Zoraptor

Have to say, I would have personally preferred a real spiritual succesor for AC even though I've never played it. This sounds like a just another Civ. Sounds like another CivRev- it is, to paraphrase interview guy #1, faster and more intense, much like George Lucas's directing style. And that's hardly a great comparison to make even for somewhere as banal and hapless as RPS has become, especially when it's pretty obviously a cash grab and reskin of CiV right down to 1upt. If you really haven't played Alpha Centauri you should. It really is very good.

Ah, but Many Worlds theory suggests it's entirely possible to create parallel universes via time travel, which is travelling between dimensions. From that it is only a small jump to travel to fictional universes, because if you have infinite branching possibilities then everything is true somewhere. Now, I have to admit to not having read Doctor Brown's dissertation on the topic recently, but if you have a Qunari and a DeLorean together then logic dictates that one or the other has to have travelled interdimensionally since Thedas is a pre industrial society which has yet to invent the internal combustion engine let alone a flux capacitor while there was a known absence of Qunari in early 80s Belfast or the mid 80s USA. Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

He's in a DeLorean. He can go back to a time when Qunari had no horns- ie pre 2010- and that problem is solved. It's a pretty good way of dealing with any continuity issues. Decapitated Leliana after defiling the Ashes, as every second person seems to have? Nope, Marty McQun went back and stopped you, so she can be in the subsequent games with no problem.

They'd be aiming for a Just In Time type process presumably, where the parts are produced separately and then bolted together. More difficult than doing the same thing for a car or other purely mechanical device, but in theory at least it should speed things up a reasonably amount. Practically... well, who knows. But if the trend towards fewer, bigger games continues in the AAA field they'll have to do something similar as a single studio capable of producing a bigger game in a standard ~2 year timeframe is becoming increasingly unworkable- indeed even those penny pinchers at Activision are shifting to 3 year dev time for the CoDs. Doing things in parallel at multiple studios would be an alternative to increasing the dev cycle.

Bioshock 2 had 5 teams working on it- 2k marin (main design), 2k shanghai (textures), Arkane (1st levels) and whoever it was did the MP component; plus Irrational/ 2k Boston at the start- and that was five years ago. 10 seems extreme but there's no fundamental reason why you could not get sound/ motion capture/ level design done the same way. It does take good supervision, but that is what you have producers for. Presumably the main reason for doing it is because it'll get done quicker plus make use of cheaper labour.

Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter, and as such it will not radiate from a person since even skin is enough to stop it. You want a nice beta or even better gamma emitter for your simile. Now that this vital information has been disbursed I return you to the eternal debate: misogyny vs misterogyny, which is worse and why?

Meh, looks like the link expires as it's pics of the last 24 hours. If you click the archive button at top right you can get to previous days' versions though. It ain't particularly interesting, they are just the pictures that were previously posted, from a recognised source. It's basically the same as the "Friends of Syria" meeting that is also being held, more designed to build up public confidence and give the impression of support/ that something is being done than actually resolve anything. Mostly harmless, mostly pointless and they'll probably come out with some sort of roadmap or whatever at the end of it.

Bro, the UN doesn't have attack helicopters of its own, as with other equipment members supply them (popular with low budget countries as the UN pays for their upkeep etc) as needed. Using UN branded helicopters would be very bad, only putting large red crosses all over your tanks and APCs would be worse for that type of infraction. The Geneva Conventions specifically note it as big P Perfidy, to whit: "(d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict." (Doubt it's deliberate deception, of course, but it's still bad enough)

Burning does that to vehicles. Pics are definitely genuine.

They were better in Awakenings, certainly, though better than the darkspawn in Origins ain't saying anything at all. As for whether that thread will be picked up, it seems unlikely given DAI's focus on demons, but who knows. Well, alanschu I guess... Apart from Awakenings they were utterly generic Tolkienesque cliches though, right down to human/ dwarf -> hurlock/ genlock mirroring elf/ ent -> orc/ troll direct from Tolkien himself. They did their job as mooks to the slaughter but that's about the best that can be said of them.

