Commissar

But I don't want to go. Just to play devil's advocate here...so what about the whole thing? It's not an illegal purchase, right? Any sovereign nation in the world would be allowed to buy missiles off the Russians if they wanted, and Iran is still a sovereign country, so how could we justify stopping them? Now, I know that's a simplistic view, with the whole nuclear thing going on, and I don't actually take it myself. However, it would be a stupid country indeed that saw a storm coming and didn't buy a raincoat.

Makes you wonder why the Japanese love Italian plumbers so much.

As articulate as always.

Well, okay. But I personally wouldn't mess with him.

That's exceptionally creepy. I thought they were dolls at first. But is it the fact that they do this at all (perhaps as a one-off) that's the problem, or the fact that they seem to exist on a circuit of such events, going from one event to another and losing their childhood in the process? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's Texas, though. Japan isn't so far away, in terms of cultural oddities.

Since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, I'd guess about seven thousand years. However, I'd say that the seven 'days' of creation (before Adam and Eve were kicked out) are not actual days, but rather symbolism to explain the beginnings of the world, and thus a much longer time period. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What else is symbolism?

Iranian air defense honestly wouldn't be as big of a problem as everyone's making it out to be, even with a few new Russian toys.

No, this guy's actually legit. We get briefings about him.

Kinslayer scares the everloving hell out of me.

Yeah, but it's always on the rise amongst teenagers. It's sort of like us always managing to capture/kill al-Qaeda's number two man in Iraq. The more often you hear the same thing, the less you pay attention to it.

Look, I clearly don't know what I'm talking about. That's just what I heard, way back when the Game Cube was coming out; supposedly it wasn't going to allow more mature titles.

Is it still true that Nintendo doesn't go for games above a Teen rating?

It'd basically turn them into consoles, is what it'd do.

I had a lot of leave saved up, and my wife's out of town until Christmas. I finally got the opportunity to geek out a little. I don't really know if you can call me a gamer, having purchased and played KotOR II for the first time ever about three weeks ago. It's a problem that runs in the males of my family. If we're not closely watched by our women, we tend to geek out. My father, for example, was a fighter pilot and later a carrier captain; you'd think that'd be enough. But no, the old guy is an avid Battlefield 2 and Counter-Strike player. Go figure, huh? Edit: He also played a lot of Aces Over Europe, which I find highly ironic. Back in the old days, of course. We played the crap out of that game.

Call me dumb, but what? Spell it out for me, man. I consider myself one, though by no means a rabid fan. I enjoyed Fallout 2. Didn't play Torment. I liked Icewind Dale very much. I think I liked Icewind Dale II even more. I didn't like Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate II. I know those are Bioware titles, by the way. Based on what I've said, I imagine that the reason why I've long preferred Black Isle/Obsidian games to Bioware's should be evident.

Die. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ^ eldar Why commissar thinks I started it, I'll never know. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Seems like something you'd do. Plus, no one else has stepped up to claim credit.

I won't go as far as to call it creative, perhaps motivated <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

Nope. I feel I have more control over the character's story. That's what roleplaying's all about for the creative writer in me, after all. As far as believing what the game tells you...are you sure it's telling you a consistent story? There aren't any contradictions? Unreliable narrators are always fun. Kreia has a very different interpretation of what's going on than the Jedi Council, for example. They're not telling the same story, so how do you determine which one is correct? Or if one of them is correct in the first place?

Modern Japanese culture is, indeed, pretty odd stuff. Their porn games especially, but even anime and getting dressed up in costumes from anime and all that crap just isn't the mark of healthy individuals. Do what I do: limit your intake of Japanese culture to frequent trips to your local hibachi restaurant, and you'll be fine. At least until those oh-so-clever chefs fling shrimp at your head.

Money.

1. So where are you from? 2. Funny, but how long did it take him to type that much? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> He was referring to your post, I believe. And I have it saved from the old conspiracy theories thread.

