Oerwinde

If it will be anything like other Paradox grand strategies it will have a broken or non-existent or woefully inadequate tutorial, have a brutal learning curve, and be totally worth it if you can get past said learning curve.The Blorg playthrough they have been streaming has made it look like one of their easiest to get into. Like a mix of EU and Master of Orion, with a spattering of Hearts of Iron 4.(which from World War Wednesdays looks a lot easier to get into than HOI3) Just announced they are releasing in house mod tool for HOI4, making a lot of the tedious province/state editing quicker and easier,while it still saves everything in a text editable format for finer tweaks.

Tilda Swinton is playing the Ancient One. Something about the ancient one being a spirit that inhabits bodies, so Tilda is the current host. They did it to avoid the "mystical asian" trope apparently.

That shot with all the moving cityscapes at the end I thought was really cool

Yeah, while Avellone's contributions were often the best stuff in Obsidian's games, it seemed like Obsidian wasn't giving him enough to sink his teeth into, hence him getting loaned out to several projects and eventually going mercenary.

Napoleon was awesome. The 4 part PBS documentary on him is probably my favourite documentary

First reactions for Cap 3: Civil War are hitting from test/review screenings. Reaction seems to be that Winter Soldier's story was better, Civil War's action is better, Tom Holland's Spider-Man is the best so far, and Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther is amazing. Reaction's are split on whether it was better than Winter Soldier or not, but looks like it's better than Age of Ultron. Now I only have to wait a month to see it

Based on the article, BAFTA has panel judges for the different categories, but opens up the game of the year to all members. So the professionals end up picking all the little indie games that no one really play for the smaller awards, and Game of the Year is usually just a top selling game.

Geez...I'm playing W3 now and its amazing Its hard to think of a Fallout 4 being even better than that ? Its not. Not even close. Fallout 4 is the Cawadoody of Fallout games. They removed most of the C&C, removed stat based dialogue choices, removed skills, etc. Basically the only RPG elements are dialogues and equipment, and the only choice you really get to make in the game is which 2 of 3 factions to kill.

A game like Shadows of Mordor but based on Gloryhammer's Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards. Dwarves and magic, space knights and goblins on the moon, all to a power metal soundtrack.

studio 60 were sports night redux... but less. sorkin did the meta-show shtick with sports night too, and while it were critical praised, it never found a niche with viewers. am not sure why anybody thought that redoing the same show but making it snl rather than sports center would sell it, particular with a less likeable cast than the one aaron sorkin assembled in 1998-2000. HA! Good Fun! Sorkin Power Rankings: 1) Sports Night 2) The West Wing (Seasons 1-4) 3) A Few Good Men 4) The American President 5) Moneyball 6) Charlie Wilson's War 7) The Social Network Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip 9) The Newsroom 10) Malice *Haven't seen Steve Jobs yet. Aside from their shared Larry Sandersesque inside baseball approach --Studio 60 just cannot be compared with Sports Night in terms of quality, writing, depth, intelligence, wit, characterization, and especially humor. I loved The Newsroom, I keep trying to watch the West Wing, but I always try when I'm tired or there are kids making noise and I can't focus.

Meh, boring. It would help if the story hadn't been told half a dozen or so times already, and one version may still be canon thanks to George's direct involvement in the writing. Probably more sensible than the rumoured Obi Wan movie though even though Ewan McGregor's performance in the prequels was as good as could realistically be expected. We won't even get to see many Bothans dying to get the plans since that was DS2. That will be the sequel Star Wars: Many Bothans Died.

Ask this guy I feel like this is an appropriate time to post this: http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2960508/worst-rob-liefeld-drawings

I don't see what the problem with PoE's writing was. I thought it was at the same level as their previous games.

Honestly, if Obsidian were to make one change, I'd like to see more of them active on the forums. Its the one thing I miss from the Black Isle days when Sawyer, Feargus, and a bunch of others were all active on the forums. Its one of the reasons I ended up migrating here in the first place.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/south-park-stick-of-truth-sells-5-million-sequel-c/1100-6434743/ Ubi paid 3.3 million dollars for the game + whatever expenses they had afterwards and according to that article the game has sold 5 million copies now. I imagine the game was quite profitable for Ubisoft in the end. Man, that article really shows little respect to the work Obsidian did. "This will be better because we made it in house." Bleh. The way I read it was that because it is in house they are more comfortable with it, where Stick of Truth was pretty much finished when Ubi bought the rights. So by doing it in house they have more control over the process. I understand the position. Obsidian were hand picked by Matt and Trey because of their specific talents and experience though, so I don't see how a new studio could do much better. I think its entirely possible that the sequel could do better than Stick of Truth. Matt and Trey have more experience making a game now, plus Stick of Truth showed that a South Park game can be excellent, after nothing but terrible licensed stuff previously, and developed a pretty big audience over time, the sequel can build on that.

