Pop

Jade Empire comments never fail I think it odd that they would show all these vids with the same PC and never mention or show the character creation process. You'd think that they'd have that worked out by now. Bioware games as of late seem to also have dwindled in the number of "avatars" you can choose, with KOTOR being fairly limited and JE having 3 per gender (each of which was tied to a certain character type) I could definitely envision Bioware going the JRPG route and making a PC that has a clearly defined backstory based on a single conception of the character that can't change. Revan's story was about as far as they could go without restricting character choice. I'd hope they'd go beyond that, but I don't expect it from them.

That's the $x-amount question. Judging from the vids so far, the name of your character is set in stone. From that, I would assume that gender is always male. I don't remember the name exactly, it could be something androgynous and I could be wrong. But I'm guessing the best we could hope for is a Deus Ex-style skin color choice. As for character abilities, I'd say that's a given, regardless. They wouldn't be able to call it an RPG if you aren't able to customize those, even if something like Jade Empire would have been the same had there been no customization at all.

5, not taking into account engine issues, which I don't mind much. Thin, mechanical villains, largely static NPCs, a fairly restrictive feel. The Keep sequence was pretty good, though. For reference, I would have given Fallout a 10, F2 and BG2 a 9, BG1 and Vampire an 8, KOTOR2 Arcanum and PST a 7, KOTOR 6, IWD a 4, Morrowind / Oblivion a 3. Them's the deal.

Instead of burning goats, I think we should all be doing our part to promote world peace this solstice time. The "positive energy fields" stuff is new age wank, but it's good stuff for a good cause. Grab an attractive friend and, uh, come together. In the interests of peace on Earth and goodwill towards men. Isn't that what Christmas is all about? btw, there's 11 days left, so some of you had better start preparing now. You know who you are.

Since when has Viggo Mortensen been the Christ?

Seems like a lot of D&D players I know tend towards schizoid personalities. So I can see where they're coming from with this. But the idea that they're some kind of security risk is ridiculous. Schizoids can hold down a job just like anybody else.

A little late on the reply, but thanks for the ideas, Blank. Now all I have to do is implement them and figure out where to get the components, and what abilities will be required to create said items. I'm writing Fallout again, since the semester has ended. Planned everything up for next week. Basically, the party is in Denver, which is kind of like the Necropolis, except much bigger and much less populated. A few police robots and some salvagers and a lot of dogs, that's it. There are also some slavers and some mercenaries, but at least one of those you fight. My question posed to you all is this: Given that there aren't many NPCs to flesh out here in Denver, what would be the best way to initiate quests and such over a large area? The thing is that without any NPCs, the whole area runs the risk of being a gigantic dungeon crawl. I don't do dungeon crawls well, so I need some inspiration here.

Was that the "Alternate Reality" game that was supposed to be a great leap in gaming a few years back? A nice high concept, to be sure, but it worked better as a marketing tool for serial television than an end in and of itself. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm pretty sure you are thinking of "Majestic" <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's the one.

It's kind of humorous, kind of, but variations on the fifty hitler post are always an eyesore.

Was that the "Alternate Reality" game that was supposed to be a great leap in gaming a few years back? A nice high concept, to be sure, but it worked better as a marketing tool for serial television than an end in and of itself.

Hmm, where is the glowing ink? I think my golem quest may be bugged.

How is Mass Effect not a hack'n'slash? To me, it seems that the planets are shaping up to be self-contained little dungeons full of third person shooty combat. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Aside from that bar scene, they haven't shown a lot in the way of interaction, true. But as far as far as pretenses go, this doesn't look as thin as, say, Diablo or Dungeon Siege, where your quests are loot-expedition excuses initiated by merchants. That's what passes for "Action RPGs" these days. I don't expect it to be PS:T or Arcanum, either. But I'm expecting something like a KOTOR weighted more heavily towards combat. That doesn't bother me. I don't expect anything less out of Bioware these days. As for the chick's voice, I don't like it, but I don't like any of the voices I've heard so far. But I'll get used to them.

I don't think the KoS made any plans, per se. To use an overthought comparison, the KoS is akin to a Lovecraftian god, potent but remote. The shadow priests are cultists who revere the KoS in the same way Lovecraft's cultists revered Cthulu. They follow him because they know he'll come anyway, and when he does they might be spared destruction. But like Cthulu, the KoS doesn't really concern himself with his cult's aims. The cult worships him, but their interests aren't his. Black Garius sought out the KoS out of a lust for power. He knew that the KoS was powerful and overestimated his ability. He thought he could steal the KoS' power and discard him, and instead he became enslaved.

With this and (in a certain sense) Bioshock, I'd say 2007 looks pretty good for RPGs that aren't of the hack-and-slash variety. If some kind of NWN2 expansion is released towards the end of the year, we'll have had a pretty good crop. Certainly better than this year.

The KoS was evil, but not through any fault of his own. He did what he thought was necessary to protect the country he obviously loved a little too much. His actions weren't evil, but they led to him being evil by chance. That's supposed to illicit sympathy from the player. It doesn't work very well. I can tell this without my usual overanalysis, so I think it should have been obvious. The silver sword and the Ritual powers were both supposed to be needed to beat the KoS, but the general consensus is that the Ritual powers were not terribly useful. As for the sword, I believe the shadow portal that appears during the last battle can only be destroyed using it.

Autechre - Second Peng Aphex Twin - Domino Both of which are too big for the gallery. So, uh, sorry?

