Zoraptor

The problem I see with using Harbinger, or any reaper really, is that they lack any compelling personality or motive, and that goes right back to the first game and the conversation with Sovereign (which amounted to "YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND OUR MOTIVES!!!!") and continues in ME2. As such they're pretty much tools or cyphers rather than actual antagonists. I'd also presume that Harbinger would try to either kill Shepard or persuade him not to use the Crucible at all in preference to the synthesis option. On a more fundamental level, it would also be rather like asking an individual locust about the reasons for the apocalypse, at least at the moment you get to ask 'god' instead. I wouldn't dismiss the suggestion out of hand though, I just think there are a fair few potential pit falls and much as with the current situation you'd need some fairly significant rewrites of earlier stuff to get the most out of it. This does nothing to solve the problem of exposition and explanation. Also sounds like ME6th Sense, which would mean that Shepard really died at the start of ME2 and everything after is hypoxic hallucination [/twist].

What would you suggest instead of the star child though? It may be a weak "it was OK" style defence, but there has to be something better offered as an alternative, and something that doesn't involve rewriting ME2/ the whole trilogy after the fact. Ultimately the problem is that the sort of progression needed to get to the ending of ME3 from the ending of ME2 needs either exactly the sort of exposition that video games aren't really very good at and which requires very good planning from the start (which didn't happen) or a star child like info dump/ interactive wikipedia approach; or a kludgey "Get the hell out of my galaxy!"/ bang! superweapon! style ending which is equally poor storytelling. What it really comes down to is that ME2 did not do the job required of it as the second game in a series in terms of advancing the main story, it was more Mass Effect: Cerberus or Mass Effect 1 part 2 than ME2- it set up stuff and did it well, but it was all peripheral stuff with the main series' storyline barely advancing. It left too much for ME3 to do what with tying up peripheral storyline loose ends as well as the whole Reaper invasion. So I tend to cut ME3 some slack not because I'm particularly happy about how it turned out (though I am, in parts) but because the blame for its shortcomings are more appropriately apportioned to ME2. Insufficient foreshadowing and groundwork means that everything gets dumped into the last game and it's too tight a fit. In an ideal world the whole trilogy would have been planned out well in advance, and the various clashes/ counterpoints illustrated through the different ideologies of the 'agonists- the dichotomies between the Krogan/ genophage, Geth/ Quarians and Cerberus/ aliens should provide an ample framework and potential for developing a good 'deus ex' style choice ending. But there was simply no scope for that after ME2. I actually think that: illustrates it quite nicely. There are very few complaints about, say, Mordin or Legion dying precisely because their situations were set up well across multiple games with the main themes introduced in ME1 and expanded upon in ME2 leading to a fulfilling ending to the storylines in ME3. If only there'd been similar attention to the main storyline I can see most of the complaints about star children and trinary choices and the like- which are effectively complaints about method of storyline delivery rather than storyline itself- being largely rendered moot.

I'm starting to see how Volourn got broken, all those many moons ago. ME3 endings are the best ever FACT! Stop the falsities, commence the verities! It's all ME2's fault for not doing it's primary task of setting up the continuing story properly! Deus Ex showed that a similar ending can work! Some nice soothing ointment liberally applied to the effected areas and I'm sure everyone will be able to sit comfortably again. Knowles is a pretty sensible guy from what I've read, but he's wrong about the endings. The most important thing about an ending is not that it is positive, but that it is fulfilling. Two of the best endings in CRGs are PST's and Fallout's, and there is very little positive about either. It's perfectly possible to get an absolutely dreadful- in an objective sense- ending for MOTB where you end up becoming the living embodiment of capitalism a personfication of hunger, and if you've played in that style it's a very good ending. And something like the end to NWN2OC or Fallout 3 is not bad because rocks fall, everybody dies/ illogical story stupidity death is 'negative', it's bad because they're appallingly bad endings. Conversely, the (LS) ending for KOTOR is positive, but still sucks more than a hole in the ISS. I'll happily concede that the endings are not necessarily fulfilling since that is subjective, but I do kind of wonder what exactly people were expecting. Given the set up some sort of deus ex machina was pretty much inevitable and given some of the (again, deus ex like) set up for J C SHEPARD a happy ending with lots of little Liaras/ Ashleys/ Mirandas/ Carths/ et alias frolicking in a field of daisies was never on the cards.

