Chairchucker

Word to the wise: Wizardry 8 owns hard. (Haven't played the others yet.) Gonna wait for a sale on account of me being a cheapskate, but I am buying these and you should too if you like dungeon crawls.

To be fair, my knowledge of the mind of a rapist is imperfect, so you may be correct on this point. That being said, I would still argue that it's OK to break the golden rule when, for example, you're killing someone to stop them from raping you even though you wouldn't like it if someone were to kill you. Given that this topic belongs to a game in a genre which often has a lot of 'morally justifiable' killing, this seems relevant.

The thing is, one cannot 'prove untrue' something which does not purport to be a statement of fact. Having said that, one can easily subvert this 'rule' by introducing into a situation people with different desires and wants. For example, a rapist might state that because he wants people to have sex with him, it is OK for him to have sex with other people, even though they might not necessarily want that. Even leaving aside extreme examples such as the aforementioned hypothetical rapist, modern society tends to set limits on free will and self ownership based on certain conditions. For example, a child may want to go out joyriding with his mates, but society dictates that he is not permitted to do this without a certain laminated card bearing his photo. He also may not exercise his free will to have a few fermented beverages beforehand. Then again, there is the school of thought that places humans as just another animal in the animal kingdom, with no more significance given to someone offing a neighbour who irritates him by driving a noisy car than one would attribute to a lion eating a gazelle. That was exactly my point though. With your example of a rapist, they are displaying a form of hypocritical egotism. While they might welcome sex, and force it on others--they will not likely approve of their victim killing them in self-defence. Refusing to allow someone to kill you, yet not acknowledging another's right to refuse your "advances" is a contradiction. Society has very little to do with what is morally right and wrong. Laws are about control, not good or evil. That being said, we might want to continue this exchange though PM. While I'm late to the thread, it doesn't need my help staying derailed. But the rapist is actually following the Golden Rule, it's the person killing him who's not.

Your observations have much truth, though I do believe absolute morality is possible without a singular authority. The Golden Rule, as it were, prevades all things. It deals with aggression against free will and self ownership. Anyone who feels that "The Golden Rule" can be proven untrue, is likely a hypocritical egotist not fully investigating or understanding the depth of the moral. That aside, I completely agree with RPGs relying on a factional mechanic for positive/negetive reinforcement. It gives the maximal amount of flexibility and freedom to design choices and paths, while still delivering a response structure to a player's actions. The thing is, one cannot 'prove untrue' something which does not purport to be a statement of fact. Having said that, one can easily subvert this 'rule' by introducing into a situation people with different desires and wants. For example, a rapist might state that because he wants people to have sex with him, it is OK for him to have sex with other people, even though they might not necessarily want that. Even leaving aside extreme examples such as the aforementioned hypothetical rapist, modern society tends to set limits on free will and self ownership based on certain conditions. For example, a child may want to go out joyriding with his mates, but society dictates that he is not permitted to do this without a certain laminated card bearing his photo. He also may not exercise his free will to have a few fermented beverages beforehand. Then again, there is the school of thought that places humans as just another animal in the animal kingdom, with no more significance given to someone offing a neighbour who irritates him by driving a noisy car than one would attribute to a lion eating a gazelle. I guess I'm not sure how hard it was or how well you summed it up because I'm actually not sure what you're saying. I don't mean to insult you, because I understand that people from many different countries contribute to discussions here so English may not be your first language, but your post is difficult to understand.

I really quite liked Divine Divinity, and I think one of the things I liked the most about it was that the game world was kind of Ultima VII ish in the level of exploration that was available. Never got all that far in Divinity 2, but it seemed to have similarly enjoyable levels of exploration. Also they had a bunch of neat side quests that were pretty cool.

