Zoraptor

Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion here. Probably the worst two games overall I've ever played too, and the only ones I can think of offhand that I actively dislike.

I tend to think of it in two ways. Firstly, it doesn't really do any harm. If it is an obsessive behaviour rather than just having fun at least it's an obsessive behaviour that harms no one else and doesn't do any real harm to the cosplayer either. As such it isn't really my business to be offended. Certainly there may be some people that I might, on balance and against my SNAGesque instincts, prefer did not dress up in skin tight or revealing outfits but then I'd probably think much the same if they were out on the town. Secondly, if I were to be offended by people dressing up as characters I'd probably have to be offended at the booth babe/ official models dressing up as characters as well, since the only real difference there is that they're getting paid. I do get a bit offended there on occasion, but mainly at the thought that someone out in marketing land thought "hmm, you're male, you like the ladies, therefore you'll buy our game because look: ladies!". I'd suspect that the vast majority of people literally don't care or don't care much either way about cosplay to be honest. It just seems a rather small thing for people to be upset about in the grand scheme of things.

Bro, my country is #1 in the perception of corruption- curse you, Danes, if only there'd been a Danish Viennese Pastries for votes scandal we'd be #1 alone! Indeed, we've been =#1 for every year that wiki article lists. I just happen to know that just because we're #1, the best and greatest, top of the pile etc doesn't actually mean we're perfect and could just mean we're collectively stupid or self righteous enough to think there isn't any corruption here, or that it doesn't really count or whatever. But I'm also far more concerned about fixing my own country than blowing my own trumpet and being holier-than-thou about how much better we are than all the grubby corruption riddled others. And I mainly wish that these Olympics were more about the sport instead of masturbatory, nationalistic superiority peddling from the supposedly quality western media and assorted others.

It has? The London Olympics went on about security and terrorism a lot and how it would be the safest games ever etc etc and I doubt many would characterise that as being PR emphasis (whole or otherwise) from Dave Central- except, maybe, the part regarding the G4S fiasco and their failure to, well, actually hire the security they were paid for. There's been lots of smoke and thunder from the usual 'sources' about how they're not saying there will definitely be a terrorist attack in Sochi that will kill and maim people, they're not saying that at all, they really, really hope the Russians are up to the task etc etc. And in other news, a report by opposition politicians in New Zealand found unequivocal proof that PM John Key is a big doody head and a lightweight who'd be drunk under the table by the leader of the opposition. Rebuilding towns is extremely expensive. The EU wastes 3 times the entire Sochi budget per year from corruption. The US has massive pork barrelling and subsidies to vested interests while their debt goes up and up. We have politicians who get parachuted into high paid directorships by companies who have benefited from said politicians' policies. And, most significantly, if there's been corruption in Sochi that's for the Russians to worry about, I, Steve Fry, Weird Al, Dolly Parton, Francois Hollande, Barry the petrol station attendant, 95%+ of the posters here and John McCain all have one thing in common- any corruption in Sochi hasn't cost us a single asterisking cent. I mean, it's 'nice' that so many people are outraged on behalf of the poor oppressed Russian people and really want them to benefit from good clean western corruption rather than that dirty eastern sort, it's just sad that it's distracting from the actual sport dogpile of anything even slightly wrong with journalist's accommodation and complaints about Russia's policy on gays being massively less oppressive than that of Saudi Arabia.

Not joking about the down south, shrapnel is used here as well and we're about as south as you get. No doubt another thing we've borrowed from the motherland.

Garrette is girl?

And for good measure, lawn bowls.

Somewhere out there, a curling hipster is gnashing their teeth and trying to find another obscure winter sport to follow. It has to be pretty close to the most discussed event at the olympics. At this rate they'll have to add petanque or lawn bowls into the summer olympics.

Oh, I agree. I do dislike the focus on marketing frippery to sell games, though I think it was inevitable that it would happen. Too much internet, too much money riding on things, too much competition for short attention spans. It's certainly not the biggest issue I have with marketing in games though, if the only problems were marketing stunts then I'd be pretty happy overall. End of the day I expect companies to yell at me about how their products are awesome, whether it's a car or a game they're selling. So when it comes down to it I don't think that this particular issue is a big deal, and it is probably cost effective because I cannot see it costing much or taking much time and I doubt it's even really aimed at the cosplayers themselves, but at getting articles and images out on the web about DAI. I'm far more concerned about the more nebulous and poorly defined effects of marketing- focus groups, follow the leader fads; the lowest common denominator stuff. That is more difficult to target of course, because it's a whole lot less obvious but it is the stuff that is really doing the damage to game quality.

