Nepenthe

Like Notch said, there's reason to be upset for people who essentially gave Oculus 1st round VC for essentially nothing just for them to cash out to FB. As mentioned, kickstarter has that anti-corporate flavour - in part due to the funders not receiving any ownership of the IP or maker - and I find this a gross abuse of that principle.

Thanks for clarifying. Do you have any specifics on which types of equipment are currently not compatible? I'm curious as I did read something about the artillery being predominantly Russian and a preponderance of the Russian BUK-M1 air defense systems (which were being replaced by a Norwegian designed system iirc). BUKs have been phased out and replaced with the NASAMS variant of SL-AMRAAMs. There's debate whether this was done simply to advance STANAG compatibility or because Russians have an effective way of jamming their own tech - apparently some Russians were downed with a Georgian BUK during that conflict, but the fact of the matter is the BUK is out. On paper, NASAMS is inferior to BUK, but certainly prettier and less loud. And I'm out of wartime a job. And moving from "know" to "think", probably the biggest issue is the Finnish use of 7,62x39mm sov block weaponry, apparently it's better in a heavily forested environment than the NATO rounds, also the mainstay ARs of the Finnish Army accept standard russian mags (but not vice versa), which is... convenient.

I can't imagine touching it again. It's one of the few games I've had to take longer breaks in between to finish. I've been playing DA2, should finish Dishonored and that last Hitman thing which were both aborted when SHTF at the old workplace, also need to do the DLCs for Saints Row IV...

I was under the impression that the opposite viewpoint would be heretical on this board. After all, heresy is, in part, determined by the standards of the social unit.

You've never done any programming I see. Coding disasters don't just miraculously work. That's an insult to the programmers and other people who worked on the games. It also implies that the programmers didn't know what they were doing at the time with their coding (coding disaster as you put it), but hey. it somehow how miraculously worked. Must be special programming magic. Also, as a few have pointed out, they have some of the original team members working on the EE's. You should have a minimum base line (original game) and work up from there. At the moment, the EE's don't even meet the base line in various ways due to introduced bugs. Allright, that was hyperbole on my part, but I have done enough coding to know that some are easier to work with than others and the fact that trying to remove presently unnecessary stuff originally done to make something run better on Windows98 is liable to bork things a bit. The others (Gromnir, too-leet) have illustrated my viewpoint already, but, indeed, a level playing field would be nice once in a while.

You're really buying that crap? Every new government in history always said "the previous administration was a disaster and worked miraculously" to justify its present shortcomings. And you really bought into this centuries old excuse? Please... You've never seen the code, so why are you repeating someone else's bullcrap like it's an established fact? I find it more plausible than the alternative: they're borking fully functional systems just for the hell of it.

Thanks for the info. Looking forward to this, there isn't much else to look forward to this year... Two miserably quiet game years in a row to me, and living here in the boondocks, too.

In what way? Superior implies a comparison, and if you like it better because you can play it on your tablet whereas when the original was released that platform didn't even exist yet, it's not really a comparison at all. I mean, it's great that you feel that the port is worth $15, but what have the devs done in the six (or whatever) months since BGEE was released that makes you say the EE version is superior? I'm not invested either way, but the fact that mods that I consider essential (Ascension, among others) aren't compatible, and the way translations are being handled (i.e. they aren't) make me a bit reluctant to give these guys my money. Those were two things that the original had that the new version doesn't, so for me it hardly warrants the title "Enhanced". As it stands, anyway. Not sure what the **** Ascension has to do with BGEE (as opposed to BG2EE)*, but activation circles/walk targets matching character main color, zoom and improved mod support via externalizations are the top three things I view as clear signs of superior execution. I also consider out-of-the-box widescreen support to be an advantage, as I do the new voicesets, but those are things that can, indeed, be achieved via mods. I'm actually not playing the BGEEs on a tablet, but on my Macs, just as I did when they originally came out. Unfortunately, the publishers have either gone bust or otherwise disappeared, BG hasn't worked on any OS X mac and BG2 properly on any Intel mac... *Last time I looked, one could install Ascension via the Big Picture mod and it worked just fine, though. Somebody's working on an updated ascension that adds stuff for the new companions, but I don't think that's particularly relevant for this. Hey, looks like it's actually possible to disagree with somebody without including "you" in every sentence, who'da thunk it!

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that Arc'teryx's "athletic" cut would be a good fit for you.

I think the only thing that's been patched in bg2ee is a memory leak. It makes perfect sense, the original bg-bg2 were a coding disaster that miraculously worked. They've had to go back and rewrite major sections of the code, which due to poor documentation and mind-boggling hardcoding breaks things elsewhere. Now, they really should have done a few fixing passes at the current versions before concentrating fully on Android instead of the other way around, but the Android people were yelling louder at that stage. I have no doubt that both EEs will become greatly superior to the originals... but in the case of BG2EE, it's probably going to take at least six months. I find BGEE already is superior. Add to Pros: Works on platforms that were previously unsupported.