Morality is a bit of a weird one because, as has been noted, it can be difficult to get people to agree on which things are naughty and which are nice. In fact, if one was to reject the notion of an absolute moral authority (with the most mainstream examples being some form of supreme deity) I would suggest that one would logically have to reject the concept of absolute morality. There are a number of things that most tend to agree are naughty rather than nice, such as murdering babies, raping people or farting in elevators, but if pressed on why these things must necessarily be wrong, it would be hard to articulate. Most people wouldn't even bother to think about it, but would instead ask incredulously 'What, you want me to explain why killing babies is wrong? What are you some kind of twisted baby killer?' which makes it difficult to have serious conversations on the nuances of subjective morality, sometimes. Often we would probably narrow it down to being the protection of rights for humans, (Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness or whatever) which of course are things that humans decided should be human rights, and not any kind of law of nature at all unless there is an absolute authority who decreed that it was thus. All of which is why I think instead of morality systems, RPGs should stick to reputation systems, so you don't get good karma for murdering evil people and bad karma for robbing them, but instead have nearby people like you more or less depending on how your actions line up with their own personal values.

Maybe Ubisoft are paying attention to some of this Kickstarter stuff and are thinking that nostalgia might net them a decent pay day. I have only played Worlds of Xeen to any extent but I am cautiously excited about what this could be. Not keen on the idea of Obsidian taking it, though, it just doesn't seem a good fit for them.

Your argument seems to be more or less 'this can't happen in our universe so it can't happen in any'. Sucks for the fantasy genre I guess. Most games I've played that have magic still do have laws of science, with the caveat that magic can temporarily break those laws. Magically produced fire still sets things on fire using whatever the chemical properties of fire are. (Again, slept through Chemistry.) If you magically summon an object in midair, gravity still tends to apply after the initial science breaking spell is cast. Magically enhanced missile weapons seem to adhere to some form of Isaac's laws of motion.

Although you do, of course, know exactly what I meant and are aware that there are ways to use a blunt object which don't involve physically touching the object if the object in question is sentient, I will propose you perform an experiment. Push someone larger than yourself in the direction of another large person and see if, despite your reduced size, you are able to hit one with the other.

Oh boy, lists! I like lists. No particular order. Rock Band 3. (Yes I know it doesn't relate to PE but you just said games, and it's rad as heck, I will fight you.) Lemmings 2: The Tribes. (Yeah I liked the first one too but this one I probably sunk more hours into.) X:Com: Terror From the Deep. (I like tech trees. I played this one before I played the first one which is why it is my favourite.) Day of the Tentacle. (This is just here to represent Lucas Adventure Games, also it owns.) Mario Kart. (No explanation offered.) (But it owns.) Planescape: Torment. (Difficult for me to explain; although I couldn't really enjoy it as much on later plays through, so much of that game was highly memorable in that it was very weird but didn't feel like it was being weird just for the sake of it, and exploring new areas was more fun because the expectation grew that a new area would actually be something I hadn't seen before.) Baldur's Gate. (I'm picking the first one because I liked exploring the areas that didn't specifically relate to any of the quests you would be given, but where you would nonetheless see a bunch of unique stuff go down like someone accidentally detonate an ogre. Conversely, I do not like exploring areas in games that feel completely generic and identical to every other dungeon, which is basically how I felt in Morrowind and a large part of the reason why I didn't bother playing any future Elder Scrolls games.) Alpha Protocol. (No game has ever before or sense made me feel more like my choices had an impact on the overall narrative of the game. Although in some ways Deux Ex: Human Revolution makes me feel a little bit that way.) Ultima 7. (Again, exploring.) Wizardry 8. (Exploring, also the sheer amount of choice in character creation and skill progression and different kinds of unique loot you can pick up, and I really enjoyed that there didn't really seem to be a level cap as far as I could tell.) Unlucky not to be included: Mass Effect 3. SSX series. Fallout games in general. (Not 3.) (Probably mostly New Vegas. In particular the add on pack which was like a b grade sci-fi movie - hilarious. ONE TWO THREE FOURBIDDEN!) Twinsen's Adventure. (I really like the aesthetics of the game, and the exploring. Same with Beyond Good and Evil for that matter.)

