ManifestedISO

Ahaha! Never gonna give ... never gonna give ... you up. Never gonna say goodbye! It is so strange, this turn of the tide. Not six months ago, MS was, more or less, inoffensive, with some big surprises up its sleeve ... and Sony was a pitiful hydra of worthless stock prices, in-fighting, too many SKU's, and unplayable versions of Skyrim. Now ... they're the scrappy underdog, sticking it to an empire. If this movement revitalizes Sony as a company, it will be thanks to us gamers. I'll take a new 4K TV, if you're listening, SCEA.

Consoles are just different. They come with different expectations, independent of mass market reality. I have Origin, Steam, and Uplay, and an Xbox 360, but I just pre-ordered a PS4 because Sony exposed a nerve inside my gamer's psyche that says consoles shouldn't be all-digital, always-connected platforms. Not yet. PC games, yes ... consoles, no. I can't really explain it, but a crazy-fun magic happened at Sony's E3 press conference ... also independent of reality. But that's what made it great. It was as if the underdog manufacturer gave us a way out, a better option: a more powerful machine at a much lower price. The irony is about perception ... the Kinect won't actually spy on us, but it seems like it will. An always-online connection isn't that big of a deal, either, but it seems like it will be, especially to the underdog consumer. Never in all my life have I seen such a wave of momentum for any product.

We may be few, but our passion is great. Tried some new vendors this time ... ASRock and MSI, in particular. Got a true quad-core Llano (A8-3850) right as Trinity launched, with the A75M chipset, HDMI and v3.0 of USB and SATA. Sniped 8GB of Corsair DDR3 1600 right at the bottom of the market, $40. The most exciting new part, is the SSD. Got the 830 128GB for $80 right when the 840 series launched. It is fast ... fast, fast, fast: Win7 boot time is ~15 seconds. Skyrim is the only game I put on the SSD ... all the others are stored on a 10k rpm Velociraptor. Load/save times are measured in 0-3 seconds, even with HD texture packs. Graphics are a Pitcairn, MSI Twin Frozr 7850 2GB. Tomb Raider and Lara Croft's TressFX hair rendering completely changed my priorities in life. Oh, and Viewsonic. I took PC Gamer's advice and went for the 23" LED IPS panel ... it really is beautiful. And a very reasonable $160. For 1080p gaming, this system is ultra-satisfying. The whole reason I built it, was to get ready for Project Eternity. Woot!

Would love to play The Last of Us ... would not love to pay $359 for the privilege, now, on a console with 256MB RAM ... am currently playing the very confusing and poorly-written game of Amazon Pre-order: Launch Day PS4 ... can't wait to stream The Last of Us via cloud to a console with 8GB of RAM.

Retail discs. With key codes. And manuals. Mint in box. All mine forever!

Imagine if the hard drive upgrade potential for the PS4 included internal solid state drives ... now imagine truly affordable SSD's by this time next year ... I'm asking too much.

Nevermind the console, I'd like to attach an Xbox One controller to my PC for gaming, see how the new vibration capabilities feel. Backwards rumble compatibility with games older than 2014 might be a pipe dream, though.

all i saw was ryse, that digital-only killer instinct remake and dead rising 3. does microsoft have more exclusives than those? They have exclusive Big Brother spying technology. Does that count? Which is exactly why I don't want the One, and is exactly how Sony can sell the Four for less, since their camera is optional. Sony is not going out of business, they're doing this launch right, finally. It's shocking for me to be a current 360 owner and be successfully wooed by a Playstation. $400 for 7850/7870-level graphics with 8 gigs of RAM and a 500GB HD ... insane.

Ars called it a twice-bisected rhombus, the PS4. I would say Sony directly bisected Microsoft at least twice during the show. And only $399?! What a good deal for 8 gigs of RAM.

Gross misrepresentation ... gads, that is so untrue. I'll never understand the ME3 ending furor. Super-excited for Morrigan's whip-tongue dialogue to return. Witcher ... meh.

Morrigan returns!! Lots of exciting news today ... SW Battlefront not least among them. In the here and now, I wish The Last of Us was available for PC ...

Gads, how do you people remember so many details. I should load a save and finish another OC, I guess, but the camera controls are a pain in my mouse.

Wait, isn't there a gradation of soul "quality" in P:E ... maybe they will introduce a kind of soul-istic bigotry more dynamic than a racial scheme.

The best steel for at least a half-mile around. Well I hope partnering with Russians is a mutually beneficial experience.

^^ Quiet resentment: seriously, medi-gel does nothing for follicle genophage. This one knows it to be certain. I have no doubt there will be zero pathing problems in P:E. The game is being developed by people who encounter real-life, unavoidable pathing problems around the I5 and 405 corridors.

Personally, I really like dark settings when they're executed well. A well-executed dark fantasy setting can create a great mixture of horror and dread. A poorly-executed dark setting just tries to go as over the top as possible purely for the sake of one-upping other works. I'm not asking for Columbia or Golarion here. I can't tell if you're endorsing Columbia, or not. I haven't yet finished Infinite because the setting seemed to beat my brow with its themes and names and images that come from real life. That player who got a refund because he objected to an unavoidable, unannounced in-game religious incident is an example, albeit extreme. Perhaps the "ending" will change my attitude, but I guess racism and bigotry, etc., are better dealt with when part of a less recognizable setting. I mean, I was totally emotionally involved in the plight of nearly every individual and race on the Citadel that my paragon FemShep character encountered ... but it was fun because I had a choice, in a world far removed from this one. So if P:E does something similar, I think it could be a productive force for tension in the game world. Something that makes me want to resolve it, not avoid it like in Columbia.

My Wounds-addled masochist monk character officially cannot wait to have his back clawed by a wicked and malicious female figure. Perhaps he will start a walking dead harem.

Sounds good, I'll have that. I hope the other classes have similarly unique paths to becoming a nightmarish terror on the battlefield. Dual-wielding lightly-armored for the win.

Thirty years on the bestseller list and I've never been able to play a pixelated Dragonlance character. Shirak!!! At least, not like I could in the Forgotten Realms.

Aww damn, and all this time I've been putting Swiss cheese on Swedish meatballs. I am from San Diego, CA, U.S., although I worked today in Irvine, CA near the Spectrum ... not too far away from Obsidian, I think. It's awesome to know I live only a few tens of miles from where my favorite upcoming game is being made. Woot!

Translucent ghost skin!? Oh man, I can't wait to unfurl my dynamic cape and cleaves some ghosties!

Not to get too excited, but it's April and the KS campaign estimated delivery of PE in April '14 ... woohoo!! Less than a year to go!! Just kidding. You guys take all the time you need. Thanks for making something I want to have.

Seriously amazing ... well done, all. Now, do we get pulsating jade green circles underneath our characters?

Oh wow, how interesting, thank you. That really lends an air of pre-production insider value to the documentary video.

Wait.. What?? What did I miss!? Guide me, oh enlightened backer!! some (i'd like to think only a minority) people behaving incredibly immature on the final video-stream during the kickstarter against a female obsidian employee wearing a green shirt at that time I don't remember an incredible amount of immaturity--maybe in the alternate stream comments. I just remember it was fun watching the final countdown stream and the instant celebrity of an attractive female dev. As I recall, Adam even mentioned it to the room.