Tigranes

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

To a lesser degree it's in all developed countries. About ten years ago there was a frenzy of German vacationers suing travel agencies by taking their holiday packages, then accusing them of false advertising on ridiculous stuff like "The pamphlet didn't tell me I'd find a dead ****roach's leg under the bed, beneath the bedpost".

Wait, they're still doing that? No way I'm giving 'em money now. GOD DIES IN THAT BOOK. HOW DO YOU NOT ... gah. ;

The entirety of Northern Lights can easily be converted into a game; however, it iwll most likely become a budget adventure game with bad graphics and button mashing. As an RPGish adventure game it could do well, especially with the latter two books, but I don't anticipate such a thing happening. A spinoff story would probably end up being written by someone chronically retarded. Conclusion? The fate of 95% of book/movie-inspired games. There is potential there though, the world is excellent.

Of course, it was the Jewish lobbyists in US that had the biggest impact. Nobody stopped to consider the Palestines, I still say they should have made one in Russia.

This is retarded.

I don't pay them anyway. Yet I still get Good points for.. not killing criminals. I don't know why giving criminals mercy and therefore a chance to repeat the crimes will be Good on every single occasion, regardless of the man, or the situation, or whatever.

Of course, not everyone in the Blood War becomes a baatezu/tanaari. Aren't some known to escape, or at least have some kind of alternate option? I'd like to believe the Nameless One remains hum-.. uh.. 'human'.

I don't know. Then the beggars come at you and ask for 2 gold pieces..

Funnily enough, I didn't discover harmonic combos until fairly late game - right around when you get super-unbalanced transformations. I still thought the game was damned easy. But then, I had chosen a more combat-oriented character because I had suspected that magic wouldn't be exactly 'deep' in this game, and melee combat would always get more of a focus. Volourn, exactly what elements of the plot or the underlying philosophies of the game were any different from nomral high fantasy? This of course doesn't debate the merits of JE itself, but rather I think explains the fact that JE's world hasn't been, and will not be, nearly as inspirational for intertextual works as has been other original works, because 1/ it's not original, 2/ and it's not any better than what came before, either. Sort of like Fable (but better than THAT, by God.)

No, no. I mean the philosophies behind the game, or the ideas, or the way people behaved, and so forth, was still very much high fantasy. It was high fantasy with aesthetic and stylistic differences in terms of buildings, clothes, etc, then drawing a bit from oriental myth especially for creatures but.. that was about it. The epistemology, as to be expected, was the same. The High Dragon King Emperor Whatever was pretty much the same as the Grand Lord Imperator Baron Etc-Man. Which would have been fine I suppose, if it was done well, but what makes JE stand out? I really struggle to remember. (cue Volo with mountains of evidence.. uh.. opinion.)

Jade Empire's merits as a single work has no bearing on that. An original work is itself a source of offshoots and intertextual works. FFVII spawned a monstrous army of fanfics, fan-etcs, spinoffs, movies, etc, etc, in an effort to expand a universe that people wanted more of. Personally, I felt that aesthetically JE had an interesting universe (despite my not liking the game), but despite all its 'oriental' roots it was constructed really in the same way as normal High Fantasy. Volourn may disagree.

The above post was sponsored by Dichotomy Inc.

Well, to be fair, some people were pissed off that there was a talking Deathclaw in the first place (at various places in F2). Deathclaws furthermore were never known for their ability to breed like rabbits, so even given a few decades it would be strange for them to have spread to the east coast. It's not inconceivable but it will be strange if there are more than one or two. Not that there's any reason for deathclaws to reappear, IMO. They weren't that central to the setting.

Sadly, the Western media doesn't help in providing that perspective.

Just a little note. There is a possibility that the Muslim teacher in question CANNOT communicate effectively with the children, partly thanks to the Veil. I have seen some teachers with some truly appaling English teaching children, and resist the sack despite the fact that about 90% of all students taught complain that they can't understand anything and therefore find it hard to learn. The fact that the Veil is the reason is for lack of communication might be compounded by the fact that she's not very good at English in the first place. It is very difficult to know without actually conversing with her in person, which is what I suppose the proper authorities should do.

Darque's sarcasm detectors went to the Bahamas. I'm pretty sure Deathclaws will make a return in FO3, actually.

Deathclaws are not lizards. They are intelligent, unique creatures and should be respected. "

I pre-ordered it because in NZ most games cost $50US, but there was a $30 offer, quite nearly half price, for pre-orders. I've fought through so many bug-ridden games in the last few years that it doesn't matter too much for me. I even remember palying BG2 with a broken computer that would freeze every 28 minutes, on the clock. I was 12 or so and not very good with computers, so I'd simply set my alarm clock to ring every 27 minutes and I would quicksave then wait for the crash. Needless to say that computer didn't survive very long. Anyway, NZ release for Gothic 3 seems to be around October 27. I have Radeon 9600, 1gb ram, but I could run Oblivion at mediumish settings, so I guess this will be a good chance for everyone to see how it runs on a not-so-flash computer.

And here I thought using > with games is a silly idea to begin with. Ah well, that means I shouldnt' even be in this thread. Did Torment get any recognition, at least?

Wait, since when do we care about IGN lists?

November 3 in Europe. Probably more like November 7-8 for New Zealand. Ah well, it's not as if it wasn't anticipated.. at least it's finally gold.