And? People ask for compensation all the time. Crazy homeless guys ask for change. If you want money, you monetize. I wouldn't call failing to donate to a charity case ("the creator asks for compensation for their creation"). Uncharitable, maybe, but not morally wrong. Err...exactly what has the homeless guy created that he's asking for compensation for your receipt of their creation when he begs for change? How does the homeless guy scenario apply at all to what Hurlshot is talking about? Clearly Homeless Guy is an ex developer who got sacked by the IP rights holder immediately after his six months of 100+ hours/ week crunch (no overtime) ended while said IP rights holder pocketed the benefits of his labour; never got his bonus because the metacritic was only 84% and a game that sold eleventy billion copies somehow failed to make a profit :che: Fundamentally IP law overall is rubbish and desperately needs reform at exactly the same time as vast quantities of money are being spent on lobbying to try and tighten the screws even further in a manner that would make minipax blush. Piracy would be a whole lot more easy to get all "BEHEAD THOSE THAT INFRINGE IP RIGHTS" about if many of those IP rights holders weren't a bunch of asterisking asteriskholes themselves.

That's the one that puzzles me as the whole R+L=J equation is such a prominent part of the books and it is difficult to see how it can be handled now, given the lack of a perspective character to use for exposition/ flashback. Well, there is a certain Bog Devil, but he hasn't even turned up in the books because he knows too much.

Already is. A bit pricey though, given what is was going for prior to the switchover.

They do, of course, pale into insignificance compared to the quality of your reviews Volo. But they're good enough for mere mortals.

The guy who wrote the GB review does post at the Codex though complaining about that is as silly as blaming /v or the codex for negative reactions to DA2. Every GB review I've ever read has been quality even if I haven't always agreed with them, and the chances of them writing a review to garner Kodex Kool Kredits is... negligible.

I've been playing Pharaoh on and off over the past couple of months and it's good, but then all those style of games are pretty much of a muchness. If you like one there's a very large chance you'll like the others. I really wanted an Akhenaten scenario for Pharaoh though.

No, you almost certainly aren't. How about having to get every software install approved through Microsoft? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about a big government repository of approved programs you're allowed to install? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about cutting off internet access to those suspected of piracy, or entire countries if the piracy rate there is too high? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about a nice always on internet monitoring program where every keystroke and action is logged for perpetuity? It'll stop piracy, after all. How about a nice big government list of approved websites to visit? It'll stop piracy, after all. Half+ of those aren't even made up.

That's what they may want you to think, but quite a different story is told if you examine the facts... Look at MOTB- Myrkul is clearly a stand in for Capitalist Conformity, cursing Akachi for daring to oppose his free market laissez-faire theology where you have freedom, but only in the choice of which Invisible Hand of the Pantheon to worship; consume their divine product- or as an allusion to Pink Floyd's seminal anti capitalist epic become "just another brick in the wall", literally. You really think it's coincidence that the curse involves you consuming souls, forcing you to consume more in a never ending cycle where more and more consumption is needed just to stand still? And that the only sensible strategy is to battle your foul, capitalistic impulses? You even get to put that foul avatar of capitalism, Myrkul, to rest, if you want, or show him the logical end point of his appalling ideology- hardly the act of a tame American Imperialist Capitalist Running Dog company, quite the reverse in fact. Of course, you can go the other way and embrace 'capitalism', consuming more and more, but what do you get in the end? A few meaningless baubles to give you the illusion of benefit, and an ally of extreme unreliability and danger. That's not all though: Alpha Protocol has you battling the forces of capitalism overtly. Halbech; Halliburton-Bechtel. Coincidence? I think not. KOTOR 2... well, you get the picture. Clearly Obsidian is bravely battling the system from the inside. Seriously, they just had a Kickstarter, which works on a communal funding model. That's hardly the act of a "American Capitalist company .. spreading the lies of American Imperialism", now is it? I rest my case.

Ah, forums. In six months time it will be "it's not like South Park brought in any useful new members", it's inevitable. There's no compelling reason why you couldn't have a Cell on a dongle. You'd need a fast external bus to run it through and a decent power supply- equivalent to having an external PCI-E slot on a computer, which isn't done* but there's no particular reason you couldn't do it. Problem is that when you say dongle people think USB stick type thing rather than the plug in self contained board it would probably be. *well, my dad bought a new Sony ultra light notebook recently. It has a decent GPU- in its docking station.

To be honest, I cannot be bothered to be detailed, sorry, as that requires digging through 3 year old links and the like- though I did do some detailed rebuttal at the time I may be able to dig up. The main problem wrt to the effects of drm was that he was very fond of using absolute figures without context. For example, using the figures he supplies, Fallout 3 which was effectively DRM free was torrented only as much over the first month as Crysis: Warhead, a game which sold far fewer copies. Similar with Farcry2, both games got torrented similar amounts despite Farcry 2 having the activation DRM, selling less than F3 but otherwise being very similar (in terms of being multiplatform sequels to a PC game, similar release dates etc). Far from suggesting that DRM is effective those figures suggest it is, at best, a neutral proposition. And if DRM is either neutral or an actual negative then what exactly is the point?