I'm not exactly the hardest core Thief fan, and I too rather liked T3, but... Tigranes even left out the small levels (but they'll be detailed, promise, and the big levels in T2 like Life of the Party were pretty, uh, horrible?), jump only at context points (because free jump looks silly, people could run around everywhere jumping, like in BGDA), rope arrow context points, the bad VO because the VO has to be done by the motion capture actor (!), etc etc. And they haven't got rid of the XP system, just hidden it away hence the ludicrous ability to buy the 'Stealth' ability* in a Thief game. Still, if you like Assassin's Creed and DIshonoured, are happy to spend time turning off all the extra frippery and hand holding devices and aren't too emotionally invested in the old Thief games it may work out for you. I do sincerely wish you luck. *To be fair, probably an upgrade rather than the ability itself. Sadly though, I wouldn't put it past them to have 'gain stealth' as a tutorial to explain their ability/ upgrade system.

Dunno, I would have thought that most of the marketing would be done by a separate team from the development, that is what you have marketing teams for after all. Developers would do some stuff of course, like dev diaries type stuff, but the only person referenced with respect to the cosplay stuff is the community manager, which is probably a specifically marketing rather than development role. I guess that in theory that does use money that could be used to improve the game by employing another artist or dev- but equally, in theory, it ends up generating more profit from the game to offset or exceed the cost of the marketing...

Ye gads man, the world has enough problems without the thought of me doing a cross dress cosplay adding to them. I'm hairier than a barbary ape and there ain't a person with eyes who'd ever mistake me for a woman no matter the effort put in, I get a five o'clock shadow five minutes after shaving.

That isn't all you said though. You also said "look how you all got riled up trying to make it seem as if it is unfair tax or unwarranted intervention by the government telling you what todo". That, combined with the rest, most certainly logically implies that you'd tax other 'bad' stuff as well. And Walsingham is most certainly correct in that you'd have to monitor a lot of stuff to enforce the sort of system you were outlining, you'd need to regularly have people's weight and incomes at least.

Hmm. I think we're in danger of taking things a touch too seriously. Way I see it, anyone criticising someone for cosplay, on an internet forum dedicated to RPGs, is treading on depth challenged ice while juggling rocks in a glasshouse- if they are being entirely serious. Indeed, the average observer may well think there's little difference in 'coolness' or whatever metric of superiority is being used. As such, it's simply easier to presume that they aren't serious as you end up thinking better of people and add years to your life from the reduced blood pressure. Same for other stuff, I don't really care if Tali Sweat Analysis Man was being serious or not since it works great as satire, so satire it will forever be; and I appreciate the (no doubt deliberate) irony of professional Bioware haters who insist on being as obsessive in their dislike as the fans are in their like.

Join the Wild Hunt Control the Wild Hunt Destroy the Wild Hunt, surely. The Wild Hunt of course being a group of magically created automatons that turns up periodically because once magic has developed to a certain point it is inevitable that it will destroy all sentient life on the planet, so they reduce all civilisation to stop this as borne out and foreshadowed by events at the end of TWitcher (1) where the world has been frozen by magicogenic climate change and everyone is dead- and in TWitcher 2 where you have the magically created near invincible Kayran and annoying-dead-people-created-by-sorceress areas. Alvin/ de Thingamybob was a visionary trying to achieve salvation with his radical pro human group, or possibly had had his mind warped by too much exposure to the aether and hence the Wild Hunt. At the end some will also insist that Geralt himself has been controlled by the Hunt, citing multiple clues interwoven in the plot, and that the whole game is a brave metacommentary on reality and mind control. Now, I know that some will counter this by saying that the WIld Hunt are actually extra planar elves- in fact, it will be revealed that every cycle they reproduce by taking the forms of the dominant species they encounter, and the last few cycles the dominant species was elvish.

At least her dress looks more practical (and warmer) than her DAO get up. Always a complaint of mine, impractical attire in my fantasy games.

Only specific 1st year physics though for me, my main credentials in anything physics related is that I've actually read A Brief History of Time. (else, physics related to biology/ chemistry)

Yep. Whole update reeks of laziness/ cheapness. Plenty of other KS give steam and gog keys, or use Humble, or whatever. Running a demo that morphs into the full product on steam (by choice, you can have demo keys time out per Div: OS, which has had few to no complaints) by default with time limited opt out based on an email/ following a game which is already a decent amount behind schedule; and when the tiers still proudly display 'drm free copy' is a richard move. I don't read updates to KS generally, good thing I caught this one.

