Kaftan Barlast

What Im saying is that alot of story "hooks" and tools that we use today, are impossible to transfer to a Fantasy setting while keeping it credible. So there is a clear limit to what kind of stories you can tell in a fantasy setting, a much greater limit than contemporary or future stories. While a contemporary setting can be blended with others genres like Neil Gaiman likes to do, it remains rooted in its basic contemporary world and the great creative freedom that comes with that. The Fantasy genre is heavily formalized and adheres strictly to a certain model of "storytelling" or whatever you might call it. You have a finite set of design/story patterns that you use over and over again with slight variation. Like for example the magic object that must be reassembled from pieces spread over the land, or the big ominous naughty person whose armies threaten all that is good and true, or the cursed hero who must find a cure for his curse. Fantasy is an inherently restrictive genre, whereas contemporary or sci-fi have a very broad range of possibilities in comparison.

I was playing Mass Effect last night and all of a sudden you're jumped by a TV crew and the dialogue turns into a live tv interview. I thought that was really cool, and its definently something thats impossible to do in a fantasy game. Unless you pull something idiotic and non-credible like "Gandolphs illusionistic news network". That is a small example, but Fantasy is a genre that really puts a chokehold on creativity is a lot of ways. And we hates it, yes we do!

There's no point unless you have a 720p screen, but once you do, the differance is enormous compared to DVD's.

Im still playing Mass Effect. It's so awesome that Im savoring it, only playing 2-3hours a day and takig time to look around HGL is a real stinker. The only thing that is remotely fun about the game is finding new armour, but that wears off after 20min. Even die hard Diablo fans dont like HLG. Its repetitive in the extreme. And ugly, character faces are just flat surfaces with face textures painted on them like in the late 90s

When it comes to Beat Em Up's the official expression is "button mashing", and apparently it's hard to counter-design. The latest game like that I played was Heavenly Sword and even though its brand new, button mashing is an excellent strategy unless you play on the hardest difficulty. JE's combat wasnt much compared to one-on-one games like Tekken, but it must have taken a humongous effort to make the old NWN engine do all that. Hopefully, JE2's combat will be more advanced and varied. Still, I didnt mind the fighting in JE. If you only think about wining as fast as possible, you can just whore stuff like Golem Form, but its much more fun to play with the opponent using a mixture of martial styles. It's built off of rock-paper-scissors. You've got weak fast attacks that beat strong attacks, strong attacks that beat blocking, and blocking, which beats the weak fast attacks. In real-time, at first it's somewhat exciting and fresh, but after about an hour or two, you realize how incredibly simple it all is. You just spam weak attacks until they block, at which point you throw a strong attack. They add in "support styles", which are the same as normal attacks except instead of doing damage they debilitate the enemy, but the spamming element stays the same. Is there dialouge and stuff? If so is it like Diablo's "dialogue" or something closer to The Witcher or Fallout? Beyond combat what else is there in the game? have you never played a BioWare game or have you've been sleeping under a rock since 2005? JE is essentially Kotor in a Pseudo-chinese setting, and it contains everything a normal BW game does; romance, quests, etc. It's like youre asking if Crysis has guns.

What I bought is a A/V to VGA + RCA.. and an adapter which converts RCA to a female 3,5mm plug

And I cant understand how you can enjoy the Gothic games

Well, since it seems out of the question to connect my 360 to my monitor using HDMI>DVI, I ordered one of those A/V>VGA thingies with sound output. What I cant understand is how Microsoft are thinging when they dont put something as basic as a friggin' headphone jack on their console. ..probably "Hey, I know. let's trick kaftan into buying 50$ worth of cables and adapters!"

The Total War series are the best strategy games ever, why fix something that aint broke? And ETW does stretch well into the 1800's I dont remember when it ends but Napoleon is definently in there.

I trtied to haxx my 360 today by removing the shell of the thingie-connector so my HDMI cable could fit too. Strangely, when I tried to run with the plastic-thingie off, it gave me alot of red lights on the front, but they disapeared when i put the shell back does MS have DRM's on their cables aswell?

I think you are projecting your disapointment over the collapse of the Swedish Empire into misdirected anger. It wasnt our fault that everyone bunched up on us until we were too weak to protect Finland from being occupied by the Russkies. Imagine, if things had gone a bit better, you would be speaking a nice indoeurpoean language with germanic roots, instead of that ugrik nonsense with far too many hard consonants. Together we could have forced Norway to remain in the union, and thus using their sweet oil to enrichen ourselves. Maybe even invade Poland again?

You people are nothing but a bunch of cranky reactionaries. Here you get the most awesome time period in Europe served on a silver platter and youd rather take China?! Im offended by your blatant lack of taste, you phillistines. The Duke of Wellington agrees with me: "Phillistines, bah!"

JE2 really cant fail as long as we get kungfu heroes in purple hotpants* and a continued lack of "the ancient race who created everything" * on both men and women this time around

IMO, this new TW takes place in the most exciting historical time period in Europe, just the setting Ive always wanted. I know its going to be the most awesome TW game thus far, you've got naval battles, guns, and you can play Sweden. Im excited. And Asia?! What, you want tentacle troopers and sailor-moon cohorts? Phh..

That is one ugly glass shader, it better be from a realtime demo or whoever made it should be pelted with pinecones. Do you have a 30", Bok? We have one at uni and its a mixed blessing.. lots of workspace but windows-handling is a mess and SLi is a must unless you want to play every game on low.

But then you could compare Klingons to urukhai, Romulans to Drow and call Star Trek fantasy aswell. Or why not call a hamburger a sunday steak, hey it's all just meat, am I right? Jade Empire doesnt really have a clear defined genre. It's an action/beat 'em up/RPG/adventure set in a setting that combines westernified wuxia with biowareism. It sure as *** isnt a fantasy game. Its clear due to the very noticeable lack of dungeons, orcs, chainmail-bikinis, pseudo-medievalism, bearded wizards with cone-hats, elves of adubious sexual orientation and everything else a game must include to get to call itself fantasy.

Hah! Look forward to being pestered. edit: oh, poop. I actually have to use my xbox to send messages or it wont recognise my gold membership and my cord isnt long enough

Is not. You cant keep putting every game with an imaginary setting into the fantasy genre.

ban plz.

Another question, when is BioWare going to give up that whole "ancient race who created everything" schtick? I mean, really, what's up with that? I was wondering if perhaps, some head honcho up there is a Scientologist, that would explain it.

BioWare is BioWare, and they're doing their thing with JE2 as they did with the original. So I doubt it will be any different is terms of Westernification and genericism.

Cant I just watch alot of Kungfu films instead? Could you recommend any sweet ones I havent seen? :D ( Ive seen "The legend of Fon Sai Yuk" like 25 times..its awesome )

So, can you give us any examples of when you behave like morons and then pull the ADHD card to get away clear? :D

Hee hee ...and the first song is really increadibly annoying.

Champagne and explosives for everyone!