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Gee, I wonder why people would feel inclined to resell a game. I mean, it couldn't possibly be because it's an overpriced piece of ****, right? I'm not saying that the producers of crap games should go under, but... wait, scratch that. That's exactly what I'm saying. Want to reduce second hand sales? Increase the game's replayability value so people will not want to resell it.

Heh, good points.

FSB has a very bad reputation for such a young organization. Worse even than KGB (not NKVD), in some cases...

Nazis didn't really bother with torture. Not very methodically, at least. They either shipped you off to a labor camp to work you to death, or lined you up with a few hundred others and shot you in the back of the head. That tends to make folks restless and encourage armed resistance. Which worked just fine for them, as "removal" of the native populations in conquered areas was part of their war plans - but that way they could write it off as "fighting partisans". As for torture itself, I think the point isn't so much that torture doesn't extract useful info (which it can do), but rather, that unless that info can be verified, it cannot be consistently relied upon. This severely limits its usefulness as a method for intel gathering. If it had been scienfically established that torture does not work as a method for extracting information, there would be no debate. Anecdotal evidence goes both ways, though.

Jacob? I never got the impression he could be a good leader - you certain he works for that role? I'll take Zaeed over him any day of the week and twice on sundays. But apparently being co-founder and head of one of the biggest merc groups in the galaxy doesn't make you a competent squad leader... may need to take a look at Blue Suns casualty rates. A few random thoughts: Am I the only one seeing a connection between TIM and the dark energy/failing stars business? Talking to Parasini, she mentions that Noveria's been suffering heavy hax0ring attacks against databases pertaining to dark energy research - and she's not certain it's standard corporate espionage. And what's that in the background of TIM's office, anyway? Too obvious? And did I miss it before, or is the in-game newsflash about this "Kasumi" person something new?

Huh? Not even waterboarding? FAIL

A warlike mindset doesn't necessarily hinder progress. But endemic warfare does, as it constantly destroys resources, infrastructure and production, that could be better used otherwise. The idea that a lot of progress is made in wartime is a misconception due to the non-linear, multi-disciplinary nature of research. During wartime more projects may be completed, but overall scientific progress is hampered due to, well, war. The krogan probably had a more rational approach to everything before their nuclear war, even if we don't really know what they were like in that period. But we do know what they were like in the millenia between that and the genophage, because it's in the codex. What they used to be or could have been doesn't matter however as those krogan are all gone, magically replaced by a bunch of overly aggressive, honor-obssessed simpletons.

Beer Effect: 1. Get to the local bar and chat up some asari matriarch 2. pretend you're listening to her 1000-year long life story while you hit the bottle, hard 3. ???? 4. PROFIT!!!

In one of the documentaries of the "making of", they speak about the ambiguity present in those, regarding their intelligence. Apparently, they wanted to make them obviously intelligent, but it's difficult to imagine true intelligence that doesn't immediately remind you of human intelligence. So they had to compromise between that and what are seemingly animalistic traits, to get a distinct non-human, alien feel. The thing in the picture is what they got. Not many animals on Earth can manipulate an elevator after watching somebody operate it just once, use the blood of another individual to elaborate an escape plan, shut down power to facilitate an ambush, etc.

I can live with that. But they really need to work on those armors to make it worth the extra $.

When you have something that is completely different from the group you are trying to analyze it's not "proof" of anything, it's an exception. Again, the krogan with the poetry only shows that krogan are capable of memorising random crap. Once more, you don't get to talk with him, so any conclusions you draw are made up, 100%. Go on, find more examples of the diversity in krogan character. Heh, even their scientists are like that, "there's ALWAYS room for one more weapon in Tuchanka!" "we measure success when the earth trembles in response!", etc. Other races have a more or less dominant trait but, unlike the krogan, that doesn't preclude their development of different, individual personas. Eh, the krogan aren't really alien, as grom said. They are simply barbaric, and dumb. Lol, walking unprotected on a venus-like world just to prove how tough you are? Really, Bioware? That guy is alien. The krogan are a caricaturized version of the gaulish warrior tribes of the classical period. Think of Grunt as an uglier, meaner version of Obelix. So... what? Obviously krogan aren't going to be shooting at each other with .22 peashooters. And a redundant liver isn't going to do much good if a 20mm round connects with your faceplate. They even get the reference in-game that, after the invention of gunpowder, the #1 cause of death changed to gunshot wound. So, actually that's judging by krogan standards. As far as I know, the krogan only nuked themselves back to stone age once. I may have missed any references to that being more or less a cyclical occurrence?

Yes, I suppose you could. But encroaching on the consumers' rights isn't what I was thinking when I wrote that, as in that sense, you adapt to something that threatens you... which isn't the case with second hand sales. You may as well "adapt" to the possibility that people can choose not to buy your product. This is generally known as unfair competition, though. But yeah, as long as they aren't shot down in court, I expect businesses to do anything in their power to maximize their profit, and to be lazy and inflexible in their practices.

