Raithe

To be fair to the brain dead council members.. Look at it if you didn't know Saren was involved: Saren - has a legendary, heroic reputation for the last x many decades. Is the Spectre called when it's a "it must be done" situation. Bolshy humans turn up, first time they have a candidate try out for Spectre, Saren gives them a fail. A couple of years later... a second human is given a chance.. the Spectre overseeing it ends up dead, and those pesky humans are saying Saren did it.. with absolutely no proof beyond their "word". And so far they're kind of known as being a bit pushy... It would be kind of like some third-world country turning up to the USA and saying "hey, you know that dedicated soldier guy who's won the Medal of Honor more then once? He murdered someone. Oh. we don't have any proof. But we're telling you the truth guv'nor. Honest."

The game makes a "special" auto-save when you complete ME. It's seperate from the normal auto-saves and whatever saves you've kept. That's the one that gets used to transfer to ME2.

Tsk.. My sister wanted to run through Mass Effect but at the moment it refuses to work properly on her lap top, keeps throwing up the joys of "general protection fault" after the first splash screen. So she's saying "I refuse to get excited about ME2's release until the first one works on my laptop!!" For myself, spent a little time replaying Batman Arkham.. supposed to have Assassin's Creed Director's Cut turn up in the post today..but the snow and frost seem to have delayed that..

Now was it just some strange thing.. or did I actually read some comment about ME2 that they've specifically aimed at having each character with fairly unique/individual powers.. rather then similar ones.. to encourage players to mix and switch their group during the game depending on what they're facing? I seem to have a dim memory of it in an interview somewhere, so that so that players wouldn't just have the same "two" for every single moment... but I can't recall where so I'm suddenly wondering if twas but some strange dream... Although on a similar point.. Vanguards don't have Lift or Throw?? Dammit, I loved those on my Vanguard run through..

Just worked my way through the Saltation e-ARC. Pondering on what to hit next, I do have the Mistborn trilogy to try at some point, but not in a fantasy mood at the moment..

He does actually start introducing liberals who are smart and aren't incompetent/evil/jerkasses. Although the word of warning, the last book in the series ends on a major cliffhanger so I'd take my time getting to it.

The key point to that.. is that the spaceships are designed that way for a reason.. First of all, so the author can simulate "space battles" with navies very reminiscent of ye olde Napoleonic War style wet navies and re-using their tactics just "in space" and with "sci-fi versions of cannon fire" . Second, so that in the middle of the series they can suddenly start changing the technology and breaking the "static" tactics they were using for the x decades/centuries before the series start. Personally I quite enjoy most David Weber writing. But the Harrington stuff is very much a.. "hornblower in space" for the early books. As the series develops the characters get more experienced, the wars start, and they really add in the politics beyond just being a ship's captain. Also minor elements of economics of it all. And a fair few point-of-view changes from character to character when you have big interstellar set ups.

Dungeons & Dragons - the roleplaying (pen and paper) game that inspired all the mentioned computer games. All using some variant of whichever the current ruleset was at the time.

Having said that, I do mostly enjoy the first 5 books. The characters grow on you and there are plenty of good ideas. It's just the author turned into one of those guys who just.. jumped the shark. He suddenly stopped being a "fantasy author" and became a "philosophical novelist". If you want a good idea of how it all goes have a look at it's listing on TvTropes

Maybe if you collected all the Prothean Data Discs you get some info ont he Collector's you wouldn't have had otherwise? It would be nice to not have spent all that time without getting some actual data..

The Sword of Truth gets better.. then gets .. worse. It starts diverting into some reallly obvious anvil over the head philosophy "lectures". While after hm, book 5 I think it is there are some good points and some nice character development, the story itself seems to go off-track. And the ending is just.. way too much of the deus ex machinae type of hand waving in the last chapter.

And apparently there is a large segment of fangirls who go squee! over Colonel Q and his general levels of badassitude. For those getting worried about catgirl attraction, it's done on purpose. Cameron went around with concept pictures of the leading spacesmurf and asked people if they'd "bone her". And he kept getting the concept art changed until the majority of people said "yes." Apparently he really wanted to get his furryfantasy working for everybody

The aesthetic appeal of the female form, even in virtual, is quite often an attraction for the male segment... but I'd say a lot of people just like immersing themselves in a game and blowing crap up while saving the country/world/galaxy I've got to say I spent more time looking at the backgrounds and other things going on on the screen with ME then staring at my character's ass.. But there's always room for everyones playing styles

From what I read, a lot of what they do is research into genetic engineering type of aspects (along the lines of how they figured out how to create human biotics) so in the name of the "greater good" they have to experiment on a small number of humans.. The rear admiral being someone who obviously didn't understand the need for Ceberus' work, and was trying to cause problems so they bushwacked him, and took him away to throw in one of their experiments...

Would be interesting.. but just can't spring for a plane ticket over the pond at the moment...

Of course, I also got quite hyped and interested over Deus Ex Invisible War when they kept going on about the reactivity of the different factions and how it would play differently if you aided one group and they'd remember if you later backstabbed them for another group and so on... and the game arrived and it was all "Where the hell is the reactivity and repurcussions?!?" I was worried for a little bit that AP might be the same..but after these last few blogs I'm getting quite positive and optimistic over it all once more...

Which I kind of recall was a lot like we had for ME newswise.. was just The Gith without mention of Saren until very close to release time.

I don't know.. the main bad guy from Jade Empire has to win a lot of points.. I mean, without any plot spoilers or anything, he was a major manipulative bastard in the classic sense of a mastermind.

From what's come out so far, it feels like Jacob represents the "bland everyman" member of the team.. the generic human "hero" aide and companion... There always has to be someone.. just to make sure the hero feels like they have serious charisma and moxy in comparison...

Looking forward to this. Really want to see how this will come across in gameplay like..

Planescape Tormnet does ride up there as one of the best... Temple of Elemental Evil was one of the worst, I just couldn't get into it..which is rare for me. Hm, there was an interesting one they did based on their Birthright campaign setting.. interesting but flawed but worth a try. The Al-Quadim one was nice if you enjoyed the pseudo arabic style setting but nothing too major.

I'm fuzzing between March and April.. but I'm going to say March because I'm being optimistic

I actually kind of enjoyed Jade Empire.. at least the story. I've never been able to make up my mind on the actual game play.. but the story I liked. Heh, I'd heard they decided to change Miranda's last name to "Lawson" just because it sounds better with the australian accent and they thought it would confuse people otherwise.. ah well.

And now they've released the companion trailer of Miranda as well.. It might take me a little bit to forget Chuck when she starts talking during gameplay...

I liked the Vanguard mix.. but I'm not a big fan of the shotgun.... I went through ME using a pistol only for my Vanguard attempt.. Not sure if that'll work with the ME2 version.... I was liking the look of the submachine guns...