Don't fool yourself into thinking you know what's going on in this world. The first duty of power is to perpetuate itself, and we don't even know who the actual powerful people are. Truman started the whole American tradition of secrecy after WWII, with Project Paperclip, in which the CIA put captured Nazi scientists to work on America's nuclear arsenal, the space program, and all this "otherworldly" technology they'd come across. (And you know what I mean.) Then they got Truman to create the super-secret Majestic 12 committee to oversee Project Paperclip, not to mention other weird stuff the government wanted hidden. They ran the whole thing, and they've been running it for years, but nobody knows who "they" are. But I'm pretty sure they're all Freemasons. The whole Kennedy thing is so huge because it's at the center of so many other covert shadow-government operations. Kennedy himself was the smallest part of it, because it was actually a power play between Dulles' CIA, the anti-Castro military, LBJ, the Giancana Mafia, and a bunch of other dirty players. Oswald was a patsy, sure, but he put a gun on Jack. Of course, so did other test-mules from Dulles' MK-Ultra LSD-mind-control experiments. Zapruder was in on it, too: He was a KGB mole from way back. And the whole thing had ripple effects, like Jonestown, which was an assassin training camp that got found out. As for the Warren Commission, that thing was a joke

Die.

Oh, I'm full of them. KotOR II really got me amped for whatever reason, making it much more of a letdown now that I've finally picked up I. I can't get past Dantooine in I without completely losing interest. I recommend picking it up, Mus. It was still selling for $49.99 when I did a few weeks ago, and I don't regret it. I will warn you, however, that you will feel a truly disgusting amount of geekish glee when you start fiddling around with the various configurations of your lightsaber(s). As far as the theme goes, I guess it really depends on what you like. It's certainly darker than most Star Warsy stuff (or at least the Star Warsy stuff that I'm familiar with), and that worked for me. Volo stated that neither of the KotOR games are particularly deep or require much thought, and I don't really know if I agree with that. There is a real sense in the game that things have just gone all to hell. The few Jedi left are in hiding, and seem extremely reluctant to face the Sith, to the point where their rationalizations seem a little suspect. The average guy doesn't care one way or the other about the Jedi or the Sith; the Jedi played a zero-sum game in the Mandalorian wars, and people just remember that they let numerous planets fall in order to keep their strategy intact. So while they tell people that they're around to keep peace, protect the innocent, and all that jazz, they can be seen sitting around while the Mandalorians overrun the joint. Abandoning the Jedi actually seems a pretty sympathetic choice in that case. There are lots of ambiguous elements like that. Onderon's a good example: though it's clear that Queen Whoever is the light side choice, and General Whatshisface is the dark side choice, the actual logical reasoning behind the factions could give you pause. The Republic of the game is failing, costing more than it's benefiting the planet, and the guys behind the General want out of the system, knowing that they can prosper on their own. Is that such a bad thing? I'll leave actual discussions of the way the Force is characterized out of this far too long bon mot, and simply conclude that I believe the game to be a nice departure from usual black-and-white portrayals of all things Star Wars. Does that make it anti-Star Wars? Quite possibly. Genre could use it, though.

There I profoundly disagree, but it's certainly a matter of preference. I prefer clean slate characters, characters that I can actually make on my own. I can figure out their motivations, their histories, etc. While not perfect in that regard, II does offer it much more than I; in the original, I can't help feeling like Bioware's loaning me their character for a couple of hours. In II, when you think about it, not all that much of the Exile's history is truly written, and the game offers you plenty of choices to clarify things. Why he disobeyed the Council, why he came back to face its judgment, whether it was actually the right choice, why he cares about the Sith stalking through the galaxy, even, to a certain extent, the nature of the whole "wound in the Force" bit. I got the impression that neither Kreia nor the Council truly knew just what the hell was up with the Exile; both seemed to me like they were guessing. The common assumption is that the Exile was, in fact, leeching power or life or whatever off of others, but I would argue that there's too much ambiguity for this to be accepted as fact. In plain English, you can do a lot more towards making the character a product of your creation rather than a Bioware loaner.