midnite rule

That was my point. Rwanda had legitimate grievance with the DRC, but the real reason they invaded was for the loot. Gold, cobalt and coltan; the stuff our electronic gizmos are made of, that which power the dialogue we’re currently engaged in. And I don’t think the US is any more moral than Rwanda. Sorry, but I don’t believe in American exceptionalism, I see no evidence America is acting very differently from any other empire in history. Besides, how do we define a cross-border raid? Trump (and his ilk) oft frame the Mexican border issue in warlike terms. Portraying every person coming from south of the Rio Grande as the vanguard of an MS-13 army. They point to crimes by undocumented Latinos as evidence. They’re not making up crimes, they’re just selectively highlighting those that fit their hyperbolic narrative. (I’d wager the Rwandan narrative justifying the invasion also contained much hyperbole.) Do you think the US should drone bomb Mexican drug Cartels?

In 1998 Rwanda invaded The Democratic Republic of the Congo. They claimed to act in response to raids originating from Congolese territory. The raiders were mostly ethnic Hutus, with whom the Tutsis ruling Rwanda had some bad blood. The invasion of The DRC started the Second Congo War (also known as the African World War) a conflict that killed 6 million people (the deadliest since WWII). Query: was Rwanda justified in invading DR Congo?

I watched a couple of Sarkeesian videos and didn’t find much worth in them. Some things she said made sense, but it was drowned out with a bunch of Post-Modernist nonsense. But Sarkeesian would have remained in obscurity if not for belligerent a-hole* gamers. Unlike Jack Thompson, she never called for any games to be banned. She just had opinions about them. And she should be able to voice her opinion without rape threats. That’s kinda the basic of civil discourse. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Michael Mann movies, including his critically maligned recent work. But I don’t threaten film critics just because they’re objectively wrong. *Not saying all, or even most gamers, are a-holes, because I do think the media too often tar all gamers with the same brush. I mean, football supporters who throw bananas at black footballers are not held up as representing all sport fans. But gamers are judged by the worst among us.

According to the intro movie this game takes place 5 years after Pillars 1. But the in-game calendar says the year is 2823, the same as Pillars 1. This is a purely cosmetic issue of course. But it bothers me nonetheless, so any chance of fixing it in the next patch?

About a year ago I had an idea to combine elements of Sudoku with 3d Tic-Tac-Toe. I soon realized I was too stupid to make it work so I just forgot about it. But maybe someone here could help. Here’s how it works: First of all, this is supposed to be a 2d representation of the layers of a cube. The game starts with a few neutral characters in the cube; these can be used by both players. The players then begin taking turns; this is where the Sudoku aspect comes into play, only one of each character in any direction is allowed; the players have to figure out which character belongs in which tile, if you place the wrong character in a tile you lose. The players have their own distinct color and symbol Get 4 out of 5 in a row in any of the cardinal directions to win. Unfortunately you cannot go across the cube diagonally; at least not with a 53 cube, it probably is possible with a bigger cube, but that may make the game too complex to play. So what do you think: salvageable or just a stupid idea to begin with.

Link Video: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QWarnqcZoCc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I'm not a big comic book guy, but I'd love a cRPG set in Jack Kirby's Fourth World.

I've been waiting for a game that lets me keep a smilodon as a pet.

How 'bout "Twilight of Eternity", should appeal to the Teenybopper crowd. But seriously Project: Eternity is fine.

Uhm… no, I mean what’s written underneath. In the first two Fallouts there were no plot points, you were given a quest to find the magic macguffin and once you completed that given another task to destroy the big baddie that threatened your people. None of the characters you came across in your journey were in any way essential to completing your objectives. In Torment or Arcanum this isn’t the case.

This is so true, I've never understood the vitriol directed at PS:T combat while Arcanum gets away with an even worse system; combat in Torment is merely uninteresting, in Arcanum it’s actively bad. In much the same way combat in the original Deus Ex is way, way worse than combat in Vampire: The Masqurade – Bloodlines but never gets the same heat for it.

In CRPGs the ideal has long been to give the player as much freedom of choice as possible. This would seem to include the possibility to kill anyone you come across in your journey. But if you’re trying to tell the player a story, this raises a problem. What’s to stop the player from killing the plot driving characters before they have a chance to advance the plot? Let’s look at some methods game designers have used to overcome this problem. Method 1: Devilishly convenient documents As seen in: Arcanum, Fallout: New Vegas Killed an important character; no problem, you’ll find a letter or diary entry on their corpse or nearby, pointing you in the next direction. This was done rather well in New Vegas, where it was only employed in the early parts of the game; in Arcanum it was used throughout the game and strained plausibility after a while. It could be made interesting if the letter or diary was written in a cipher or foreign language and you had to get it translated before you could continue. Method 2: I have to search you As seen in: Deus Ex: Invisible War, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Fallout: New Vegas ‘No you can’t approach the King wielding your Broadsword of Infinite Death’. This is a logical way to solve the problem, as it only makes sense that important characters would have bodyguards that force you to disarm before meeting their charges. It was however rather poorly executed in Invisible War, where the areas in which you could or couldn’t use weapons were quite random from a consistent world perspective. Method 3: You just can’t As seen in: KotOR 1 and 2, Dragon Age, The Witcher Simply remove the ability to manually enter combat at the player’s whim. This is something of a cop out, but nonetheless I find it an acceptable method. Method 4: You fail As seen in: Planescape: Torment, Morrowind Game Over, man. This was the method used in my favorite game: Planescape: Torment; but it really isn’t a good one. At least in Planescape the plot advancing characters were few and pretty well indicated to be such; in Morrowind these characters were many, and with no indication at all until after you killed them. Method 5: No consequence As seen in: Oblivion, Fallout 3 Just kill anyone you want, no one will give a flying ****. In Fallout 3 you can go berserk with a nuclear bazooka in the middle of the brotherhood’s base; and all the essential characters will simply wake up, with no recollection of your atrocity. This, in my opinion, is even worse than method 4. Method 6: Lose the Plot As seen in: Fallout 1 & 2, Gothic 3 Just don’t have any characters that are indispensable to the story. This might be the best way, but probably the hardest to execute whilst simultaneously telling an engaging story. In fact I’m not sure it’s even possible to make a game using solely this method, for instance I’m not sure what happens if you decide to go berserk in Vault 13 in Fallout. The best way to go about it is probably to strive for method 6 whilst using methods 1 and 2 as a last resort. Of course a lot of it comes down to design and execution; Planescape: Torment used of bad method, but is an excellent game; Deus Ex: Invisible War used a good method, but is a terrible game. Thoughts?

Well, it hasn’t been executed, it’s just some scribbles on an online forum. But how this system might work in a game, well… An Antagonist who fears you might be more willing to parley then one who simply regards you with contempt. An organization that fears you might send out assassins to kill you; whereas if that same organization disliked you but didn’t consider you a threat, they might decide not to waste any resources on you. Some characters might be more predisposed toward pragmatism then emotion or vice versa.

Obsidian really likes reputation systems, having used them all games (except maybe DSIII, which I haven’t played). But their reputation system so far has been one dimensional, being based solely around whether a person or faction likes you or not. I propose a two dimensional reputation system with one axis representing emotional feelings and another representing practical opinion. The y-axis the being emotional and the x-axis representing the practical, it would look something like this: Sympathy Affection Admiration Indifference Neutral Respect Disgust Hatred Fear This would make the reputation system more dynamic I think.