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Oblarg

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Everything posted by Oblarg

  1. Oblarg

    Music

    The only musical "Exodus" that I know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39dW-QJByo Far beyond the myriads of crypts and pyramids Beyond the harpy-vultures guarding their tombs Arcana awaits...
  2. I got the "Alright, I'll do that" option and a few others at the same time asking more questions. I went with those, and the "Alright, I'll do that" never popped up again. Eventually it just hit a point where the conversation exited and then talking to Atton would just elicit a single line of dialogue from him and that was it.
  3. Hate to be a spoilsport, but I just ran into a bug - if you select certain dialogue choices with Atton on the Ebon Hawk after escaping Peragus, the "so what was your lightsaber like" exchange will not occur.
  4. This is how I saw it, too, rather than having him become the "new" Batman.
  5. And this really is simply an inaccuracy in your worldview. This is no different than an organization refusing to admit black members, just as gay marriage is really no different than a state refusing to allow interracial marriage. The sooner people see this, the sooner we can move forward as a society.
  6. You misunderstand me. Were I to design a high school curriculum, there would be a mandated course in basic statistics, followed by a mandated course on common cognitive biases. I do not think I have ever heard of a public school system that actually does this. Mine certainly didn't, and it was regarded as one of the best in the country. Having teachers well-versed in the subject and rigorously teaching the subject are not the same thing.
  7. The idea that "critical thinking can't be taught" is false - the single most important step towards a more accurate appraisal of the world around you is the ability to recognize the biases inherent to human psychology. This can very clearly be taught, and the general lack of such education is one of public schooling's greatest failures.
  8. If anything, the stance on homosexuality they published is even more shameful than the education "oversight." What a pack of bigots.
  9. Yeah, would be an interesting setup for further material in the universe, for sure. A lot better than "all synthetic life has been destroyed and the relays are gone." Of course, I doubt they'd have ever done any ending involving the loss of Earth, what with all the "take back Earth!" marketing noise and whatnot. It's ironic - BioWare really like to talk about how they're mature enough as writers to not write a happy, "the enemy is defeated and everything is fine" resolution to the story with Shepard riding off into the sunset, yet they still bend over backwards and defy plausibility to keep Earth at least somewhat intact at the end of the game, as if they think that losing Earth would be too much of a downer ending for their target audience.
  10. Hadn't even thought of that, but yeah, that too. I mean, the whole series kept harping on how humanity is judged by the sacrifices they're willing to make for the galactic good - what bigger sacrifice is there than blowing up your home system to save everyone else?
  11. It still would have been vastly superior to leave the Reapers shrouded in mystery. Whether you accept it the logic of the Starchild or not, his very existence takes the Reapers down a few pegs on the "impressive villain" scale. Sacrificing our solar system to stop them would have been a much more fitting ending for the scope of the conflict, I think.
  12. I was personally hoping that the Crucible would be something capable of causing a dark-energy-based star explosion (like what was happening on Haestrom), on a rapid timescale. Thus, the end could involve winning the war by sacrificing Earth and all its inhabitants by essentially blowing up our Sun (and most of the Reapers, with it). Now *that* is a bittersweet ending. No need to elaborate on the Reapers' motivations or history. Leaving them nebulous makes them a far more convincing antagonist than bringing them down to "the tools of some ancient AI whose logic falls apart under any sort of scrutiny."
  13. Oblarg

