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Excerrent. But for a second there I thought Aldanon made it into the game Some odd camera angles in there too. The examples of the dialogue are pretty impressive. I liked the law guy's speech.

I remember level drain being a problem in BG2 because it would erase spell memorizations, such that if you didn't protect your spellcasters, you'd have to re-list your spells after every fight. I'm not sure if that's the case in NWN2. It would also reduce the abilites of your fighters right quick, if they got rushed. The NWN system doesn't make it nearly as debilitating. Greater undead are comparitively easy to handle. In the crypts prior to getting Elanee, poison and disease are an annoyance, as no one has spells that can counter them (expensive potions are the only recourse). But the rest / death system being what it is, they're of absolutely no consequence for the rest of the game. They don't even complicate combat all that much. It makes one nostalgic for the days when a mutated spider's venom could actually kill a party member. Hell, it makes one nostalgic for untrivial RPG death. The worst poison or disease does is reduce strength such that they become encumbered.

Yet the point of my argument was that the efficacy of a law is not related to its justification for existing. Perfectly valid reasons (such as infringement on personal freedom) for revoking the law are made without having ever referenced the irrelevant issue of whether or not the law works. That issue is brought to the fore when we consider whether or not we want to adapt or optimize a law, not whether or not we want that law to exist. If the government intends to reduce drug consumption, but its law fails to that effect, that is indicative of failed policy; the intent can still be innoculated against the argument. In other words, the legitimacy of a law and its implementation are seperate, and efficacy arguments speak against the latter, not the former. Which, again, is irrelevant. That individuals defy a law does not make it illegitimate. If drug law is illegitimate because some individuals defy it, rape and murder laws are also illegitimate (if we want to be reasonably consistent) for the same reason. If drug laws are illegitimate and rape / murder laws are legitimate, then our criterion for legitimacy must come originally from something other than efficacy. If we don't want drug laws because they don't work, than we don't want laws against murder if they don't work. This line of reasoning is absurdity, but it is consistent with this line of argument. We want murder laws and we don't want drug laws, but neither of those things have anything to do with whether or not the policy is failsafe and effective. They have to do with whether or not those policies are fair and just. Your other arguments and your conclusion may be sound, but that particular argument is not. On the contrary, there is not a "vast majority" of people who take murder to be wrong all the time everywhere. Most people would agree that certain people deserve death (but most would take exception to things like capital punishment because they kill people who don't deserve it), and more still would make exceptions for self-defense or defense of others. I didn't see anything prima facae wrong with tarna's post. If he wanted to kill his landlord, that would be wrong, but he'd be reasonable in wanting your Slobodan Milosevichs or Pol Pots dead.

(w00t) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I WOULD KILL FOR BG3. But if Atari is in such dire straits (I don't know if they are) they could sell the property to Obs

Welcome Mr. Veran. I myself used to write fanfic (I was 12, and man did Prince of Persia knock my socks off) but it sucked. Gonna have to take some creative writing courses or something. VELCOME!

Your argument was about the legitimacy of drug laws in reference to their efficacy. That drug laws were wrong wasn't the issue, it was that they were ineffective. That drug laws harm the innocent is irrelevant to the argument that they fail as a deterrent, and that the laws fail as a deterrent is insufficient argument to conclude that those laws should not be in place, as evidenced by the murder analogy.

Is that really the case? Consider Glaucon's "Gyges ring" dilemma. We might assume that most people wouldn't do the wrong thing if no consequences would ever befall them, but it's not unreasonable to believe that most people, if they were never held accountable for their actions, would err in many situations. In this example, if there was indeed a God that judged him by his actions after his life, and this was readily accepted, the rogue would not rape or kill even if he could get away with it. He couldn't get away with it. Humanism creates no such imperative, it has no such teeth. Kant had to include a God in his moral calculus to make it workable. When one refuses or is incapable of comprehending a metaphysical justification for the permissibility or prohibition of an action, and no physical prohibition is implemented (ie an action is wrong but there are no definite negative personal consequences) imperatives can't reasonably exist. A consequence must be present to deter those would act in spite of our moral judgements. We can say that killing is wrong, but saying it isn't enough, and there are examples of people getting away with murder just as there are examples of people reaping the consequences of their actions.

Terrible argument. There's a mandate out against murder, but a determined person will still commit it. By your logic, that imprisonment or capital punishment are not effective deterrents against murder (people still kill each other with full knowledge of the consequences of their actions) means that those punishments should be suspended until we find some punishment that precludes murder all the time everywhere. But that's unreasonable, so we implement those punishments because we can be confident that it will deter some.

Jung was also at least a bit insane, especially going into the end of his professional relationship with Freud. The Seven Sermons to the Dead were indicative of this descent. He reffered to it as a "creative illness", which some believe is indicative of paranoid schizophrenia that was probably mild in its severity, but Jung apparently was visited by some hallucinations and delusions (he professed to having been visited by angels) during that time, so he meets the diagnostic criteria. He also has the same problem that Aquinas had. If you do not hold the premise that a Platonic spiritual world exists to be true, the entire foundation of Jung's theory becomes nonsensical. As for good / evil being defined by the existence of a God, humanists generally disagree. Most at least paid lip-service to the concept of a deity, because if one is not judged for his actions after he dies, it is entirely possible to commit evil actions without consequence, and thus moral consideration becomes arbitrary. That's why Nietzche was a nihilist and not a humanist.

