alanschu

caste system - check use political intregues and back stabbing to gain higher levels of status - check murder/assassination a common way to go up the ranks - check honor (or at least the perception of such) a huge thing in the society - check time honored tradtions of combat and arena fighting to prove ones worth - check the more skilled warrior you are the more you are praised, and get women - check You have a 'number one' or whatever that guys title is (idential equivlant to klingons from noble houses forget their title however) - check Oh thats right noble houses who all come together to form the policital body with a king (or klingon high chalancier) - check While their empire is in decline they are spending all their resources with infighting and backstabbing - check Sounds like you described a good chunk of human history. Given that the evolution of Klingons has always in some way mirrored historical cultures and civilizations (from totalitarian regimes to tribal-esque warrior race), it's not surprising that the source material is similar. The similarities you depicted could just as easily make references to the various Indo-European cultures that employed a Caste system. I'm guessing much of what has influenced the current culture of Klingons, was used to influence the creation of Dragon Age's dwarves. Given the rest of the game sports civilizations that seem inspired by dark ages Europe, it seemed to me that the Dwarves continued the same thing. Caste systems with honor and military acumen being highly valued are common in history. Houses having leaders? Might as well accuse it of ripping off Dune. The Dwarves do seem awfully Harkkonen, now that I think about it. Though perhaps less outright evil. The Klingon culture isn't simply made up. The only good argument you really have is probably the political infighting and arena fighting. EDIT: Haha, I swear that I had not seen the other Dune reference prior to posting this.

Still curious what it is about the Dwarves that are specifically similar to Klingon lore. What is it that is unique about the Klingon lore in particular?

LOL awesome.

Caste systems existed long before the Klingon's were conceived. What is it about the Dwarven Caste system that just screams Klingon?

Hmmm, it could be some sort of issue with the CD-Drive. Do you by any chance still have the old one? You might want to swap it out just to test. How long have you had the extra RAM?

Well Virumor, you didn't technically solo the dragon

Yeah DLC has not gone nearly as smoothly as I would have liked

She did? Haha. Whenever I'm down to one person against a dragon it was always game over. Did you game the system somehow?

I can see the Hitman analogy since it pretty much follows what you described. Though I find the comparison to Deus Ex a bit odd. IIRC, wasn't the difficulty for Deus Ex just more damage?

Thanks! I'll admit it is hard to not get defensive on the BioBoards (where I have a fancy BioWare tag and am therefore a target) and it takes self-restraint up the wazoo when people start alleging that "clearly the game wasn't tested at all." There are issues and in hindsight things I think we could have done better during QA, but a bit of me would like to show people what a completely untested build would look like hehe.

Speculation on my part, but I'm guessing that the long development time of DA had to do with conceptual changes and whatnot. I am skeptical that all 7 years went into adding content

Exhibit A, those pesky Soviets circa 1943-1945

Depending on who you ask, the rogue build is still more powerful damage wise. I would guess it'd be like a WoW rogue or something, in that it'd be a large damage dealer. As for lockpicking, IIRC, picking the lockpicking skill is effectively +10 cunning. Though I don't know what the end game cunning requirements are for lockpicking off the top of my head though.

Just curious, what would you like from higher difficulty?

Some builds replace cunning for strength, and they have been pretty powerful for rogues.

The PC version was also 1st and 2nd at retail (non-Steam) according to GamaSutra.

I suspect it's as much of a deal breaker to some as the dedicated servers issue was to the people on the boycott MW2 steam group, spotted playing MW2 on Steam.

I have only briefly looked at that distractions hahaha.

Sure, but really any job utilizing unskilled labour could become a sweatshop.

Depending on how you play things in Orzammar, I have noticed very different endings with just Lord Harrowmont.

I didn't compare HOTU to anything but NWN2, since that's what Fighter mentioned. I meant the NWN2 OC by the way, which may not have been clear.

Another update coming soon. Been slowed by real life and other distractions, but some fun stuff happening around Wake Island, as well as the Philippines

Maybe he's never seen a call center?

I don't think SOZ destroys your computer upon uninstall But I don't have it

I don't know... I guess we can always hope for more (I do too), but I did enjoy the Fallout-esque summaries of the character's and locations you visit at the end. I also enjoyed dealing with Redcliffe's situation, especially since I didn't know of the third option at that time. What would be an example? I know it won't be perfect, but going back to Redcliffe, I was happy to see myself get a verbal lashing from Alistair at the party camp after my solution. That's fair, it is a combat heavy game for sure. I think it's mature in that it's dark, where sometimes the choice you make is the lesser of two evils (or greater, if you prefer). There have actually been posts on the main board of people complaining that it's TOO dark and depressing, so I guess your mileage may vary. That said, the game certainly has its silly moments, so it's definitely not serious all the time.