Keyrock

I wonder if we can reach 1000 members?

I voted no, but it's a very slight no. I understand putting up some new stretch goals might induce more new backers or people upping their pledges, which is good since it would mean more funding for Obsidian. On the other hand, I don't want to see Obsidian get locked into something like "crap, we promised X number of more areas now we have to make them", I'd rather Obsidian had the flexibility to do whatever they felt was best with whatever new funding, even if that means just more polishing on the existing content, rather than feeling obligated to add more stuff because they promised more stuff.

Fair enough. I'm the opposite these days. I have to tackle something the size of an Infinity or Aurora Engine game in chunks. There is exactly a zero percent chance of me powering through one of those games straight through without taking a break. I just can't do it.

The intentions behind this might be good, but the outcome would almost certainly be awful. First off, viewing or listening to audition clips, deciding who would voice what part, sending out scripts to people, then screening sound clips and picking out takes, that all takes time and effort. Time and effort that could be spent polishing levels and animations and such. And for what? What are the chances Obsidian finds even one diamond in the rough? 5%? 10%? Maybe 15%? Voice acting is significantly more difficult than some people think, good voice acting that is. The chances that Obsidian finds a quality voice acting, even if it's just for narration, is pretty low. My stance on acting/voice acting has always been "only do it if you can do it well". There are some exceptions to the rule, games like Tex Murphy, but those games are intentionally campy and they embrace the cheesiness of the acting. The cheesiness is part of what makes Tex Murphy games what they are. Pillars of Eternity is not a silly or campy game and cheesy voice acting would take away from the game. Stick with text.

On the other hand, 10 hours in a pretty beefy episode. Most episodic games are 2-4 hours per episode. Heck, 10 hours is the size of an entire typical on-rails, set-piece to set-piece, explosionfest. With proper planning, each episode would essentially be a chapter/act, ending at a natural time/location shift point, or plot cliffhanger. I mean, I'd rather get the entire game all at once too, but if episodic is what it takes to make it happen, then I can get behind that.

Well, the Tex Murphy games are FMV games, which generally means cheesy, and they're certainly no exception. You play as Tex, a down on his luck, smart-mouthed private investigator who keeps getting caught up in grand conspiracies. The games takes place in the near future in post Wald War 3 San Francisco where the population is made up of both regular humans and mutants. The games have a distinct film noir feel to them despite taking place in the near future. The acting in the FMV scenes has always been a mix of professional actors and some of the programmers and staff working on the game, thus there is a curious mix of surprisingly decent and hilariously cheesy acting. The games are conspiracy mysteries and play like traditional point n click adventures, except that you get to walk around in first person view. What makes the games special in my opinion is the way they embrace the cheesiness and run with it, plus Chris Jones' snarky sarcastic tone is spot on for the film noir feel.

LOL, they broke out the Inception BRAHHHMs

So can you just plop the "punk" suffix onto pretty much anything and call it a genre? How about Paper Mache Punk? A world dominated by fully functional (though likely not very sturdy) machines made out of paper mache.

Holy ****! Is that just a joke trailer or is this a real (super low budget) movie? Oh man it's got sexy storm troopers AND awesome tag lines like "Get between him and his woman and space ain't black enough to hide you from him." I'm fully in support of absolutely anything Lando Calrissian focused.

I'm right there with you. Really any type of modern-ish game set in basically the real world but with a secret underground world (not necessarily literally underground), whether that be vampires and monsters and magic, or aliens and human/alien hybrids, or cabals like the Illuminati or New World Order, or some combination thereof would be pretty sweet.

I can't think of any isometric party-based sci-fi RPGs off the top of my head. If we expand it to include third person RPGs there's Mass Effect and KOTOR, and there's a bunch of sci-fi games in other gameplay genres like shooters or strategy games, but really there's no sci-fi equivalent of the Infinity Engine games. Plus there's tons of stuff you can do with sci-fi, especially if you move away from space opera. It should be at least theoretically much more open than traditional fantasy. You often see fantasy returning to elves, dwarves, orcs, etc., but sci-fi properties at least always have to invent new aliens even if they borrow ideas from other properties. All of the settings that you listed sound great and I would back any one of them. I do think however, that since Obsidian pretty much chose the safest possible genre for their first Kickstarter game, it might appeal to them to gradually Kickstart less safe choices until they have a few stable IPs. So a good progression might be trad. fantasy -> sci-fi -> something less traditional. You definitely have a valid point. Obsidian does have to consider just how much support/funding they would be able to get with said setting. While I would bust a nut over a Wuxia RPG or an Al Capone type gangsters and cops RPG, maybe the average potential backer out there wouldn't get as excited over them.