The krogans are dying because of the genophage and the wanderlust which is a result of it; but the warlike mindset predates it by far. Wrex is simply trying to find a way to prevent the extinction of the krogan around the genophage. The reason societies progress forward is because their advances give them a decisive edge over competitors. That it takes player intervention (made flesh in Wrex) for a krogan to even propose these changes is exactly what I'm complaining about. How many other krogan share his views? Have you tried importing a save where Wrex died on Virmire? As for what the writers may have been thinking... irrelevant speculation. Only meaningful discussion can be about what is in the game, no? The blood rage thing was already present when the krogan were uplifted. The codex (just checked) says their planet was destroyed in nuclear war four thousand years ago, roughly two or three thousand years before the salarians made contact. The blood rage is explained as an overwhelmingly advantageous trait from a natural selection perspective, which is crazy-silly. In a post-gunpowder society, physical toughness and blind aggression aren't decisive. Psycho gangs in post-apoc scenarios aren't alone: they prey on settlements. Who do these barbarian krogan prey upon? Each other? How long would it take for such a society to collapse or evolve? One-dimensional.

The woes of a free market economy. Adapt, survive, thrive.

Fixed. The krogan and the asari thing isn't representative of anything - you don't even get to talk to him. If there was a krogan doing somersaults, it wouldn't lend much more support to what you are trying (and failing) to show. And the fish-obsessed krogan talks about going to the presidium and killing all turians there. How was that you said... Oh yeah: So, where can I get Bizarro Effect? I'm not going to get dragged into a discussion about ST with you. Suffice to say that even the writers disagree with you about that enough to add another facet to the race in ENT. Klingon lawyer?! OMFG N0z That they are in ME? Seriously, chances are you are just drawing another imaginary connection, that doesn't actually exist anywhere else... IIRC, the blood rage thing is "promoted" to survive in the post-nuclear environment and had nothing to do with the salarians. Which is pretty stupid by itself and another excellent example of what I'm saying, as it's not uber macho bull**** that can rebuild a society but initiative, intelligence and, yeah, you guessed it: production. Looks like somebody in the writing team isn't familiar with the concept of diminishing returns. Can't argue with their popularity. Can't argue with Paulina Rubio's popularity, either.

Perhaps that we are critically short of Sir Charles Napiers? Sometimes I wonder...

I know it's true, I gathered that much from your post. The message they are trying to get across with the ad, though, needn't be. But the point is that when you're being mugged (or, especially when otherwise attacked), you aren't in control at all. So the idea that just giving up everything you're carrying will protect you is as much a mental paper armor as carrying a weapon.

Good points. But they could do it when they imagined the Thorian, the rachni, the Reapers, the geth... As for the more anthropomorphic species, the krogan are the only race lacking individual distinctiveness past the cultural stereotyping. Quarians, turians, asari, you meet a lot of different characters. Krogan... not so much. Even the "scientists" have a warlike mindset. Didn't work for Klingons, doesn't work for krogan. And no, a culture like that couldn't have discovered fission. It would have been destroyed while trying to attack cultures with a more utilitarian approach to war. War isn't about who has the toughest warriors - it's about who has the biggest production and the most manpower. It's debatable whether the krogan culture in Mass Effect is a product of the defeatism and irredentism brought about by the genophage... but that doesn't do anything about the lack of depth of krogan NPCs. You must have been playing the Director's Cut.

Which are, eh, perfectly legal.

Doesn't. Apart from being the most WTF?-moment in the game that I can remember, isn't really worth it. And no, she don't put out either. :/ edit: actually, I just remembered that she does.

Oh, shi-

It's not hypocritical to focus on one issue over another, and whether the effort is worth it depends on your point of view. I was perhaps not as clear as I should have been. What I mean is that it's hypocritical to focus on (read: bash others over the head with) one relatively minor issue, when one is actively or passively involved in other, bigger issues. You guys heard of antibiotic misuse? Hella scary...

He was fine... except he's a krogan. I mean, the whole "KILL! MAIM! MURDER!" thing applied to an entire culture is quite silly. I remember than in ME1, Ash and Wrex have an Elevator Convo, and Wrex specifically mocks this krogan stereotyping. Sounded promising, but Bio chose to take the easy path and reduce krogan to multi-gonad Klingons. And since Grunt is the UBER krogan, he ends up being uber silly. So... what you're saying is that she's exactly the kind of person you'd expect TIM to choose to watch his multi-billion cred investment? I liked her precisely for that. And her cameltoe. Whoa, you can actually fail that mission? I must have got lucky then. Didn't have to backtrack once.

Yeah, because cops are always there to protect and to serve, and 99 out of 100 times, carrying a weapon will result in the weapon being used against you. Because it was on the telly, right? It must therefore be true.

Er, wasted effort? Diminishing returns? Hypocrisy? The point isn't that this gets attention, it's the disproportionate amount of attention it gets, compared to its real importance. Its importance is in turn established by comparison with the impact that this and other problems have. Because it's pretty silly to focus on the effect that smear on the walls can have on children if those children won't live long enough to develop a tumor because the unhealthy living habits they learned from their parents causes a stroke before 40 (yup, smoking doesn't help with this, either). Cardiovascular disease is the #1 cause of death in developed countries. Just sayin' I'm in neither camp myself. I don't smoke, but the biggest problem smokers cause me is the foul smell that clothes get when people around smoke heavily. But I'll have to get around to washing my clothes all the same...