pmp10

Isn't that sort of contradictory? I would think whether or not to worship a particular god or not a crucial part of a faiths tenets. That would make Judaism, Christianity and Islam a sectarian difference according to your second line, yet different religions according to your first line. Err no. I wrote a part of an pantheon. Judaism, Christianity and Islam could be sects of the same religion if Yahweh God-father and Allah formed a pantheon. If you believe that you in the afterlife go to the halls of Grimnir as a dead dwarf and believe that you go to the gardens Morr as a good human Empire citizen, would you simply call that different sects? Why would there be any conflict in that case? I see no problem in belief that different people go to different places after death. In fact religions usually describe different forms of afterlife depending on the way our earthly lives go. If good people can go to heaven and bad people to hell why would a separate afterlife for humans and dwarfs lead to a schism?

That's a completely unnecessary definition. Every single religion has it's tenants of faith that list exactly what beliefs are necessary to be considered a part of it. It's pretty simple - if you don't believe in Jesus Christ being a son of god and his subsequent martyrdom/resurrection you cannot be considered a Christian. Likewise if you reject Mohammed as a prophet you can't be considered a Muslim. Differences in crucial tenants of faith point out to splits between religions. On the other hand the differences in which part of the pantheon to worship and the manner of that worship is a sectarian difference. The split between Catholic Protestant and Orthodox churches is a prime example of Christian sects going about worship in different ways. If a group of fantasy races have the same core beliefs that are not mutually exclusive then they are a part of the same religion. If in that worship they concentrate on different deities and use different ritual it just means that they belong to different sects.

Just because you call your supreme being 'God' doesn't mean you form a part of the same religion. The theological differences between Judaism Christianity and Islam are far too large to be considered a mere detail.

By definition "pantheon" covers all deities that are thought to exist (whether worshiped or not) and yes that's a real world definition. Actually it would be the same religion just a different sect. Just because your worship focuses on different set of deities (or different aspects of existing ones) doesn't mean you follow a different religion. You need to deny some crucial tenant of religion in question to be a part of a different belief.

Religious schisms in human history have regularly resulted in wars, massacres and persecutions. Even if you can set political correctness aside that's still one ugly side of religion that people wouldn't like to revisit.

Because gaming audience demands some level of familiarity with the setting. What gamers are familiar with (in terms of religion) is modern Christianity and ancient paganism.

Posted March 2006 with no news since. I wouldn't expect an effective mind-machine interface anytime soon.

Not in my experience. I certainly didn't go from 'dead in 5 seconds' to 'victorious in 15 seconds' on skill but on grind.

Wait until the ending. It's a little polarizing so may change your opinion. I kept trying to get further with Dark Souls but finally ran out of patience. I was hoping that the next boss will be beatable without grinding but no such luck. Final impressions are similar to first ones - it's an average game with a lot of undeserved praise. But my biggest problem is the way it's difficulty level has been presented everywhere. It's complete non-sense that the game is difficult - boss fights are simply around 90% equipment-based and don't test player abilities in a significant manner. The only necessary ability to succeed at Dark Souls is commitment to grind.

That's nice but even for a level 20 character 3000 souls represent a 30 minute grind. I guess it may not be a big deal if you compare it to bosses which as far as I've seen require hours of grinding to beat.

I have a different suggestion regarding Dark Souls: Just watch/read every walkthrough and guide you can find. Learn your travel paths and enemy attack patterns and things should start to slowly move forward. That way you can avoid the epic foreknowledge grind and focus purely on execution.

I tried it out, and it's actually pretty awesome. The main strength of the game is the narrative. Yup. The combat isn't bad as it changes throughout the game with new weapons, upgrades and enemies. But it's the storyline and the way that handled are by far the main attraction.

Dark Souls and occasionally Vindictus. It's essentially a mixture of an average hack&slash and an older MMO. On the other hand Vindictus is at least fun for 10 levels or so and (nominally) free to play.

That's great. I just hope 'more' doesn't mean DS3 was considered the first one. That's one RPG definition I wouldn't agree with.

There is no business sense to compete with another one of your own products. Unless of course it's 'Oblivion with lightsabers' but then why name it KOTOR? IIRC book canon always triumphs game canon so Bioware is free to rewrite the whole of KOTOR2 to their liking.

A collaboration with Obsidian? (I don't understand the language, even though it's vaguely similar to Italian.) That what is says (it's Portuguese btw). The whole rumor makes little sense. Not only would KOTOR 3 compete with TOR there seems to be no reason to collaborate with Obsidian on it.

It's actually quite funny that he thinks upgrading Irish internet will somehow help players from outside the UK area. On the plus side this may mean no GoA for European release.

Space marine. Flash over substance. Nice presentation but gameplay is shallow and gets tedious.

That's a Fallout 2 recipe. You just needed a NPC to use it. In my case, I would break down pistol ammo for guns I did not have, and reload cartridges for the gun that I did have. But there was a big problem with conversion in that bullet hulls were always limited. I never understood why the ammo crafting for guns was so much more complex than for energy weapons.

All four of them? The point is this: there is little to show that such games will sell. You don't like the graphics/writing/combat in a single developer games? I get that. You want it to be better? That takes resources and to pay for them you need more sales. If you are willing to invest enough to make a game met the minimal expectations you simply better off not making it an rpg. Small audience means that you cannot keep up with production values. Especially when there are plenty of good quality browser games and MMOs available for free.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it's been tried before. You can buy your old-school rpg games like Avadon or Eschalon on Steam. Few people are interested.

Neither dose Starcraft 2 and see what happened. If there is enough demand in the pirate community it will happen sooner or later. The only question is how long will it take and how difficult it will be.

The only question here is whether the DRM will work. Starcraft 2 was eventually cracked for LAN. I think I'm missing something here. The last time I saw a real life "internet cafe" was in Budapest a year ago and it looked about as uninviting as the dark ally next to it. A gaming one perhaps. They tend to make that impression. Smaller towns still sometimes have cafes for regular people mostly for browsing and downloading.