It was far more 'clunky', for want of a better word, but I found it far better mechanically and ultimately far more interesting in gameplay. Its stronger points relative to CK2 and my problems with it were that having a bad leader or a child king gave you very real, and realistic, problems as your martial skill directly effected how many soldiers you could raise, even a large empire with a bad leader could be vulnerable to a small realm with a top class military leader; there was a friends/ enemies mechanic that allowed for both more organic expansion (no artificial 'fabricate claims' as in CK2, but claims against your enemies cost less prestige to get, plus you could get claims through tournament events and the like) and a better feeling of the characters being people with personalities rather than just semi random collections of traits; and the bad boy system worked well both in limiting the 'tyranny' of the ruler- you could strip traitors of titles which gave bb but so long as you gave the titles away (which lowered bb) your loyalists would not get upset- and to curb stampeding. You'd also get buildings and the like burned down if sieged, captured provinces could be looted which trashed them for years and wars cost huge amounts of money (with debt potentially forcing you to sell more buildings) so there was far more scope for a Byzantine style Decline than in CK2 where provinces, in effect, only get better with time. CK1 was not perfect by any means, its UI is difficult, it has a learning curve like a toddler in a diving pool and it still has some occasional nasty bugs, but is one of my favourites despite its flaws. CK2 has tons of stuff that should be better but ultimately feels rather like Excel: The Game with a nice interface.

Good thing this reached 9 pages before I noticed it or it would have been hulk smash, as I absolutely loathe that infernal tweakguides garbage article*. As it stands there will be a drm free copy and I for one would not have contributed to the KS if there hadn't been, and I'll simply state that I refuse to get OUTRAEGED!!1!! at pirates because it's the most pointless exercise imaginable. *Full of half truths, stats that prove the reverse of what it claims and the like. He proves that relative piracy rates are higher with activation DRM and it's obvious he never read the actual conditions for the Starforce Challenge- sadly star force no longer has them up and archive.org doesn't seem to have them, but it involved paying your own way to Moscow to reproduce the error on their picked hardware plus more and was absolutely and obviously set up specifically to be fundamentally unwinnable. Even the updates are dishonest, saying that TWitcher 2 was DRM free when the pirated version- as stated by CDPR themselves- was the SecuROMed retail version rather than the DRM free GOG one. Half truths, selective facts, strawmen and every other cheap rhetorical trick in the book.

Shifted this from the goty thread, as I have been playing CK2 recently having got up to date with the expansions and it isn't really on topic there. I don't actually dislike it though I will sound like I do; I'm mainly disappointed with its wasted potential. Main problems are: 1) The larger country wins pretty close to every single war fought, and the larger army wins close to every battle fought 2) There's no real bonus to having exceptional characters, because above a certain realm size everyone has exceptional characters. That is also at least partly why (1) happens, since you can practically guarantee 3 very good to excellent military leaders for any sizeable realm so there cannot be a Crecy/ Poitiers/ Agincourt. 3) (1) and (2) ensure that the strong almost always get stronger resulting in blob/ stampede syndrome 4) There's a lot of cosmetic variation, but almost no practical variation. Simply put, it gets boring. 5) There's a whole lot of- completely unnecessary- ahistoricity. You cannot execute (landed) traitors without loyalists getting the hump, you cannot execute/ imprison people who murdered your own relatives and were caught doing it without people hating you. 5a) You can wage war after war, fight civil wars etc for centuries and neither go into debt nor have any long term effect on your lands. 5b) Castles take too long to siege relative to levy recharge rates, and there's no 'surrender' mechanic (as would generally happen historically) so an enemy can be back to almost full strength in the time it takes to siege a province. There are assaults, but good luck with that if the garrison is 2k+ and you've less than 10x their numbers. 5c) Hilarious usage of allies to win wars- 16,000 Byzant cataphracts turning up to smack some random Sami count having sailed all the way around Europe to get there, all to gain a single province for their cousin, who isn't even in their realm. For a defensive war, maybe, but for an aggressive one and with the (ahistorical) stability of the Fatimids and Seljuks? It's a game with almost limitless potential but overall it's a garish capering jester and I've lost my patience for hey nonny nonnys and n'uncles- while Paradox seems more interested in sewing sequins onto the motley than doing anything else. (CK2+ is a large improvement over vanilla, and the GOT mod has even more potential than CK2 itself)

So far as I can remember* I've only played two 2012 games, neither of which I'd rate as a GOTY unless it was mandatory to give the award. While I liked ME3 overall it was too up and down to qualify and I'm slowly giving up hope that CK2 might be expanded into a game that fulfils its enormous promise. *I have almost certainly played other 2012 games but I can hardly have a GOTY I need to be reminded of having played.

