Tigranes

Oh, they do. Except their influence was dwarfed by another, somewhat gigantic force of nature, which at the same time tenderly put to rest a human defensive mechanism called "discernment of crap".

No. You talked to a girl.

Either that, or the imperfect nature of the backward compatibility is so great they can't just say "none", and simply decide to concede "little". Who knows, though.

The pernicious rapacity of collective intelligence by the nominally 'adult' never ceases to astound me.

And that's precisely because of these threads, isn't it?

I bet Jack Thompson would just love that.

Agreed, science has shown itself to be adaptable, and therefore there is always a chance that if it's wrong, it will correct itself. Of course, the 'other side' is that how do you know you can trust in science - just like atheists ask, how can you place your faith in God? What if your current belief in, say, gravity is actually as much as 'founded in logic' as the beliefs of people centuries ago that believed the earth wasn't spherical. The point I'm suggesting is that in the end, science is not 'absolute truth' precisely because it keeps adapting (progressing towards truth). I am not saying God > Science or anything, so don't get that idea, but if you say... Well, is progress as a linear idea really suitable for application upon the real world? Even if it is, how is one to confirm that, for example, cloning (which I am not against, or for) is progress in the desirable direction, or not?

Well. Curse timezones and all. Firstly, something that throws a few pages back: when one tries to refute the claim that science, too, is based on faith, think about the fact that scientific theories are only validated by two things: - Statistics. Experiments simply mean "these examples show that the pattern established in this small sample will most likely apply to everything of the same condition." - Conformity with other established theories. Sometimes not, they 'break out' of the mold, but you're usually using established scientific theories to form new ones, and think about them in relation. So we can see the problems of science. I believe it's a very practical decision to use experiments, yes, and I'm not against science. I simply believe that science never intended to give us absolute proof and absolute laws, simply the greatest likelihood through logic and example. ------ Also, the whole atheist vs christian thing. Of course it was inevitable ( ), but attaching characteristics of (in)tolerance to a specific group in such a small community as this is just as discriminative as racial or sexual ones we so 'abhor'. Exceptions are there to be found, after all.

Hm. I think this is my first topic, and I've been here since day one. Go figure. So this is about religion, so this is going to be a flamefest. I'd hope it's slightly different, though, and maybe the extravagant verbosity of my rambling discourages idiocy somewhat. Or is it the reverse? Anyway, all of this comes from my personal experience with the church and the religion which I recognise to be extremely limited and infantile. All the better for me, who will come to learn something, and not for you, who might be fooled into suffering through all this. 1/ Christians are big on "being thankful for everything", right. The Christian premise is that an ideal Christian is thankful to God whatever his circumstance, because there is always something to be thankful about. Now, logically, one could say that this is a workaround / crap, because sure you can see the silver lining in ANYTHING, and therefore it is clearly ridiculous. Well, tendrils of thoughts wander here: what is the basis for such a logical argument? There is only a good side to everything because that is how our world IS. That is a truth of the world just like gravity, and need not necessarily be that way. So, if we assume that God exists, and God did create the world, then did he not create it so that no matter what, we will never find ourselves in a situation where there is nothing benefitial to us, either short-term or long-term? Then, is that not something to be thankful for, in itself? Of course, another way to look at it is how I have when I was younger - it's just a self-regulatory mechanism to train yourself to seize opportunities and not despair at the situation. And the eventual 'respite' most people experience is probably related to the optimistic / energetic behaviour such thoughts often generate. Although, I've seen cases where people *aren't* very thankful, wallow in their sorrow: then things get better, and they pray in thankfulness because God picked them up from the mud even though they were being bad Christians. I have yet to integrate this into my chain of thoughts... but in any case, the Christian ethic seems to provide for a more pleasant life experience. It's not like we can go a day without criticising something anyway. w00t.gif 2/ One of the things the Christian Church warns against is "creating your own God". For example, one claims to be a Christian and takes to heart Jesus' teachings about love, but dismisses his teachings about, say, homosexuality, arguing the text is corrupt, or whatnot. A "selective faith", of course, is tantamount to creating your own deity - you are no longer believing in the Christian God if you just 'pick and choose'. But the arguments can be put forth that the Bible as we have now is of highly debatable integrity, what with the religious reorganisations of the late Roman Empire, the various Nicaean Councils and the fickles of the Emperors in consolidating or banning sects such as Nestorianism. Not to mention the.. what do you call them, the Apocryphals? And the symbolic nature of the Bible means that even if the text is perfect, it is corrupted in the reading - how can one believe the Christian God manifests himself in absolute, invariable and complete values and ethics in the present world with so many 'versions' of the religion? Is God's 'presence' within your heart, through prayer, etc, more "true" (or just your imagination) than the minister on the pedestal that might or might not be listening to God? The heart of Christianity is not to question but to believe, but it is to believe in God, and to believe God must you not first separate divine and human in the religious infrastructure? Eh. Flame On, I guess.

