Raithe

Maybe I just had a glitch then Vol.. Because I told Jack flat out "no, I wasn't interested in her" and then every time I tried talking to her after she kept doing the dialogue spin of "i know you're seeing that other girl, make a choice or just leave me alone." and nada else but that.

Alien Legacy - developed by Ybarra Productions and published by Sierra Online back in the early 90's... Had an interesting mix of strategy, resource management with an almost.. adventure game style storyline.

"If there was a way to get magic for free, do you really think I'd have spent so much time sacrificing children to my dark gods? For spells, I mean. Obviously there'd still be sacrifices. A hobby's a hobby."

Tsk.. it takes me about 5-6 hours to read one... if I'm having a seriously quiet weekend feeling like lazing around, I can get through a three or four .. Maybe that's given me a different view point on them then all those people that seem to take a month to read just one.. but I find when you have them together that the story smooths out a whole lot better then when you take them piece meal...

Hm, one thing that did hit me.. Even though I told Jack i wasn't interested in a relationship with her, the next time I tried talking to her she went into the "I know you're hitting on that other girl, make a choice or stop visiting me" dialogue.. Which kind of makes me want to throw my hands up and do the whole " I don't need to make a choice. I told you NO!"

Legend had (now it's run by Atari) a book forum for WoT. It was quite popular back in the day, though now it's like a graveyard. I don't know.. Dragonmount is fairly active on the net for fan interest on WoT.. besides linking fans, it's the site that had a long running connection with Jordan's family as well.

Maybe it's just that it's a lot quicker with the mouse on the PC version then it is with the xbox control.. But yeah, scanning a planet was the hold the button and run the mouse back and forth quickly, then if you got a big spike , slow down center on the area, blip a probe, then return to the fast flicking the cursor up and down... Didn't really take that long. Scan a few planets like that every couple of missions and you had enough minerals for everything...

With Miranda, it felt like even Cerberus treated her more as a tool due to her genetic enhancements (and no, I'm not talking about the curves), but she was loyal to them because they protected her from her dad, and gave her a sense of purpose. Then along comes Shep and through the quick-n-easy hero therapy sessions, trying to treat her as a "person" rather then just some genetically enhanced wonder tool.. not even counting earning her loyalty and/or seducing her into the romance.. They could have made more of the whole process rather then shrink it down to a handful of conversations, but it's understandable characterwise.

From the limited news so far, I don't see a point to go mass-hate, or mass-love. It's obsidian involved in some way with a game (or possible several games). It's not been announced what sort of format or genre the styles of the games will be (although with obsidian involvement, the likelihood of some form of rpg is most likely). It's a rather extensive fantasy setting with a fair amount of detail out about it. Beyond that... as someone who liked the books, I'll be interested to see what gets done. But until more details come out, I'm not going to say it's going to be good or a horror show.

Yes, when you talk to the Volus in ME1 about the Shadow Broker you do get the heavy suggestion that the SB is heavily intwined in galactic politics, business, and crime on a lot of levels.... and everybody is used to it. Which suggests that the SB has been around a lot longer then the 10 odd years that humanity has been on the galactic scene... Although TIM comes across as if he's going to be pulling xanatos gambits and even some xanatos roulette. I get the feeling he's spread out through the alliance and used the whole.. "humans are adaptable" to get into the flow of info on the other races. There was some entry that mentioned how it was actually TIM who'd manipulated the Alliance/Turian agreement that created the original Normandy as an excuse to get a better look at Turian technology...

Yeah, a first person shooter type, set 1,000 years before the books. Played as an Aes'Sedai using channeling (the magic) to do the shooting. Rather then picking up guns, you picked up new "weaves" to use. A bit glitchy in places. But did have a rather good soundtrack.

That's the real reason for romancing Miranda... seducing her away from Cerberus to loyalty to you..

I do kind of wish that if they're going to let you troll around the universe after finishing the suicide mission... that there'd be at least some recognition by certain people that you'd just done that. I mean you just get the same old dialogue choices for Aria, Anderson... How much would it have taken to have put in something there? Apart from taking Legion around to see what reactions people get to a Geth... there just doesn't seem any real immersive flow to doing any missions or such afterwards..

Talk to the Citadel Security/Receptionist in the dock area when you have Legion.. Shep : "Why is security so heavy?" C-Sec: "We're cracking down to prevent Geth infiltration." Legion: "Geth do not infiltrate" C-Sec: "Please be aware that mobile recording units are not allowed on ..."

There are slow bits, and a lot of people don't like that the author introduces a lot of characters as the series progresses... But it really gives the detail and character development of the main "hero" types, that start out from the typical back-of-beyond-village.. and over the course of the series grow into positions of major consequence, influence and having to deal with the "bad guys". Throw in the politics, manipulations, countries going to war with each other, people not truly believing in the big bad, and thinking that the hero's are the big bad... It can go off the rails in way too much details of certain things, and following minor characters (but then, even minor characters cab do stuff that turns out to have serious consequences that affect the main characters 8 chapters later...). Personally, I found it a lot more fun then reading LoTR

ME2 Ending tweets : "The game is going really well and folks are looking forward to where the overall plot will go. Then Fox cancels the series" "Shepard discovers that the princess is in another castle." "Shepard discovers that he is inside the Matrix." "At the end of mass effect 2 you find out that Shepard was a ghost the whole time! " "Shepard wins SAG Award for his moving documentary "In the Belly of the Beast." Harbinger sues, citing defamation of character." "Joker makes the Kessel Run in less than eleven parsecs." "Shepherd discovers its all a simulation, Miranda is in fact an old insane German sounding scientist pretending to be a girl."