They conquered Manchuria though. It was the Soviets that kicked them out of Manchuria again in the second largest military operation in WWII (only Barbarossa was larger in scope and resources). Yep, though Manchuria was and still is the least populated area of eastern China they also held a lot of the coastline as well, but they never came close to holding everything- maybe a quarter, roughly. In any case Japan/ China isn't a good model for anything modern as neither army was 'modern' in the sense that Germany was at the start or the main allies were at the end of WW2.

Using figures from the 6 day war is... not great, as that was a surprise attack by Israel. Comparative death tolls for the US and Japan for Dec7-13 1941 would show pretty much exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason, as would the figures for Barbarossa. A better comparison would be the Yom Kippur war where the Egyptian performance really rattled the Israelis, and Egypt's army is far better now than it was then. Pointless anyway. Israel words are backed by nuclear weapons, and that's all that is required 95% of the time. And Volo, Japan never conquered China, not even close.

It shouldn't be that bad persistently, first time it is run it has to do some engine housekeeping (building the "pathfinding", essentially) which takes extra time and can make it look like it's stuck, but that should be only for the first time. It'll never be fast loading though, it's just not how the engine is constructed.

It's almost certainly not a steam key, but a paradox key. You need it (if desired, optional) for paradox forum registration as it gives access to restricted forums like tech support, and to use the metaserver for multiplayer. I bought my CK II on steam... got a steam key and redeemed it on my steam client. It has been working so far I don't use steam of course- as it's an affront to all that is good in the world and a vile carbuncle on the otherwise baby smooth bottom of PC gaming- but a key which it doesn't want prior to installation/ running will likely be used for the metaserver/ paradox forums. If it were the steam code itself then she wouldn't even be able to install/ run it without having inputted it prior, as you did. My properly DRM free copy bought from the rich, verdant, oppression free fields of GG came with a key, for example, which I've never had to use; sadly in large part because I found CK2 extremely disappointing overall (actually one of the most disappointing games I've ever played) and a pale shadow of the gleeful anarchism of the original game.

It's almost certainly not a steam key, but a paradox key. You need it (if desired, optional) for paradox forum registration as it gives access to restricted forums like tech support, and to use the metaserver for multiplayer. All Paradox games take ages to load- there are thousands of files loaded at startup and to help with modding most are in plain text or can be altered. For something like EU3 you can also end up with 70MB+ plain text save game files that take ages to load towards the end of the game.

Yes, but one of them has an uninterrupted history from, effectively, Baibars in 1260 to the present day while the other's possession terminated either 2500 or 2000 years ago, depending on how you measure it. That's not like Joseph Bloggstein turning up in Frankfurt in 1946 expecting to get his old property back having fled it in 1933, that's Joseph Bloggstein's great great (x100) grandson turning up and expecting his property back. Under those rules Italy has a legitimate claim to western Europe and the Mediterranean littoral, and I'd rather like north Germany, England, Denmark, Palestine, Switzerland, Italy and southern France back. Nope, Balfour Declaration was 1917, during WW1 and was, as with their (contradictory, who'd a guessed) promises to the arab side, a ploy to get support vs the Ottomans and never intended to be fulfilled, hence British Mandate Palestine, not Israel in 1918. Anyone with any sense does blame the British, and the French, for being- frankly- dishonest colonialist scum who managed the difficult task of asterisking the region up even more than it was with their arbitrary line drawing, contradictory promises, flagrant outright lying and mealy mouthed White Man's Burden justifications for said self interested carve up and associated brutal repression and reliance on even more brutal proxy rulers. After all, it wasn't Saddam Hussein who first gassed Iraq's marsh arabs, it was the British as suggested by... Winston S Churchill, national hero.

Yep. Else, it will be welcome to our new Ethiopian overlords. Which will be fine actually, because in those circumstances we'll all be Ethiopians. "We were there x years ago" is a poor justification because if it's valid then it's a valid justification for pretty much everything. All Euros out of the americas etc etc. Even if it could be a proper argument in some cases it isn't a proper argument in this case. Israel took Solomonic Israel from the Canaanites by a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, so logically we should have a look for some extant Canaanites and give the land back to them.

Well, it's not well explained. It can be finniky and sticky. It's hard to get out of combo's once you've started them and can't break your attack to dodge. Not to mention the fact that they have clunky controls for magic, and it's habit of giving you abilities that you don't understand how to use (catching knives on your sword). I kind of presumed Nightshape was asking primarily about the UI (since layout and design was mentioned) rather than the combat? I do agree on the giving abilities you don't know how to use thing though. Last replay I forgot how to level up (!) and (iirc) neither the manual nor the help text mentioned opening the relevant screen while meditating, only opening the relevant screen itself. Didn't take me long to work it out, of course. May have changed with the new version/ tutorial stuff though which is far too big for me to download.