Pop

I'm saying it doesn't matter how good Citizen Kane is. Citizen Kane is in the Pantheon. "Best film of all time" is an inherent quality it has, not a status given to it by virtue of its other qualities. Once you put that idea in peoples' heads the onus is on naysayers to prove otherwise. That's not how analysis ought to work. I mean have you read any Rolling Stone best of lists over the years? You'd think good music began in 1960 and ended in 1979. The institution of Rolling Stone is caught up in the idea that the era of psychedelic and classic rock was a Unique and Unparalleled Period of Time in History. Spin thinks the same of the Alternative craze of the 90s. What gets into someone's head that convinces them that Sgt. Peppers is the best album recorded anywhere anytime by anyone ever? I would argue that it's mainly being inundated by just how HOLY **** IT'S IMPORTANT Sgt. Peppers is. You could call that nostalgia, I would call it the natural inclination of institutions to create idols. Raise your hand if you've ever met someone who said Oblivion was one of the best games in years without being able to name any specific qualities it had that made it that way. *hand* Now ask yourself how such an idea became so prevalent. It's not simply that people played it and liked it. (Abbey Road was better anyway)

I would disagree with you there. Institutions and cultures maintain sacred cows often without any active championing by anyone in particular. All you need is a person in a place of esteem telling others how important something is for long enough and soon enough it has its own momentum, that one person can die and it wouldn't matter. You're implicitly acknowledging this when you say Citizen Kane is on so many "best of" lists "because of the type of film it is". What sets Citizen Kane apart, exactly? A lot of people will say it's one of the best films ever made without ever having seen it, because it has the reputation of being one of the best films ever made. And it has that reputation because critics, in the AMA and other institutions (who may or may not have a vested interest in branding things American Classics) have endorsed it as such. Bill Shakespeare is the best writer the English language has ever produced. People know this, but very few of them have read his work extensively. Why is that notion so widely held? Because we're taught it in school. Most children read his worst work, actually. (Romeo and Juliet) I could go on.

I am looking forward to the inevitable desktop wallpaper shot

If you're on this forum you probably think about your games a lot, and people who think a lot tend to be critical, even about things that they love. It's just in their nature. We'll all be buying the game.

MCA has had a hand in every game Obsidz has made. He will be instrumental, there can be no doubt, even if he is not the lead.

How quickly they forget! I remember Van Buren, and how amazed I was by the design docs, and how crushed I was that I'd never see it. There was an ambition in that game that I have never encountered elsewhere. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I would have paid a lot of money to see the Obsidz boys back behind the scenes of another Fallout game. With all luck, we'll see some of that again.

Bethesda destroyed Cthulhu? That's nonsense. And Beth is not your standard publisher, but also a developer, so that's a good thing. They care about Fallout, Obsidian cares about Fallout, therefor we, the customers, win. I'm also interested in the "Beth destroyed Call of Cthulhu" thing. They made it and it was buggy, but if they hadn't made it, it wouldn't have been made at all... Is there any official word on how this "partnership" works? If Obsidian gets to do what they want then I see good things in the future... Bethesda didn't make Cthulhu, that was some other studio that found itself unable to pull the **** together. They didn't develop the game. Headstrong Productions did and had made a far more in-depth gameplay until Bethesda demanded it to be simplified for the XBOX. I had whined about it years ago regarding of this, its not exactly new news. Whatever. This doesn't really affect New Vegas. Beth and Obz are pros, they don't need to bite each other. And if necessary, Ferg can always wield his mighty hammer of persuasion to get Todd and Hines back into lines. Don't underestimate the mighty power of Ferg! Quote tunnel zoooooom

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I would take the engine assertion with a grain of salt. Howard (Hines? It's a monday) didn't say anything publicly about the game's engine from what I've read.

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Can I just say HOLY ****ING **** GODDAM

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Gamespot talks with 2K Marin, new footage and crap. Looks promising, I have to say!

I would hope you're not getting all your advice from this place. Outside of the Obsidz forum most of the feedback I've heard on 4e has been positive.

Considering that a new IP probably wouldn't have superfans, I'm banking on this being a sequel. And KOTOR3 seems highly unlikely, so I'm going to place my money on Baldur's Gate 3. Atari is on the rise financially and they could really use a megawatt hit to announce their official return. They've already expressed their interest in making another BG. So I'm betting it's that. But he could just mean "superfans" of Obsidian. Sawyer is a tricky **** like that.

Those look a little rough, the models have certainly been touched up in the videos we've seen thus far. Thorton's face in particular doesn't seem very malleable. This particular animator apparently didn't work on leg movement, either.

yes

Holy **** I didn't even see this before. I can't stop laughing.

Obama is not a secret muslin, he is a secret jew. He held a passover ceremony in our sacred Americo-Christian White House. And how else do you explain his favor towards banking interests? Truly, Obama must be teabag'd. USA! USA! USA!

After so long pretending this wasn't a gaming forum and thus not rife with hooting morons, it's nice when something puts everything back in perspective again.

The cover art is mimicry of the Criterion Collection, a line of DVDs / Blu-Rays of "significant" films (often the outputs of notable auteurs like Kurosawa or Truffaut but also things like Armageddon) Criterion is credited with inventing commentary tracks and special features back in the early 90's when they were still relegated to laserdiscs. They are expensive (a single film usually runs $60-100, generally) but all aspects of the package are held to ridiculously high standards, from the minimalist cover art to liner notes to the picture, which is usually remastered by hand over the course of several years from original prints. They usually contain essays on the film by film scholars and numerous commentary tracks from the cast & crew but also film scholars, all of which tend to be excellent. Most of the time they contain at least one feature-length documentary on the film. By and large they are the ultimate film package. For a cinephile they are an absolutely perfect gift. The Seven Samurai, as an example

Criterion Games Hot **** most of these are awesome.

If anyone's interested, Bioware is now taking applications for participation in the DA End User Tools beta.

To be honest I'd rather see Aliens made than anything. I just want it to be interesting for its own sake, not because it's "fresh territory". If we've gotten to the point where a game is is dismissed because of superficial similarities to other games we've gotten to the point where we shouldn't really be playing games.