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Twin Snakes is a lot like Baldur's Gate Tutu in a lot of ways, really. In both cases, elements of respective sequels (for Twin Snakes, it's tranqs and first-person mode, for Tutu, it's class kits) were introduced into the original games. In both cases the additions are initially delightful, but sooner rather than later you discover that the games weren't designed with the additions in mind, and thus they get broken and become much, much, much, much easier. The AI in Twin Snakes is at times hilariously stupid, because your first-person mode allows you line of sight they don't have.

NWN2 has a Mac port, now. Don't know about the expansions.

for frak's sake, am i the only person on this thread who can actually read? he didn't say they would revisit BG or NWN, but "the likes of" BG and NWN. it's a hopelessly vague statement that most reasonable folk would read as an indication that they want to make games like BG and NWN in the future, but not necessarily direct successors to those games and not in the next year. personally, i think it's deeply unlikely that we'll see a BG3 (pointless as it would be) and i have strong doubts about even an NWN3: no developer in their right mind would want to add to the code as bequeathed by NWNs 1&2 and few would want to spend the time to start a new engine afresh. i'm sure we'll see more D&D games from atari and they might even slap an old name on one of them to garner a few more bucks. but before y'all start drinking the kool aid, you might want to re-read what he said, because if you think that's a firm promise to make BG3 or NWN3, i have a bridge on the thames to sell you. Frankly, given what we know about Atari's situation (due to the modest success of Alone in the Dark it's hanging by a thread instead of being completely doomed) I'd sooner believe that use of the term "the likes of" is a grammatical error on the part of the writer than a true conveyance of Atari's intent. If I were running Atari I'd have no problems using whatever Big Names I had at my disposal. Which isn't to say that BG3 would be a continuation of the whole Bhaalspawn thing. It's hard to imagine it would be. They're just going to use the name.

Truth be told I wouldn't mind a BG3 developed by CDProjekt. I've long argued that one of Baldur's Gate biggest weaknesses as a franchise was that not every single one of the female characters was a total, shameless whore. This company has what it takes to take BG to the next level.

True. Nothing says "Baldur's Gate" better than attention seeking, sex starvedpsychologically disturbed female elves.

Is nothing sacred? Is nothing sacred?

Given the game in question I can't see how the PC crowd could complain about either of those things.

I felt the urge to start playing Mass Effect again, and unfortunately I installed the PC version (don't know where my 360 copy is, exactly) and hit a game-bricking General Protection Fault a few days into my game. Checked on their forums and there's a 30-page long thread started in May (when the game was released) filled with people who can't figure out how to get past it. Troika wasn't this bad. Blame EA, I suppose. Support for other Bioware games has been pretty good.

What's likely the case is that the screenshots we've seen of Thorton with rougher skin / stubble / the like are parts of the game that have been finished before the rest of the game, as eye candy for game journalists and promo screenshots. Even though the rest of the game isn't complete, the part of the game in which you confront the arabian arms dealer is done. The "before" screenshots are ostensibly what Obs is going for in the finished product.

It's not just you. Around here we call it "forward development".

?uestion -

It came out a few weeks ago, and it doesn't.

I'm curious as to whether or not martial arts will be viable as a primary means of combat. From the way Josh had written about it, it seemed like you'd be using unarmed mainly in conjunction with stealth, as in, you use unarmed when you want to avoid combat. If I put my Thorton's skill points primarily into unarmed combat will I end up gimping him? I figured that a sensible "power" associated with unarmed combat, assuming it could be viably used as a primary skill, would be some means of closing the distance between Thorton and his target, a sprint or somesuch, during the use of which you don't take damage. Obviously we can see from the dev diary that the levels are often expansive enough that you could stand to hurt yourself just running straight at a guy who knows you're there. It's also worth asking if there are enemies who will use CQC against you, or at least, characters for whom CQC is recommended.

Uh, Obama is a constitutional lawyer by trade. You don't get degrees in **** you don't care about. Of course, and thus far this cabinet seems to be more or less a technocracy, which is good. I would've pegged Clinton more as HHS or education, but I'm sure she'll surprise me as Sec of State.

Guitar Hero: World Tour Stick around / fast forward to the end. You will be glad you did. It kinda sorta ties into Obs, as it stands now.

