did the same, though with a bit more spunk and a bit more maturity. There is a reason why FFVII and BG2 both command a huge repertoire of dedicated fan fiction five, six, seven years after their creation; the basis of the cast was very solid in both games, and were fleshed out enough to go on with. I enjoyed one particular long-running FFVII fan fiction and some BG fan fiction when I was in high school. Certainly, you can call them up for their shortcomings, but if you want to slate them as 'shallow trash', then the same criticism could be levelled at most of US television, for example.

For about the first year and a half after Oblivion came out, none of the mods were doing enough to balance the game out. Some were incomplete in their implementation as of that time; others' solutions became new problems, such as massive mobs of poorly equipped bandits that really showcased why Oblivion's Radiant AI can't handle more than 5 people in a small place, and so forth. I am sure they are much better now, but that meant that the crucial time period in which I wanted to play the game, I wasn't getting any satisfaction. This isn't to blame the mods, I know how hard it is to make a good mod and how long it takes. The blame has to be laid at the very stupid design decision made by the devs (and one they have never admitted to, either). I liked Pharaoh Bubba Joe in AOM, actually. It was a pretty silly game to begin with.

Pid: I usually play mage or thief - mages are so bad in the first three or four levels of AD&D. I'd leave him way outside, have Imoen talk to him, run around a corner and Hide in Shadows while the Guards dealt with him. But yes, Oblivion was really spectacularly ruined for me when I discovered all the daedric/elven armour worn by bandits and found in barrels. I still finished the game and enjoyed it as a pretty well-made, pretty fun game, but level scaling and the endless, stupid bore of the Gates are unforgettably poor.

It wasn't Nimbul, Pop - Nimbul was relatively simple. Maybe you just remember the name wrong, but it was that lone mage fellow outside the Friendly Arm stairs who Mirror Images then Magic Missiles. Speaking of PS:T, Baator was pretty horrendously grindy.

Baldur's Gate I, for those who are not familiar. It was quite silly, yes, because even if you prepared Imoen beforehand to backstab and shot arrows at him like crazy, with the THAC0 of a level 1 or2 character it was almost impossible to disrupt that mage before the Mirror Image went off. The only way to get him easily was to lure him to the guards then run away. That was brilliant, otherwise they would have been completely OP. Besides, aimed well, nothing beats a Siege Onager round of flamin' balls on a dense pack of enemy troops, falling over in line. Also, let me be the first to cry WEREWOLF

See?

Faith is very dangerous. So is faith in science, faith in our government, faith in the way we live the world. To believe that avoiding religion makes us fully rational, controllable, independent beings who will not be subject to fanaticism, paranoia or delusion is itself the greatest danger of all.

Heh, I missed some posts while I was posting that one. Walkerguy: I think if you were interviewed extensively for a film, then you find out that the film is not what you were told it was going to be, then your words, your appearance and your reputation was effectively hijacked; furthermore, removing Myers as crudely as he says he was, is simply rude and deserves the derisory laughter of the blogging world indeed. I am not saying Myers is right and is telling the truth without bias; I am saying though, if we believe his version of events, then he has a lot of cause for complaint and to be a 'drama king'. Just saying 'it's just a stupid documentary' is.. well, I don't even know what it could be. Anyway, I think it's funny because in all the ID/evolutionist debates I've seen, there have been so many instances where they all shoot themselves in the foot through poorly constructed or badly presented arguments, and their hate for each other gets in the way so much that instead of debate, we often have a game of insults. Quite apart from the question of which one is correct, it's both sad and funny. edit: Also, the Sandbomb has landed, this thread is now about evolution v. creationism, and Those That Want to Prove Sand Wrong.

Aww, I get here and the debate is over. While the number of atrocities committed against others and themselves by the PRC government could fill up a series of books, yes, it certainly must be said that it is no worse than what many countries would do if given the chance, what many countries do now and did do before, and it is only from the lofty pedestal of a, say, G8 nation or Western Europe that one can casually condemn what they are doing without any effort at understanding.

Oh, I think of plenty of Christians, myself included, and Creationists, can see the funny (and sad) side in this, DN. It's difficult of course to comment on the event without hearing from Mathis' point of view or seeing the film (for all we know it could be the doctors who have an agenda - Dawkins certainly has difficulty keeping out some of his more sarcastic and aggressive side against ID in his blog entry), but it does seem like a classic case of shooting in the foot to me. It's amazing how so many creationists and evolutionists all shoot their own feet.

