Stun

Minor nitpick. This is not the first time we've seen people label Geralt as a "Drizzt wannabe", but interestingly enough, he predates Drizzt. By a couple of years. If anything, Geralt of Rivia is an Elric of Melniboné wannabe. A clone, in fact. Both are Mutants. Both are supernatural swordsmen, both share the same nickname (white wolf).

Fluid, yes. What I found most reassuring was this: Up until, like, just now, my only worry was that my CPU would be my bottleneck. Because I've recently upgraded everything else on my computer. (I've got a GTX 970, 12 gigs of Ram etc). But my CPU is still a fossil from 2010. It's a 6 core Athelon Phenom 2.0 Gig. But apparently, this article is telling me that the game will run fine on my system. sweet.

New footage. 35 minutes of map travel.

Of all the IE games to cite for the "fog of war issue", you choose BG2? Really? It's the ONE IE game that didn't impose the fog of war in cities and towns.

Depends on the genitals, of course. lol

Yeah, funny thing about Skyrim though, the Day 1 version was a download of only about 6 gigs, but a couple months later they released the Hi-Res patch and that thing was friggin 20 gigs.

Not really. They did have to create a new engine from scratch. And the software tools were much more expensive and far less efficient back then. Plus they had to pay all the licensing fees for the rights to use both the Forgotten Realms setting and the AD&D ruleset. Oh, and contrary to the ridiculous Hyperbole, BG2 did not cost $20 Million to make.

I don't think the Budget differences were all that great. PoE cost just over $4 million to make. How much did BG1 cost to make?

Yeah, don't expect even the profound world-state decisions in your imports to be little more than "historical details of stuff that happened before Nilfguard finally came in and took over"....or something like that. Which is fine with me. But.... there's something interesting that we've discovered from looking at the Achievement list. Apparently there's a quest to assassinate Radovid. Check it out: http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2015/04/14/full-list-of-the-witcher-3-achievements-released/?slideshow=1301#/slide/2 Assassin of Kings - take part in the assassination of King Radovid And even more interesting.... Bedding Keira Metz.... confirmed. Check out the "Friends with Benefits" Achievement.

False. Staff of Rynn. Sold at the Adventurer's mart. The moment you exit Irenicus' dungeon... Like I said. And.... it doesn't matter anyway. We were talking about +3 weapons, and the Adventurers mart sells plenty of those as well. 6 points *Minimum*. Guaranteed. That's more than we can say for any +3 weapon. And it'll hit any creature in the game. Again, that's more than we can say for Any +3 weapon.

Nope. I can kill liches without using level six or higher spells. I can kill a lich using a single 3rd level mage spell.

We've already been through this. BG2 is a game with 10,000 solutions and even the loopholes have loopholes. On the off chance that your party manages to face a Lich or an Iron Golem before acquiring a +3 weapon (a feat in itself. Why are you under the impression that +3 weapons are rare?), There's always alternatives. Thief traps come to mind. Summons. Spells. etc. +3 and +4 weapons (including Axes, Quarterstaves and warhammers), can be bought in the Adventurers mart in Waulkeens Promenade.... you know, the Adventurers mart, which is next door to the game's opening dungeon. Oh, and a +5 weapon can be bought at the copper coronet in the slums, the second area you visit in Athkatla. Imagine that. About an hour into the game, you can find a weapon that will be effective against friggin Demogorgon, Mellisan and Baalthazar 200 hours later.

No one paid $20K to $40k for ringside seats. They either got in for free, or they paid $100,000+. In fact, for the Opportunity to sit next to Evander Holyfield and Jay-Z in, like, Row 10, you had to shell out about $350,000. As far as I know, not even the last row of the bleachers was $20k to $40k, unless you were one of the super lucky sods who managed to snag one of the 1000 tickets that went on sale about 2 weeks ago....and sold out in 60 seconds.

^Which makes him par the course for Boxing "greats". Really, Boxing and Women don't mix. Ever. Off the top of my head: Mike Tyson (Raped a 19 year old) Carlos Monzon (Beat the sh*t out of his first two wives; Murdered his third wife) Joe Louis (Spousal Abuse) Sugar Ray Robinson (Spousal abuse, and he was a notorious womanizer) Marvin Hagler (Spousal Abuse) Deigo Corrales (Brutal Spousal Abuse....and she was 8 months pregnant) Jake Lamotta (Spousal Abuse....and he used to Brag about it) Arturo Gatti (Yes, the celebrated Real life Rocky that everyone loved.... Spousal abuse) Pernell Whitaker (Spousal Abuse. And Wife was pregnant) Evander Holyfield (Beat his wife, over a disagreement about a church donation) The list goes on and on. Generally speaking, Boxers aren't Role models. Mayweather isn't anything special.

It happens. a lot. Are you surprised? Look at how much money they're making off each other. For $180 MILLION, I'd be complimentary to my opponent too.

Yep. Which just lends weight to something I've been saying for years but no one in the boxing world ever wants to admit: There is Nothing special about Freddie Roach. This is not the first time he's had an extremely talented Overachiever in his stable, and then sent him out against an equal, only to see his fighter lose because he had a crap game plan, or he had no game plan, or his fighter was woefully undertrained, or he gave his fighter bad instructions in between rounds.