Yep, 400 million real money and 1,6 billion monopoly money (facebook stock).

But you must have liked Isabella's outfits? Especially her boots..... I like big boots, I cannot lie.

Next stop, Scumsoft.

Looked pretty good on the video posted earlier here than in these screen caps.

Last time I checked (but I'm not very into MOBAs) League of Legends is doing really, really well, so it's probably that. I mean, while I wouldn't cry "dooooooooooom", BioWare isn't in the same position as they were after the release of Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, and Obsidian is still not the safest and stablest of workplace, even though they seem in a better financial position now than they were after North Carolina was canceled. I was being mostly sarcastic, but based on my (admittedly limited) knowledge of League of Legends, I'm more likely to play candy crush saga. But I know of at least two Mass Effect peeps I'd describe as "key" who left for Riot between ME2 and 3, Christina Norman (me2 lead gameplay designer) and producer Jesse Houston - and I don't really follow these things. Edit: looks like Jesse Houston's left Riot last month. I wish him good luck, he had one of the better community presences among the Bioware devs (along with Patrick Weekes, I'd say).

I dug Aveline and Isabela, too. Both the siblings are ok too, but I'm not sure if their limited screen time is an advantage or disadvantage. Mechanically, to represent the "other side" of the mage/templar conflict, I think they are interesting. Fenris, Merrill, Anders and Sebastian... I am, at best, indifferent to. Every time I replay this game I find myself just using a combination of Aveline, Isabela, Varric and Bethany (as much as I can), subbing Anders is for his gameplay advantages when I have to. :/

League of Legends developer.They've drained a lot of top talent from Bioware, too. I wish I could say I understand why.

Ninja'd, by myself among others. So disregard.

I dunno, currently playing DA2 and having a harder time making good decisions. I mean, when the dude wants me to help him gather obvious gunpowder, I can make the good decision of not doing it or the bad decision of helping him, but the end result is the same. Pretty sure you can make some fairly bad decisions in Awakening, too? If both decisions lead to the same result, it's not much of a decision. If helping Anders led to the Chantry blowing up, and not helping him meant it didn't blow, it would be a rather meaningful one. That was kind of my point. This has been a rumor forever. It's literally impossible to get both of them in the game. Two different models, etc. Dragon Age Keep. I just made the impossible possible again. Where's my halo.

I dunno, currently playing DA2 and having a harder time making good decisions. I mean, when the dude wants me to help him gather obvious gunpowder, I can make the good decision of not doing it or the bad decision of helping him, but the end result is the same. Pretty sure you can make some fairly bad decisions in Awakening, too?

Yeah, I rather suspect he's of the opinion that whatever he says will be spun negatively in the west ("cat lovers disgusted at Putin's pro puppy stance") so he deliberately trolls for the visceral thrill of bunching morons panties, rather too many half smiles after saying something controversial for it to be coincidence. Indeed, one of his old advisors said that he basically does do it deliberately on Al-J. You guys need to realize that despite what you think the concept of Trolling is an Internet phenomena, don't mistake behavior on forums with behavior in RL. World leaders don't " Troll" they make strategic decisions that have real consequences in the best interests of there country Clearly you've never had to deal with the corruption of power... I see it regularly in how some loser becomes a minor cabinet secretary and starts immediately having delusions of grandeur... now imagine that scale up to the level of czar putin. Ho boy. Well, apart from Finland. There's also the little issue of Crimea having large deposits of gas and oil. Like eastern Ukraine. Now guess where "ethnic Russians" are campaigning for a return to the motherland... I hadn't actually realised it was the old oil and gas game, like with Chechnya. Natural Resources and who gets to exploit them is behind the majority of conflicts in the last half century. It's one of the first things one should look for when looking at a brewing war situation like Crimea. Cui Bono and what from? Nationalism, ethnicity, 'spreading democracy', etc are generally just casus belli manufactured for the general public, they almost never are why any nation is actually doing what it's doing. True. I was under the impression that this was just about buffer zones in reality, but it was even more base than that. Looks like there are several layers of maskirovka this time around.

I am still waiting for my VIP rank Oh well, PE rank is good too <-- If they're in the same industry they're competitors. Apples and oranges are both fruit. If oranges want to succeed, people have to buy less of every other fruit. Not really. They are literally apples and oranges. There is plenty of room in the marketplace for both, they are both successful independently and they work together well in juices and salads. I doubt apple farmers spend any time at all worrying about the strength of the orange market, or vice versa. It would be entirely different if Obsidian and Bioware were on a similar release schedule, or their product were a closer match. But Dragon Age and PE are very different products that have been marketed in very different ways. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Yeah, the second I only buy one game a year we might have issues... on some years, because that one game would be from either of the two.

These must be the Swedish equivalent of the Crimean Self-Defence forces, with the Norwegian flags on the uniforms and all.

I'd just get shot for my big mouth.