Wrath of Dagon

http://kotaku.com/5731751/accused-tucson-s...-aggression-247

Slippery slope arguments can be applied to anything. Doing something is still vastly superior to doing nothing. So the solution is what? Don't check on the children and let the insane run loose? A civilized society has certain responsibilities. The fact that we're not meeting them in one area isn't a justification for anything. I'm not a psychiatrist so I can not give you a general answer. I do know that leaving paranoid schizophrenia untreated is not an option, that has been proven over and over again.

Apparently some countries do have a better handle on this issue: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/loughner-and-...s-mentally-ill/

No, you require them to check in once a month or so, to check on their condition. Those who couldn't or wouldn't comply can be placed in a supervised environment, it doesn't have to be a hospital, just a special residential project. Your response isn't really relevant to what I said, and anyway I already explained institutionalization is not usually necessary if proper treatment and follow up is provided. People who remain dangerous to society should absolutely be institutionalized, this is different from criminal law. This is a tremendously difficult issue for people to deal with, for one thing you can't make someone get treatment if they don't want to. Also the worse symptoms of schizophrenia often appear around age 20 or so, when parents can't do much anymore, either legally or practically.

Depends on the type of mental illness. Definitely people who suffer paranoia are very dangerous, it makes them hostile and obsessed with guns. You're right to an extent that mental hospitals don't do anything since there's no real cure. However, the medications now available are generally quite effective in dealing with symptoms. The problem is no one makes sure that the patient takes them outside of the hospital once he's released, and since medications generally have side effects often the patient will stop taking them and become dangerous again. Also, a lot of people can't cope with their illness, and either have no one to look after them or refuse help. Those wind up living in squalor in the streets, and society just accepts that as normal. Unfortunately they usually don't get locked up until someone is already dead. Also to be criminally non-culpable it's not enough to be mentally ill, it's to be unable to distinguish right from wrong, just as an aside.

They basically rely on the shops to judge the mental state of the buyer who hasn't been declared insane by the state because he hasn't undergone treatment. This is just another example of the government hoping that every state is capable of ruling themselves, but neither the state nor the federal government do anything to prevent events like this from happening. When they do they become a media frenzy game of hot potato to see where the blame lands and the problem continues unsolved. Deja Vu from Columbine, anyone? It's actually worse than that. The store can't judge anything, they check with the FBI computerized list of people not allowed to buy guns. The problem is even if someone is committed by court order to a mental institution, they're not reported to that list because of privacy laws. It takes a separate court order to do the report, but hardly anyone knows about that so it's almost never done. Add to that the liberal/conservative conspiracy not to treat the mentally ill but instead turn them out on the street, liberals because they are protecting their civil rights, conservatives because they don't want to pay for it.

I meant people paying $5000 a month for a game. Obviously they're addicts being exploited by EA.

Soon EA will own your soul: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/09/riccitie...ertakes-retail/ pathetic

IS7? Is this a fantasy game?

The real reason these things happen is because we let lunatics run around free in this country. You basically can not make someone get treatment if they don't want to. In addition, because of privacy laws, the mental institutions can't even inform the FBI to keep guns from the insane. Congress had hearings on this after the Virginia Tech massacre, but apparently being Congress they didn't actually fix anything.

26 quid is perfectly reasonable for (by my reckoning) 180 hours of gameplay. I was talking about the DLC, I already finished the main game.

Good, I'll get it when it's all available, and for a reasonable price.

The simple solution to all this is not to buy the game. No bloodsucking EA rip offs, no horrible cloying Bioware dialogue, no tedious and generic game design. Plus you save $50-$60 and a ton of time that can be better spent elsewhere.

I think what you're talking about are the 3 long text adventures they've added, which is what the RPG watch article linked above is talking about. The normal quests would involve much shorter text adventure parts and more "actiony" parts, though that depends on whether you're going for the combat or non-combat solutions. Edit: Here are some more screens which hopefully clarify how quests work http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index...opic,901.0.html

The dialogues would be a part of the text adventures though. Yes, there is exploration, like the city in the demo, but my understanding is that the quests would be mostly like in the video. There probably would be some walking around sections though which the video didn't show. If you look at dialogue in the demo, you basically get the same screen as the text adventure screen. Edit: It's like it shows in my first link, you walk up to the tower in normal 3-D, then you get the 3 text adventure screens shown, then you might get some more text screens or combat or have to walk somewhere else, that would be a typical quest.

This is what I was able to find quickly: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=163.30 I'll see if I can find something more recent. Edit: Here's a long text adventure, that's probably a lot more text than a typical quest though : http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?artic...;ref=0&id=2 Edit2: I finally just watched the video, and it seems to be showing the typical quest set up. You get several screens of text adventure, then depending on the outcome of that you may go into 3-D combat followed by some more text screens.

There will be seven distinct paths through the game, and countless permutations along those paths. There are seven factions you can join, each of which has its own story through the game, and on top of that you can double cross and triple cross those factions. Additionally, your playthrough as a lore master will be completely different than if you chose to play as a fighter. And of course the quests have multiple solutions, it's all designed for maximum reactivity and player choice. One example given was if you join the assassins, there's a quest where you assassinate someone (or you can assassinate your partner instead). If you join the merchant guild, you set up the victim to be assassinated. The reason they can implement all that is that quests rely heavily on text adventure with screens inteface, as Starwars mentioned, while exploration and combat are in 3-D. Right now they only announced sales through their website, which they will ship anywhere in the world assuming you want the boxed copy.

In AOD's case, proper RPG gameplay means gameplay being fundamentally different depending on your skill set, choices and consequences, multiple highly distinct paths through the game, non-combat gameplay fully supported, and combat almost completely dependent on character's skills/attributes and player's tactical acuity.

Is that what I said? If 3 games have proper gameplay, that means they're identical?

But they made BG2 already. OK, so play it for the 1000th time, no need for new games. Btw, AOD is going to be nothing like BG2, or even Fallout for that matter.

It's not trying to break new ground, it's trying to deliver proper RPG gameplay.

Why play chess when you can play Halo?

A really interesting After Action Report for Battle for Normandy. Not only shows what the game will be like, but also gives an introduction to proper tactics to use: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=94495 http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=94496

Actually that's every Obsidian game.

Of course it did, it would sell tons more on PC if it wasn't for piracy.