algroth

Anne Wiazemsky, who starred in in films like Au Hasard Balthazar and Teorema, passed away.

Going back to TV, this looks pretty interesting. Anthology series based on Philip K. D1ck stories:

As far as Hitch goes, my favorites are Vertigo (easily first in my mind), Psycho, Rebecca and The Rope. North by Northwest is also very good though. While we're at it, my favorite filmmaker of this era is probably Michael Powell. I think practically all of his films alongside Emeric Pressburger as well as The Thief of Bagdad and Peeping Tom are worth watching, but The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death and A Canterbury Tale especially.

There were plenty of films before Kane that employed several of the techniques used in it (see Renoir's films for depth of field compositions or Dreyer's films for long shots for example), but it did employ all these with a remarkable consistency and idiosyncrasy throughout, and then repeated through later Welles films, so that it would become centrepiece example for the "auteur" theory and many other concepts regarding realism and forbidden montage and so on by Bazin some ten to fifteen years later. It was the birth of modern cinema for many theorists largely because of how it unified all these concepts into a complete approach that was deliberately breaking with the classic Hollywood mold (as well as several other narrative aspects and focalization which made it incredibly interesting to break down from a semiotic perspective too). That said, I first saw Kane when I was 14, not knowing anything about its cinematic importance other than it was a "classic", and I was absolutely spellbound by it. I think this is a film that most certainly lives up to its lofty title (even if it isn't my favorite Welles - that honour goes to The Trial), and works regardless of how well you know the technical side of the medium. The rest I'm less fussed about - I largely agree with Gromnir here.

Well, at least it's something that can be easily remedied. I'm also pretty slow on watching TV shows so I still haven't seen The Wire.

Not in Nevada.

Also from Twitter regarding that pic: "I always wanted a companion dressed as a supreme court judge." :lol:

For Rekke I guess I was expecting something a bit more Queequeg-like, someone whose appearance also denoted the foreignness of his culture. If you told me the above portrait was for an Aedyran I wouldn't have thought otherwise.

That looks pretty damn good. Still pretty anime though.

Same, really. Looks very interesting.

Yeah, that big.

Damn. I knew he's been in bad shape for a while - missed my chance to see him live last year when he cancelled due to his cancer diagnosis. R.I.P. That Sabbath cover is a beaut too.

I'm also stuck with a game-breaking bug of my own, it seems... I can't seem to change party members, doing so makes my formation go haywire (refusing to remove characters from the party and adding one or two characters only, creating multiple copies of Verse, and disparities between the party management interface and the people *actually* in my party - not to mention the occasional doppelgangers appearing in the party management interface too), and following that my game will just refuse to load a new area. I'm just stuck in a loading screen. Anyone heard of an issue like this?

I would have made act 2 more investigation-driven for sure, but I would have still kept the rough story so to speak: by the end of the game you have grown to be a master of several spires and a leader of considerable power, who *could* have opposed Kyros or remained in her wing (that is up to player choice). I would also have not made the story more linear necessarily, as in, each Tier would still have faction-determined content and the way you'd be forced to carry out your investigation could change a fair bit according to the faction you allied yourself with (for example, allying yourself with the Disfavoured could mean finding more cooperation and openness from them, maybe you could trick them into admitting guilt or learn of certain things they had to deal with from the Chorus that you might not have had you been in hostile terms with them instead - viceversa for the Chorus). Mostly I guess I would have made the choices and narrative branches less faction-dependent overall, not necessarily less linear. I would also have made it so that there is enough evidence to make the case the player wants to make. As in, there is no *one* mystery to solve, there is not a specific violation that started it all which you have to uncover, you just have to make the call as to who did (or if both did) from the evidence you gather. Gathering some of that evidence could well be dependent on your choices and allegiances.

