AGX-17

For some reason I felt like playing Dragon Age: Origins but remembered the physical disc necessary for play is in a sealed box in my parents' attic. Then I saw it was on sale on Steam, but I didn't want to pay $7.50 for the "ultimate edition," so I undercut the market for those stupid Steam "trading cards" and still made more than enough credit to buy it. So, DAO. Moral of the story: Steam is full of mental deficients who will pay real money for nothing. Half of them Russians. Go figure. Whistle innocently while walking away. I'm always carrying my lantern.

A likely story.

Trailer, 1:03 Also, not like the image size matters, considering how overloaded the Obsidian servers are right now.

Well, the Tides of Numanuma backers who are still bleeding rectally from the turn-based combat announcement wouldn't have found any hemorrhoid treatment in this product, anyway.

A secret handshake? Is it really a critical project component? If they failed to make good on it, would P:E's development come to a screeching halt, the project would be shelved and the team would move on because a bunch of amateurs on the internet weren't telling them how to design a game on a special exclusive board for the people who paid in advance for the game? As opposed to all the amateurs who are telling them how to design the game right now, of course.

The fact that it's an original IP should have made it obvious from the start that it's not a D&D game. Not to mention the fact that many of the updates and announcements, found both on the P:E Kickstarter page (and in backer emails, you're presumably not a backer given the circumstances here,) and in the P:E Updates and Announcements forum ( http://forums.obsidian.net/forum/89-project-eternity-announcements-and-news/ ) have described in a decent amount of depth the game mechanics and to a greater degree, the intent in its design, which is to make a well-balanced system in stark contrast to A/D&D. D&D's main influence on P:E thus far seems to be as a starting point in how not to design/balance gameplay, especially combat, mechanics.

Weren't most of the RPGs of the last decade not D&D?

You said it was your opinion, there's nothing to prove. I guess this is a good enough stand-in. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/59336/course-mandela-supports-saddam/dave-kopel

Do I need 3D Glasses for this, or is that just blurry? Why hasn't anyone made any Terminator jokes about this? Austria? Muscles? Weapons? Come on.

Nostalgia goggles are a hell of a thing. Well, I suppose it's not impossible that there are legitimate RTwP fetishists out there who only played P:T for the combat and thought the story, characters and roleplaying were needless fluff. Ignoring, of course, the irony that D&D is a turn-based system originally.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/686723 I literally busted out laughing when I read the update solely because of this thread's OP. I'm looking forward to the tide of butthurt about to roll in. That said, I'm happy to see they went with TB.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nelson-mandela-becomes-first-politician-to-be-miss,34755/

Don't elderly Californians reach their peak mortality rate mid-summer?

Does a Swede really have any grounds to envy anyone for their low temperatures and snowfall? That was rhetorical because the answer is NO.

UK TV content is forbidden to dirty foreigners, sort of like how snaggletoothed Britons and America's Hat (Canadians) aren't allowed to watch The Daily Show or Colbert online. So you should probably take it to some kind of UK forum for a UK game developer where people can actually see whatever it is you're sharing.

Why does that motor/turbine thing look like it's made out of some sort of solid substance (i.e. metal,) instead of the classic feces/mud composition of your usual work?

Just don't bring up Oblivion or Skyrim and you won't set off the powder keg. Anyway, Deuce Ecks: HR: DC seems to be doing well enough, because there was a solid stealth/hacking option to deal with the first boss (notoriously not present in the original game,) two turrets provided and one was enough to do the job.

You mean shallow and bland writing like the Thieves' Guild questline, right? Not to mention the terrible narrative and game design with a single railroaded linear "BUT THOU MUST!!" structure, with no roleplaying allowed and vital decisions made for the player by NPCs (aka bad writers/designers) without the PC's input. At least with the Dark Brotherhood you were allowed the option to righteously deliver a heaping plate of well-deserved retribution as a hero of justice, but everyone involved with the TG is permanently immortal so as to preserve the shining example of bad design and writing in Skyrim. Yeah, although I can't agree on a number of aspects you feel are better than FC3. Visually/graphically? No. Gameplay? No. Choices/consequences (i.e. "roleplaying") in the main story? No. Varied, sometimes (as opposed to "never" in FC3,) interesting side stuff to do? Absolutely. The joys of exploration? Certainly. Bethesda really needs to prioritize combat design since it's the main aspect of their games, and it typically isn't fun in TES games. The vacillating writing/story/design quality would be a lot easier to overlook if the combat was fun rather than a tedious chore, which was the case for me in F3. It wasn't great as "FPS" mechanics go, but it was still fun.