To be fair to Zaeed there, when he co-founded Blue Suns, he handled one side of the business, and his partner handled the other side.. The partner being one of those rather nasty individuals who developed a core group of nasty thugs loyal to him, and then pulled a coup on Zaeed when he got back from business.. Then after they thought Zaeed was dead, they proceeded to purge all mention of him in the groups history and started a major recruitment drive to push out some of the other "old core" of the group. So it wasn't as if he was shot by his own men for being a crappy leader.

For the slightly random thing.. How many things have people noticed that should be affected by ME1 playthroughs? (beyond the main storyline aspects of Wrex/Ashley/Kaidan dead or not, Rachni queen alive or dead, Council save or not).. I mean Conrad Venner acts as if renegade option was chosen, (even though I went paragon on him). The Asari Consort mission was done to save her reputation, and yet there are the news stories about her having to leave the Citadel due to leaking information... I ran into Helena Blake doing social work on Omega.. The Asari scientist I told on Virmire to "run if you can, because I'm about to nuke this place) turns up with the amusing "I saw it was you, so I turned the security cameras off..now I'm about to run before you nuke this place"... How many other aspects have people noticed? and how many seem to go with the choices made in ME1?

I get the feeling that if she's not loyal she'd actually be shot at that point. I had Zaeed lead the second team once, (thought the whole, veteran mercenary, battlefield expert would count for leading teams) and he came through that door, leaned against it almost exactly like Miranda does, then falls over dead gasping out "shields went down at the last minute" or something to that effect. (and yes, he was even loyal at the time).

I've had everyone loyal and still people died.... So it's got to be as much who you choose to go on which teams beyond just having them loyal or not..

Mordin kept being the only one that died until I used him to take the Crew back.. Of course, then I used Zaeed to lead the second squad and he died.. I did manage to juggle it so no-one died.. but I do get a feeling there's some really finnicky reasons for people dying on the Collector Base...

" In a post-gunpowder society, physical toughness and blind aggression aren't decisive." That's judging purely by human standards. Krogan have the whole.. multiple redundant organs, an extra nervous system, and the big hump that stores water/food type stuff. When a big hump is a sign that you're a successful hunter and have been able to take on the very predatory wildlife of sunny Tuchanka.. and that gets you scoring points with the ladies and being able to breed... Krogan society keeps bouncing from advanced to wasteland.. if it wasn't for all the alien contact they wouldn't have the "steady" aspect of technology available.

IIRC, the blood rage thing is "promoted" to survive in the post-nuclear environment and had nothing to do with the salarians. Which is pretty stupid by itself and another excellent example of what I'm saying, as it's not uber macho bull**** that can rebuild a society but initiative, intelligence and, yeah, you guessed it: production. Looks like somebody in the writing team isn't familiar with the concept of diminishing returns. I wasn't saying that the Salarians had anything to do with the Blood Rage itself. Just that before the Krogans were uplifted, before they had the technology to destroy themselves, the Krogans actually viewed the Blood Rage as a bad thing. It was only after the whole given advanced tech, blow themselves up, and the Blood Rage becoming a near universal thing to the Krogans that they stopped viewing it as a bad thing. And frankly, the Krogans as is, come off like the psycho gangs in any apocalypse movie.. because they haven't rebuilt anything. They've reverted to the tribal clan structures. They don't really have their own spaceships, they don't seem to have much in the way of production at the moment. If it wasn't for other people turning up to hire them as mercs you wouldn't really see them off-world. Heck, Wrex is the one that's actually trying to rebuild the Krogan's as a "unified" society. He is showing initiative, and attempting to use intelligence and increase the production of the species. But he's mostly the exception to the Krogan rule.

Maybe it's because the "warmonger" aspects are in-line of the Krogan being the "ultimate jocks". That might appeal to the gamer-jocks more then the gamer-geeks

Hm, well its not as if the Krogans developed totally naturally. There's even the conversation with Mordin at some point where he regrets what the Salarians did. He does the commentary that "to develop to x point, a species has to deal with the warlike attitudes, but we bypassed that for the Krogans by giving them the technology and pointing them at the Rachni. If we'd left them alone they could have worked it out naturally." .. or words to that effect. Also, the Krogan Blood Rage - it get's pointed out (in the Codex entry I believe) that before the Salarians uplifted the Krogan race, the Blood Rage was considered a pathological condition, was rare, and treated as such, as some form of disease. But after the Salarians had uplifted them, and they'd destroyed their own world and had to rebuild and regrow.. only those with the Blood Rage had survived the fallout and general apocalypse conditions. So it's almost unheard of for modern-day Krogan to not have the Blood Rage.