Pop

Meh, if it's got a lot of utility, I don't care. I'm not the kind of guy who can mod on Source, but I can make a lot of pretty okay Starcraft maps a drag-and-drop kind of baby editor is just what I can use.

Looks good, but that dark background makes the armor loud, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, but you know they're going to pass him over again this year. This is certainly better than Gangs or the Aviator. I've heard some say it's better than Goodfellas.

what game's that? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> World of Warcraft....which I'm apparently addicted to now. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hit it like you mean it MORE DOTS MORE DOTS MORE DOTS MORE DOTS In my games: Get that mephit!

Word is Waters cannot sing worth a damn anymore. Too bad. Coil - The Anal Staircase (a heartwarming ditty) Headland - What did you Say? Aphex Twin - Domino

I guess the quality of the villain depends on the game, as certain villains lend themselves to the atmosphere of a game. I remember being freaked out by Icarus in Deus Ex when he first made contact with the PC. I'd say Bioware has made a lot of great villains, but Darth Malak and Morag were just so boring. Dug Sarevok, dug Irenicus/Bodhi. The Valsharess was okay, but I had hoped they would have explored the disappearance of Lolth a little more. As far as Obsidian goes, I thought Kreia was alright (I didn't much care for objectivism before I played it, and it kind of got in the way of my connecting with the character) Sion and Nihilus were designed well. I actually thought Atris was the best-drawn villain from KOTOR2. Are there any games in which an established good character from earlier games becomes a villain in later ones? Maybe the PC becomes the villain? I'm thinking that would be good for a D&D game, but I don't play often enough :\

I found it kind of fell apart after the wonderful character creation process Once you give it a chance, there's really a lot of roleplaying opportunity in the thing. Definitely an imbalanced game, though.

Get this book. It's got all the crazy crap like this you'll ever need.

"Pop: "All deities had to give spell power to their followers through Mystra's weave, so I don't know if you could trace a spell back to them or back to Mystra." Is that all deities or all deities native to Faerun? During the Time of Troubles, I thought that clerics of the Seldarine could still cast magic despite Mystra no longer being around." I usually play FR, I know that's how it works there, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was different in other gameworlds without Mystra. As for the ToT, no clerics could cast any spells unless their deity's mortal avatar was within a certain radius (1 mile, I believe) Thus, clerical healing became a near-impossibilty during that time. In the ToT storyline, Mystra confined herself to an amulet during that time, so the woman who carried the amulet and became Mystra could always cast spells. I believe I remember the Seldarine (like many deities during the ToT) resided amongst their chosen people during this time, in some big tree grove, most likely. Thus a cleric not far from said grove would be able to cast spells. I don't know if that explains all of it, though, because Helm (the only deity in heaven during the ToT) would still technically then be able to grant his followers spells. Mystra created the weave, it's kind of like her body, as I understand it. It can be wounded, creating dead and wild magic zones. Maybe because she was confined to the earth, she couldn't control it. If someone were to destroy the weave (say, with epic mythal spells) they would destroy Mystra. Technically, Mystra could deny any person the right to magic use, and could cut off a deity to his followers. That would probably royally piss of Ao, though. Big "balance" violation. I have all the FR 3.5 books

I just saw the Departed, and it's the first good movie I've seen all year. Mark Wahlberg pwnz!

Yeah, it's coming back to me now. I really think that age was the problem Bodhi and Irenicus had. Bodhi didn't have magic to keep her alive, so she became a vampire to circumvent the Seldarine's curse, and she succeeded in keeping herself from aging, but she lost her soul, and when Imoen takes her soul back there's no problem. But Irenicus had a soul that kind of "fused" with the PC's divine soul, so when the PC kills Irenicus the first time, he's able to fight for its ownership in hell. That's how it was all explained by Imoen, anyway. So Darque was kind of right, Bodhi indeed had no soul, as she was an undead vampire, so the soul-transfer didn't work as it was intended to do, there was no soul to heal, and Bodhi wasn't capable of "possessing" the soul. Irenicus had a cursed soul that he healed through the Bhaalspawn. That's how it worked.

What I'm hearing here is that losing his soul would make him apathetic towards things. If we assume that he can compare memories, and find out that having a soul is good, and there's one out there for the taking, then it makes sense that he would kidnap the Bhaalspawn. I had always assumed (from the way the thing was written) was not that Irenicus and Bodhi had no souls, it was that they lacked their elf essence which made them immortal. They were aging rapidly, and becoming senile. The Bhaalspawn represented a chance to get their youth back and exact punishment on the Seldarine. So they exhibited the Bhaalspawn to many tortures for that reason.

I don't know about all of that. You've never hated someone so much and then you forget why you hated them but you still do? It's sentiment, it's illogical, but if he lost his soul he'd still have his vitriolic sentiment (that of being betrayed and abandoned) and that would be enough.

Since the "What are you reading?" thread seems to be dead, I'll recommend The Road by Cormac McCarthy. For those of you that like post-apoc fiction, this is a devastating and frightening read. It's about the travels of a father and son, the son born after the nuclear holocaust, and their struggles to survive. A big question of the book is whether surviving is even worth it. It's really, really good.

I don

Funny that. I'm having the same problem with Diablo, and Deus Ex, and System Shock 2. I think it's something with XP. I never used to encounter this.

Not even the Sith are cold-hearted enough to harm such a fuzzy jedi.

I have a friend that wants to play BG2 with the original NPC portraits from the first game (original Imoen, Jaheira, etc.) is there a mod out there that makes that possible? Or can you do that easily through coding... or what? He refuses to play it without it (he likes the original game, and he's unnerved by the updates) and I want to live vicariously through my friend who's playing the game for the first time.

I'm surprised nobody's gone off and mentioned that Sephiroth guy yet, as far as "good villains" go. I've heard "best villain evar" thrown around with him quite a bit. Then again, I always found FF to be lame-o.

Indeed. It's down now, but it showed the Jack guy (I don't watch the show, but if you're part of any forum on the internet there's a little enclave of Lost-watchers) on a table, knocked out, with a little girl sitting next to him. Pink shirt (I think) and blonde hair. It apparently wasn't on the show, but was on their official site. Could be red herring. *edit - Here we are, found it. The official line seems to be that it was part of a hallucination sequence that got cut, and "accidentally" got loaded onto the site. but do you believe it?

Anybody catch picture #33 on the site? It's so fun to watch people get jerked around by these guys. They get away with murder.

Melisa (or whats her name) was a good villain in ToB, but so soon after BG2 people just 'overrun' the expansion without even noticing anything from the game. <_< <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I thought it would've been better had they not made it blaringly obvious from her do-goodery that she was pulling the strings all along. Other than that, yeah, I agree. I thought Balthazar had a lot of potential, but they didn't flesh him out enough. *edit - Dammit people, why don't you just come right out and spoil it for the n00bs?

but can they make computers that think in heuristics instead of algorithms? I think not! Go humans!

That might be part of it for me as well. Plus I did play BG about 5 times more than I did BG2.... so maybe that colors my perceptions a bit. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I thought you had said that earlier mebbe I was wrong on that count. solly. And perhaps I'm being a bit simplistic. Ambition and hubris are certainly common traits among villains, as it tends to make them bigger threats, but it's not required. A powerful assassin might not want to take over or destroy the world, but he's certainly committed to killing off the PCs, and that's a bit to deal with by itself. Or you could have a Mononoke-style situation, in which there isn't a clear villain, but rather powerful entities and ideas on a crash course, with neither of them being inherently evil. It's certainly easier to make a Bond villain, though