That was the top 50 it was based on. This is Codex RPG List: Enhanced Edition with reviews and stuff. (Next will come Codex RPG List: Enhanced Edition: Director Admin's Cut, then Codex RPG List: Platinum)

What we really need are some hard figures about desertion rates in the Ukrainian army, apart from the 80% for those in Crimea. We already know much of the police force is gone, but if the eastern part of the army is deserting or starts to desert in large amounts to the rebels then there's trouble. And in 'interesting parallels' news, I note that Ukraine has restricted cut water flow into Crimea. From April 28, but for some mysterious reason there's difficulty finding an english language news report of it, not sure why when western news is so well balanced. Which, I am sure, is completely different from Russia's potential restriction of gas flows if Ukraine doesn't pay in advance, after all, one is an essential for life as we know it and the other is only water. And in "what did you expect you muppets" news Russia cuts the US off from ISIS and the rockets they use to launch military satellites. Which is surprising and underhanded, and an unwonted escalation. Sanctions should only be applied on stuff which isn't useful to us, anything reciprocal is deeply unfair and mean. I don't need a solution, I wouldn't have ended up in that situation in the first place. It's like demanding a solution for a broken motorbike problem where the motorbike has been deliberately disassembled, the solution is: don't break in the first place what you cannot fix.

I'm just glad that there's an authoritative poll from a prestigious institution determining, once and for all, that F2>BG2 and Planescape Torment is the greatest RPG of all time. Will help with arguments with all those- now objectively wrong- people who believe differently. I don't agree with the list wholesale, but it's certainly better than those RPG lists that have CoD- you play the role of a shooter dude, duh- and the like on them. (I actually was going to stick the list into the Random News thread, but decided it was a bit too close to the top 50 one it's based on and which was discussed when it was released. Still, good effort and good resource from the Codex, whatever nits people may have)

Heh, I particularly like how you describe quoting the actual constitution as being "conveniently plausible"- when your "detailed well founded specificities", no doubt, involve not even bothering to have read the document your claims rely on. Hint: if you run around quoting propaganda without checking it is actual factual rather than, well, propaganda you will get bitten on the arse by reality and you will look silly. And you'll deserve it. (That's the reinstated constitution I linked to, btw, the one that they supposedly deposed him with, so no, you can't wriggle your way free on that either. Also, Yuchenko was president in 2004- you know, 'Orange Revolution' dude. But so far as inaccuracies go that is small fry, if symptomatic) Still, it is amazing how 'legal frameworks' suddenly become of paramount importance once the side you favour has done all of their illegal stuff- and immediately before people you don't support do something illegal. Convenient, that. Everything is, spontaneous self defence groups in Maidan, awesome idea and a response to oppression by an unfriendly government, spontaneous self defence groups in Donetsk, ultimate evil and couldn't possibly be a response to an unfriendly government also.

Yes Bruce, I can confirm that you are... confused. From the same post you quoted, two asterisking lines further down And that is why people are convinced you're a troll. I just wish you'd go back to at least putting some effort into it.

Nope. The vote is actually irrelevant, that it was made under duress with a third of the members missing and with Right Sector providing security is simply the cherry on the top that would make the vote invalid under any circumstance. What makes it invalid in the first place is that it was unconstitutional and did not follow the correct procedure by any definition. The constitution of Ukraine is the constitution of Ukraine, like it or loathe it. You need to show how the method used was constitutional. If you cannot, then it was not constitutional. I've shown you the relevant clauses for removing the president, you're free to rebut them. If you can. But wishing it said something different- maybe that the medical grounds was less specific and could be stretched to any absence whatever the cause- is not rebuttal. You won't see me arguing that the separation referenda are constitutional, because they clearly are not. Equally clearly neither was Yanukovich's removal. Fact is fact. You're just going to have to deal with it. People blame the rightists for Odessa for numerous reasons- they clearly drove people into the building, they clearly set it alight, they clearly used a modus operandi that is a signature of the UPA from WW2, and, clearly, the vast majority of those who died were pro Russian. There isn't any serious disputation about that at all, and most tellingly the rump government and its biggest supporters aren't saying diddly about it, and are instead trying to ignore it since they know it's a loser. That's straight propaganda 101, if you're in the wrong put out your spun version then don't talk about it and hope it goes away. It's the same for Mariupol, if they thought they were in the right they'd never shut up about it, as with them saying continually that the referenda are unconstitutional. If they're in the wrong they'll say as little as possible, and hope that the pictures on BBC/ ITV/ AlJ etc of clearly unarmed people getting shot won't do too much damage or get too many to question things.

Alt requires an older, original account being hidden behind a newer one. No actual evidence anyone is doing that. I'm mainly still here because I made predictions at the start as to what would happen and it is interesting seeing if I'm right or not- largely right to this point, though I'm rather less happy about it than I may seem- and I'm always fascinated by propaganda and (other) people's (of course, since I'm immune to such things) massive capacity for self deception when following narrative lines. Plus, for much of the last twenty years I've had this nagging feeling that some time in the future we'd wake up and find that we'd totally and unnecessarily asterisked up the end of the cold war and dealings with Russia with trying to grind them into the dirt. Much as Foch (?) said about WW1 what we had was a twenty year armistice, not a peace, and blaming the other side entirely for that is as moronic now as it was then. And yet again. Unconstitutionally- literally against the provisions of the constitution clauses 108-111- while the rada was protected by the same people who recently burned 40 of their compatriots alive in Odessa, and with a third of its members missing. It'd never be accepted as legal were it not done by 'our guys'.

