Tigranes

The only really bad voices I remember are the epilogue / Highcliff battle narrations, the guards at the Manor, and possibly Qara was a little grating. Grobnar isn't that bad at all IMO. But then, Sammael hasn't heard the narration yet, has he?

Saw Haruhi on both manga and anime, it's one of those things that really comes alive on anime. But then, I always have trouble with manga where everything is really messy and cluttered and there are people and speech bubbles at war across the boundaries. Way too unsettling. Show itself was pretty fun though. Nothing special, but fun. Recently saw: Kare Kano (the OTHER gainax), Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society (good as always), Eureka 7 (some blatant Eva ripoffs but still pretty fun), and Welcome to the NHK. The last isn't as well known so I don't know if anybody here ever picked up on it; it just finished in Japan, 1 season, 24 episodes. NHK is the Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai (the Japan Hikikomori Organisation / Conspiracy); a hikikomori is someone who has extreme antisocial tendencies, even phobia, and can't bear to go outside or interact with other people because of paranoia and lack of self-confidence. As a result they cannot work, socialise, or study, and live holed up in their room - financially assisted by their sympathetic partners, friends and/or parents. It's a big syndrome in Japan (and smaller elsewhere). The main character, Satou, is one of these hikikomori - and the story revolves around him and his two only acquaintances, and Satou's troubles as he struggles to overcome his hikikomori status. It's funny, witty, well paced and pretty damn nice overall. The only complaint is that the anime convention of artists getting tired mid-season is really really prevalent here; frankly the faces and character art in most mid-season episodes are ****. Still, good series. But then, my tastes are a bit different in terms of anime, especially from Adult Swimw atchers, I believe. I generally get really bored by sci-fi or adventure anime (Naruto, Champloo, etc) and in fact usually go for the 'lighter' ones - and anime being anime, that usually means Japanese high school (Fruits Basket, Kare Kano, Azumanga Daioh, so forth). More of a social setting. The only exceptions to that are Evangelion, GITS and Full Metal Alchemist, which I enjoyed. ONe of the big reasons for me is that fighting in anime is really really boring. Martial fighting is boring because in manga they just have outrageous poses and random slashes (exception is Holy Land, by Kouji Mori; that thing reads more like a street fighting manual, it's excellent.) Fantasy / Sci-fi ones have that Ever-Escalating Scale of Once-Awesome Moves, also called the Dragon Ball syndrome. I think the stupidest one in recent memory is in Naruto. I was watching a few eps ..around 40-something, I think. That fat little kid, the main character, he had taken about 10 episodes to perfect this awesome move that would totally destroy anybody. He finally uses it and succeeds, with much hoopla, one hit kill, etc. Then in the next episode, some guy just invents some sort of flaw or rule that renders the move useless and brushes it aside. And so I understand the episodes are somewhere upt o 200 now. Can't keep using the same moves, right?

But then, you coudl get some crazy multipliers with the Assassin. Nothing beats the BG experience where you sneak in with your thief, backstab x6 CHUNK that baatezu then run out with boots of speed as the fireballs come in. Then the said Assassin would sit around while the rest of the party fights.

I think even a utilisation of well-known personality cliches can make for a bigger variety of Good and Evil. For example: -> Good: man who will stop at nothing and will commit lesser evils to save ze world - i.e. if you dont give me that keycard i'm going to kill you, because i need it to save the people. -> Evil: or rather amorality, where dialogue options denounce the flimsy notion of morality and one acts in self-interest, which does not exclude helping others depending on the situation -> Evil: kill everyone, etc, etc. -> Good: Pursues a particular moral or legal code that overrides all feelings of compassion and pity. etc, etc. The problem is that the current dialogue system in CRPGs treat each dialogue choice as a separate one; there is no interrelationship or the creation of a real personality. It is possible to talk to one beggar and be nice, then be evil, then be sadistic, etc, etc - in other words, play a compelte schitzo. The game deals with simple variables (Good points, etc) so that a composite picture can never appear; that is why everything is so simplified. If we were to, say, script it thus: Please give me money, good sir. I'ms o hungry! A) Yes. B) No. A-> Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you. A) Here, guards! Guards! He's taking my money! He's a thief! B) Right, just so I know you're not some druggie, I'm going to follow you and make sure you get food with that. C) Bye, hope I have been of help. B -> But sir, I'm so hungry! A) Do I look like I care? B) Try working instead of begging for food, it will be better for you in the long term. C) Sorry mate. If I give you money here, then it will break down the social structure and people won't be rewarded for hard work! Its nothing personal, but I can't give you money in good conscience. Now, dialogues like this exist in current games. However, there is no correlation, composition, relation between your first choice of answer and your second choice. This is grossly simplified, of course - but in the current system you'd get "Evil" points for first picking No, then get Good points ironically (or get nothing) for picking C) afterwards. You would end up with G/E points cancelling each other out, or just being termed evil. But what if the system was revamped so that the system considers ALL the dialogue choices you picked in a paritcular conversation branch before dealing out "points"? For example, B->C would give you, say, Lawful Good points, but I don't know, crank down on the Compassion point meter. A->A would give Evil and perhaps Chaotic points? Sadistic points? So you see the challenge is to create a system where there are enough 'categories' to reflect these multiplitous facets of a personality, then use these variables in a complex set of scripts that recognise a person's consistent personality and direction at least within a conversation branch, if not throughout the game, isntead of judging each dialogue choice by itself.

