Tale

We're using different meanings. I don't disagree with you. The reason I said "technically" is because you cannot replace romance options with not-romance options and somehow maintain the quantity of distinct option types, is all. Imagine you have 7 different foods on a table. If you take one of the unique dishes away (say... I dunno, salad), and you replace it with a second plate of another dish (Mac and cheese, for example's sake), then you've still got the same amount of food, but you could still say the table has "less" food than it did have, since it had 7 foods, and now it has only 6 foods. I wasn't trying to argue with you. I was just pointing out a technicality of the meaning of "less interactivity," because I'm a defective android. 8P This analogy doesn't work for me. Why do you have 7 different food types and are taking things away instead of an empty table on which to add things? A video game is not the metaphorical sculpture, on which you take away all the parts that aren't the game. It's closer to a house. If the architect designs the house to not have a study, it doesn't mean he took the study away. The house is still going to be the same size at the end of it all, but maybe it has a rumpus room. Maybe it has a dining room separate from the kitchen. Maybe it has a child's bedroom or a walk-in closet. And maybe he's just expanding the living area. It was never going to have all of these things. It never had the potential for all of them together. The architect didn't feel a study was appropriate, and now he has room in the plans for something else. It's not technically a smaller house for the omission of a study, either.

It was never a battle. I hope we can trust that Obsidian made this decision for the reasons they stated, which were entirely internal, not because the fanbase bickered at one another. The arguing was largely pointless. Points made may have had merit, but the tone of discourse didn't really seem to be contributing one way or the other.

I'm the guy who has to sweep up afterwards. But yay. Part of me was thinking they actually finished already and were waiting for a marketing window. But if they just went gold, I'm going to be skeptical of my own conspiracy.

The sizeable romance budget they started with went straight into hookers and blow. Sorry, guys! Research is an important first step.

Fair statement Junta, but I also fear for the overall quality of writing if Sawyer thinks not one writer on their staff is capable of writing a decent romance. Which is basically what he just said in blunt terms. That seems like quite a jump. Many games have poor romance writing and otherwise fantastic writing. Why would you think that this, of all times, is the instance where those skills are going to be intrinsically connecte?

I wonder if I can hate-mance one of the companions.

In fact, Obsidian has never done a good romance. Ever. Look at NWN2, and Mask of the Betrayer. Brilliantly written Characters in Both, but the Romances were god-awful. Cringeworthy. total black marks on both titles. I have to disagree. Safiya is one of the better romances in western RPGs. Because it's part of her character. It's part of her arc. Maybe Viconia is better, simply because I love the juxtaposition and contradiction she provides in how she reacts all over the place. But let's go over some other popular ones. Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins. The difference between a romance and not-romance is perhaps 3 lines of dialogue. All the interesting things in her character are completely aside from that romance, like her duality of harsh reality versus the childlike nature that still values baubles when she knows she shouldn't. The highlight of Tali in Mass Effect 2 was the interaction with Legion and learning about her people. They tried to make her something of a creepy Shepard fangirl and I think it made the character look worse. The other Mass Effect favorite was Liara and I don't think that the romance did anything of note in ME1, gave a single extra scene in ME2, and the big contribution she makes in ME3 fit well on the friendship path. By comparison, I think Safiya's was much better. Her romance with the player is sort of a reflection of what she is, the Founder's love for Akachi. She's not as memorable a character overall, but her romance contributed more to her.

I'm actually a little surprised. Not disappointed, but surprised. I'm glad they're not including them just to tick off the check box. I like to imagine they wrote out their character's arcs and simply didn't feel that romance was an appropriate part of what they wanted to say with those characters.

I'm watching Farscape. I'm surprised by all the episodes I skip in watching it nowadays. I love the show, but half of the filler episodes are crap. I, ET and Home on the Remains I think I'm watched once since I started getting DVD/Blu-Ray versions. I think it's primarily an issue of the first two seasons before they get the tone down.

