Tigranes

Given that the U.S. does not make public to its citizens information on who it is at war with, and definition of terrorism is very famously an internationally uncertain affair, it doesn't make me so easy. I'm not Middle Eastern, I'm Christian, I'm a humanities student, there's a very very low chance that the NSA will be looking at anything I did, unless I start publishing on the wrong subjects. But again, look back to how 'terrorist suspects' have been treated at airports and elsewhere over the last decade. Can you really use the logic that "if your privacy, dignity, etc. is harmed by wrongful suspicion of terrorism it's your fault for not living a pristine clean life"? Do you 'deserve' the extra risk of secret surveillance if you are Muslim, Middle Eastern, have 'non-standard' political views, have visited a Middle Eastern country, are an activist, etc?

Biggest steaming load of bollocks ever. Do you know what policemen will tell you to do, if you are apprehended by the police when you have done nothing wrong? Don't tell them anything. They just want to ask you a few questions! They don't think you did it! Oh, it'll be okay! No, don't say anything. Any and every innocuous, innocent, even noble thing that you do in your life can easily be turned into something scandalous, incriminating, sufficiently suspicious, when under the close eye of people who are trained to look for suspicious things and have some reason, whether right or misguided, to think you may be suspicious. Why should we now live our lives by the maxim that "you should live so cleanly and unambiguously that no amount of secret surveillance upon every aspect of your life will incriminate you, and if you don't, then it's bloody well your fault that they're now probing up your buttcheeks"? It's nonsense. As for the story itself, I don't think this comes as a big surprise to anyone who knows a little bit about these issues. And talk of wiretapping, Homeland Security, etc. has always been in the air. But the media have shot this one out of a cannonball and it may well become an overwhelming issue.

For a second I thought it was Cutlock with a new idea about a spider-man game.

From memory that's really all you need.

Cool. Can't get to it until mid-July anyway, but cool.

I'm fine with boobs in games, I just wish they weren't so freaking huge, it feels like I'm looking at a three-headed monster.

So reading a few screens of text tires you out? Screw 30 minute 'tutorials', I want all the information and I want to get on with the playing. Insane Ironman + Low Leadership/Survival Leader = lots of party wipes. Going to try again later.

I dream of being as cool as Monty when I'm eighty-four, too. When I arrived in the US I fulfilled the American Dream by using Newegg to buy parts for my computer. 2000USD and two years later it plays everything perfectly, but I plan on sticking with it another couple of years even as next-gen consoles I'm sure will push things up. I do appreciate that I could play The Witcher 2 on max settings, but games have hardly looked any better over the last 3 years.

Finished the game by I agree that by the end the game was beginning to get stale, and it has a large amount to do with (1) unimaginative encounter design, and (2) unimaginative character progression. Both of those things I suspected for a while would be the biggest flaws in the game. I'll play another round through as a native-hugger but after that I don't imagine the game having replay value because of that. Still, for a small team it was an achievement and it's great to see they put out a game that very much lives up to what they promised. Oh, and hunters are actually pretty good given the inherent advantage in range, though that depends on your playstyle.

Nope, there are no surprise-twists if you explored the map. I think yeah, about a 20 hour game, which is not a bad effort content-wise for this kind of team. I was disppointed in though. Well hidden, good lead-up, then bam, you just get a few measly valuables and a far too easy typical battle.

Scholar is good when you're in controll of the battlefield and/or you are facing even numbers - scholar + 2 scouts can take down pretty much any enemy in 1 turn, for example. Doctor is good if you're getting hit and poisoned a lot. The most difficult battle so far for me was the end of Hispaniola, first time I reloaded after screwing up, but mainly I'm just living with my decisions and failures. Roaming around Mexico and it feels like after a while the resources / hunting / etc mechanic doesn't really trouble you at all unless you lose a battle and get a lot of injuries. Not quite on hardest difficulty though, might ramp it up.

It's a bug, will be fixed by next patch (next week?)

At least once a year, I end up playing: BG1/2 IWD1/2 Arcanum A Paradox Game Thief Series At least once every couple of years, I play: Torment Fallout 1/2 Alpha Protocol A Piranha Bytes Game Games I loved but don't seem to go back to in the same way: Morrowind Mask of the Betrayer Fallout: New Vegas The Witcher Series

Meh. Let me know once Garriott's proven he can make a good game after twenty years of not. i.e. when this thing comes out.

Started a party full of racists on Hard + Smartest AI, and even though I played the press build I eventually ended up decimated. Not enough hunters and doctors to keep wounds out, a few mistakes in battle and getting lost was all it took. Delightful difficulty.

Or, you know, playing BG1 on the iPad probably is a big deal. All this 'nostalgia' argument doesn't make much sense to me. Nobody has the stats, but most of the time people who bring up that argument are precisely the people who haven't played the IE games much in a while. I play IE games regularly and also replayed NWN2 and KOTOR2 recently, and there's no question what I prefer.

