Nepenthe

EU?

Preordered. And I hate myself for it.

This isn't probably news to anyone else, but over the past few weeks I've noticed that any news comments on Eurogamer I agree with get a ton of downvotes.

I don't understand that. I used my thieves all of the time; For setting traps, finding traps, scouting, and pick pocketing.. Often times for dialog as they usually had better charisma too. (*And how could one get through Durlag's Tower without them?) Even in my earliest play through(s), I would [for example] split Imoen up from the party and investigate the "Friendly Arms Inn" upstairs rooms [solo], while the rest were downstairs at the table with Khalid and Jahiera; Its no good pilfering with an armored Paladin in tow, and one who would sooner turn them in than defend them from a victim. Is it the view that they were not very useful so long as one's party barged into every house as a mob and did as they pleased? Who plays an RPG like that? (Why would they want to?) **I found Backstabbing to be very useful. Well, in BG1 rogues could do the archery bit quite well, and archery was quite lethal in the game. In BG2, you could get 99 % of what you needed from a thief from either Nalia or Imoen. Not sure it was so much a limitation of Bioware as a result of how the 2nd edition rules broke in the higher levels.

Requiescat in pace. (Always loved mainstream PC users attitudes towards Apple. I've had apple gear since 1989, and I've seen the attitudes go from "what's that?" "lol, it crashes all the time, buy a real computer" to the now prevalent "but the cuuulture!" )

You getting enough exercise? Your energy levels sound appalling. I've been keeping mine topped with sugar and caffeine. Expect to hit the wall so hard I'll be picking my teeth up when I cut it.

You mean that the both guys who hate the west are fighting each other? I know its wrong of me, but somehow this doesn't feel like completely bad news. I'm no expert on Somalia, but quite a lot of Somalis like the West. After all, bongzillions keep coming here. Free food beats no food. Then ship money home to fund the struggle. Maybe. I still doubt it, tho. Inside joke, our security police recently busted a pair of somalis who were recruiting/financing al-shabaab.

You mean that the both guys who hate the west are fighting each other? I know its wrong of me, but somehow this doesn't feel like completely bad news. I'm no expert on Somalia, but quite a lot of Somalis like the West. After all, bongzillions keep coming here. Free food beats no food. Then ship money home to fund the struggle.

Never found the BG1 exploration to be particularly rewarding, mostly due to the steep power curve of the 2e AD&D rules that meant a level here of there could make a fight a walk in the park from being virtually unbeatable. And the areas liked to mix up encounter levels. Can't really disagree on the latter two points, though I think that the visual design on ME2 and portions of ME1 is superb.

Meh, never mind. In fact, I agree with the gawker statement most.

Ok, smartypants, let's insert an "again" there, and qualify it with the statement that this has been the situation for the past ~11 years, ie. after anything less rough came out. Which is a great source of sadness to me, since I remember how awesome it used to be. (****tard). Re: DA2 being better than BG1, it's slicker and has less random death. On the - side, less tactical than bg1 at higher levels on normal difficulties (at least) and doesn't have Kevin Michael Richardson or Jim Cummings in a major role.

It is and it is not true for both games and films. There are less games with permanence than movies, indeed a game has a half life of a few years before it goes through all the retailing and finally becomes irrelevant. Still I say that there are a few exceptions to the rule, games that get re-released in new formats. As for movies; I still love Blade Runner (tears in the rain moment is one of my top 10 scenes) I can still watch Aliens and appreciate the cinematography and the effects. These are films very dependent on special effects. Some games seem to get it, that the characters, plot, storytelling they're all supplemental to the gameplay. Tetris has been a very strong game, and Shadow of the Colossus managed to become memorable without anyone knowing the main's character name. All those comparison between the two mediums (film and games) are fair but there is something that has to be taken into account when it comes to games: they're an active medium. The argument of the "immersiveness" of games has been discussed plenty, and while games are immersive that is not guarantee of an emotional impact. Consider that the games regarded as having the most emotional moments are some of the most linear; with a few exceptions. So whilst in a film you can manipulate the plot to achieve the desired feeling, in games you manipulate the plot to fit the gameplay. Wanna do a shooter? alien invasion! and that's the depths of emotion you're gonna get. I think one of the big things with Films vs Games is that 20 year old games are just flat out Hard to play for some people because the graphics look like garbage. I mean, in film you're always going to have an actor on the screen so it's pretty rough for somebody to look like they've been turned into a mish mash of polygons. But compare how goldeneye holds up to, say, Dr. No and see which one the kid will actually stick with. I dunno, whip out some cgi-fest from 15 years ago and it's gonna look pretty damn terrible.