Not really, no. (The hint as to the reason it is not that strange is in the '2' part of the name of BG2.) Also, I remember hearing it suggested that the most powerful character type one could make was a Kensai-Mage. Kensai's lack of armour was offset by having stoneskin and mage armour permanently cast, and then you just pick exclusively spells that make your character better at chopping people in pieces, or stripping enemy mages of their defenses. Something like that.

Game systems can have any number of explanations, or none at all. Perhaps because one can't see the heart. Perhaps because it is more firmly embedded in the chest than a hand is attached to an arm. Perhaps for some nebulous reason involving the person's body more strongly resisting attacks against more vital organs. Perhaps because 'game balance'. Also I'm really not sure what your second sentence has to do with this particular conversation arc given that the example had rather specific limitations.

Indeed, why ever cast magic missile when power word: kill is more effective? The mysteries of spells and their relative power.

Didn't say anything about swinging. I am not a swinger.

I could be wrong but it seems like you think he made that spell up when in fact I'm pretty sure he ripped it straight from DnD. In answer to all of your 'why not' questions, I believe that many of them are also spells in DnD. So the answer to 'why not' is 'that's not what this particular spell does, but there are others which do something more like what you're suggesting.'

Yeah I dunno none of them seem all that plasmaish. Plasmaesque? Whatevs. Maybe less was known about plasma by the Greeks or whoever it was. Also I basically slept through Chemistry so... yeah.

I always kind of interpreted the traditional 'elements' as being more 'states of matter'. So you have solid (earth), liquid (water), gaseous (air and kind of fire) and love (Milla Jovovich.) Or something along those lines.

When I play as a wizard, if an enemy gets near me, rather than hitting him with my mace, I prefer to hit him with my fighter.

I'm currently doing a 'pacifist' run on Deus Ex: human Revolution. It 'works' because you can still knock people unconscious, because it is a highly stealth based game, and because they are all, well, people. Alpha Protocol has much the same kind of situation: you can walk around knocking people unconscious, because by yourself you can hide around corners and stuff. Encouraging not killing people is good when everything you encounter except bosses is basically a grunt. In fantasy games, it is unlikely that it will be quite as easy to knock zombies unconscious. It is also unlikely that anyone will be particularly bothered about how many rats you have slaughtered.

F'real, it owned and I hope the remake gets made.

I dunno if that's the best term for it; in the Infinity Engine games, there was a screen you could get to somewhere for each character in your party which basically had a list of how much damage they'd done ever, what percentage of the party's total damage, what percentage of the party's total kills, how many kills, favourite weapon, favourite spell (favourite based on regularity of usage) what the most powerful foe they'd vanquished was... I liked it. It was cool. I would like something like this to be implemented in Project Eternity. OK cool that's all I got carry on.

The Paramour achievement in every Mass Effect game. A bunch of different achievements in Alpha Protocol.

I am 'not opposed' to romances being included, but when there's an achievement attached to it that irks me slightly. The main problems I have with romances as presented in ME3 (what the hell, everyone else is using Bioware examples, and that's the only game in recent memory that I've played that had them) was that: a. There were too many individual people who were capable of falling in love with - or wanting to sleep with - Shep, regardless of Shep's behaviour; and b. The romance ended, for all intents and purposes, with Shep sleeping with the other person. It was basically a minigame to have sex. No options to 'take it slow', it was basically 'if you are romantically interested in this character, signify this by initiating coitus.'

Same problem. Bridge blown, cursor freezes, everything stops.

Having one's name on a title screen as being the person who presents the game is not necessarily an indicator of one's current popularity, especially when the game in question is over a decade old and one's only game that could even loosely be called an RPG in the last decade is the Xbox version of A Bard's Tale. I haven't played NV yet (It's on my to do list. Eventually.) but I'm not certain why 'the developers of Alpha Protocol' would be considered a bad thing. That was a thoroughly good game, with absolutely unparalleled levels of cause and effect to decisions made. The only downsides are the bugs, and since (as Mr Fargo kindly pointed out) QA is a publisher side of the fence dealio, that's not really on Obsidian.