One assumes, of course, that the kind of system Hummel is advocating can accommodate not only the all-diplo nonfighter that is currently the point of discussion, but also a diplomatic man who can wield a gun to adequate effect should the need arise. It is simply that he can't sweet-talk the Queen of Sweden for a threesome and shoot the eye of a needle across the British Channel all in one playthrough.

Heh, I played the game around the same time, I actually finished HoW so went back and now doing ToTL. Anyway, so AR9200 is the Barbarian Camp, then. That's tricky - the Barbarian Camp is visited multiple times and has various triggers, so that it's probably unwise to simply skip over the area. Unless someone comes up with a better idea: 1. You did do full install, right? The [alias] section of icewind.ini should read like this: CD3:=C:\Games\Game Folders\Icewind Dale\CD3\ (Or whichever folder its installed in, thats just mine). 1b. If it's not, and it's set to D:\CD3\ or something, copy the entire contents of the CD3 folder in the Heart of Winter CD to the above folder; then put in Qwerty's AR9200.cbf. 2. Clear the cache/data and temp folders in your IWD folder. 3. Try again. This is probably what you have already done, though. I'll see if I can find anything from my past troubles when I come back home later.

Fair enough, if I have misrepresented you. But would you say that you yourself therefore live with no morality?

Yep.

You people post way too much when I'm not here. Bad. walkerguy, you said killing was evil, except in war or [something else i forget]. So is killing okay in war? Can you explain to me why killing in war is different from other sorts of killing, and why the declaration of warfare makes killing okay? This isn't a rhetorical question with the sole aim of being facetious; I genuinely think that if I am to understand why you would say this, I (and others) would need you to explain this specifically. When we look at controversial issues in society right now such as gay rights, abortion and sexual equality, it is easy to see how both sides can believe in completely different things, but believe they are 'right'. Completely different ideas of what is 'good' and 'evil'. So, walkerguy, I am assuming you are a Christian. If you were born in the 1600s, you might have been Christian. But just as you say "Genocide = evil, period" right now, you might have been saying, "black people are inferior, period". If you were born in 1000 BC, you might be saying, "certain races of people will never go to Heaven, period". If you were born two hundred years later, you might be saying, "I am Catholic Christian and therefore I fully support homosexual rights and abortion". Once again I stress. I am not saying, abandon your sense of good and evil. I am not saying that nothing is good and nothing is evil. Of course not, we could never live like that. But we have to always try to understand WHY we think something is good and evil; we have to understand where our value system comes from. We can't just say, "Genocide? Ugh, of course that's evil! But killing in war and [X] is okay. Why? It just is!". That leads to a life where you think you have done good or stopped evil, but maybe you haven't at all. You are not in control of your own life. This applies to the Christian life as well, walkerguy. I go to Church, and while I wouldn't say I am fully committed to God and Christianity at this point in time, I believe there is value in the church life and I am still at an 'undecided stage'. But anyway. You might say, 'my sense of good and evil are absolute and certain because I am just following what God has told me to do.' If you were, that would be fine. But it only takes one look at the world to see millions of very devout, very faithful Christians who have completely different viewpoints. Heck, the Christian doctrine tells us to pray and read the Bible on a regular basis, so that we may try and find out what God wants us to do and not go astray. Being a Christian is essentially a continuous system of self-discipline and self-surveillance (I don't mean this in a negative way). The minute a Christian says, "Of course I know what is good and evil, of course I know what God wants me to do, there's no need to double-check", he stops that process; he essentially stops listening to God, and is acting on his own instincts and his own habits. I hope that makes a little bit more sense; nobody is trying to say "there is no good and evil", and Hell Kitty is not trying to say everyone should go out and genocide. But on the other side of the spectrum, it is very dangerous and tragic for a person never to think about why they believe something is good or evil. Questioning yourself, furthermore, doesn't mean you become indecisive and lose confidence; it should mean that you are actually being truer to yourself. Yes, I know I sound like a self-help book here, but I wanted to avoid using technical terminology in this post, to see if that works better. If I sound patronising at any point, please excuse - not the intention.

Clearly, double-jump and wall climbing.