Curiously enough, this part of the internet seems to harbour an inordinate quantity of newcomers that love, and fail to locate, this particular site. Especially since no regular ever visits it, to my knowledge. The answer to the question is yes, the URL links to some crazy movie thing. One hopes that you have enough rl friends to ask for such a confirmation, and they are simply off in the Bahamas hunting crates at the present.

philosophically, your points are easier to agree with: logically, if, say, 'investing' a certain amount of moments to 'live healthy' yields a greater number of 'moments' by which your lifespan is extended, then sure, a degree of that 'investment' would be worth it. If not, there is, of course, no point: but that is rather improbable, unless you want to die at 27. 'tis all moderation.

Error: Command "Fireball" had no designated target. Current hostile targets within your range are: hobgoblin_1 hobgoblin_2 hobgoblin_3 hobgoblin_4 hobgoblin_5 hobgoblin_6 Alternatively, you could yell the x/y co-ordinates of the spot you wish to target your command.

The stylistic changes are impressive. Environments still look a lot better than cities, but we shall see.

well. if 1 spearman = 1 power rating, and 1 tank = 10 power rating, and tank vs spearman power rating bonus to tanks is 5... *shrug* i suppose if 20 spearmen did run at a tank from all directiosn, one would pull hollywood and sabotage it.

While accepting your background, you are still able to determine what kind of character the current incarnation is. Now, unless you're about to claim that other games with faceless main characters allow you to reconstruct their past in-game to a great degree, the tradeoff isn't exactly gargantuan. Anyway, Curst onwards did suffer from what *looks* like lack of development time. Curst I hoped to find as complex and well-developed as the Hive: apparently not. The back-and-forth with Trias was too short, so there was no real sense of betrayal or indeed anything about him. Also, would have been nice if there were more differences in Sigil once you returned (and there aren't enough shadows ambushing you.)

Not if there's no game worth playing on that controller.

NEVER forget I watch you THIEVES, you KILLERS! pleasant person, TNO...

Great. We are so elitist that we can't even agree on the greatness of Torment. Or Fallout, probably. Or sliced bread.... Whatever. You bought the best RPG evar. Now go play it. If you don't like it, be sure to tell us so we can crucify.

Well, even if it doesn't work out, you gotta hand it to Nintendo to try stuff like this, while still being a major console developer. XBox2 and PS3 are just "more silicon chips" in comparison. Anyway, if the controls are sharp enough, I'll love it, it looks great.

The only stuff you find that used to be yours are the easter egg stuff, like the pantaloons. I wasn't aware of the stat-raising option, though. Is that when you are importing when running BG2, or...?

Yes, but this will stop you from taking advantage of BG2's new classes and subclasses. You also lose all your equipment. The only real reason to "import" is for roleplaying continuity, and to keep your statistics (you can raise them, uh, by special means unique to BG1.)

Agreed with Monte Carlo. Either Tactics or Improved Battles are essential (unless you want something as easy as KOTOR. well, maybe not that much.), Ease of Use is great for some of its functions (like stacking), and baldurdash > *.

BG series isn't very hard. (unless you found, say, KOTOR hard.) So just recruit whoever you like, to a reasonable extent. But yes, common sense dictates that for a good party, you'd usually want at least 1 full-time mage (e.g. Dynaheir, Xan, Edwin), and 1 full-time fighter (e.g. Khalid, Minsc..). Somebody should have at least partial thief skills. Other than that... *shrug* And yes, install xpack right off the bat.

Voicing the player character is a horrible idea, btw, because it always ends up being a generic voice, and almost nobody will like that voice on their character.

Of course, just because graphics increase as gameplay supposedly decreases, and just because those COULD have a causal relationship, doesn't mean they DO. Those in this board should know this quite clearly, since this is the argument that lays flat all the Jack Thompsons. I believe Bethesda pointed this out when they said, artists aren't designing in their spare time, they just don't design. Of course, you could bring in salaries and the like, but is graphics the only, or the primary, reason for the trend? Many other things could be blamed, say, the 'mainstream' appeal the games work for now.