Outrageous distractions would be the minimal requirement. I'm pretty sure there are no unlimited spawn areas either, and if there are, it can't be more than one or two. I'm not too bothered about it. Anyway, I think Pop is right, or something, about the sneak rules - you don't even have to be hidden in NWN2, as long as you hit somebody's back it's a sneak attack (thus your rogue could potentially make a sneak attack EVERY TURN indefinitely.) BG did use the back-to-wall workaround, and dialogue initiation upon area entrance regardless of invisibility (i.e. Gromnir Il-Khan). Of course, traps were so broken in BG it wasn't funny - my solo Assassin in SoA could kill the Tree Irenicus in ONE TURN with traps.

Hey, in pnp I'd have the thief sneak in, talk to Fihelis himself, and sneak out, while the rest of my party stays outside creating suitable Qara-like diversions. Not my fault the game can't handle creativity. " And Spot is really powerful in NWN2, so half the time you can see them on screen even though they are still invisible. They can still baxtab though, so you have to turn to face them.

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Gromnir, I never said BG was hard. Hell, I've played it so many times I instinctively know where all the encounters are, etc, etc. But it's still *fun*. That's the whole point. And it's certainly more challenging than NWN2 with the right mods, way more challenging (though still not uber-difficult). BG battles are nearly always a lot more fun. What's wrong with BG2 entangle pop? I still use it in Tutu usefully.

You fools, you don't actually *fight* through that area, you just get a thief on invisibility and haste dash into the room with Fihelis, initiate conversation (thereby teleoprting your mainchar into the room as well), then have whoever's waiting by the door exit, thus, in a PST-style exploit, letting everybody leave the place. Or just have thief & mainchar sneak back. Seriously, who barges in there like an Anomen and kills everybody? Come on, think pnp, not Diablo.

Yep, its possible and I did it on my second runthrough. It's probably one of the most difficult diplo checks in Act 1, scale-wise.

I'd say the latest Tutus are pretty similar now, especially if you have Tutufix and Tututweak or whatever it's called. The main difference in mine is that because I use faster BG2 walking speeds, ranged weapons aren't as awesome as they were in BG1 vanilla (where you can just shoot everything down before they reach you). I still don't have a fireball, it's a travesty. I have this compulsive disorder that before I go to the bandit camp I must explore all areas south of Beregost (except Durlag's Tower); so I did everywhere west, and now am doing Firewine Bridge. It was really great in one map where i used Charm Person on Zat (the guy that throws Darts really fast), killed his companions, ran up to the top of the map where that encounter with Sendai and the 2 lackeys are, and then had Zat help me take them down. They fire really powerful arrows for level 3 characters. Well they are, kinda. Just not conversation / appriase skills.

I don't know the reasoning behind Obsidian's decision on that either, but it seems to me that it doesn't serve a very positive purpose. Anyway, if there are no gameplay OC modifications or standalone modules worth playing right now (as it seems), I might just complete BG saga again. Played about the first half of BG1 and it really is still excellent, the combat is still a lot more fun for me than NWN2 (or NWN1, K1/2, JE...)

Yes, your PC pretty much does everything. It leads to silliness when you have your thief sneak around scouting the place out, but then you enter a room where dialogue is automatically initiated (what with their all-seeing eye of Scriptzor) and your PC is instantly teleported there so he/she can speak to them. I believe the Bandit house in act 1 is a classic example, as is Fihelis' house. Anyway, I had laid off on NWN2 a bit after finishing it twice; are there any interesting modules out there yet (I assume not), or tools, or OC modifications worth looking at? All I really use ATM is some UI mods.

Apparently not.

Not really. Many Christians interpret the Bible in terms of symbolism, allegories, anecdotes and parallels. Can God condone such brutal murder in one time and one place and condemn it in another? For some, yes. For some, no. Even when placed contextually, it tells you that God is capable of ordering such things and does not see wanton murder of those with different religion as inherently bad. Following this, it would not be 'unlike' God to order mass genocides of Muslims in the Middle East right now.] Uh.. that was pretty much what I was responding to, no? I was pointing out that while you can find lots of KILL quotes in the Qu'ran as has been quoted last page, so can you with the Bible. That was all. Now if you want to look at the context as well, then see what I wrote above. To say a portion of the bible doesn't apply at all because it's in a diff. time and place is not valid.