I think Pop and the Architect are really reacting to the argument, "there is no good and evil; it is impossible therefore to make moral judgements on others; we are all postmodern immoral fairies." I also think it is fair to suggest that neither I, nor Hell Kitty, nor anyone actually living in the real world, really, would make that claim. So hopefully we can move on from that. I think there is a way for us to bring it down to examples that both sides can actually imagine; In our society, in our worldview systems, yes. Why? Because from the very beginning of our lives, we are conditioned to believe that human life is one of the most sacred things in the world. Us (on the forums here) are also very rarely exposed to mass death of any scale, and therefore it is not even a practical necessity to have to kill people. So it's very, very far away from us. But would you say that the Europeans of the 16th-17th century, who thought black people were inherently stupid and semi-human, and killing them wasn't that bad, were all idiots? There aren't 'universal, timeless human values' which every human in every imaginable society and civilisation, would follow. And if there are, they are very few and very essential (e.g. 'human life' was generally valued throughout our history, but that didn't stop numerous forms of sanctioned killing). That's not to say that we should consider the possibility that genocide may be a 'good' thing for our society. But it raises an important point; that when we are 'naturally' repulsed by something, and we think 'that's just naturally inhuman', actually, we are employing a value system that is not absolute and that is a MIX of natural instincts and social conditioning. This helps us form more informed, more thought-out moralities that are more honest to ourselves, than "this is evil/bad because I just find it disgusting".

To claim that good and evil is all about perspective shouldn't mean that there is effectively no good and evil. If that was truly one's personal ideology, one would be, literally, immoral; one would be either completely irresponsible, or completely paralysed. So yes, for each of us, good and evil does exist in a practical sense. The trouble is finding out what's good and what's evil, and *why* you think it's good or evil.

Purely in terms of setting, AP, as I'm not a big fan of the Alien franchise.

Wasn't NWN2/MOTB T? Heh, I remember that NWN1 was R-16 when it first came out in NZ, and I had to scout around until somebody was lazy enough not to check. Yeah, I was 15, I think. Good times.

I'm Asian, remember? Sliding tackle from behind is valid in one instance - when you are outrunning the guy very comfortably, and loop your legs around to snatch the ball away. In outdoor football I've saved a few goals like this. However, if you get it wrong you can trip the guy up at best, or smash into his legs from the side (not from the behind). I only do it when I am very sure I am going ridiculously faster than him (say, he's stopping to shoot) and I am not going 'full in'. Generally, I think the direction of the tackle is not so much a problem if you are a proper footballer; the problem is the way you tackle. I never tackle with my studs up - in fact, I am often tackling in a way so that the opponent, if he clashes with me, clashes with my shoelaces and never my studs or the tip of my toes. But I agree that sliding tackle is often a last-minute measure (duh, you can't get back up) - shadowing the opponent is generally the way to go.

pruuuuunnned, and in last chance salon. Let's see if this has anything productive left. Maybe not. walkerguy, I don't see anyone attacking your posts just because they are Christian. If anything I'm in the Christian camp (though vacillating) and I don't feel I have ever been trounced for it, either. They are raising logical question to your argument - whether you want to reply to them or not is of course, your choice.

That is the Enhanced Version, in May.

Sorry if I mislead - meaning the text dialogue is restored to a more accurate (and thus lengthier, fuller) translation of the original, but the VO naturally remains the same. A dialogue restoration of some sort is promised with the official Enhanced Version, but I am not sure if that includes the VO. And yes, the tutorial is rather dreary, but what tutorial isn't? It's certainly better than Peragus or the Temple of Trials.

