Tigranes

If NK bombs anywhere, it'll be either themselves or Washington. Don't be so sure, Americans. But any point of provocation NK will take will not be in the form of nuclear weapons. They would use their array of conventional weapons to attack China, Japan, or more likely, SK, and take over; then yell NUKE when the world wants to pull an Iraq on it. I'm pretty sure if NK takes over SK, for example, or if there's a war, Japan and China would have a very hard choice between sacrificing SK and having a nuke blow up in their back yard (or even in their country). Of course, if NK took over any country they'd probably collapse economically and either starve everyone to death or be overthrown, but only after a huge loss. Really, the best way is to assassinate Kim Jung Il and organise some sort of covert maneuvre to bring down the regime. Probably damn hard, but it would actually be justified (as opposed to Iraq) if they had nukes.

MONUMENTAL. edit: that said, it's finally a campaign that offers more than what an adventurer does - dungeon crawls, small espionage missions and some variable hingers that have no real effect. In fact the only way for the adventurer to be given significance in the world at large is for the evil boss at hand to have a silly, unending stretch of backstory about The Artifact of Doom and crap. Politics, factions, being in command - all are awesome things in the scope in which I envisage it being implemented in NWN2.

Come on, I want some Obsids' screenies. Their first creations. *bioboards*

Tell us stuff!

Who the hell cares if it's TB or RT? The fact is the game *plays* with simultaneous movements and therefore the animations are not up to scratch. It's horribly to see them take one swing then stand exactly still, not even in tension, for 5 seconds. Also nobody really reacts when you hit them except when you die, and even that has some disturbing delays.

Benny Hill? What Benny Hi- NO.

I'm not judging their character or anything, by the way - or not even their dialogue. Just the voice acting. The dwarf had the potential to be good but stressed the wrong parts and generally sounded forced to me. If I closed my eyes I would not imagine I was in the room with the dwarf, but rather with a man in a studio. I liked Annah, but that tiefling's voice would probably grate after a while. But I was talking about the quality of fovoice acting, not the voice itself - in terms of that, the dwarf was fine IMO.

Way too many pages. Has anyone pointed out the lack of sync between attacking animation and death animation, so there is a distinct moment of nothing between when the sword goes through them, and when they burst into blood and fall over dead? It looks really stupid. Not to mention that if the hit is not fatal, they dont react at all! (See paladin-type guy fight the soldiers in chainmail.) Not to mention the super-super-bright highlighting on characters with the cursor, and the gigantic target circle beneath for characters such as the Spider. I recognise music from NWN used in the trailer, but dunno about that. Voice acting seems decent if sometimes unnatural. The dwarf, however, is horrible. Stupid and dumb all in one. I'm really concerned about the fact that in some of these dialogues, there is a much too long gap between one 'screen''s worth of dialogue and the other.. hopefully these can be manually managed with mouseclicks. The animations never fit, either, using stock generic animations in an unwieldy combination. Not game-killing, but still.. I thought we'd be past such things by now. Love the giant shield though :D

No, nearly every game I play on NWN is as a wizard. I did not import, either, and had to level up then and there. Trust me, I wouldn't have been able to win that fight as I jacked up my difficulty and I was a 'pure' mage, so without spells I would have been running away (not very effectively given NWN's mechanics). I know I had stoneskin, lightning bolt, and even flesh to stone. I too would have complained vigorously had I been left without. Oddness.. maybe because mine is 1.0?

The Library was tolerable the first time because it actually made you turn and look behind you every 3 seconds in paranoia. What was REALLY crap was those Covenant compounds where every single room and corridor looks the same, and there are about 30 of them. Same with Halo 2, around mid-late game.. I rushed that game but there was one with repeating purple conveyor belts, I think. Horrible. Halo could very well be turned into a 'traditional' RTS a la those LOTR strategy games and so forth. I rather imagine it would be more 'individual', in that sense placed somewhere between Age games and Warcraft.

Perhaps not 2-4 months, but going through the bureaucratic process in even a magazine publishing outfit can take a surprising amount of time especially with mass production, which involves well-timed collaboration with printers and whatnot. Especially if the company isn't going to spend too much on what is really an idiot-job.

Played Arcanum. I had already finished it once with a magic-oriented character, and somehow I did the same thing again - magic & goodie goodie. Say what you like about Arcanum being similar to Fallout, but the 'evil' option in the main plot is absolutely horrible (why work for an evil group you KNOW are being manipulated, then help someone destroy the entire world? Although Kerghan was more logical in that argument than anybody else.).. Thinking of starting again with a sneakish technologist, I always end up collecting these beautiful schmata even when I can't use them. Also dug up nearly every single unknown location in the game this time, the half-ogre island is extremely disturbing.

I seem to remember that it DID let you sleep. I certainly used a crapload of spells in that first battle.

Why do all the interview questions pretty much go "why are you so awesome" or "here, let me ask a question so broad you can say anything you want"? From what I've seen (video-wise) of combat it looks like standard FPS with a few variations, and generally I'm expecting a game with a mediocre, uninspired (but well-polished and overall decent) story and gameplay reminiscent of their recent games. I'm also getting a sense that ME, or at leas thte first installment, is going to be fairly driven... not sure if my brain has any actual facts to base that impression on, though.

Too much pressy crap for my liking, but even the fact that something like this is in development makes the skin tingle. *tingle*

Screw that, you need REAL knights.

That defeats the point of chess.

Who cares, talking about White Knight sounds like a nice distraction. The character graphics are really cool, but the single white circle with some japanese word on there doesn't tell me how involved the combat is. Do you actually need to block and parry, or just sit and wait until you can do Superleet Combo? Also, the Yugioh transformation was totally gay. :/ I was loving it right until there. Hell, I used to play FF. And Shining Force. But that gundam stuff is just not it.

Two things: % is better than an artificial number set, because % tells everyone just how far up or down the 'scale' this particular lock is in terms of difficulty, whereas if you say DC 25, a newb to D&D will have no idea. While it doesnt take long for one to catch on that 30 is very hard (not 30%), there's really no point in having to remember that. % wins. At the same time, the main reason for AC change from D&D 2nd Ed to 3rd was that bigger is better is the more intuitive system in most cases. So... just say if the lock is 43%, your roll must reach 43 or higher. Then use skill modifiers that start off at a negative (e.g. at Lock Pick Skill level 1, your roll gets a -20 or something,, so its not quite as easy as it seems to get a 10% lock open).

Probably do a world of good for middle class buggers like me who can't sleep.

What's that then?

Oh, well, that's alright then.

OC and SOU? God forbid.

Look, Jack Thompson!