Yes you can. I've never had the opportunity to sit down and read the Qu'ran extensively, but any casual reader of the Bible need only sit down and think a bit. One of the examples - one of many - I can remember is Joshua in OT.. he's pretty much ordered by God to go and kill children, women, men, everyone in a city, just because they didn't feel like submitting to the Israeli migration into their lands and put up a fight. No baby-killers or Sodom or nuthin'. Of course, even more interesting is Joshua.. ch10? 11? Somewhere that says, roughly, that these men were doomed to fall under the Israeli because God had hardened their hearts and made them refuse the overtures of the Israeli. Could be interpreted very badly for God. But that's not the point here.. both the bible and the Qu'ran have passages that, taken literally - and for some, even when not taken literally - are very, very aggressive. Is interesting to see how others that are religious / want to be religious reconcile these passages.

They are just behind a big boulder and have a campfire. The crates are clearly visible on the map, and they also have a couple of weapon bags.

The example sorta clunks here because it was a passive one, but are you then suggesting that anything we can get used to, is within our nature? You can gradually increase the temperature of the bathwater to kill humans without realising, you know. I suppose that's in their nature too - to die from insidious, slow-heating bathwater. As for the instinct, is that instinct an instinct to kill, or something even more base that simply manifests in killing? Is it the instinct of self-defence, or of physically lashing out at those it hates / fears, even physical reflexes?

How is that relevant to the question of killing being human nature? That's like saying being crushed by heavy things is human nature, whether by a big rock or by a flying pig launched by a Cambodian intercontinental artillery unit. I'm not sure where you people draw the line between action and nature.

Easiest way: go to game folder\data\world\imperial_campaign (might have missed out a folder there) then open descr_stats.txt, then at the top move all factions to playable. Except for a few like rebels, who don't work properly without further modding. I'm using Darthmod Lite right now, mainly for its inclusion of ShabaWangy diplomacy mod.. it's the only thing that makes the game tolerable. I got exactly the same experience as BI: a few new features made it fresh for about 5 hours, then I found out that the AI is still just as stupid, and the game mechanics remain just as, uh, mechanical. It's still a damn good game, but right now and after months of RTW, I dont have the patience for the same enemy betraying me EVERY turn although it's outnumbered 20 to 1, then fighting me just so it can sit there on top of the hill getting shot by my arrows. Still, it was pretty fun being the Champion of the Pope.. I had 10 out of 13 cardinals French, French pope, with a little kingdom in Jerusalem and Acre (Antioch and Damascus held by the Hungarians) and the English as my vassals. Just really miss giving out titles. I'm actually playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11 by KOEI... it's a very old series, you westerners might know KOEI from Dynasty Warriors. I hadn't played it since the 4th rendition back in the last century, and they now have battles actually take place on the campaign map. The thing is, this game is pretty damnc omplex - and had just as many variables and so forth as total war games back in its more ancient incarnations. And the AI works so much better. THey honour allianaces; they gang up on you and only attack when the odds are good; they backstab you only with a big chance of success; they use battle tactics very well; etc. There are probably a bit less variables and stuff like that than TW, sure, but it doesn't matter becuase it's so immersive.

No, really. I played a little bit of EU1 and a lot of EU2, I loved trhe games but to pretend that the combat is good is .. yeah. It's simple and does a goodj ob at using the limited variables like morale to good effect, but it devolves into movement point arithmetics and has some randomness about it which gives you all the frustration of being a real armchair general and not much else. I play EU2 for its campaign, not its combat.

The 3 crates for the Orc is easy, you just follow the coastline from Cape Dun until you find some bandits with a campfire. You kill them, then take the crates. Above the cliffs still, not below on the beach.

EU's combat is slightly superior to Risk's.

NWN2 has better companions than Gothic 3. Gothic 3 is designed as a solo game and places small emphasis on companions. The two statements are not contradictory and they do not imply anything more than what they say, like 'so nwn2 is better'. Arguing that NWN2 sucks without henchmen is stupid too, because that's like saying Gothic3 would suck without quests.

Orden, yes. It is a very narrow window when you can visit WH and still get him - but it makes sense because you would naturally go to WH to close the What Happened to Lorne? Quest, which was probably cut down to size. So original vision, IMO, was that the full blown Lorne quest would have its epilogue in the words of his mother, then on the way out you'd talk to Orden. The tower has other purposes. A mage called star something will teleport in and commission a wizard's tower - I found its items more useful. Church, monk.. not too much difference IMO. just slightly different kind of shop.