The 17th Amendment for those you don’t know and don’t want to look it up, allows for the US Senators to be directly elected by the voters of each state by popular election. Prior to its ratification is in 1917(ish I don’t remember exactly) the US Senators were elected by the representatives of the State House of each state government. My problem with it is that there a few issues, mainly unintentional, that has arisen because of it. First off the founders did not trust the voters with the task of electing Senators. The Representatives were already directly elected and they wanted the Senate to be the representative of the State governments and to be buffered from what Hamilton described at the “passions” and “general rowdiness” of the public. Personally I think that is a steaming pile of bull crap. The voters are educated and informed enough to make intelligent choices on who will serve in the Senate. My problems with it, and the reason I think it needs to be repealed are these: • Since Senators are elected by a statewide popular vote we have stepped away from a representative democracy and stepped towards a real democracy. This is problematic because entire regions of a state end up playing no role in the election of a Senator and provide the senator with no incentive to address their concerns. For example California is about 165,000 square miles (425k km2 for those of you who use the smart system) and is home to 40M people give or take. The Bay area and the LA/SD metro area alone can elect the senators from that state. In a state of 58 counties just 7 can elect a Senator all by themselves. That gives the folks north of the bay and east of the Sierra Madres, San Bernardino and Diablos ranges no voice in the Senate. Ben Franklin said it best “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch”. When the Senators were elected by state reps, who were themselves elected by the voters of their districts, there was a proper representation of all voters. • The supremacy clause of the Constitution allows the Federal government tremendous power over the state governments. Prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment the State government had a reciprocal power over the Federal government and there was a balance. Afterwards the State governments were cut out of the legislative process of the Congress altogether. Don’t forget the Senate has the responsibility of confirming judges who will have authority over the State Supreme Courts that are appointed and seated the State Governments. The result of this has been profound. Power reserved to the States by the Constitution has been regularly usurped by DC and mismanaged. The 10th Amendment has all but fallen by the wayside and the Commerce Clause has been twisted into something unrecognizable in the power it is used to grant a Federal Government that no longer has to answer to the States it damages. The states on the other hand have become almost subservient to the Federal government, practically begging for funding from monies the states themselves collect in taxes. This is all out of balance now. • Returning responsibility of electing Senators to the State government empowers the State and will hopefully re-engage the voter in State level elections. We are a Union of 50 sovereign states. The needs of Tennessee are best determined by the voters of Tennessee in the people they elect to the government of Tennessee. The government of Tennessee is far more responsive to the voters of Tennessee that a Congressman ever could be. If a US Senator owes his job to representing the best interests of his whole state not a single population center, fighting for the interest of the government of his home state the Senate will go back to being the body it was intended to be. For those who want to stop partisan bickering in the Senate, this would be an excellent first step. There is nothing there I disagree with. Why was the 17th ammendment passed?

I think Obsidian's next will likely be the first Fig game I back, unless inXile does Wasteland 3 or something original.

Yes. It was left in because the delegates from the southern states made it clear they would not sign without it. To tell the truth I doubt the majority of delegates there those days saw it as any kind of moral wrong because it was so prevalent in the world at that time. And Meshugger is correct, it did not stop after the civil war. Or before even when it was illegal to buy slaves not born in the Americas. But as for the slaves in the US at the time I figure that is a fraction of the number that became free men in 1865. And many of those in 1787 were born elsewhere and might have returned if given the opportunity to do so. I used to have a much more romantic view of the CSA and often argued that slavery was not the root cause of the secession and the war. Perhaps I did not want to admit my ancestors would be willing to go to war solely to keep their fellow humans in chains. That they had loftier and more noble ends like States Rights in mind. But as I read and learned more I realize this is not so and the truth is just as ugly underneath as it looks on the surface. I was guilty of the very thing I ridicule in others, and in books and movies: revising history to suit modern mores. To be fair though, the south's entire economy was dependent on slave labour at the time. Abolition meant the loss of a ton of wealth in the form of "property" and increased business costs due to having to pay workers. Wars have been fought in modern times over less.

The more self funded stuff they get under their belt, the more long term income they get, builds kind of a safety net for slow periods, so hopefully they can get a few more out.

Supposedly they are remaking Labyrinth. Cumbersome wouldn't make a bad Goblin King

Ha. All I could think of was Shadows of Darkness. The 4th Quest for Glory game. The BG games were some of my all time favorites, but for some reason I can't bring myself to pull the trigger on the new ones.

Hopefully they use the cash influx to start an entirely new dev studio for the mobile stuff, hiring some experienced mobile devs. It seems like most of the successful mobile games are strategy games, so their IPs could work pretty well there. I don't see a problem with them branching out to consoles. Its a large audience, but I think PDS is not the studio to use to do so. They are pretty specialized in doing grand strategy, which is not console friendly. Magicka could probably work on consoles, but their main IPs would not. Using the money to fund some AAA console games would probably be their best bet there.

I don't know why NWN2 didn't take off in terms of the modules. I felt the toolset was able to make much better areas than NWN, and NWN2 had a better campaign

I feel like this is a dumb question but SoD?