Raithe

Not a new discovery per se, but an interesting thing... Up and Down; The journey of a shuttle booster in 400 seconds.. http://io9.com/58936...e-during-launch High definition video shot from the booster rockets, then given to Skywalker Sound to clear up the audio ... http://youtu.be/2aCOyOvOw5c

This.. Is... Marriage!

For one thing that struck me as amusing, one of those minor celebrities over here in the UK has just had an ex-bf leak an "intimate" video of her going down on him. So she puts up a youtube video to her fans talking about how she's been "broken up into bits over it" but that she isn't the type to "the type to sit down and keep my mouth shut about anything". Did she actually think about that line before saying it?

And for the Developer Dispatch regarding the Legacy system.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6y_1WQAewI&feature=youtu.be

Well "time travel" is also a banned reference. That came up a year or so ago because you can't use the chinese internet to search for Doctor Who related matters apparently..

No matter what happens, you have to admit, the majority of the game was quite good. The way some of it wove together, and how things could totally change depending on those earlier choices. Tuchanka and the Krogan being one of the serious examples. If Wrex had died before, and Wreav was in charge, you know the Krogan's can't be trusted in the future, and without Maelon's data to ensure Eve's survival, she can't balance things out.. so there's a damn good reason to take the sabotage options. But if Wrex is alive, and Eve is there to help support the resurgence of Krogan's beyond warfare and bloodshed... Then it actually makes sense to tell the Dalatress to take a hike and make sure the genophage cure actually works. Much the same way that Tali / Legion relationship can pan out in different ways.. Sure, some of it might be taking the "easy emotional buttons", but they're usually well-crafted emotional buttons regardless. It's just a shame you have that sudden reversal for that final 10 minutes.

The slideshow endings can be a nice, short way to show how companions move on, and how they're affected by things you did during the game.. It can add a certain sense to things having mattered beyond whatever "final boss" encounter was there beforehand.. They weren't the first to do it, but they did proceed to use it with a fairly decent attempt at not just having "one automatic response" regardless of how things played out.

And for the stellar phenomenae folks.. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120306-dark-matter-galaxies-mystery-space-science/ There could be more then one type of Dark Matter.. just to confuse matters..

Also for the whole Collectors vs Dreadnoughts argument.. Think about the number of dreadnoughts in the galaxy. The human alliance has..7? in total. The Asari have around 12, and the Turians have about 27? Rough numbers are like that.. Since they're divided up between the various fleets that are dealing with Reapers directly.. I don't think the Collectors would have that much issue in avoiding them to take swipes at the various colony worlds...

Ah, if you have a really high number of War Assets.. And I believe it's only if you choose the Destroy option..

Hm, made it to Act 3 for my Smuggler. This time it was actually noticable that the war had broken out once more between the Republic and Imperials.. Seriously, it didn't seem to crop up as any announcement in the Sith Inquisitor story.. maybe I was too focused on the whole.. internal sith politics and one of the Dark Lords trying to killl me..

Of course, I'm not gaining huge amounts of weight.. but then I have rather bad habit of getting into a set of one actual "proper" meal for dinner, no breakfast, and some kind of light snack rather then lunch.. along with pints and pints of tea drunk throughout the day..

Gee, if only I could stabilise my sleep to stop bouncing those odd weeks of insomnia....

Hm, in my life so far I've gone through three hamsters, one guinea pig (struck by lightning - I do not lie), one dog that was the families and went out with cancer, and one dog that whilst technically was my sister's I was the one that actually took it for walks and who it spent the most time with. Currently juggling a persian cat that's blind in one eye, an overenthusiastic (and not totally coordinated) alsatian that's just over a year old, and a ****er spaniel that originally came from an abusive home and is now learning to bark again. Again, technically they're my sister's.. but since I'm pretty much the active person at home during the day...

Hm, that depends on several perspectives. Having the comparison between EDI and the Reapers as both are examples of unshackled AI's might not be a glaring "This is majorly important to the Plot!" marks, but it's very good storytelling. It adds to the sense of the world, and you couldn't build that in if it was all crammed into ME3. By establishing EDI and exactly how she came to be unshackled in ME2, it lets them weave in a more fully fledge part of the backstroy for ME3. Vital to the plot? Maybe not, but vital to the sense of character and background? I'd say so. Also, for the plot related notes, EDI's presence, unshackled nature, and attachement to both Joker and Shepard are what allows Normandy to be there to pick up Shepard on Earth at the beginning. If EDI and Joker hadn't hijacked the ship from where the Alliance were remodelling it, getting Shep off planet and back to the ship would have been a whole nother mess of things.

Heh, And with the new Saints Row DLC coming out (The Trouble With Clones), they're doing the "Remember, if you paid for the Season Pass, you'll get the DLC free!" .. Um, no. If you got the season pass that was paying the price of three dlc's, with a small discount, a year before they were all out. That doesn't mean you get the dlc's free.. it means you already paid for them...

You need EDI's presence in ME2 to have established that rapport with Joker, and to have an unshackled AI that you can contrast with the horrors of the Reapers. Thus making EDI's potential journey into an awareness of what it means to be "alive" a nice background note to all of the horrors of war that's happening during ME3.

Not to get too outrightly finnicky, but the SR2 is based off of the original Normandy, but has a whole bunch of upgrades compared to it. That's why it's about twice the size of the original Normandy, and that's before you do any of the character driven upgrades available. I still tend to view the Collectors as a nasty behind the lines types. They have better sensors, and probably stealth systems (since they have that whole mysterious reputation as slavers and the like).. so getting in close to a planet and dropping a few shuttle loads of their paralyzing bugs, or some other type of biological/nanotech virus across populations? Who needs to face serious defences when you can bypass them like that?

No, we wouldn't. The collectors had negligible military force (one cruiser, which loses in a pitched fight to a frigate), and thus they never could have really competed that human reaper. They were a non-threat. Well, the Normandy Mrk 2 had a few significant upgrades beyond a standard frigate. And the Collector's ship that we did see was able to spot the Normandy even stealthed, which shows their sensors must be significantly advanced.. Also, who is to say the Collectors would be used as a space navy? Get a shuttle or two loaded with their organic weapons into a planets atmosphere.. boom, handle a serious chunk of population without too much stress. I'd say the Collector's would have made a fairly devcent behind the lines strike force like that.. Plus adds in some Psy-Ops elements..

I still haven't gotten around to trying the DA2 dlc.. hell, I haven't even picked them up yet.. and I'm not in any rush to do so...

The thing is, if you're comparing it to the DX:HR ending.. The ending for that game fit within the story of what had come before, and where it was going. It wasn't a great ending, but it was coherent with everything else, and it suited the game. The ME3 ending just..has that violent reversal from choices mattering. And in fact, it seems geared towards making choices that you had made earlier.. not matter. Throw in that it's not coherent with everything else. And that it directly contravenes everything Bioware had been saying about it before hand... "We won't give you an a, b, or c ending" and you end up having to select button a, b, or c...

They've mashed up the books, John Carter has seriously mad jumping skills, the Therns have super-tech , the City-States are kind of split between two instead of a bunch.. But damn, it catches the spirit of the whole thing. That, and it's just generally fun. It's not too serious, it's not too silly, it has pulpy sci-fi planetary romance swashbuckleryness.

It's supposed to be an automatic thing whenever you reach 10th level. It's usually about 24 hours out of synch, but it's basically a "here's some more basics explained, just in case you hadn't learnt them in-game getting there". Apparently they had a few people get confused about what was happening when they hit 10th and were supposed to head to fleet.