Darth Drabek

Many of you seem to have overlooked this tidbit. I think many of the employees at the school would agree that the rule is stupid; they're just afraid of getting sued. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, reminds me of that episode of South Park when everyone was sueing everyone else for sexual harassment. "No matter who wins in the courtroom today, the public school system stands to lose at least $12 million."

Ha... just a week or two ago we had some sort of school wellness week in our area, as part of the federal government mandated health and nutrition programs designed to fight our nation's childhood obesity problem. What better way to get kids in shape then to ban them from running around at recess? I have a vision of hundreds of junior high fatties lined up on the gym bleachers playing their PSPs or DSs. School district treasurers should get ready to spend some of their permanent improvement funds on treadmills for the schools... a nice safe way for junior to get his exercise.

I've had one of those trial CDs for a few months now (given to me by a WOW-junkie with two (!!) level 60 characters). I haven't installed it because I hate the idea of paying a monthly fee to game. Also, the manner in which he gave me the demo disc was quite disturbing. Like a dope pusher telling me "The first one's free, buddy..." However, if I can score a free WCIII for leaving after my trial period is up... ah, but they probably are more concerned with keeping the paying accounts.

Wow... Petay taking us all the way back to 1991. Old school, man, old school. The Afghan Whigs - Tonight

TN: I liked the Audioslave cover the best, flubbed words and all. Don't feel bad, I used to forget words all the time - even when we were playing sober. LW: Not bad, not bad. Props for the acappella, because that is hard as hell. I never, ever sing without at least one guitar backing me up.

I got a free beer tonight at the bowling alley. They were doing classic rock trivia night, and the first song up for grabs was "Turn Up the Radio" by Autograph. After about 20 seconds when I thought it was "Let It Rock" by Bon Jovi, that free Heineken was all mine. Thanks GTA:Vice City! :D

First, I've never even been to the Codex. Second, all I'm saying is the avatar selection was a little weak compared to their past efforts. And no, that doesn't make or break the role-playing experience, but it's still an important part of character creation in today's games. Not as important as NPC dialogue or having multiple story paths, but still important. Go ahead and pimp your favorite games as much as you want, because we all expect you to, anyway.

Better role-playing in JE? Come on, you had to pick from five or six pre-made character models to start. And the inventory? I don't remember even having much more than a weapon or two and some potions to manage. Ah well. We all know Volo believes a mind is like an electrical circuit: It works best when closed. They are both good games, but I think the ranking is justified.

I think the early, lounge stuff would be the easiest fit for a "whispery" female voice (as Johansson's has been described). But I'd love to hear versions of some of the more recent Waits material. But I've always imagined a Fiona Apple cover of "Clap Hands" would be a good idea, so I'm excited to see how this project turns out. Now "16 Shells from a Thirty Aught Six".... that's another story.

Interesting... very interesting. There are a handful of stories on the Net about this, I picked this one because of the awesome ending joke.

KOTOR should be higher than JE. The characters were more memorable, the battles were more challenging, and the role-playing was better. JE had better graphics and art (the environments in particular were beautifully done), and I thought the stories of both were very good. In my opinion, JE was a great game, but not quite as good as KOTOR.

Teenage Fanclub - The Town and the City

Prince - I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man And let me tell you, if you were thinking "Boy, I sure hope Drabek doesn't post a video of some dude singing that Prince song and playing ukelele," then I just ruined your day.

For the love... I was up four points in my fantasy game. But my opponent had Arizona's defense going tonight, and I had Thomas Jones. I'm dead.

You, sir, are a hero of epic proportions for giving all those dogs a loving home. Dogs are fantastic. I've always had a dog in the house growing up, and I love 'em. Once I get settled and get a house with a yard (for room to run... gotta have room for them to run) I'll go get one from a local animal shelter. Probably won't be for another year or so, though. I feel the need to assert that dogs are great.. probably because the denizens of this board seem to favor cats.

Maybe I should... usernames with "Darth" in them are so last year.

The Who - Squeeze Box she's playin all night and the music's all right mama's got a squeeze box daddy never sleeps at night

All of those things you mentioned do indeed make RPGs great, and I agree with you that the graphics don't have to be cutting edge for a game to be enjoyable (hell, I'm playing Baldur's Gate a lot lately, and that game is eight years old). I just think that it was a probably a lot easier to flesh out a wide variety of storyline options back when the general audience expected to read most of the story, instead of watching it unfold in a cutscene with voice actors synched to the the animations. And the more NPCs that can join your party, the more work it would be to fully integrate them into the plot, or create alternate plots in case a vital NPC gets food poisoning and dies along the way, rendering them unable to deliver their epiphany to the PC before the final battle. And please don't call me Darth. DD or Drabs are both fine. :D

Right now I'm reeling with college nostalgia, thanks to all you young'uns with your coffeeshop study groups and your last minute research papers and your drinking cheap red wine on your roof with your buds and watching drunk girls try to walk back from the bars in their high heels. Well, maybe that last one was just me.

They did not allow Imoen to die in Irenicus' Dungeon. If her HP went low she ran off screaming and you met up at the end of the dungeon. It was a developer-implemented trigger to make sure the story progressed as it needed to. I agree with your points about the design of the companion stories and their optional supplement to the main story arc. I think each NPC should have their own quest, which dovetails in some way with the goals of the PC. Otherwise, If you want to kill off everyone you don't like, as some here seem to enjoy doing, you should be punished for it. NPC quests give you XP and cool items to make your NPC better, like Anomen's knighthood challenge. If they want to lose great NPCs by killing them off or never picking them up in the first place, fine. No problem. But that age of gaming is gone, guys. There's just too many variables, and a current game with that kind of freedom would probably take a decade to make. And that's why there is a need to compromise, because in the current generation of games you need the animated cutscenes. They've become expected content in video games, but they're expensive and time consuming to create (not that I have any practical experience, but I'm pretty sure I'm correct on that). And no development studio has the budget to make 12 different versions of the same cutscene showing all the different variables of who died and who didn't. At least not yet. If they choose to implement permadeath but don't make the changes in each cutscene, the player would be left scratching his/her head at times: "Hey, didn't he die in a grease fire back on Dantooine?" That's why I think Kaftan is spot on with his assessment of the problem. And no, I don't have any solutions, except spend more money and time on a game to implement both the cool in-game movies we've come to expect and the freedom of NPC choice. But a game like that would take so long to develop the engine would be obsolete by the time it was released, so its sales would tank anyway.

I'm chatting about how much I hate AFI (they're like an unholy union of emoz and goths!) while having a few too many beers for a Sunday night. But they are very, very tasty tonight.

I moved the original music over, so I've got that goin on. I tried it vanilla first, just to see what it looked like. Didn't like the stone interface, either. If the story and gameplay are the same, I don't see why I should spend 40 hours playing a non-improved version of the game. So far, I can't really tell which banters are BIO-made and which are added by the modders - and that's the thing that worried me the most when I started my playthrough.

Ah, classic. Have you heard the Joe Strummer version? It was on his last album with the Mescaleros. Paul Westerberg - Waiting for Somebody Man, this song rocks!

The Afghan Whigs - The Temple Yes, from Jesus Christ Superstar. Covering ALW/Rice takes some serious maaa-balls in my book.

Baldur's Gate... for the first time. Got my shiny new copy a day or two ago, and installed it with Tutu and the NPC banter pack. My first thought? "Damn, that's a big box." Welcome back to 1998. So far, I actually like the low-level adventuring (as opposed to BG2). I don't have to worry about dispelling this spell and that spell, I can just skewer 'em with arrows! )