Tigranes

NWN1 also had the same problem of zooming itself to the max when you exited buildings, getting itself confused over elevation changed, etc.

That is, indeed, the high point of MOTB. I think Casavir is just left vague completely? Though it's safe to assume he died?

Well I'm already in the Lower Ward now, but I will try the rat tails when I go back there for Xacharias. Thanks Gorth & insomniac - I never thought to have anybody else translate Fell. One of these days I really need to play eeeeevil at PS:T, just so I can

Yeah.

Hmph. I was tempted in the Dead Nations. I'm findingl ittle things I missed (and some are so obvious I have no idea how I missed them) - like the Puzzled and Riddling skeletons in the Dead Nations. Apparently 15INT is too low to crack the riddles, and I'm dying to know what happens if you thwart him. Ah well.

The 'merchants' can both be appeased with a single soul. You must first speak to Master Poruset, the golem, and enquire about soul transfusion: then, he should guide you rest of the way. Yes, both souls you need are in the library. You just have to, guided by your journal, find the two that are the right fit. It's not too difficult. The mirror really annoyed me for a while, but you have to remember that on the south side of the room, there is a hidden corridor, the door is hidden behind a bookcase. Once you find that it should be easy to link up the two and get the soul. Remember that you can take the control mechanism off the pillar and use it remotely from your inventory, to make it easier.

Where's MCA going then?

Blitzkrieg!

Yeah, the strat-cam is fine. My comp can't handle the lag from drawing ceilings anyway, and unlike KOTOR games, NWN games are built with narrow corridors that make it much harder to have a behind-the-shoulder cam, no matter how good the camera mechanics are. I play permanent strat cam with minimal movement and have no trouble in any NWN games, except that annoying tendency for it to zoom down when you've just exited a structure, and its hard to get it back on track.

Didn't Interplay sell or lose any rights they had to BG/IWD?

I guess Jason enjoys working at doomed studios..

My only tabletop experience is the short-lived Obsidianite campaign, and I wish we'd try that again. So does this thing look solid?

No, it's not the same as being a puppet. Keep in mind I don't share a hive-mind with Azarkon. Certainly, even the most westernised country is a hybrid. There is no such thing as 'Americanisation' in the sense that you simply become influenced by America (or France, or West, or Japan, or whatever) and take some of their nature directly: there is always an indigenous hybridisation that occurs at the site of the influence. The question, though, is what are the standards by which such hybridisation is to occur. Currently, across many nations, yes, such standards do exist; but they are dependent on extremely vague, misleading and easily manipulated ideas such as 'national identity' and 'tradition'. I recently read a Korean book on the matter (which is nice to get a perspective, after reading many US/UK based writers), and it was stressing how a blind and forced reproduction of the past traditions can never displace the organic processes of cultural hybridisation (or 'Americanisation' if you want) - i.e. even if the government subsidises some obscure ancient Korean music, nobody's really going to be receptive to it (because its just bad? because our ears are already trained to Western music? Who knows?), and then the triumph of tradition or identity becomes a farce. A hybrid that is to the benefit of developing a Muslim world that can coexist with the Western one and retain its core values (another can of worms) is possible, but how? Who can say? Sand, yes you are right - the fundamentalist movements we saw last century in pretty much all major live religions is testament to the fact that the phenomenon is not limited to Islam. It should be noted, however, that such a struggle to adapt or accept changing social reality isn't a characterstic of religions alone, and it's not because religions are inherently based on ignorance of how the world works, or anything like that. Religion seeks to explain how things work based on particular spiritual standards: Science seeks to explain how things work based on particular empirical standards of its own. Both disciplines' standards change over time (science has changed its own standards and judgments again and again, just as religion does). Judged using religion's standards, science naturally is limited; judged using scientific standards, religion is naturally ridiculous. My point is that all such disciplines are ways of explaining reality and our place within it; so, with rapid or major changes in social reality, of course all these disciplines then struggle to readjust themselves, to remain relevant and alive in our world. The same kind of crisis is now happening with the idea of the nation as a polity, the idea of group identity based on physical geographic integrity. To come back to religion, religion has adapted and changed again and again throughout all its history. It may do so again; it may die (probably not). But as you said Sand, it's not just people in the Middle East, or people that believe in Islam, that are affected by this. If the question of how to live a religious life in the modern world is not solved, then not only will there be more tragedy in the Middle East, there will also continue to be extreme and dangerous, perverse fundamentalist movements in places you wouldn't suspect, like suburban America: there will continue to be violence and conflict not only where religion meets religion, but also where religion meets the rest of the world.

