Agelastos

Personally hoping they'll be less Aasimar/Tieflings, more Anakites.

It was an early pre t2a osi feature that was later taken out. Some private serves such as UO Second Age have it implemented. Which was released in '98, so... Yes, I know there's plenty of Greyworld (are they still called that?) servers out there with their own set of rules. LLTS!

I'd rather have an Edwin-like character. I always thought that's what Edmund Blackadder would be like if he was a wizard.

Your sarcasm detector needs re-calibrating No, no. It works just fine. And your post was funny. That's not the issue.

Of course you had to compare one of the worst characters ever written by Bioware with one of the best characters ever written by Obsidian. Yes, DA2 was a bad, horribly rushed game. But overall, I think Bioware has a better track record than Obsidian when it comes to companions. That's because Bioware usually make low-concept games that are very character-driven, whereas Obsidian (and Black Isle before them) tend to make high-concept games that focus on big philosophical questions. They have different areas of expertise.

Geralt is definitely NOT comely. He's described as ugly in the books, and by pretty much everyone he meets in the games.

The horror... It's more about the depth and inner strength of his female characters than it is about their fighting abilities, though.

As long as the PC doesn't say something each and every ****ing time you tell him/her to go somewhere or do something. Gets really annoying after a while.

Why stop there? Why not take his loincloth? His man-panties? His fundoshi? Leave a naked corpse and pay someone to take his soiled undergarments. Better yet, harvest his (or her,) corpse or organs and sell them to schools of anatomy! Inventory: Fresh Human Cadaver (12) Health Potion (6) Iron Short Sword (3) Rotting Human Cadaver (34) Rotten Human Cadaver (47) Wooden Buckler (2) Well, UO did originally allow you to dismember a corpse and take the body parts. They removed that function in... what was it? '98? because they wanted to make it a T-rated game. Everything went downhill from there... Still the best MMORPG ever made (IMO), however.

Haha! Whedon is revered by (female) feminists around the globe for his portrayal of strong women, and there's even a field of Gender Studies called "Buffy Studies" at some universities.

They made Xaro - a pale, thin, hook-nosed gay man - into a big, black straight man for some reason. Edit: Sorry. I did of course mean "a big, straight man from the Summer Islands".

All of Whedon's stuff is tongue-in-cheek, though. He's constantly lampshading and playing the tropes associated with the genre (horror/vampire fiction for Buffy, Western and Space Opera for Firefly, etc.) for laughs. So if you find something in his shows to be over-the-top or just ridiculous, then that was probably his intent. His shows are like porn to us B-movie fans. Sorry! I know you didn't want to talk about Whedon, but I couldn't help myself.

I will play as... YOU! * *

They didn't come to power until '96, though. The Soviet-Afghan war was '79-'89.

"Harry Potter staircase"? Is that what it's called now? M.C. Escher must be turning in his grave. Bah! Humbug! Kids these days... *shakes cane at youths skateboarding on the sidewalk*

River wasn't just a girl. She was a genius (who may have had latent psychic abilities even before she was altered) turned genetically engineered super assassin through a secret Alliance military program. Hell, they even removed most of her amygdala (which is what made her so... erratic). When focused, she was the most deadly person in the galaxy. Edit: ah. too late

I didn't say that either. I said that it COULD make for raw and poignant stories. It all depends on the skill of the writer. You really love to distort peoples words, don't you? Which is EXACTLY what I have been saying from the very start...

I guess that making an "emotionally raw and poignant story" is impossible without rape, right? Did I say that? No, I didn't. Of course it isn't. Eiji Yoshikawa used it to demonstrate the misogynistic culture of Tokugawa-era Japan, to make us feel for Akemi, and to explain the changes in her personality. There are also plenty of novels that describe war rape without reveling in it. It's there because it will have an effect on what happens later in the plot. Because it motivated a character to make a difference, or broke him/her down. To explain why a woman later on killed her child and herself. Or why she was so cruel and distant to her child that he grew up to be a sadistic murderer. To raise moral questions. It's not gratuitous if it serves an actual purpose. If it is somehow integral to the plot.

I remember a revenge quest in the City Elf origin, where a human noble claims jus primae noctis and kidnaps you or your soon-to-be wife. But you rode in and saved the day before anything even happened. And you didn't have time to get to know the would-be-victims before the quest. I don't remember anything about a rape in the Brecilian Forest. Did it happen before you even got there? Didn't happen to your or one of your companions, anyway, so it's not the same thing. Graphical rape doesn't have to pornographic. It could just be a short cutscene that fades to black before anything really happens. Yes, implied rape is pretty common, but it's rarely used to move the plot forward. Usually it's just there to showcase how dark and gritty the setting is, and that's exactly what I don't want. And there are plenty of good examples of rape in literature. I don't see how it's any less imaginative than murder is.

The Trobriand Islands? Papua New Guinea? Vanuatu?

The reason is to make you feel. To make you crave revenge because you care for the victim. Or at least want to help him/her through it (if your character doesn't believe in revenge). In most games, they do that by killing off the character's parents or something like that. People you don't know and have probably never even met. It's nowhere near as poignant, and it's been done to death. Why is it cheap? It's a pretty common plot in literature, both classical and contemporary. And in films. But for some reason, it seems to be taboo in games. Sure, sometimes a character will hint at the fact that s/he was raped in the past, or a character is about to get raped when the hero rides in and saves him/her. But to actually have it happen during the game...? Apart from Phantasmagoria, I can't think of a single game (that isn't some stupid hentai game) in which a character is raped. And it's not like they have to show it on screen.

What about Iron Tower Studio?

isn't that a sexploitation trope... that's all folks!

Well, personally, I want P:E to be a fun video game and not the next champion of the "games are art" crowd; leave that **** to pretentious indie developer douche bags like Jonathan Blow. Why does rape = artsy pretentiousness? It could be used to tell emotionally raw and poignant stories, or just to illustrate the horrors of war. If it was to happen to one of your companions, it could be the start of a great revenge quest. As long as it isn't used in a gratuitous way just to make the game "dark and edgy"...

Ah, okay!