Yeah, I don't get why everyone wants sci-fi so bad, it's almost as played out as generic Tolkien-esque fantasy. There are so many cool settings that have barely been touched by RPGs: Arabian Nights Hindu Mythology (Mahabharata and Ramayana) Native American Mythology Wuxia Wild West (Either steampunk-esque or more historical) Cthulhu Mythos Modern Conspiracy (Masons, Illuminati, New World Order, etc.) Prohibition Era Gangsters That's just a few off the top of my head, there are tons of other potential settings that have barely been touched by RPGs, if at all. Why do people insist on going back to the same genres that we've already visited again and again and again and again? If it HAS TO BE sci-fi, for the love of all that is holy, please let it be hard sci-fi and not another space opera.

The Saints seem to be this year's most Jeckyll and Hyde team. I know all team have good weeks and bad weeks, but the Saints ups and downs have been really extreme. They've had games where they looked like unstoppable juggernauts and they've had games where they looked completely hopeless. They're a dangerous team because they have the capacity to go off and throw up a score in the 50s at any moment, but I can't imagine them stringing the 3 or 4 (depending on if they win the division or get the wild card) good games together necessary to win it all.

Gave SteamOS a shot over the weekend. It is indeed in very rough shape, definitely not fit for mainstream consumption at this point. As Valve wrote, only try it if you're one of the 1337 Linux haxorz. The stripped down and highly gimped installer was the thing that made me scratch my head the most. There are plenty of installers out there for distros like Ubuntu and Linux Mint and even Fedora that are free, readily available, open source, thoroughly tested, and a billion times more robust than the current SteamOS installer. Why not just fork one of those and modify it to their own needs? I'm sure Valve have their reasons. If I had to guess it's probably just wanting to make things on their own from the ground up, or closer to the ground and up, anyway, hence the choice of basing their distro on Debian rather than Ubuntu (which was originally based off Debian anyway). It's admirable to want to build things from the ground up yourself, but sometimes it makes a lot more sense to fork something that's already out there, robust, and thoroughly tested. Taking other people's code and working off that is completely accepted in the open source community. Not only accepted, it's encouraged. I have faith Valve will make SteamOS into a good distro, but it has a long way to go right now.

Yay! Bosnickel is back!

Yet another massive collapse for the Cowboys. Romo threw 2 picks late, and he certainly deserves a lot of the blame, but the playcalling was atrocious. The Cowboys flat refusal to run the ball was some of the worst offensive playcalling I've seen in a long time. Up by multiple touchdowns in the second half and averaging OVER 7 YARDS PER CARRY they kept refusing to run the ball, which led to them using up very little clock, which in turn led to the Packers scoring on the Cowboys historically bad defense again and again and again. Just mind-numbingly bad playcalling. The saddest part is that this dumpster fire of a team still somehow controls its own destiny.

With SR4 they somewhat moved away from "porn" territory, which, supposedly was something THQ more pushed them to do than what the devs wanted to do themselves, and more into just straight goofball wackiness territory.

Correct. The only MMO on the horizon that looks like it may change the formula even in the slightest bit is Everquest Next, hence why it's the only one I have even the slightest bit of interest in, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's grand promises of turning the genre upside down will turn out to be just candy coating atop the same old tired MMO formula.

Did you play the Dominatrix? Yeah, I don't know how you can cross more lines than Enter the Dominatrix. That DLC is completely bonkers. They pretty much take the 4th wall, smash it, grind it into dust, set the dust on fire, then take a leak on the ashes.

So delete it. It's the only MMO that has held my attention any length of time. I can't explain why.

Yeah, GWFs don't have as high spikes in damage as CWs and TRs can do, but they dish out a steady torrent of damage to large numbers of enemies. I'm specced mostly toward critical and life steal, hence my other stats tend to suffer. I have no clue how someone gets 8000 Power and 5000 crit, gotta spec full into those stats and have rank 10s, I guess.

Here are my stats (no campfire or potion bonuses):

Ready to launch

I've never bought any bank slots or bags of holding. I use the bank of mail stuff to myself and leave it in the mail for however long.

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