Just wait until a major news network catches this, runs a small online news story, and its put down in history as another display of the "Power of the Internet".

Keep in mind my 'crazy' post wasn't really a coherent argument leading to a conclusion, cause I don't really have one. Just thoughts. hrm. Okay, I tried writing a reply to Rhomal that would articulate my position better (which is definitely not some sort of sex/nudity=inherently bad crap, which admittedly is what it sounded like), but I'm failing, so I"ll let it lie. Suffice to say I've represented myself badly so I can see where you're coming from, but it wasn't where I was going. Tale appears to have been prescient. Anyway, anybody else found this? Actual comparison of original and translated Witcher dialogues, coming from my Polish friend who may or may not have transltaed himself. X is original, Y is English. I'm pretty disappointed actually, I may hold out on the game until someone releases a patch to replace the text.

It was the best one though, if only for the final bits with the .

On the whole Islam deal, with Azarkon, Silentscope and whatnot: Certainly, flat 'westernisation' is one answer. Japan has shown the powerful ways in which the Western mechanisms can be adopted for one's own uses in the economic sphere: South Korea has shown how rapidly and effectively such a jump can be made in the right climate (though it did at the turn of the century suffer from the aftereffects of doing in thirty years what most nations took a century to do). But in the end, one of the biggest question facing not only the region but the world in our time is, how can, and how will, Islam, as not only a religion but a way of life, culture and politic, manifest itself in this century? Because right now it's not really 'realised'. Even setting aside the fact that Iraq is not purely 'muslim', and that 'muslim' doesn't mean one thing, there is a massive lack of consensus or examples of workable / successful models on how a modern state can be run using muslim ideals; how a muslim can live culturally and religiously in our era; how indeed a muslim identity can be negotiated altogether. There is nothing more urgent than this in that region, never mind immediate causes such as Palestinian eviction, oil, nuclear Iran or current presence of US/etc troops in Iraq.

ramza: the Dark Materials series are really excellent, on quality and on entertainment as well I would rank them far above Narnia and Harry Potter, they're lovely books and the world is actually really well made. Most recommendable.

I don't know why the argument is all around SE curse as stopping you from resting. While that is certainly probably a big point with it, I mean... it's just about adding a distinct layer of gameplay to the xpack, I think. It certainly wasn't built as complex as it is with the primary purpose of preventing resting, whatever OE might have said before.

I am very curious as well. If the English version is shorter due to budget issues or Atari's angrypants, ini...?

Probably. Not sure. I'll come back in a couple of hours and see if I was.

That said, Rhomal... the graphics on the cards for the Witcher are pretty much porn. In fact, they could go straight into a porn site and live there happily. Maybe not the most 'hard core', but they are explicit, and they will be arousing for certain people, i.e. certain male teenagers. I used to think it was extremely hypocritical to be fine with violence on the screen but not sex - but something occured to me as I was reading your post: sex on the screen isn't just a simulation of sex on the screen, it's also pornographic material (at times) that actually arouses the viewer. I don't think that happens with videogame violence to the same extent, but if a teenager plays the Witcher, and goes around hunting sex and those cards (and you know they will), and is aroused from them - well, isn't that pretty different from just someone enjoying Halo? I mean, it is possible someone really wants to kill people and gets the same kind of satisfaction and enjoyment from playing Counter Strike, and associates that with real killings, but most people don't. But a lot more people who hunt for the 'porn cards' in the Witcher would associate that with real sexual activity and be aroused. I don't know. I sense that it isn't a fundamental difference here but rather the difference in how people treat the two things in games differently, but I can't see the whole logic very clearly at the moment. Will get this game next month probably, around when it gets here in the NZ. I wonder which version we are going to get - and I wonder if I can even run it.

What's next? 'Press the arrow keys to move'?

That last one is disturbing. "Oh, you want sex? I was just killing this chicken. For dinner. Topless."

I enjoy the fact that inventory screens are small actually, didn't bother me much. There are mods out there to let you see them all at once though, if you like. I'm sure somebody's made them MOTB compatible by now.