The thing is that this kind of UI would never be fully customisable in the way NWN2's is because of the stylistic elements. The menu-button-circle thing would look pretty weird if you could take it out, resize it and put it somewhere else. My point is that some customisation is well within its capabilities, such as freely modified hotbar icons and expand/minimise UI, but for a game like this full resize/move functionality should be sacrificed for a UI that just by being there adds to the feel of the game. NWN1/2's fully customisable UI was an OK solution for those games because with free camera you really wanted to be able to move stuff out of the way; this is not a problem for a fixed perspective game. Also recall how hideously ugly they were. People might have become used to this because we've had a long run of super-ugly UI in the last ten years or so, but UI, because it's always there, is as much about functionality as it is about feel. I think they could experiment with some best of two worlds solutions, e.g. NWN2's quickcast bar could be implemented where you bring it up with a hotkey, you one-click to select a spell, then as you cast it disappears. They will also need to find clever ways to show new things like the Monk's Wounds count because it'll be hard to notice in the portraits. For everyone who tacks on "this is 2013 not 1998", I'd like someone to think through and explain the logic behind that statement. I don't think there is any. A good idea is a good idea whether it's 2013 or 1998, unless you believe every idea in the future is better. (If so, why are we even making P:E?) You want a UI that fits the type of game this is and adds to the aesthetic adn experience, instead of making decisions by saying "hey let's make something modern".

"The way I see it, minimalist UI ends up feeling more intrusive given that it sticks out from the actual art, while IE games felt much better integrated though they weren't up-to-snuff in terms of usability. Minimal works pretty well with more futuristic games, modern games, as it compliments the art direction more successfully than in a fantasy title." This please. I am all for the ability to move UI elements around or to hide them, but there should be a significant level of emphasis on having a UI that is appropriately stylised. This is an isometric party-control game not a first-person game, and it's a pseudo-medieval game rather than a futurustic or sci-fi one. The fact that NWN went with its horrible generic-blue UI took away from the entire experience, since every time you look at the screen you're reminded of how gamey it is. To boot, it might have been better for moving things around and such, but it looked a lot less professional and polished than the IE UI. I think distribution can be fiddled with for quick items and efficiency but the basic style should remain IE, it should be all about stone and wood, forget 'modern UI'. Edit: sea, given that IWD2 let you choose what you can put in the hotbar drag and drop, I think they will do it?

Crusader Kings 2: The Old Gods DLC is now out and apparently there are no gamebreaking bugs. Rurik has now carved out the Kingdom of Rus, and hopes not to die before his two underage sons mature (and, hopefully, one of them conveniently die).

Dialectic is not quite suitable for the purpose Wals is describing - I assume he's talking about a standard 'here, I'm clearly on the side of Chardonnay but I've also considered the possibility that Bourbon is superior, aren't I impartial and smart and reasonable" move in academia, journalism, etc. Neither the Socratic dialogue nor Hegelian dialectic would really work. In fact, it's surprising how we don't really have a word for it as far as I know, given we repeat "consider both sides of the argument" about a billion times a day around the world.

Xbox 360 isn't a western thing either, but these games are ported over to the Xbox 360. FF games were put on PC starting with FF VII, though they didn't port X, XII, or XIII over admittedly. What's more interesting are the games that are huge on consoles these days but not so huge on PC (even with ports) that got their start on PC, such as COD series and such. This is the kind of thing that makes your arguments more of improvised connection-making than a well grounded suggestion. Final Fantasy has never had anything much to do with the PC in terms of sales, fanbase, porting, whatever. The fact that FF7 and 8 were ported very badly, neglected for years, etc. has very very little to do with the position of the PC in the market; anyone who's ever followed those games/ports will be able to tell you that. That example only works in the particular way you portray if we choose to ignore all the facts regarding that specific game/situation. I'm not sure why you're not doing the one thing that would really convince - focus on the central claims you made (PC $ as much as porn, PC AAA titles steadily decreasing, PC sales decreasing) and provide some numbers/cases/etc that are sure and solid.

I love someone doing something in that setting, though the decision to mostly tell me about marriage problems in the video doesn't convince me that the game's doing its best to maximise that setting. Of course, this is fully accepting that I gave it about 30 seconds, it's already funded, and I'm broke. Will definitely keep track of it.

The new XCOM will be on sale by itself at $10 around 5/28-5/31.

Google StreetView. Guess where you are. Go! http://geoguessr.com/ I got pretty close with 13000.

Yeah, there's some dispute about the actual message, e.g. whether he means super huge AAA games or even ruling out games like NWN2 and F:NV. If he means Assassin's Creed stuff, then that actually means nothing new, Obsidian have never made such blockbusters. I do think making bit parts for other companies' games is a crappy way to make a living, though. Sad that it's come to that.