*SPOILERZ* I think what Obs was trying to convey was that the KoS was not really evil. He was a blind idiot machine. The Shadow Weave stuff makes sense given FR lore. When Karsus magicked himself into Godhead and caused the Netheril cataclysm, the Weave from which all magic drew dried up for an instant. All the mythals that had been maintained by Netheril went haywire. The flying cities crashed to the ground, dead and wild magic zones popped up, all that jazz. The KoS was basically a walking mythal maintained by the weave. When Karsus initiated the cataclysm, the KoS got ****ed up just like all the other sustained spells. I'm not completely sure about the whole story story, but I think when the Weave was weakened by the cataclysm, it stopped being able to provide the magical fuel that powered the war engine that was the Guardian. Without the sustenance, the Guardian started wasting away. But the thing was that normal magic doesn't draw from the Shadow Weave, so when the cataclysm took place, the Shadow Weave wasn't weakened in the way the vanilla Weave was. The powerful spells that drove the Guardian were no longer sustainable by the Weave, so instead of failing, they took the path of least resistance as some manner of magical physics, and started feeding off the robust power supply of the Shadow Weave. But the Shadow Weave, while powerful, was a corrupting force, and thus not only was the Guardian's purpose corrupted, causing him to turn on those who created him, but the walking mythal that the Guardian was became this tremendous beacon of negative power, and he became the KoS. There was an immense amount of epic Shadow Weave magic emanating from the Guardian, and he became like a natural open conduit to the negative energy plane, thus by his very presence the land became barren and the dead turned to undead. It's all still kind of confusing, and I agree that he wasn't that compelling of a villain, but I don't think it's because there was any inherent flaw in his design. I think had Obs elaborated upon the story and the nature of the KoS he would have been. The fact that the KoS threat is completely the result of chance rather than hubris or dark design were kind of beside the point in the game. There wasn't much of an element of tragedy. I didn't feel bad about having to destroy the KoS, nor did I get much sense that I was supposed to, despite this backstory. He might have well have been some inscrutable menace from a distant world who didn't need explaining. There are still some things I was confused about. What exactly was causing the KoS to "come back"? Was it the efforts of Garius? Was he naturally waxing in power out there under the Mere?

Only get GoW if you've never played Halo, fancy MP arena combat, or put grfix in the top 3 considerations as far as what makes a game great. Oblivion is better if you prefer to play solo, and you have a lot of time you need wasting. Just don't go into it expecting an RPG. It also has the best as far as downloadable content goes, as far as any 360 game is concerned. Double Agent is probably the all-around best of the three, if not just because there's not a lot of bloated hype around it. Basic Splinter Cell gameplay, 400% more story than GoW or Oblivion, good MP. More stealth than action. I'd urge you to get Dead Rising if you want to play the best exclusive 360 has to offer in the way of sheer gameplay awesomeness, though. But only if you've got an HDTV, because otherwise you can't read **** on it.

ya, well, I think the band is supposed to subjugate the realm of pop music under an oppressive quasi-leninest bureacracy. I'm all for that. :cool:

a Fake hipster band name database. One of them is "The Pop Stalinists", so I ran with "The Pop Stalinist" on my first forums, and after awhile people just started calling me "Pop".

Meh, I haven't made a "pack mule" character yet, meaning a character with an initial >14 strength, so I have to rely on Khelgar to carry most phat l007 (that's how you spell it, right?) like weapons and armor. And when you're a spellcaster with a 10 strength, you push your limits if you hold onto all the essences you make. I'll probably run a half-orc or a fighting class here after my Warlock's done with.

If our intent is to stop participation in a war, a draft would theoretically be effective. Boys get drafted, and families who don't want those boys to die at war then exert pressure on the legislature to have restraint when declaring it, and war is not declared. This was the point of the draft legislation that was recently "considered". Since war cannot be declared without an okay from congress, if more congressmen had children in the military who didn't volunteer, the logic goes, we wouldn't be at war. But that doesn't work, obviously. That craftiest of the governmental branches, the executive, discovered after Vietnam that war can easily be waged without congressional approval. Thus we had all kinds of "police actions" that committed troops to foreign soil, and there was about **** all anybody could do about it. After 9/11 congress virtually issued a mandate giving Bush freedom to do whatever he wanted. I can't fully blame the bastards, at least they gave it up with the intention of not being useless, like they usually are. But yeah, drafts are bad for ongoing war efforts, but the point of the draft in this case would be to get us out of a war effort, not bolster it.

I remember a few parts being unskippable (like the NWN-style interchapter movie ), but I never had much problem with the concept of wordy cutscenes in the first place.

Bah, Ministry was so much better during their totally ghey new wave period. Definitely the hardest band ever to open for Boy George. I've seen them play a few times. Seeing them the first time was an experience. Met Al too, he was a charming drunk (signed my car door and high school press pass) but without Paul, Ministry is less industrial metal than it is straight metal, and it isn't terribly interesting to me. An unsettling number of neo-nazis show up for the shows, too.

I was under the impression that she wasn't necessarily a Vampire. She doesn't seem to regard herself as such. Certainly she's some kind of undead since she was "alive" at some point (and a lesbian, no less) but the fact that she eats flesh as opposed to blood would make her something different. Also the implication was that she wasn't embraced, but achieved undeath through her necromantic pursuits. That's what I gathered, anyway. If she is a vampire, she's of some incredibly obscure bloodline. I haven't read of any strains of vampirism that fit the bill, but then again all the materials I have are post-Masquerade.