Raithe

I remember playing the first one a long time ago... Once you got used to the Alien's perspective it became very fun to play. Sucked to be a marine though. Life expectancy was predictably short But doing the Marine as part of a lan match was always damn fun. Especially when doing the cooperative marines vs alien horde or predator hunters.. Man, that hits flashback to university days...

Hope things turn out well for you and her Hurl. May recovery from all the testing go swiftly. Hm, it seems a whole bunch of people I know are suddenly dealing with all sorts of hospital visits and wotnot lately. Guess it's all going around. Successfully had the boiler repaired this morning. So as autumn turns its way, we actually have heating in the house...

And of course.. as Hollywood has shown us.. What you really need for a classic villain.. is an English accent. That and utterly memorable dialogue full of pithiness and wit..

Heh, had a totally and utterly random thought. "What would a vampire do when the zombie apocalypse happens?" I mean, can you imagine it, most of the population wiped out and turned into slavvering zombies.. what's a vamp going to snack down on? I could foresee some budding author taking a spin with a vampire protagonist trying to deal with that... Possibly a black comedy or just in a more serious manner....

Pushing my Jedi Knight through Belsavis... trying to decide whether I can let my ocd gaming nature slide on avoiding some of the world quests and just focus on the class quests ..

The prologue for the finale to Wheel of Time is making the rounds. They released it as "By Grace and Banners Fallen". Now it's the wait until the full release in January.. I suppose after the better part of just under two decades it's nice to see it come to a close and see how much gets wrapped up. The prologue firmly teases a few areas out...

Although, if there is no direct alignment push for your actions (ie, there's no +2 good/light score) etc, you can be picking what might be considered the "good" actions for purely rational, ruthless reasons. It's the "huh, if I do this, they'll potentially owe me a favour and will consider me a nice guy", compared to a true blue hero who is all "i'm doing this because I like puppies and saving people and this is the righteously good thing to do!" It's the same action, it's the same result of improving your reputation with the faction, but the reasons for it are in your head. The complexity starts kicking in if you're trying to develop means of recording within the game if you're doing it for "good/evil" reasons... If there is no morality system per se, you don't have to worry about labelling one choice good or bad. You just have to have options available that make sense and are intelligent / ruthless / practical rather then the usual "help them / ignore it / kill them all regardless" that you find in a lot of games. But yes, if there are going to be ways for the player character to be a complete and utter magnificent bastard, you need it to be smarter then just moronic evil.

The bad guy needs to have soul. Soul and dripping atmosphere that provides that loathing/hatred/respect that digs down and propels you forward to stop his plans. It's also kind of fun to have the bad guys who really, truly don't think of themselves as bad guys. Sure, there have been some fun "i'm crazy and evil" bad guys, but the ones that felt that what they were doing made them the heroes and you the bad guy in their story.. Those can be memorable.

Although that does add another element to ponder on.. The Trophy Room! So at various points, significant enemies might leave something behind you can loot/hack off their dismembered corpses and have stuffed and mounted in your trophy room for you to look back on fondly and show to guests.. That, and to take groovy screen shots of the collection to boast out of game..

A dungeon crawl is basically one large complex (regardless of how it's actually set - underground, in a wizards tower, wahtever) to explore, fight the monsters and pick up loot.. They can be fun when paced right, but they really need a good atmosphere and some consistent story behind them. If it's just there for the sake of it, it's a meaningless grind for loot n xp. But with some form of backstory of why it's there, how it's been turned into a "dungeon" as it were, and a good reason for why you've decided/needed to go wandering through it.. The atmosphere builds on that. Not everybody gets their kicks from a dungeon (not all kinks are the same..) so if you do make it a "mega-dungeon" it really needs to be non-mandatory rather then an integral party of the story that has to be done. Personally, I need to be in the right mood to enjoy a dungeon crawl experience. So while I would say it's always good to put in a mega-dungeon if it has a good, consistent story logic to it... I wouldn't want to see too many resources pulled away from the main story and gameplay. It is a really nice throwback to the classic adventuring so it's going to touch that inner-gamer, but it needs to be balanced.

Actually finding it a little hard to sit down and play anything for any serious moment of time. Keep getting short half an hour bursts of some games, but the mood just isn't clicking at the moment. So having short pokes of TOR, Space Marine.. Having a ponder about trying Alpha Centauri too see if that addictive nature helps bring my gaming mood back..

The one issue of technology in a fantasy world that does interest me is the balance it has with how common magic is.. Such as if everyone has some simple magic that can be used to solve a problem, who is actually going to bother coming up with a practical engineering/science based solution to that problem? At what point does reliance on the one slow down research / practical applications of the other? How well does magic and technology mix? With advanced magic, there's usually a fairly well versed alchemy and basis of chemistry.. But with the casual applications of healing magic and such, how often will people really look into biology and medicine?

If you do get a house, it really needs to have some element of story to it. And several quests (large or small) over time, with the potential to have it reflect different aspects of your character. Not just some generic shack/hut you can pick up for 10,000 gold and is basically a couple of pretty rooms and plenty of loot-holding containers... If you can get it early in the game, you should be able to expand on it in some ways as you get more powerful/renown/wealth. Have quests that complicate matters, and depending on the outcome change the way your house can develop.

If you do get to wander around after the main storyline has been done.. You really, really, really, truly seriously need to actually have it mean something in the rest of the world. Okay, that is if the main storyline actually has effects on the world and various factions and such like. But in general, there has to be some reaction in the rest of the world to what you've just gone through and achieved.

From the outside observer, most the press has seemed to cover Romney and Obama are basically them making claims about how crap the other is, more then actually talking about specifics of what they want to do... It tends to make it very easy not to take either candidate that seriously.

"Nonsense. I speak horse. His name is Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices."

The balance of narrations with pictures, and potential cutscenes.. Things get increasingly harder if they're supposed to have the player character or companions involved. At least, if you can change the appearance of them and what they're wearing.. So you pretty much have to default to showing backgrounds and everyone else rather then include the party in them..

heh, and shortly upcoming "quality of life" improvements on 1.4 http://www.swtor.com/blog/quality-life-improvements-game-update-1.4 Including, finally:

Otherwise known as 36 of D?

On that other side.. it's about 5 years this October that Bioware was picked up by EA wasn't it? Has that timing of potential contract issues? <lurks suspiciously> Quick, let us all start positing the assorting Evil Conspiracy Theories regarding EA now...

Well it looks like a whole bunch (including Corellian Run) have been merged together to form a whole new "The Shadowlands" server. That and folks are getting the opportunity to rename their legacies, and handle potential multiple character names on a server issues.. Hm, and they've added 4 extra slots to create characters in (so from 8 to 12...).

"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" One of those slightly quirky low-key drama/comedy/romance films, Steve Carell as an insurance salesman whose wife suddenly leaves him when its realised that a rather large asteroid is going to hit the Earth in a months time.. As the world slowly loses it's plot over that period, he receives a letter from the lost love of his life and ends up going on a road trip with his slightly flakey neighbour, Keira Knightley, to go find said ex-girlfriend.

Gracias for the swift update. It all sets the mind to inquisitive stirring..

Hm, Unless.. they could do in in a way of flashbacks within the game.... o O (queue Twilight Zone music....)

Yes, condolences indeed WDeranged.