Agreed. And that's not a knock on the fight. (the fight was actually fairly entertaining). It's just that The level of hype for this fight was surrealistically high. Had it lived up to the hype it would have had to have been the greatest fight ever. And someone would have had to have died at the end of the 12th round or something. But again, It's was fairly good, even if it lacked the Drama of Ali-Frazier or the brutality of Hagler-Hearns. And more importantly, it was *decisive*. None of that bad scoring, premature-stoppage nonsense that often plagues big fights. Instead, we got 2 guys with contrasting styles, who fought the way they typically do, and we found out who wins such a match up. And really, That's all I personally wanted from this fight. For the better part of a decade we've been debating the topic of "who would win between Pacquaio and Mayweather" and tonight we found out. And, a sidenote. Mayweather is a better fighter than most people give him credit for. A lot of people don't like him because they think he's "boring". But for me, I've grown to admire his style. His defensive skills are almost non-human, and from a student's point of view It's neat to watch him make his opponents miss by a mile....or by an inches....constantly.

It went exactly as expected. Those who thought Pacquiao would win a decision, or unbelievably, by knockout, were, understandably, thinking with their hearts. As he's the 'courageous' aggressive type and always the crowd favorite. But tonight, Mayweather was....Mayweather. As usual, he made the guy in front of him miss 75% of his shots. He wins one round at a time without any fanfare or drama. And by round 12, you look at your scorecard (yes, I'm one of those nerds who keeps a scorecard in one hand, and a drink in the other lol) and you suddenly realize that the fight wasn't close at all.

Quintuple melee damage....useless! Sure, it's not Needed. That's the beauty of BG2... Nothing is needed (including melee. *hint hint*). BG2 is a game of 10,000 solutions, where even the loopholes have loopholes. Thankfully, we're not discussing Needs. The beauty of fighters and rangers is that they're not weapon restricted. So when one asks "why give celestial fury to your thief?", I'll answer by saying: Because I've decided to give the Flail of the Ages, Lilacar, Crom Faeyr, The Mace of Disruption, Stone Fire, the Silver Sword, Dragon's breath, the Defender of Easthaven, etc. to my fighters and Rangers. Which is an item description-typo, btw. It doesn't actually have a zero speed factor. And even if it did, it would be worthless for a Thief. In BG2, weapon speed factors affect initiative at the start of combat, and nothing else. And again, why would a thief care about combat-start initiative when he should be approaching all fights in stealth and/or Invisibility to guarantee a first strike anyway?

Lets see. 1) It's the single most powerful backstabbing weapon until Staff of the Ram. 2) To bestow him with spell casting ability 3) To stun opponents so that they can't fight back when you're on the front lines 4) To do the same damage per swing as a 2-handed sword, which thieves can't use until they get UAI. It is Generic. It has no special properties beyond its basic +3 enchantment. And tons of weapons in BG2 have a 0 speed factor. Including ALL Daggers, and Kundane and a few others. My turn. Tell me exactly the benefit of having a 0 speed factor weapon, for a class that can (and should) be initiating all combat from invisibility and/or Stealth? And when you're done, tell me the functional difference between a weapon with a 0 speed factor, and a weapon with a 1 speed factor (Celestial fury)

You're right. Instead, it meant making a Beeline to the temple district after Chateau Irenicus to get Celestial Fury, which is about 5 times more powerful than the generic short sword +3 that Renal gives to Non-thieves. In fact, non-existent. You mean Backstabs. And Backstabs were as common as you wanted them to be. So was trap setting, btw.

Not a single person on this thread claimed otherwise, nor has anyone accused you of saying any such thing. This is a childish attempt from you to move the goal posts.... again. Role playing; Faster leveling, Faster skill gains. More utility value than the fighter class, More powerful than the Ranger class. Nope. No reason at all. Derr.... Meaningless statement, and different from your repeated original claim that they were underpowered end-of-sentence. ....and you'll get an incomplete BG2 experience. Again, Current retail versions of BG2 are LITERALLY entitled " Baldurs Gate 2 Complete". And this is NOT semantics nor is it a marketing gimmick. Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal are literally a single SKU now in all digital retail outlets. Of course, you can argue that back in the year 2000, this wasn't the case, but that's irrelevant history trivia and it will get you nowhere. When there's a BG2 class comparison being debated on a message board in f*cking 2015, We're going to be discussing those classes in the context of ALL of BG2, not just chapter 1-7. But hey, don't let me stop you from wailing away like a baby because of that.

Yeah I forgot. It's not called Baldurs Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. It's called Dragon Age: throne of Bhaal. No wait. It's called Icewind Dale: throne of Bhaal. Er.... Planescape Torment: throne of Bhaal? Legend of Zelda: throne of bhaal?

No. He's saying something even more silly: He's saying that Thieves are underpowered in Baldurs Gate 2 - the one IE game that munchkinized thieves and made them game breaking.

I'm not surprised. Have you ever passed up an opportunity to deliberately miss a point?