    Music

    Eugh, every time I try listening to post-Gutter Ballet Savatage I wonder what happened to the band. If you're going to do keyboard-based hard rock-ish trad/power metal, at least do it right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFV2aEHyR4
  14. I have a life. I haven't played WoW (minus that ten-day trial) since WotLK, nor did I spend a particularly large amount of time/effort on it when I did. However, I did bother to learn how to play my class properly, and had fun with what challenging content there was (rather than the dull daily quest grind that seems to keep the majority of the player-base placated these days).
  15. Nice response. Never occurred to you that "fun" and "challenging" need not be mutually exclusive? If it's too much to ask of your player base to choose effective talent builds and proper gear in order to effectively complete content, then your game likely isn't worth playing. WoW has crossed this threshold. This idea in MMO design that people should have to make no effort to learn how to play the game before being thrown at actual content serves only to reduce the enjoyment of that content for the people who bother to not suck. WoW is at the point where it's simply no longer fun to play due to this. It was always a casual-friendly, relatively easy game. Now it's utterly trivial and dull (and, despite this, the majority of players are still ****ing horrible).
  16. No, I'm pretty it was entirely due to 90% of the player base not knowing how the **** to play their class, and Blizzard making every effort to force you to group with people you don't know such that you can't avoid said players. There were plenty of melee classes in the groups. Hardly any of them were at all competent. If, perchance, you found a group of people who didn't utterly suck you could literally run through instances without a tank, they were that laughably easy - and, of course, the cross-server LFG system does a great job of making sure you can't remember who those people are to do that regularly. If you think it takes "math kings at various sites" to figure out a viable DPS spec (or the caps of various, obviously-capped stats), you shouldn't be playing an MMO.
  17. The combination of the LFG system and all the new mechanics which attempt to spoonfeed people the proper ability rotations for their class are clearly geared towards turning the game into "press LFG button -> run instance -> get loot -> repeat," with as little emphasis on player skill as they can possibly manage. The "streamlining" of gear types and talent builds all plays into this. The raiding did not need to be "more open to people." There were too many incompetent players vying for raid spots already.T To give you an idea of the calibre of your modern WoW player, Blizzard offered me a 10 day Cata trial a while back, which I took (though in retrospect it was a massive waste of time). I started a Paladin, specced DPS, and ran instances nonstop until I was level 65 or so. It took only a few days, the dungeons themselves seldom took over half an hour, and despite all this I was managing top damage (usually by a factor of two) with gear that was 10 or more levels out of date. The game is trivial and boring.
  18. Oh, it was always noob-friendly. I don't deny that. Not always to the extent of Cata, though, which is essentially a distilled gel of boring, trivial **** that they spoonfeed to you through various hand-holding mechanics.
  19. Hahahahaha, what? Everyone I know who is jumping ship from WoW (myself included, a fair while ago) is doing so because it's becoming too dumbed-down and new-player oriented.
  20. It's supposed to destroy all forms of Reaper technology which is why everything synthetic gets wiped. Of course, Shepard being Reaper tech. too and it being the only ending he could survive is kinda odd. Not everything synthetic is reaper tech. The geth, for example, have no Reaper hardware at all - they were created before the Reapers were discovered. It makes no sense to force Shepard to condone what amounts to genocide in order to get rid of the Reapers.
  21. I still don't get it. Why the **** does destroying the reapers also destroy every other form of synthetic life in the galaxy? What sense does that make? Why would you make the only sensible choice given to the player have such a completely unnecessary and very unappealing effect? A proper "bittersweet ending" does not involve simply tacking on a down-side to a sensible ending. Besides, when Hacket talks about "those who will not see [our future]," it's rather funny that the game shows only the two synthetics who worked with Shepard and not the entire ****ing race of geth who were senselessly slaughtered because the writers are ****ty.
  22. Can anyone explain to me why the only sensible option involving the Reapers (destroy) also results in the death of all synthetic life in the galaxy? I've yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for that one. Did BioWare just feel that they needed to make all the choices suck equally?
  23. She's quite clearly neither Jedi nor Sith - she has been both, been cast out by both, and found for herself a new purpose in the galaxy. Her manipulations of the Exile ultimately work to dismantle what remains of both and thus create a path for the future which might be free of the ignorance she sees in such extremes. She is not, however, above temporarily taking up the mantle of one or the other when it suits her ultimate purpose - that is essential to her character.
  24. My god, that interview is pathetic. "Left a lot to the player's imagination?" These guys honestly don't see why the ending in its original state was utterly unsatisfactory.
  25. So, I've been playing the game through on Insanity, and it's by far the easiest of the three. Playing a vangaurd with minimal weapon load (Disciple shotgun and Vindicator assault rifle), my powers cool down so fast that I can essentially afford to charge nonstop until the battle ends. The only enemies that give me trouble are phantoms - even the fight against two banshees in the Ardat Yakshi monastery was easily handled with charge -> roll away -> empty shotgun clip -> reload -> repeat.
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