Yeah, claiming that the government is an interim one dedicated only or even primarily to setting up new elections is one of the more bizarre claims I've seen, especially when the pro coup people are usually quite open about the 'government' doing a load of stuff that is in no way at all related to making new elections and for which they cannot claim any electoral mandate. Loans would usually be OK as you cannot expect an interim government to go bankrupt just because it's interim. In this case even that was dodgy though, because they reneged the agreement with Russia (without paying pack the first loan tranche of the loan, of course- after all, they had nothing to fear from further antagonising the Russians...) and have signed up to an onerous deal with the IMF/ WB that binds any- legitimate- successor government to its long term conditions. That's not the behaviour of an interim government, that's the sort of thing you get from coup governments in Africa- or from the Iraqi Transitional Authority in Iraq, let's disband the Berkut as disbanding the Iraqi army worked sooo well- and it's designed to remake the country quickly and without recourse (except violence) into your image, then slap a 'democratic' stamp on it with elections, post facto but before any of the consequences start showing. Well, in theory, Putin had something to say about the last part. What was required was conciliation, consultation and the other stuff you get when people deal in good faith, but then if we had that Yanukovich would still be caretaker president and any of the deals signed with him and broken by the Maidan types would have stuck. What was got was as about as far from that as it is possible to get. And I too am still somewhat baffled about how people can claim with a straight face that the current government has a mandate for what it is doing but those who supported the democratically elected government and oppose the interim one don't have any reason for unhappiness.

Many will regard it as bad because it is counter to one of the critical factors in a game being an RPG. In an RPG there should be a primacy of the development of the avatar's skill over the player's skill (/having quick reactions), and twitch gameplay is very much about player reaction time. So combat in a typical twitch shooter is all about the skill of the player, a hybrid like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 has it depending a bit on both, and a 'pure' RPG like Fallout or even Baldur's Gate has it be wholly dependant on the avatar's skills- or at least, as much as it can be wholly dependant, the player still has to make the decisions about who to attack for example, but it is entirely the avatars' skills and equipment that determine probability of hitting or being hit. But yeah, it's only subjectively bad, not objectively so.

Their conduct in Iraq was pretty amateurish, to say the least; blundering into the middle of Fallujah and getting themselves killed was utter incompetence as was shooting up a Baghdad round-a-bout and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. That is basically why they aren't called Blackwater any more but are called Greystone/ Xe/ Academi as their reputation was, er, shot by their conduct. But I certainly wouldn't think they'd be doing direct combat in Ukraine for the same reason I don't think there are Russian soldiers there, it'd be a PR disaster for them to be caught and there are enough available fighters to do the fighting without them. I'd suspect they'd mainly be instructor types.

Bro, it's as proven as any 'fact' from the US State Department/ British Foreign Office or Ukrainian government based on intelligence. In this case it's the 'friendly' German intelligence doing the leaking as well as the 'enemy' Russian one, so it's a lot more credible and is not something the BND would make up randomly to make their favoured side look bad. Yeah, if it's the Russians and only the Russians saying so it may well be straight propaganda, if it's the Russians and Germans saying so they could still be wrong, but it doesn't seem likely and it isn't propaganda.

Vandal under the hospital in Santa Monica certainly has some.

Heh, you should have mentioned the Jewish moderator as well... (For those who don't know, all three of them are also members here. They're just a lot less active.)

What's wrong, Infinitron? You've still got that 'Duraframe' guy to get Obsidian news from, after all. It's probably a matter of not having a dedicated PR unit (hence, Paradox for PoE) and having multiple other projects done for publishers and hence also under their PR control. Fargo's two projects are both his own, he can say whatever he likes about them. And in terms of what can broadly be called self promotion comparison to Fargo is like comparing a boxer to Muhammad Ali- he's just very good at it.

Blackwater would certainly explain a penchant for randomly shooting places up, even if they're just instructors. Funny in a way, I thought the accusations from the Russians about Blackwater involvement seemed pretty unlikely (FUD, basically) when they made them last month. I guess the ultimate source was probably the same there as well, intelligence sources. Still, nice to see that Ukraine have found something constructive to spend their 3 billion IMF loan on.