I don't think anybody remotely informed about the guy should have seriously considered Obama to be a liberal. It's a testament to how far rightward the political dialogue has shifted in this country that Obama, who's assembling a center-right cabinet and is proving to be Clinton 3, was feared by many a mouth breather to be a socialist. Most of his actual appointments or decisions will not matter all that much, honestly. The crisis-management oriented economic team likely would've been assembled more or less the same under McCain. The things that will matter will have to do with the war, primarily, if he chooses to address it, and he might not, and his foreign policy in general will be something to keep an eye on, what with Russia newly ornery and prone to swinging its **** around. The biggest and most important thing Obama will do will be retaining the current ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for another decade or two. That in itself was worth the election falling to him.

Combat in actual locations is strenuous enough that buffs are useful, and healing is now vital. Favored Souls are hella useful. It is odd that if you use a haste spell immediately before exiting to the map you'll be hasted on the map for a few seconds. Sort of kind of useful, especially if you've got a warlock with Flee the Scene. I did not plan ahead for group feats, and thus I can only get 2, one simply by chance, as my warlock is a half-elf. There's a new patch? Stupid D2D games.

Jason Graves, but also Alex Brandon.

I've hit some weird pathfinding on the Overland map - Every once in awhile a monster will spot me, I'll attempt to make a break for it and my party will move towards the encounter, when I told them to move away from the encounter. That's always fun. Also there's a "jumping" issue, where my party will be moving and they'll suddenly "lurch" half a screen or more ahead or behind the point at which they were previously.

An SDK has been announced (called, of course, GECK) for release in December. Also, DLC in the first three months of next year. January - Operation: Anchorage, in which you enter a simulation of the battle of Anchorage against the Red Chinese. Should be interesting, if a little heavy on the combat. February - The Pitt, in which you travel to the ruins of Pittsburgh, now a hub for raiders. March - Broken Steel (or something), which will allow you to continue the game past the original ending, become a member of the BoS, and destroy the Enclave. Apparently.

If it's anything like Fallouts 1 and 2 there should be an .ini file or somesuch with a variable that affects the frequency of random encounters. IIRC it's how the Fallout 2 Restoration / Unofficial Patch makers were able to optimize the game for processors that are much faster than Interplay / Black Isle expected the game to run on.

That's not always the case. Bethsoft in particular is pretty good about getting out functional DLC in a timely fashion, but Bioware promised lots of DLC for Mass Effect and there was only the one (rather negligible) extra mission. It certainly doesn't seem like we'll see more than one other DLC addition before ME2 comes out.

Rogue skills are about as necessary as they are in the other games - if you've got a wizard with Knock, you've got part of it substituted, but you're still susceptible to traps. But more importantly, most of the skills, particularly those having to do with detection, are put to good use during overland travel. Hide / Move Silently are also useful if you don't like the hassle of combat. The skill with the highest modifier is the one counted, so if you're not actually using stealth in the rest of the game (and let's face it - why would you?) it doesn't make sense to put points into both of them. Choose one, I don't think it matters which, I haven't seen any special dialogue options relating to either, or the like. Gotta hand it to Obsidz, they put a lot of effort into making the skills more useful, and they well succeeded, I think. Also I think I may have fashioned a broken party. Or at least, it's certainly broken now that I managed to complete 3-4 quests in one excursion out on the map and came back to the tune of 15,000 gold or so. They made enchantment way too easy. Party's level 8 and all my fighters are using weapons that do an extra 3 or 4d6 elemental damage. The useful wondrous items all take special ingredients or spell memorization, but all it takes to add a d6 to damage is gold? Tsk tsk, Obsidz.

What about an xpac? I know you guys all hate the DLC queries, but it seems like xpacs are a thing of the past in the Bioware tradition (where for the moment Obsidian resides), at least outside of modular DnD games,. None of the KOTORs had xpacs, Jade Empire didn't have xpacs, ME didn't have xpacs. AP seems like that sort of game, that has all its ambitions wrapped up in a single package, just the one story to tell, only to be continued in an entirely new story.

So after getting a few levels with my Grey Orc Monk / Half-Drow Warlock / Human Ranger / Human Thief party and totally sucking, I restarted with a Human Favored Soul / Half-Drow Warlock (same character as first party) / Halfling Rogue-Swashbuckler-Duelist / Human Bard-Fighter party. I'm doing much better, mostly due to the inclusion of the Favored Soul, who has healing powers. Storm of Zehir's death mechanics are certainly unforgiving of cleric-less parties. Meanwhile the warlock continues to be a decent ranged power hitter (and the fear blast, never really useful in the OC, gets a lot of mileage in SoZ) and the Bard-Fighter is one level away from becoming a Red Dragon Disciple. The 1 Bard / 4 Fighter / X Red Dragon Disciple build is the most powerful I've run across in NWN2, I'm sure I'll have lots of fun with it in SoZ.