I ran into this as well. My party turned into slack-jawed idiots as soon as we stepped into the Moonstone Mask. Try using the "follow me" or "defend me" scripts by right-clicking on the screen (not on any particular party member) and selecting the "broadcast command" option. That gave my AI the kick in the ass it needed and fixed the bug when it came up.

Yeah, but they make even less RP difference than the traits in NWN2. They're mildly interesting, but Bloodlines has two strengths, the narrative and the roleplaying. Every other aspect of the game is rough or unbalanced. The traits slightly change the way characters are created, but beyond that they're mostly useless.

Not really, from what I can tell. He wasn't particularly NG when he was introduced into the game, and he doesn't become more lawful when he becomes a monk, by my measure. Seems like his transformation into a monk was the end of his progression as a character, but he hadn't transformed much. Made a speech about justice and fairness, but it's not as if a NG character can't value those things.

You weep easy.

Uh, dunno if this has been posted by anybody yet (I'm a little noviced with the Star Wars forums) but the VP of Lucasarts says, in effect, that KOTOR 3 will in fact be deveoloped. She doesn't use those exact words, but she says they won't "leave that franchise behind" ^_^ let's go Obsidz!

I'd reserve that one for Goldeneye.

The movie was. The game underutilized its fear system, and not a single party member ended up uninfected. Lame. Had some nice moments, though

DO IT URSELF

2nd edition. They also had a hilariously low level cap. Gotta love 2nd ed. I've still got friends who swear by it. If anything, goblins would be expanded in 3+

I've run into a quickslot bug, seemingly relating to the newly implemented dual-wield slotting. I'm a warlock, so I quickslot my eldritch blasts. The problem is, each slot will hold two different blasts, like I'm dual-wielding them the spells cancel each other out. I can correct the slots, but they seem to rearrange themselves from time to time, and it's a little peeving. Has anybody run into this problem with vanilla spellcasters? It might just be a Warlock thing.

He's given the chance to. My impression was that if you got him to regret killing Shandra, he becomes defect-proof. I think the Obs writers were hinting that AJ had made so many moral compromises in the name of defeating the KoS that he was truly evil by that point, and he was simply rationalizing his actions, such that if you don't get him to regret killing Shandra, he'd be capable of a complete idealogical 180. Heart of Darkness and all that. But I've only gotten to the ending once, that might not be the case. Seemed odd that Garius would even attempt to persuade AJ, but he did. Maybe there were other defect-proof NPC-Garius dialogues that got cut. It would have been great if a PC who paid no mind at all to influence ended up on the wrong side of his entire party. As for Fallout, the bad Killian ending was not implemented, but the idea was seriously considered (Interplay may have nixed it, if they had such power) Originally, siding with Killian resulted in him becoming an iron-fisted frontier tyrant, hanging people left and right, eventually dooming the town and siding with Gizmo resulted in Junktown becoming a prosperous but dark (it's Fallout) New Reno-style free market casino town.

It made sense to me too, since (I'm assuming) both characters are supposed to be of advanced age and versed in the obscure lore required to fight the KoS. But even then, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to make their character levels equal to the players' That seems to be the major problem everybody has with AJ (myself included) because by the end you realize that hey, you really didn't need him, and thus he becomes a forced NPC and most players don't seem to like that. But by the same token, if they had required the web of purity, the game would be unbeatable (or at the very least, much harder) if you had no means to protect / resurrect him. He died at least twice during my KoS battle. They also wouldn't have been able to give him the chance to defect. Certainly that's a good way to go about it. Being between a rock and a hard place is much more effective dramatically than scripted events or even obvious good/evil choices, even when the consequences of either are not clear cut (I'm reminded of the original planned Junktown endings for Fallout, where the "good" outcome came from siding with Gizmo and the "bad" outcome came from siding with Killian) even better is that difficult choice that could result in a no-upside conclusion. Maybe by choosing to save your betrothed, both of them die. Still, what would they have done? Make the player choose between Shandra and AJ? For many, that would have been no choice at all. Shandra and Elanee would have been better, but then you're deprived of one of the two clerical spellcasters.

A developer talks about how his upcoming genre game is different and more ambitious than those other ones? Color me dazzled

No Bloodrayne? Not only was it a terrible game (and even worse movie), the ludicrous jiggle effect was its major selling point. Ugh, God. ****ing Bloodrayne.

Played Gears of War for a few hours, total Halo flashback (checkpoint, fight, checkpoint, fight, extraction), got bored, took it back to the BB, got the new Splinter Cell. Quite a bit like MGS, without the comic book-y talkiness and fantastic powers, but lacking in the cinematic qualities that MGS pulled off so well. Mission-to-mission, I prefer Splinter Cell. If SC had the great villains MGS has and managed to avoid all of MGS' hamfisted melodrama, it would be a better game. Good but not great as it is. The ending sucked. But still the best Tom Clancy game I've played. Micheal Ironside ftw. I'm settling into Fight Night Round 3 again. Nothing quite like beating the **** out of virtual boxers in HD. Some of these guys just don't understand how to duck.