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Filmspotting. Like Siskel & Ebert (they're also from Chicago), but online. If you like movies, and have itunes, you can't go wrong with them. They come in episodes of an hour each.

I don't really own 99% of the music I have. And I don't use itunes. I get a lot of gifts.

my update utility didn't pick it up.

Project Georgia is an original IP, as Mr. Holmes pointed out elsewhere. So if it's a vampire game, it's not that vampire game. Or Bloodrayne. Welcome to the boards, Raymond Holmes.

Have you been reading the thread?

So will the reputation system work towards a balance ideal, where, say, if you complete a quest for the progressive thayans, you get +2 reputation with the progs and -1 with the tradionalist thayans? Or is it a +1 / -1 dynamic? Because if you do it right, playing with the +2/-1 system would allow a careful player to be more or less in everyone's good graces. That is assuming that you don't have to choose sides right off the bat (and commit to a set path of quests), and that extensive work for one camp wouldn't preclude work for the other. In other words, would the PC be able to play both sides of a conflict (prog vs. trad Thayan, or Thayan vs. Simbian) or would he have to throw his lot in with a single faction?

I dunno about that. The Fedex quest required to enter the thieves' guild was in competition against NPCs. As I remember them, one was an idiot that did nothing, and the other knew exactly what to do and made a beeline for the needed item. It was an adequate feint. The point of the quest was to lift the item off of the successful thief, not get to it before her. The PC couldn't possibly do what he needed to do (in this case, bribe the location of the item out of local bums) in order to complete the quest before the competitive AI, who didn't need to investigate anything. I metagamed past it to avoid hassle, since I wasn't that great of a sneaker and thus not a good pickpocket. But if that's what Radiant AI meant to most of the gameplay of Oblivion I'm glad they took it out. It wasn't really all that dynamic or exciting.

Second-Party Developer. They're getting more and more rare with the increasing cost of game development. Obsidian was a second-party developer for the Xbox with KOTOR2 up until the PC port, and is technically a second-party developer for the PC with NWN2. But the article doesn't seem to connotate PC development with the term. The thing is, porting a game from a PS3 to a 360 or vice versa is relatively simple compared to porting to a Wii. For one, there's the obvious difference between controller types and accomodation of the Wii's motion-sensor capabilities. And the Wii doesn't have HD capability like the others, nor does it have near the processing power or rendering power. Games look different and play more different. So we're going to see over the next few years a lot of games that come out for the PS3 / 360 and not on the Wii (like Oblivion) and if we see games that come out for all 3 platforms the game is either going to be gimped on the Wii or is going to be different in many basic ways (Madden, for example, which actually turned out pretty well on the Wii)

IIRC the "special edition" of Morrowind that came out after the initial release of the main game was priced at $20 or $30, if not just because by that time Morrowind was already out in another, "platinum hits" edition. Considering the 360 is next-gen, none of their games, except for the neglectable ones (championship poker, etc.) have been under $30, even the platinum "hits" like PDZ, and if they didn't cut prices during the release of the PS3 it's hard to say when they will. Tentatively, I'll just predict a $30 special edition for the 360 when it comes out. Technically, $40 would probably still be a deal, as at this point the core game, plus all the XBL points for the extra content, costs at least $60. Also, it might be worth noting that Bethesda has given first official dibs on the new expansion to the official Xbox magazine, hence the atypical Bethesda silence here in the face of people trashing Oblivion. By some accounts, the Xbox magazine will get first dibs on F3 news as well.

Children of Men. Pretty savage, bleak movie. Reminded me of HL2 most of the way through, 'cept for the hopelessness. Cuaron uses a lot of conceits from the beginning, namely and the random, spontaneous violence of the first scene, and idea that Kee is humanity's last fragile hope for the future, to set a palpable tone of tension that stays throughout the whole movie. When nothing's happening, you're bracing yourself for the inevitable shattering of the peace. Track shots were amazing, too. They must have had a big budget for firecrackers.

Weren't you the guy that refuted the Hobbesian conception of selfish human nature?

I'd be very surprised if they didn't.

I remember the talk of skooma junkies randomly murdering dealers and taking the drugs. Sounded pretty ambitious, and also possibly game-killing. Unless you had randomly spawning NPCs (which, considering the non-personality of regular NPCs, would be doable) it would have ultimately resulted in a single addict, and a disproportionately large percentage of the game population in prison or dead.

Yeah, it'll go into the "get JE Sawyer a swimming pool" fund

Cool. So is this something that Josh asked you to do, or is this a fansite kinda deal? You could totally send this out to all the boards and hotline news sites out there and get Josh swamped ^_^ but we're too nice for that, right? Right?

I'm this 20-year old kid, but I know a lot of stage actors who want to voice act or who have done so before. They'll jump at this. I don't know it'll work at all, but we could do it. It's all up to the Sawyer Man.

So here's another question for Josh: Given that it's going to take a year or two by your estimates, do you plan on incorporating any new community material that becomes available during that time? Weapons, enemies, random crap, etc.? Sounds like you'll be well into it during the cresting period of mod activity. *edit - hey, this post ain't mad. I bet you're going to make me the new Noober (that's the guy's name, right?), given my incessant VB questions.

That might be the saltiest piece of D&D dialogue I've ever read. "simply the mud-brown bitches to the red curs of Thay." Youch.

What's Black angst? NWA?

Sometimes the pressure you need isn't the kind of pressure that is exerted by more soldiers restricted to police duty and training.

It'll be too big for d/l (I'm guessing) so they'll pack it up with the main campaign / all the other extra content and put it on a new special edition. That's what they did when they released the expansions for Morrowind on the original Xbox. For the PS3, it'll be the first edition. They might sell the 360 version at a cut rate, seeing how everything but the new material will have already been out for several years.

So would Obsidian develop an RPG for the Wii? And note that there's nothing in my post to indicate that Obs doesn't love the Wii, but rather, that Nintendo is not the most fertile ground for the kind of RPG that Obsidian has made and continues to make. Either Obsidian would have to make a JRPG or Nintendo would have to change its standards.

I was pretty sure the name Sheogorath was a direct Lovecraft reference, but I'm not finding it on Wikipedia. Could've been a hoax. Anyway, hopefully Bethesda will eschew "zany" in favor of "sinister" when it comes to their plane of madness, but there's bound to be a wood elf or two in there.

A game I love and Josh Sawyer loves to bring up in regard to romance: Full Throttle. Great, great ending.

I'm sure it'll be a huge-ass help to people who're slaving away at Fallout mods. The implications of this are enormous.!!! VAN BUREN !!! WE CAN DO IT WE CAN DO IT