Humodour

Windows 7 aka "Guys, you really ought to buy this from us. It's Windows Vista, but possibly not ****!" 'Cause god knows they're done for if this flops too. I sure as **** am not budging from XP and Ubuntu.

Willy Peter is often used as a smoke screen. It is only illegal against military targets in built-up areas due to the potential for civilian loss of life. It certainly reasonable to call on Israel to stop using it in such areas if indeed they are (which has not been determined). Nice use of unbiased sources, BTW. I love Iranian journalism. It always touches my special place with it's mischaracterisations and propaganda.

Yeah but America's system is completely unproportional. There's not even preferential voting, so parties with only like 30% to 40% of supports can gain power (look at the Minnesota Senate race: 15% of the voters didn't get their voters counted - wasted votes - because they voted Barkley). Similar situation in Canada, where currently the government in power was only voted for by 40% of Canadians (the rest voting for centrist parties). America's Senate also requires a 60% majority (de facto) because of filibuster/cloture (which is an oddity in the Western world and gives the minority party basically complete veto power as long as they have 40% or more of the vote). Nobody would really seriously hold up America's electoral system as a role model. No. It's got nothing to do with ethnicity. It means if there's 30% of people who vote for party A, and 50% who vote for party B, and 10% who support party C, then that's how many seats each party gets as a proportion, roughly. Eh, as I said it's not based on ethnicity, and moreover, non-citizens don't get to vote in most countries (including Israel, Australia, and America).

Doet.

And you'd rather silence the people you disagree with? Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just your gut feeling? Maybe your system in Britain is weird, but you only need a 50% majority to pass law here, which means nothing goes wibbly unless both the Opposition party and third parties are opposed to some plan, in which case it probably damn-well shouldn't pass! Rubbish. If Israel didn't have proportional representation, the only groups that would become more powerful are the extremely hawkish ultra-right-wing parties. How does that lead to peace? I'm Australian. We use proportional representation in the house of review (the senate).

It's called having a social life that relies heavily on drinking alcohol.

In the meantime, if you don't get a copy in your country, you can always legally buy it online and have it shipped there.

Wouldn't work very well. I'm pretty sure that the Arab League passed a resolution disallowing Palestinians citizenship in Arab states, precisely so they'd continue harassing Israel instead.

There's a virus on both of your links btw. What? It's Game Trailers. I know - I just had a virus warning in both, that there was a Worm in the links.. Tried following them now, but then I didn't get it.. It sounds more like your browser has been hijacked by a trojan or spyware, Rosbjerg.

I don't have NWN2 or its expansions yet because I don't have a good enough computer, but BH is extra incentive for me to buy these games once I do upgrade.

Well the funny thing is that Arabs make up like 20% of the Knesset (Israeli government) but just cast a vote of no confidence in every decision. Even though 20% is a massive amount and certainly enough to influence decisions, force compromises, and actually represent their constituents. BTW, that's an pretty silly blanket statement about proportional representation, Wals.

Actually, Israel considers it favourably, as does the Palestinian president (responsible for the relative peace in the West Bank), while Hamas rejects it. But Hamas doesn't really get a say in the matter unless they want to start killing predominantly Muslim peacekeepers - which would be a really bad idea, since the world would come crashing down on them like a bag of bricks. It's absolutely short-sighted of you to assume Palestinians will always back Hamas, Volourn, as an epic failure by Hamas in this war is more than enough to switch popular support to the Palestinian Authority and lead to the same situation of calm you see in the West Bank (I bet you thought fighting would continue forever there as well, no doubt).

No, it's not sarcasm, it's the French-Egyptian cease-fire proposal which you obviously missed and is backed by Turkey, America, and the EU.

Obsidian isn't Bethesda, and even Deus Ex 1 and Torment had off-putting moods before I played them, so have a little faith.

Wouldn't it be then an Action game instead? Well done quoting me out of context.

Actually, at the time of buying NWN+SoU+HotU, SoU was the only reason I didn't consider the whole NWN franchise ****. SoU was too short, but still managed to pack in more light-hearted fun and life (akin to BG1) than NWN1 OC ever did. HotU was just OK.

Being sold a lot over time qualifies as good, though, since hype cannot sustain sales over time. Credibility destroyed.

I find it hilarious that Sawyer, basically co-leader of an internationally famous gaming company, with 100 something employees, can not find somebody to draw a sheep skin, for a pre-existing wireframe, in their spare time.

I'm banking on this Egyptian-French plan to send in a Turkish peacekeeping force to subdue Hamas and thus force an Israeli ceasefire.

Will they give me funky black mojo?

Exactly. I honestly believe you could make an awesome RPG by relying simply on variety in actions/events/quest resolution instead of stats or even dialogue. You want to role play? Actions speak louder than words. I'd love to see a game like that, in fact. It'd be an FPS, of course. Think Deus Ex with twice as many quests, and twice as many possible meaningful outcomes per quest.

I love that post, Josh! I hadn't really known your thoughts on game design issues of this sort before, but now that I do I am certainly pleased (for whatever that's worth). Might I suggest, though, that you focus less on the sole overarching theme of a game? Isn't it entirely possible to explore multiple issues at once? On the one hand you have a main theme which is accessible to the general audience (and I'm not saying it needs to be generic or shallow, but it could be if you wanted), and on top of that you layer a strong secondary theme about some deep/serious issue which is rarely touched upon, and which the player can largely ignore if they really chose, but is nonetheless pervasive and obvious enough to make the game unique and distinct. E.g. a game about a dystopia (as the main theme, done to death I know) with strong undercurrents of racial or class identity is entirely plausible - you actually see this pair fairly commonly in written literature. In fact, I feel that it is the games which do not have such deep secondary undercurrents that give off the greatest impression of being shallow or 'trite', as you put it. Still, I would like to see games whose main theme was more adventurous. Maybe an inversion of the above: a game which primarily focused on racial identity in a setting with minor dystopian undercurrents. It removes the focus from surviving in a dystopia, or reforming a dystopia, to instead however you wanted to play out the racial identity theme. Now that would be interesting, IMHO. I do believe it would be successful because you still have the core background elements there (in this case the dystopian setting) to strengthen your appeal. Not to mention that a game about racial identity is nothing to shirk away from. I'm not saying it'd appeal to everybody as your average game does, but it's entirely possible that for every customer who was put off by the idea, you'd gain one was intrigued by its freshness. Something that the media coverage as a sort of 'first of its kind' in this fledgling media would only magnify. Note: when I say racial identity, I don't necessarily mean a preachy game. Simply a game which genuinely explores the issue. In fact, probably one of the most compelling reasons for covering such issues in a computer game is the unique degree of interactivity and freedom you can afford the responder in their exploration of the issue if you so choose, compared to print and film media. This became somewhat of a verbose rant.

I think it would be entirely reasonable to settle for below 60 fps as many games already do. I believe the GTA series and Halo run at 30 fps, off the top of my head, but you could easily opt for 45 or something, depending on the framerate sacrifice (if any) required for better transparency techniques. I'd say this is especially true for games which don't operate in first person view (e.g. Aliens RPG). It's all well and good to aim for as high a framerate as possible (within the monitor refresh rate) as far as it actually improves graphical quality perceptibly, but high framerates shouldn't be an end in and of themselves. /2 cents and all

You honestly think skill checks in conversation is what constitutes an RPG?

Nah, that's an excessively simplistic view of things.