Starwars

Monty Python - Bruces' Philosophers Song Love the lyrics to this one. EDIT: Now in video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTtS8WXEXVs

Monty Python - Eric the Half-a-Bee

Started playing Hugies NWN2 mod called Moonshadows. Since it's really combat-heavy and light on roleplaying it's not my cup of tea, but I must say that I'm quite enjoying it. For the most part, he hits the spot with the writing, and the whole module just has a nice "D&D adventure feel" about it. It also gave me an excuse to finally play a more fighting-oriented build for once, not something I do often. I'm enjoying it, good fun. Also playing Call of Duty 4 for the PC. Initially extremely impressive game, though I think once you get used to the adrenalinefilled combat and get over the great graphics (and it runs great to, very nice) the game loses its charm a bit. The best bits were when the game outright shocked you with bulletfire going off everywhere and explosions and whatnot. Still, it's well done no doubt. Enjoying it despite it not being a genre I'm very fond of normally.

Xard, I'm not sure what it takes to be frank, but I have never failed those checks with any of the two builds I've tried it with so far. Both have had either capped, or near capped Bluff which you also seem to have. But for one build I had Shadow thief of Amn levels which give bonuses to the social skills I think, and on my last playthrough I played a Warlock with Beguiling Influence. I also had that Finch's "something something" hat (not the Fine Chapeu, the better version) which you can buy at the Veil theatre. And yes, it's a good way to gain influence with Kaelyn and One-of-Many.

Mask of the Betrayer soundtrack - The Thaymount

Posted this on the Codex as well. I just finished an evil playthrough, and got the 'ultimate evil' ending for the first time. I must say that it was extremely satisfying and empowering. I had not envisioned my character as a "do evil whenever she can" type. But it was satisfying to get the choice that she's been through so much crap, and *now*, in the end, she has tired of it and is taking this awesome power. A really nice "fall" (if one can call it that) to evil. Mediocre as the NWN2 OC is, I still find a playthrough of NWN2 + MotB to be rather nice. I really felt like I bonded with my character. I also love that I could essentially lie to Kaelyn all the way through, and then betray her by defending the City of Judgement. Muahahaha. The City itself feels empty (like it's been pointed out), but I really like the fact that you can choose sides here. And Kelemvor was *still* angry with me, since I had Devoured Myrkul before. And of course he became furious when I decided to take the power for myself instead of simply ending the curse. Safiya also attacked me at the very end, leaving only my character and One-of-Many. There seems to be rather a lot of threads that lead up to the end and how it plays out exactly. I must say that I'm really impressed by this game, I really find it great.

Thanks, doesn't sound all that bad. Perhaps spelling has been checked (I only remember reading it about near the time when the first part was released) since way back then. Will probably try it out once I've finished MotB again.

I might give this a go now that the entire thing has been released. Though I remember reading some comments on the Vault long ago that there's quite a lot of spelling errors in the mod. That can really kill a module for me. Any comments on that jaguars4ever?

A bit early, but wanted to wish Obsidian a Merry Christmas! And thanks for creating what in my mind is the best RPG since the Planescape: Torment days in Mask of the Betrayer, as well as giving continued support to Neverwinter Nights 2 in general. Have a good one!

Tommy Emmanuel - Guitar Boogie

I noticed a weird bug or something after installing the 1.11 patch, which I saw other people report on the Bioware forums as well. Sometimes areas will run at a much lower FPS than usual, but bringing up the character screen © fixes it for some reason. When 1.10 came out, I could increase shadows to the medium setting, but the full setting (with environmental shadows) still killed my system.

Well, let's see. Some of these are more myself not being very compatible with action-RPGs, so keep that in mind. -The combat system is not my cup of tea, though admittedly it's one of the best systems I've seen for action-RPGs. I'm just not a big fan of action-RPGs in general. -There is a large presence of "go there and kill that" and "collect 10 blablas" type of quests. It makes sense since Witchers are monsterhunters, but it's still a design idea that I've really grown to hate in cRPGs over the years. Even though it's "justified" in the Witcher, I find it equally annoying here. -The translation might be one of my biggest beefs, I found it to be very bad. Sometimes it's almost disastrous, especially in certain cutscenes where the camera shifts between characters in a rapid fashion. It's quite hard to follow at times, and sometimes it's laugh-inducing (there is one such example once you've left the Prologue and get the opening cutscene for the next area and a monster attacks). It's equally disjointed in regular conversations sometimes. -The loading times have been mentioned, but it gets worse when coupled with how certain quests are designed. Not spoiling anything, but in Chapter 2 there is a large quest where you have to speak to a wide array of characters. Now, this quest is actually quite good in what it tries to do (but again, I think it's partly ruined by bad translation), but I think it was absolutely ruined in how much running back and forth there was. And couple this with the loading times, and well... I got rather tired of it. Then, there is the fact that there is a day/night cycle, which is of course nice. But when you have to wait for day/night constantly (or pretty often) and you have to go the inn to meditate, and there are once again loading times... gaaah. -Lack of skills to influence the dialogues with. A small complaint perhaps, but rather important for me personally. Though it should be mentioned that there are definetely choices & consequences in the game, and some of them are pretty great. However, I wish it was a bit more subtle at times. Definetely give the game a chance though. Like I said, I simply don't think it's a game for me for the most part. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a *lot* of work and love has gone into it, and I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