Sorry Krezack, I forgot to come back to this. I'd like to focus on what you have termed my 'doublethink', rather than the validity of the scientific method. While it is true that the scientific method is an ever-changing thing that never claims to or can be completely relied upon for the production of universal truth, I don't want to seem like I am out to attack science - that's not really my goal here. Certainly, most of the problems of science today are from a mispractice of science (e.g. 'psychiatry' in the eighteenth-nineteenth century, gynecology in the 1950's) or a misunderstanding of science. What I am trying to say is closer to identifying what science really is and what position it has in the world, rather than refute it. Basically, science as we define it in contemporary Western society, is a designed mechanism for the production of truth. Its primary ingredient is the empirical object, and its primary mode of verification is material sensibility. Simply put, science makes its own rules for the production of truth, then declares that truth as a scientifically proven hypothesis. Then, thanks to the proliferation of the scientific discourse into all areas of society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, citizens of the Westernised world now generally believe in scientific truth and scientific method as an absolute, timeless, universal and infallible certainty. The actual scientist says, "based on the following presuppositions that are necessarily made for science to work, and based on the following presuppositions made using laws of statistics and so and so, I find it very, very likely, in fact, extremely likely, that X is true." This, in practiced discourse of the average citizen, becomes, "X is true because science said so." Science is very valuable because the mechanisms it uses to investigate empirical reality is extremely sound (or more sound that most other methods we know of) and its perfect practice lies under the realm of reasonable possibility for humans. In other words, as fallible as we humans are, it is still possible to make some pretty darn solid scientific hypotheses. However, two things must always be remembered about science: Science never produces truth, understood as an absolute, infallible, perfect thing manifest in any and all instances. It simply produces a statistical and logical likelihood of a certain thing, which likelihood is based on various presumptions. This does not make science 'bogus' or 'guesswork', by the way. That's not what I'm saying. I'll come back to this. The scientific method itself is, just like the truth it produces, never perfect. Firstly, basic presumptions behind scientific projects can and do change. Secondly, the very mechanism of a scientific method, the very basic fundamental things about what constitutes science, can and does change. That means ideas about what is empirical, what is logical, what is scientific information and what is not. With less than two centuries between them, Buffon takes his predecessor of naturalistic sciences in Aldrovandi and declares his work a hotch-potch, 'legend'. Rather than that Aldrovandi was a rogue charlatan, this means that Buffon composes his natural history with a different method and definitions of 'scientific evidence', and can only recognise Aldrovandi's as unscientific. What do these two things mean? They do not consign science to the dust; they do not refute the importance of science. What I am saying is that 'science' is a particular mechanism for the production of truth. Its rules are ever-changing, and there is no guarantee that as time passes, we will get closer and closer to the mark until, voila, we have the science that produces absolute and undeniable truth. Big Bang Theory in 300 years' time may be denounced by scientists as bollocks, occupying the same space in children's history-books as countless other discarded theories. Or it may not, and it may be the truth. So, if we forget what science really is, and fall into the illusion that science is and produces absolute truth, then we are trying to take a square peg and put it into a round hole. I am not saying you are guilty of this, Krezack - not at all. This isn't a dissertation on where you are and what your problems are, but simply my ideas on what science is. The second, and more relevant, point that all this makes about science is this. Modern science has decided to use particular tools available to us, such as statistics, the concept of population and normativity, the modern definitions of the empirical and the material, to cultivate a particular way of understanding the world. That means that science does exactly the same thing religion, shamanism, and other things do, but simply in a different way. Modern Christianity (yes, I generalise) use different tools, but to reach the same goal of understanding the world. Christianity uses tools such as faith, prayer, and the logics of spirituality. Now, that means Christianity is actually very logical. What do I mean by logical? I don't mean the popular definition which equates 'logical' with 'common sense' or 'scientific evidence'. I mean that the internal logic of Christianity, which it uses to construct its own perception of reality, is sound and solid, or as much as the scientific one is in its own way. You have two different sunglasses to use to look at the beach; you have two different building-block sets to make a house. Which is better, or closer to the truth? It's very hard, if not impossible, to tell. Why? Humans are incapable of seeing reality as it is. We have to apply some form of mechanism, whether it be the scientific gaze, the religious, or whatever else. So, if you look at something from a scientific POV, of course, religion seems nonsensical, illogical, unfounded. Why? Because Christianity wasn't built with the scientific logic in mind at all. It's like a craftsman who only builds his houses in clay, who looks at a brick house and says, "what the hell are they doing?! That doesn't work". But of course, if you only use their own internal logics to judge them, then everything appears wonderfully and absolutely true. A 'scientific fanatic' is just as blind as the 'religious fanatic'. So. Finally. Back to Krezack's summation as 'doublethink'. I know this is getting away from the original Orwellian meaning, but I would argue that 'singlethink' is actually more dangerous - where you are fully immersed in one particular way of understanding the world, whatever it may be, and fall under the delusion that it is an absolute mechanism that produces absolutes. That is why I would argue that if you are a Christian, you would still be a fool to denounce anything scientific. Christianity does not, I contend, mean giving up everything that is 'secular'... because God is, or should be, 'worldly'. A Christian who refuses to listen to science is like one that refuses to take his medicine or go see a doctor, and instead sits there and prays. He dies; and God says, "you bloody moron, you prayed and so I delivered you medicine, I delivered you a doctor, and what do you do? SIT THERE AND PRAY." Equally, an atheist who believes in science will do well to consider the fallibilities, or rather, the limits of science. But of course, practically, in our daily lives, we can't just hold all these different views in balance, and go nowhere; in the end we have to choose what to believe in and what ideology to live our lives with. I just wanted to stress, in that 'doublethink' passage, that choosing one does not mean the complete denunciation of the other. I'm not happy with how the post turned out - entirely too long and obscures some key points - but it's hard for me to make it clearer without spending even more time on it. Hopefully I have made my general ideas come across; if not, feel free to lambast.