That's a strange choice. If I was going to choose how I died, it probably wouldn't be by attempting to keep an animal known for being psychotically vicious, violent and so tough it frequently wins fights with lions as a pet.

In other words, you want a palette-swapped fire spell relabeled "ice." Ignoring the fact that nitrogen is an element and fire is just the heat and visible light released by certain chemical reactions, of course.

I would respectfully challenge these two points 1) China has the option of NOT pushing for a resolution of the status of the islands. They get by perfectly well with Taiwan by simply not forcing the issue. 2) While I agree that the ol' Mandate of Heaven rests on economic prosperity, it can always shift to rest on something else. I rather suspect that there are those within the Party who would welcome an opportunity to have a purge or two. An opportunity that serious unrest would give them. 1. Taiwan wants them, too, but it's a pretty small fish in this proverbial pond. Besides, it's comparatively small an issue compared to the fact that the PRC claims Taiwan is its sovereign territory and they've had guns literally pointed at each other for the past 50-odd years. 2. It's got nothing to do with the "Mandate of Heaven," it's got to do with the economic and political realities of China; it's a country whose stability hinges on maintaining its current, absurdly rapid pace of economic growth. Pulling people out of poverty through growth is the only thing that balances out all the ****ty things the Party is doing on the other side of the scale, and they have a lot of people to pull out of poverty. Besides, we're not talking about a purge (that's generally an internal affair,) we're talking about open rebellion (populist revolution was what ended the "golden age" of China, the Han Dynasty, after all.) For the political elite of the country it's this simple fear that drives their policy decisions: the economy stops growing, we lose everything. That's why they're willing to bulldoze as many peasant slums as necessary to make way for new subdivisions and apartment blocks as well as manhandle those few tens of thousands of victims who lose everything and devote their existence to protesting/petitioning for justice in Beijing, a city where justice is in short supply.

Who? If your video review is longer than 5 minutes you're just a bad reviewer. And where'd he get the idea that Far Cry 3 is meant to be some kind of satire/deconstruction of video games?

Deuce Ecks: Director's Cut. Still haven't reached the first boss so jury is out. I don't remember these hacking grenades being in the original game, though.

The UNSC was formed in the aftermath of WWII, of course they don't. The current Japanese constitution, drafted under American patriarchal guidance, bans Japan from having a military or engaging in any proactive military activities. Combine that with the fact that Japan has an aging population and low birthrates, it's not exactly in a great position. Its only real advantage is the fact that it's basically a tributary state of the US. That said, Japan is a country where submission and servility are valued and "alpha" type behavior is something which goes against social norms. Even if Japan did have a permanent seat on the UNSC their politicians and diplomats are highly unlikely to make a vigorous argument for anything. Japan has an excessively tactful culture. Directness/bluntness are uncouth nearly to the point of taboo outside of familiar personal relations. That said, the simple fact of the matter is that the Senkaku islands are twice as far from China as they are from Japan (and Taiwan, they're roughly equidistant between those two.) China's government has no choice but to be belligerent for the sake of economic growth, it's constantly teetering on the brink of riots or revolution. When economic growth stops, the communist party is done for. There are regularly demonstrations and mass uprisings numbering in the tens of thousands throughout the country which aren't publicized thanks to the government control of the media and the entirely unbiased choices of the state-run news service. And, obviously, the idea that any Korea has any claim to the islands and associated waters is just ludicrous to the point of hilarity. They might as well claim Kamchatka and Alaska as their sovereign territory.

A New Game+ mode which is basically a different game in which the protagonist already knows how the story played out the first time and has access to new choices which wildly diverge from the original plot.