The Witcher didn't really grab me. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's just not my type of game though. It's excellently made, but it's one of those games that have millions of little things that annoy me a lot, and eventually they break the game apart. Gotta hand it to the developers how they translated the setting and visuals to a game though. Art direction is spot on, and the game is just amazingly atmospheric. I was very impressed with this side of the game. I thought the voiceactors also did a great job, but unfortunately I think the direction is a bit off. And unfortunately I found the translation is terrible. Hopefully it's a successful game financially though. Even though it didn't hit the spot for me, it's quite an amazing effort and it really feels like a unique game. I might give it another go whenever the next patch is released though, supposedly it will reduce loading times. I'm usually rather patient, but I can quite honestly say that the Witcher is the first game where loading times have annoyed me to the point where it really hurt the game for me.

I always considered the NWN2 OC quite mediocre, but in some ways I think MotB (which I definetely prefer) has made it better in the sense that it's sort of satisfying to take a character all the way through the OC and then through MotB. Hoping like hell that Atari will get Mysteries of Westgate out the door next week though.

Great, thanks Ashercon. It's morning here where I live, and I think I'll just spend some time wrapped up in a blanket, drinking some coffee and listening to the Podcast.

JJ Cale & Eric Clapton - Missing Person This collaborative album is really good.

Nile - Ruins

Finished Harp & Crysanthemum. Definetely the best mod for NWN2 so far, and perhaps the first which I don't think has any big flaws to it. That doesn't mean it's perfect obviously, but very good. The area design is jawdropping and the writing is great. Highly recommended. Not sure on what I'll play now. I'm hoping that Mysteries of Westgate will be released one of these days. I may give Mask of the Betrayer another playthrough (gonna try and get the ultimate evil ending this time) once the new patch gets released.

Playing Maerduins new NWN2 mod called Harp & Crysanthemum. Very good so far, and will probably end up being my favourite NWN2 mod so far by a decent margin. The area design is absolutely jawdropping, and has actually made me think rather differently of the NWN2 toolset. Writing is top-notch as well.

Montys new schedule: Morning to Evening - Work on Alien RPG Evening to Midnight - Work on Purgatorio Midnight to Morning - Work on the Black Hound And there was much rejoicing!

Well, Rob McGinnis reports in his NWN2 Blog that Monty has been assimila..., sorry, hired at Obsidian. If you don't know about Monty, shame on you! He's the guy who started up the Planescape trilogy. Here's his message from Robs blog: Congrats to Monty, kick ass and chew bubblegum!

Can't speak on how Tortured Hearts develops once the game gets going, but it never managed to pull me in for some reason. The writing seemed so... strange. Even in the second chapter (where I think the author got help from a novelist) there is just something that rubs me wrong about the dialogue. I really can't pinpoint it either. I've seen other people say pretty much the same. It does seem to be quite a monumental effort in terms of how big and non-linear it is however. It seems to be very well done, but I was put off by the writing.

Still playing Culpa Innata, though I haven't had the time to really dig into it (hopefully I'll spend some more time with it this weekend). Still disappointed, though the game is getting better and better as the plot is unravelled. I'm usually a fan of slow unfolding plots, but I think this game goes on for to long before it really captured me. Despite the fact that it's supposedly very non-linear for an adventure game (in terms of approaching dialogues etc), I doubt I'll replay it anytime soon as it's just to slow-moving and kinda boring until quite far into the game. This games ideas is something that I really like, but the execution so far is a bit average.

Yeah, that version is a really nice arrangment for live playing. I have to say that I prefer the original a bit more though, it's a bit more subtle. Great song overall. Eric Clapton - Love don't love nobody

Eric Clapton - River of Tears This might be the saddest song I've ever heard. Been listening to lots of Clapton lately.