This is something I can agree with, but I'd put the NWN series between BG2 and DA2. I leave it off the list, partially because I keep forgetting it, partially because I could never get it to run properly on the rig I had back in the day. Didn't like the uncontrollable NPCs, either, so based on my personal experiences is at the bottom of the pile.

Well you're about to see whether or not a fat tax works, because in a couple of years Denmark will have solid figures to show you. That's part of how evidence-based policy works. Try things, then a few years later, evaluate their performance. It beats banging to the drum of some blind ideal like "TAXATION IS ALWAYS BAD, AVOID ANY POLICY THAT INVOLVES TAX!!!11" Of course, the problem with using it for taxation is that taxes, once implemented, are notoriously hard to get rid of.

The opposite of what I said. (Tale: not really. It just makes the phenomena painfully obvious, so you end up like me, the universally disliked forum guy who claims to see rampant stupidity everywhere. Which, of course, is just me seeing another pattern.)

But as seen in the news item, the suits are "in-house". The whole question is just another example of idiotic gamer paranoia against big publishers (hint: the small ones want all your money, too - and your soul, if they can get away with it).

Having a kind of melodramatically grim mood today, seems to be complimented well by the DXHR soundtrack, Icarus especially.

Well, that is kind of stupid.

Where do you get that from? Looking at the pictures, I don't see support for that. You see Mitchell Scanlon (author of Descent of Angels) on 192. On 193, you see the title Mechanicum. So it was 192/193, which are different pages. Boom, missed that. My bad.

This would be nice. I wonder if al-Qaeda would have become irrelevant on it's own of if it has become so only because the US, UK and dozens of other governments have been so effective in hunting them down and killing them like the vermin they are? As a rule, you can only get rid of people like that by cutting off their popular support and/or bankroll (AFAIK, that played a big part with the PIRA, but Wals and the others would know more about that). Otherwise, it's like decapitating a hydra, especially in the case of al Qaeda which is more like a terrorist franchise than an actual organisation.

Trying to do things "the easy way" to finish by the end of next week. Obviously not working out, keep running into absurdly complicated situations with stuff that should be clear as day. ****!

See, you're comparing causes and results here. You should ban either tobacco and transfats or lung cancer and obesity.

That's really strange, since the pages where it supposedly switches are two sides of the same page. Which just shouldn't be possible. That also conveniently makes it "unshowable" in pictures, but I can't think anyone even on the fake rumor-ridden 40k boards would crave attention that badly.

I think I've managed to find the point that I'm obviously not getting across at all (based on your post here and WUE's blatant strawman above). I'm NOT ****ING SAYING THEY ARE BAD! It's not a binary choice between God's Angels and, well, "bad". All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist! OK, I'm happy to accept that's what you meant (and I always think I come across more aggressively than I intend anyway). To elucidate a bit better though, the problem is not so much whether you are antagonistic or neutral to their approach, it's more a question of what they realistically can do differently and whether it could even theoretically be done better. Seems to me that they have the three basic options I listed: only bug fix the PC version with zero additional content, charge for any improvements from xbox development or combine the two without the charge- assuming they wouldn't just abandon the PC version wholesale, of course. Given those options I think that it is clear that the best one for their customers is the one they have picked. And you really cannot ask for much more short of them... converting themselves to neutrinos and going back to May? So it's not just a question of whether any option is good in an absolute sense, just a question of which is best in the circumstances The PR thing is completely true, of course, they are in general very good with it and know how to massage opinion rather well. They're going to have all PC dlc free, awesome, but it just means that anything significant will be classed as an expansion pack (look PC gamers! we do proper old school expansions rather than nickel and dime you, aren't we awesome!) and charged for, of course. I expect that sort of thing from everyone though, it's just that CDPR generally has enough good will and has not mucked people around enough for most people to not object to it. Good points.