Tigranes

Fair enough, Skynet, as long as you are equally concerned about female teachers being alone with your sons, male teachers being with your daughters, etc, etc.

I think puppies would have died from that post even if you didn't mention RPGs.

I would be extremely surprised if you couldn't make the drag-box.

See, it'll be funny when hardcore video gamers ARENT the fat bastards that can't see their own feet or engage in any real physical activity.

Hopefully it'll have an option to 'turn off AI', like in BG, so that they act exactly to your orders and only make basic funcitons on their own (e.g. when idle attack nearest).

Conversely, there are people who LOVE Dungeon Siege. and really really really care about Aribeth. Moving on from unreconciliable differences of opinion..

The Guild 2. However, I had never played the first one and it's really hard to know what I'm supposed to do. It seems I can't even talk to people anymore, except for a select few (or courting).

I don't know. I tried A Hunt in the Dark, as well as at least twenty other fan-made mods, some widely acclaimed, some just dug up / stumbled over on my own; I could find some enjoyment here and there, but never could 'get into' it or often even finish the module. Yet I absolutely loved BG2's mods. I think one of the things was that BG and other games often 'inject' quests and whatnot into the main campaign, and thus if they are conscientious about making their work 'fit' into the existing setting it ends up being pretty good, creative, but still polished and part of an immersive setting. NWN modules have to hold up the world on their own shoulders, and I often find the effort, however laudatory, somewhere flimsy or transparent - can't quite describe. But it never does feel like I can immerse myself as I can afford to do with even some official campaigns that I don't really appreciate afterwards (e.g. Jade Empire). Although, the Elegia Eternum creator - that guy with the weird name - he came pretty close. Pity his modules were so short.

I downloaded NWN patches and +100mb BG community mods with a 56k dialup. At first, without a download manager, so that half the time it would fail and I'd have to start again. I'd never go back to it, but it wasn't quite so bad, really. Ideally I'd suggest that 'gameplay fixes' only become separate from 'add-ons' (and god, NO tangential discussion on the definition of the word patch please?! ), but practically, I'd have no qualms about simply pushing to have NWN / MMORPG-style patches in every game that could have it. It's a great way to provide longevity and freshness to games, and besides, most people do have high-speed internet now. If you don't, that's like saying I want NWN to cater to a Celeron 133mhz audience. If you can't upgrade, then YOU deal with it. I did.

Excellent.

512 is BS, why do we need to talk about it? And yeah, Desslock just loves whatever big RPG that gets released. He loved old ones, he loves new ones (Oblivion, Dungeon Siege too, I think..), etc, etc. But then, who listens to most reviewers?

Yeah, but this is a game. Aerie was equivalent to having a party member without a leg, so that instead of providing a game mechanism (e.g. wooden leg) so it becomes a nice characterisation, the character walks twenty times slower than everyone else, and regularly falls over and loses hit points. Or spending three hours helping rehabilitate an injured comrade back to health. Aerie was waaaaaaaaaayyy too whiny. I'd be interested to see if anybody actually *liked* her. I mean, roleplaying wise I coudl sympathise, and I would have provided help given the option, but take her along and listen to all that? In a game? Hell no.

Oerwinde, it should drive you into further depths of despair that I could have a level 5 character with 3000 health within the first hour of the game (D-something.. Dolbet? Dolret? Delret? Deekin? misison), then promptly fight against enemies doing 80 damage for the rest of CD1.

There are only very few battles where your high levels give you a disadvantage, one of them being the Ultimate Weapon. Who is so freaking easy it doesn't matter anyway - I had once prepared Heroes and other rare items to use, and ended up beating him with magic and limit breaks. When I first got FF8 I was 10 and it was my first RPG of any sort. It was also my only game on the PS. So I did end up putting +100 hours into it and doing pretty much everything. ...then BG2 came out.

FFVIII was ridiculously easy, because you could use Quistis' blue magic of I-forget-name that would 'black hole' any single enemy and instantly kill it. Only on regular enemies, but you could do it with Island Closest to Hell and I.C.t.Heaven and get up to level 100 really fast. And even if you didn't, limit breaks become incredibly powerful, and triple aura/haste combinations are awesome. It was definitely easier than most other FFs. But then, I beat the ultimate weapon of FF8 in about 2 minutes, so...

Yes, because it's a video highlighting AI errors. ZOMG.

Actually, she talks about Khalid all the time. It's hard to see how more substantiated it can get without degenerating into Aerie-like annoyances. I mean, WINGS. OKAY. MOVE ON. NO WINGS.

Alright, alright, let's not start.

You can complete the circle of Zerthimon and discover Dak'kon's past and so forth. You can use the bronze sphere. Don't think so about the diary.

I'd much rather the game had its own history. Or referred to Bhaalspawn saga if anything, or HOTU. NWN OC? No wai.

I played FFIX-IX and liked them for the most part... of course, I mostly tanked hours into 7-9 when I was about ten and I was stupid enough to bear all the boring battles and so forth (I played X last year and was so damn bored), then played 4-6 on emulator with windowed and alt-tabbing. Still, some of them were great games with great narratives for those who like them. FFXII is probably the most amiable for people around here, and probably has a shot with those who liked pre-PS2 FFs. I'll be able to try it by borrowing a friend's PS2 in a few weeks... if I like it I'd probably finish it then in a super-run and be done with it.

So someone relate the Rand arguments to Paladins? Or is that not what we're trying to do anymore. Most 'evil' paladins, or non-LG paladins, redefine paladinship as not the obligation to champion Good wherever you go, but the obligation to champion your sense of morality or worldview wherever you go - in essence, take the "Halt, in the name of the law", then replace "law" with whatever. It can get rather interesting if the roleplayer is good enough to mimic (or actually believe in) an alternate worldview than the Paladinic Good (not hard, that) then champion it in a very.. uh.. Paladinic way. Heh. Paladinic.

I tried that game once. I died in the first 20 minutes from creatures, radiation poisoning, lack of food, lack of sleep (?) and whatnot. Need to try it again sometime.

That's a good point, Volourn, but in my personal experience I could anticipate both the twist in KOTOR(1) and JE, and felt the former still had some quality anyway, and the narrative did not suffer too much from my already guessing it. My reaction to the guess was "If I *am* Revan.. well, interesting. Let's see what they do with it." With JE, it was the first covnersation with your mentor.. "Oh God, this will be silly." Which it was.

To Darque's quote.. it's too simplistic. Extend that argument and you could say "It's okay for people not to hire black people, because they should be able to choose whot hey pay and employ and set their conditions. Dont like it? Dont work under them." Which, naturally, is not what you meant. Workplace impositions cannot supercede laws and human rights. Does the right to wear a veil count as the latter? Is the real question, obviously. Although, I say again, I can totally see the teacher (who wanted the assistant gone) totally bemused by all this, when he actually wanted her gone for not being good at her job. :D