Wrath of Dagon

Then what precisely are you waffling on about? My point was that torture often works, since I didn't claim that that was what won Chechnya the rest of the discussion was irrelevant, except that I had to correct the distortion of historical fact.

ME2 has multiple ways to complete quests?

Once more we got Bio's crappy "visit 4 places to find 4 doohickeys" all purpose autopilot plot. They could've made the whole thing a lot more interesting by explaining Loghain's motivation early on. Then a civil war would break out and you could choose which side you wanted to join. Lots of opportunities for political intrigue, spying, betrayal and so on. Also Loghaine being the patriot that he is, could've moved (after Cailan was dead) to save what was left of the Ferelden army, catching the Darkspawn army off-guard and destroying it. That would explain why that huge Darkspawn army didn't just roll over Ferelden in a few days while you were prancing around gathering allies.

They said their team will be small, implying Obsidian's team will be the larger one, thus Obsidian would do most of the work. That of course doesn't mean Obsidian will have creative control, but they're hardly a "consultant".

This certainly accords with what I've heard. Rather than your cheerful but strange notion that the KGB succeeded in Chechneya. I suppose they also succeeded in Afghanistan using the same methods? Then you heard wrong, the second war was every bit as brutal as the first one, except now they actually had a leader who was competent in addition to being ruthless. Afghanistan is much bigger and more foreign to Russians than Chechnya, and still Afghans couldn't win until US went in full bore to help them. Anyway, I'm not arguing for the efficacy of brutality in winning wars, but let's not distort historical fact to make dubious points.

There's no except there, as I'm stating a fact.

That would be I, except I didn't say ME was the worst thing in the world, just the worst Bio game I played by far. I didn't say what Alistair does doesn't make sense, I said unless you use a line which doesn't make sense Alistair acts like a boneheaded jerk.

We have no real clue how many resource they are devoting to it. So the point I'm making is this could have a minimal impact on the games they are developing in studio. Again, it sounds like a consulting job, which can mean a lot of different things but probably is not a full development team. Red Eagle was pretty clear they're only supervising, while most of the development team will be supplied by Obsidian, doesn't sound like consulting to me.

Ignore the troll. Wrex is more like Ordo than Zaeed is. Wrex and Ordo are both mercs from a race of warriors that are slowly dying out because of a destructive war, who are now trying to reunite the Mandalorian Krogan clans. Yeah, except Ordo doesn't keep whining like Wrex. He lost and he accepts it.

You can say that after the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest? Your choice there affects your party big time. How about your choices in/after Landsmeet? Life or death, quite literally, for several of the NPC's. Your choices affect the ending in ways you cannot even imagine at the time you are making them. The Dalish quest had three potential outcomes, and the results of each could not have been more different nor affect the game more. I'm really confused that you would say this about this particular game, since it is the first game I've played where choices have such far-reaching, potentially catastrophic and unpredictable results. The Dalish quest affected the game? How? What I said is choices don't affect how the quest plays out, you still do a long grind and a decision at the end. And they're not great because you can always do the right thing without cost if you want to, nothing new here. As far as being unpredictable, that's why I said they're not very satisfying, for example you have to say something that doesn't make any sense at the end of Alistair sister quest, or else Alistair will act like a boneheaded jerk at the end of the game.

That depends on whether we're including Russia or not. Putin definitely counts. Please don't misquote me without pointing that out, or I'll report you. And Berlusconi is far from being a fascist, you don't even know what a fascist is.

No, your history is faulty, they won through brutal repression, not that I would ever advocate we do the same.

DAO has some choices, but they don't really affect how the quests play out. No matter what, most of the quest is just a grind, and then you make a choice at the end, the new Bio paradigm. Plus there's nothing particularly great about the choices you make, they didn't really feel very satisfying, it's pretty much be a goody two shoes or a jerk once again.

Some of us just play slow.

Same with any intelligence, doesn't mean you don't collect intelligence. US has been successful using coercive interrogations, what you would term torture. Also I remember some Russians were kidnapped in Lebanon. The KGB sent the kidnapper's balls to his family. No Russians were kidnapped again.

Berlusconi is the only man left in Europe.

Bull

I thought the writing itself was pretty good quality, but the overall design was terrible and stale. Not sure it was just the writers responsible for the design, or it was a horse designed by a committee.

There are tons of unnecessary voice acting, long, boring conversations with every Tom, ****, and Harry, party members whining about their childhoods, party banter, etc. Take a few of the most interesting entries from the Codex, some of the boring voice acting, part of the unending dungeons and combat, and make a few really interesting quests about the setting, instead of just having to read about it.

As much as I rate your college level experience of torture, I have to say you have no idea what you are talking about. I mentioned the torture thing to a friend of mine who worked with the ANC in South Africa and he said that yes, people break under torture, but breaking and providing useful timely information are completely different things. Did you even read the link? Interrogation is a process, not a magic bullet. You check and cross check everything, just as with any other source of info. Intelligence work is by nature unreliable, witness all the CIA blunders. Doesn't mean it's never useful.

I think it was slowed down some, but not completely put on hold. For instance, the writers were always there it seems. But yeah, what the hell were they doing for six years (actually there's almost infinite amount of rumours and party banter you can prompt, so that must be where all the efforts went).

No, a good RPG will mix it up with non-combat gameplay and some variety. DAO only gets worse btw.

There is no worse written story than Star Wars, yet both KOTOR's were great.

At least it's not being made by EA Hopefully it'll be a fairly off-beat game instead of a generic cash-in.

Of course torture works, if it didn't no one would use it. http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2...-moral-torture/