I'm giving those Angry Orchard hard ciders a shot. Definitely better than drinking beer. The Traditional Dry is a what the name implies. I can't detect the ginger in their ginger one. The Crisp Apple I can see myself drinking regularly.

I don't think I've seen Hell Kitty in a while either.

If I told you that you had to read a book in under two hours, or if I break you from drama in a book to make you view explosions and car cashes, it wouldn't show the flaw of movies as a storytelling medium. It would simply illustrate my failure to understand their differences. There's a sentiment I see recur commonly that I also see your post imply that bothers me. That movies are a "pure" storytelling medium. They all have their differences. Different strengths, different weaknesses, that change or compromise what you tell in a story and how you tell it.

Bravely Default. Opinion stands that I'm hooked. It hasn't really changed in either direction of being more or less interesting than previously.

Bravely Default. Only about 4 hours in, but I'm hooked for now.

I'm at Dracula's Castle in Order of Ecclesia. I'm liking the game well enough. Bravely Default should arrive today, so I may not get back to completing it.

I don't even know how to decide what qualifies as a "favorite" anymore. My tastes are always changing. I've got these 90s era Playstation RPGs that I absolutely loved to death in their day, that I would play over and over again, but I won't be able to go an hour playing it today. I've got a bunch of Nintendo DS games that focus more on story with some puzzles and end on such fantastic high emotional notes that they nearly ruin me for gaming for some days after. And then I've got games like Dark Souls or Team Fortress that I can just blow hours days or weeks with without batting an eye. I have tens of games that I absolutely adore for such disparate reasons that I can't compare them to another in any context.

Sorting through third party websites and save editors don't really seem to contest the idea that dealing with all of this is a burden. Though I'd agree it helps lighten the load.

They really don't. So one time I grabbed a Mass Effect 1 save from MassEffectsaves.com. It had all the the major choices I wanted, true. He even had not picked a romance, which was a rare thing indeed. But his name was Vulcan, he was a soldier, and he was a survivor, when I really wanted Spacer. And that's as close as it got. But it's lucky that I played on PC. Because console gamers don't even get that opportunity.

I think the Atari troubles really interfered with it. Atari wasn't in a position to do a yearly release of anything.

I actually hate imports. The idea that I need to keep my saves is burdensome to me. I hate that to see content in Mass effect 2 or Dragon Age 2, I need to do replays of the original games in ways I'm not really interested in. I'd much rather games be self-contained and vague about references to past events. Choices should pay off in the games they were made in.

There's going to be a season 6, called Lost Missions or something. It's a smaller season. The only confirmed airdates so far are for Germany. I don't think anyone's worried about confusion with Episode VII. They cancelled The Clone Wars while in development of season 6 because Disney wanted a Star Wars cartoon on Disney XD, but didn't want to deal with a channel change. So they're creating a new cartoon series for it, Star Wars: Rebels. And somehow, the team was able to swing it so that they got to finish some of the in-development stories for Season 6 following the cancellation.

I'm amazed to hear that they do. https://www.google.com/search?q=skyrim+best+writing+award&oq=skyrim+best+writing+award&aqs=chrome..69i57.4325j0j8&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 Google's not coming up with anything of the sort for Skyrim.

So I just finished Clone Wars. They got a lot better in that final season. It left me feeling that I wanted to know what happened next. It's also a far better Star Wars prequel than the actual prequels were. A far better emotional ride and far better story.

Considering the Reaper child shows up in ME3 even if you destroy the base, I'm going to have to disagree. They salvaged it anyway and then refused to follow the plot. There's more than the Collector base that could have been followed. EDI as a Reaper AI. The team that was assembled. The latter of those two being something everyone expected them to follow up with. But then they didn't.

I couldn't get halfway through Amalur. I tried hard to like it, really enjoyed the demo, really enjoyed he start of it... then realized I was what looked to only be a quarter of the way through the game and I had nothing to look forward to. No interesting plot hooks, no intrigue, nothing on my skills tab that looked like it would alter the gameplay in any significant way. And I gave it up.