Here's some thoughts I have on Edér... Personally I find his personality very involved and affected by the events that transpired in Dyrwood. I find that in his disagreements with the player's choices as well as his opinion of other parties and factions he comes across as pretty apathetic and soft-spoken (if you say you don't care what Raedric does in Gilded Vale, he'll reply with a comment along the lines of "not even a little?", while his opinions on the Dozens, while negative, express disagreement without calling for action or opposition - in his stance, things are just the way things are), and this all fits the history of a person who is full of personal doubt and who goes about his life keeping his head down. He has reason to do so: he's a follower of Eothas in a time when Eothasians are being hanged in public, *and* he's the brother of a rumoured traitor. He is a character who's refusing to take a centre stage because that could lead to his presence being noted and thus being questioned (making enemies who'd exploit his history as an Eothasian and so on). He's also very skeptical and harbours a particular distaste for zealots, all of which ties to the persecution of Eothasians and the questions surrounding Waidwen as an incarnation of the same - he has reasons of being as much. I don't think that he is in the end any less affected by the events than Durance, but whereas Durance seems to confront his own history with vengeful directness, Edér, being the small-town farmer and so on who's just trying to live, is someone that chooses to evade his history instead. This is my interpretation on his character anyhow. I don't necessarily think all of the characters are 'affected' by the events of the game to the degree Durance or Edér are though (I would add Hiravias, the Grieving Mother and Aloth to the list of those that were), but I do think they all inform in some way or other about the themes, the history and setting that the game explores. For example, as Wormerine says, as a foreigner Sagani may not have been that deeply tied to the events concerning the Dyrwood but her story does help develop another facet of souls and reincarnation, both of which are very important elements to the themes of Pillars.

I wonder if Versus Evil will be up for doing a Deadfire console port...

I looked again but I can't seem to find it. Got a timestamp perhaps? Woops, my bad. It's rogue. I guess we'd be talking about grimoire specific spells right? Yeah. At least, my understanding is that there'll be some of those. Question is how many, and if they'll all be attainable through grimoires or through other means too.

I looked again but I can't seem to find it. Got a timestamp perhaps?

Again, I'm maybe misremembering or imagining things, but if I'm not mistaken there'll be a few wizard spells that cannot be learned by levelling up. Maybe they're not included in that bunch? It included ability levels 8 and 9 so everything was there. Hmm... Now that I'm looking at the video again, I'm seeing that the spell table shown is that of the druid, not the wizard. And these seem like the same spells that are in the first game? As far as wizard spells are concerned we only see a couple of them from the UI itself, and it's like those few spells are the ones that were selected upon levelling up only, not all of them.

Again, I'm maybe misremembering or imagining things, but if I'm not mistaken there'll be a few wizard spells that cannot be learned by levelling up. Maybe they're not included in that bunch?

On one hand: Nooo! What happened to your Lingchi portrait? On the other hand: Is that a wicht? Pretty cool.

It was already there in The White March. I like it myself.

Yes, i wanted 19 mage/1 Cipher. I actually was really into this idea after MC announcement. Just sad it died, o well. I am sorry to, i probably didn't make myself clear enough. No worries, sorry I didn't get you the first time. If I understand correctly from what I see in the video and the above explanation I think you *are* able to give greater predominance to one class over the other, as you'll be given a chance to unlock abilities from either class' trees as you level (and you could therefore dump all your resources into the wizard tree instead of the cipher tree), but yeah, you won't be able to make a 95/5 split between classes the way you could before. I personally think it's an okay tradeoff for what makes for a more solid, comprehensible system but I can get the frustration when a character idea you have goes falls on the wayside because of it.

Not quite. A multi-classed character only sacrifices two power levels by the time they're level 20, meaning it's closer to each class being at three quarters the power of their single-class equivalents, not half. And this is why half was in quotation marks. Cause i didnt wanna waste time 2 elaborate. I don't need 3|4 Cypher. And pls don't spin it like i am complaining where is trade of. This make it sound like you think i am stupid and i don't wanna think what about you Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. What I meant was that that there was always going to be some power trade-off for each class of a multiclassed set as opposed to their single-class equivalents. I share some of your frustration inasmuch as I'd love to be able to access the highest-level abilities for each of these classes but if so I could see how single classes could be made superfluous in the process. Again i am sorry but where did i say i wanted high level ability of 2 classes? And where did i say i was frustrated i can't be best at 2 of them? I said i didn't in the quote you used, Alright, sorry, I'm misinterpreting what you wish to say. Are you instead saying that we cannot choose how much predominance we give to either one class or the other, and are forced to go for a 50/50 split between the two instead of, say, 20/80 or the likes?