It certainly couldn't fund an AP2 in the same fashion as the original AP. Full VO, high detail graphics and the other AAA trappings would have to go and it would have to be a roughly PoE scale game. I think that could still work well though, since I don't think that most people who enjoyed AP enjoyed it for those AAA trappings- so long as they were honest about what changes were being made. Having said that, very very unlikely to happen. Personally, I'd be happy with a spiritual successor building on the things AP did well, it's certainly a more realistic prospect.

Yep. Cherry picking the best written movies and books also ignores that for every [my favourite book/ movie] that is untrammelled and objective awesome there is an absolute horde of Stephenie Meyer/ Dan Brown/ Michael Bay garbage extruded, year on year. Much like video games. But I do agree- in general- with Monte's basic premise in that if I were to make a list of favourite story tellings there'd be few game ones compared to others- but I'm nowhere near as concrete in it. Plus, per below, in games it really depends on how the story is told as well, and that is difficult to separate from the story itself. You can most definitely prefer games as a medium for story telling without necessarily thinking the stories being told are themselves good in an absolute sense. Most of the people I've seen that like Oblivion don't argue that the story itself is good, but that the way of telling it is good- they're able to put themselves into the story and world in a way that is literally (heh) impossible for other media. In video games the story is not just what is said and done, it is also the interaction with a world, the immersion and the feeling of being part of the action yourself- something that movies and books and other such 'art' cannot do. I love Stalker, its story, if separated from the game itself, is pretty mediocre. Its way of telling the story is, at least in SoC, absolutely brilliant as it oozes atmosphere and especially immersion that a movie (yes, my eastern european friends, I know) or book (ditto) can only dream of. And that way of telling the story makes up for a lot of the story's shortcomings.

Probably, it was certainly the case for Bioshock (1*). Levine's games' stories have a certain amount of depth and a certain amount of genuine craft about them, and are in a medium in which most commonly neither is present. In that sort of context anything with some competency about it stands out because it is, relatively speaking, very good even if it is not good in an 'absolute' sense- ie it is one of the better examples, until you start comparing it to the best storytelling in other media. Or start looking at it in detail, though it certainly isn't alone in falling apart under those circumstances. Personally, I still prefer the Thief and System Shock 2 story lines of his as they weren't so encumbered by Ken Levine, video game auteur as opposed to Ken Levine, writer. *If you're going to skewer a fundamental trope of gaming (the lack of true player agency) then you need to do something, anything to subvert it once pointed out. Going back to 'obey the voice in your head, may as well be with added would you kindly' after making such a point of it... wasted opportunity. It's also ironic, because video games is one of the few media in which you can have elements of choice in how the story plays out even if it does at the end boil down to following branches in a script rather than writing your own story. That is the big advantage video games have as a storytelling medium- interactivity, player agency- and that is the thing that should be taken advantage of. It often isn't because it's hard to do and takes more work than trying to shoehorn in a merely 'interactive' movie like script.

I was surprised that they had tatu* performing and actually had to check it was them. Though I would have been more surprised if it was feline riot, of course. *only really famous for girl on girl snogging, for those not au fait with 2000s (?) Russian pop.

"An RPG is a game in which the player plays the role(s) of a character avatar or multiple instances thereof, features development of the character's abilities and in which the gameplay skill of the player is subservient to the abilities developed by their avatar(s)." There you go, what is an RPG defined with absolutely no argumentation possible at all. List? Planescape Torment Fallouts System Shock 2 Gothic 2/ NdR BG 2 MOTB VtM: Bloodlines Wizardry original (and Icewind Dale KOTOR 2 Order is fluid and subject to change, addition or deletion at no notice. No warranty given or implied. Realistically, everything below MOTB is about equal to stuff that is left out like TWitcher/2, Alpha Protocol and a couple of others so if it were a point system like the codex one some would be missing.

Heh, here it's drilled into us not to do anything around snow in jeans. Of course, we don't actually have snow sitting around populated areas much so you're far more likely to be tramping or skiing when encountering snow here.

NWN2 vanilla is listed as well as MOTB, I think... yes, #61, on the additional list. I presume Throne of Bhaal isn't there because either it was rolled into SoA in people's minds (it's been impossible to buy them separately for ages, after all, and all digital versions include the Xpac) or simply because it isn't considered particularly good.