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The "good" ending is clumsy, unfulfilling and pointless. Just watched the evil ending (thanks YouTube), and it's much, much better. Why is this kind of moody stuff so popular? Why is it so prevalent in Obsidian's writing? Oh, and the handling of epic level stuff isn't very good either. What's the point of being "epic" if every janitor in the Academy is at least your level? Why is a Bear-"God" a pushover and some telthor midget is "Impossible"? I mean, how many Kings of Shadow have those losers killed? But worry not, because they kindly provided a win-button in the shape of a little epic spell called Vampiric Feast. Bah. Yeah, I can live without a strong story, if the gameplay makes up for it. How's the exploration? Is there a reason to explore, anyway?

Finally forced myself to finish MotB (the thing had been sitting on a shelf for a year). I feel... stupid. I want my 20 hours back, Obsidian. I don't have SoZ. Is it worth getting?

New X-W/TF game. Or JK. Or grand strategy a la Rebellion. But those can hardly go on consoles, so fat chance.

Ah, of course, equivocation. "The vast majority of poor people don't sit around on their asses all day and chew on the public cud" is equivalent to "there is no such thing as sloth." Nope. The equivocation was yours to begin with. "Efforts are made so lazy hobos get no state subsidies" is equivalent to "everyone in a hard financial spot is assumed to be lazy and therefore, should get no money".

I guffawed. Yes, because democracy (or lack thereof) justifies anything... Count again.

"Unworkable" comes to mind. But then again, I have no idea how far automated video surveillance can go, so what do I know. Stuff like ECHELON is pretty scary and it's been operating for decades. Nobody seems to care... which is by far the most horrific theme underlying in the novel. BTW, what do you think of Clean Feed? Are you suggesting that sloth doesn't exist?

Actually, owing to the way NWN2 deals with cross-class skills, you can keep dialogue skills maxed out no matter what, provided you take at least one level in a class that has it as a class skill. Able Learner is really, really useful if you have a decent INT and plan on mixing classes.

Yes and no. If you take the content of my post at face value, then it's probably wrong. But read carefully the sentence I quoted - you need to resort to real numbers and/or specify that you are operating with base 10 to have 2+2=4. Unless we define the starting conditions, symbols and operations can work however we wish. Pop did not explicitly say that that was an unconditional truth, but said it's a different sort of truth (heh) as Rand's moral cornerstone which, according to him, and rightly so, is subject to human will. I was just showing how it isn't. The trivial aspect of the response has nothing to do with me being facetious (which I was), but rather, that I hit his argument only tangentially by attacking his example instead of his reasoning. It makes perfect sense in the scope of the discussion: it illustrates how under different starting conditions, the same thing can be both right and wrong, or not make sense at all. I find it odd that Pop doesn't want to tackle the epistemological aspect of Rand's work, as it's epistemology that deals with truth itself. Kierkegaard had some interesting things to say about "objective" truth for instance, and, as with many other fundamentals, the debate is far from closed. Off to the court I am.

This amounts to suggesting that Blizzard suck up the costs of maintaining WoW and rely on Diablo 3 to make money. Why would they want to do this, again, other than to please you? I'm sure you have made millions off the stock market, but that doesn't really apply here. A speculator (shareholder) could perhaps take your advice, but not a company board. Why? Because going public means an initial injection of cash in exchange for obligations towards those who bought parts of your business. And those guys demand dividends like crazy. Umm... increasing dividends by decreasing your overall income? DOES NOT COMPUTE

This is interesting. What happens if you try a lethal takedown on a target that needs to be alive? Does MT automatically perform the non-lethal one, you get a "FISSION MAILED" screen, or (hopefully) you get to deal with the consequences of being a compulsive neck-breaker? More generally, how does AP deal with killing sprees?

Multiplayer?

It's worth pointing out that 2+2=10 or 11, with a simple change of bases. I also hear that some non-euclidean geometries can make a mess of even the simplest of arithmetic operations, too, but I never completed my math degree. There goes your unconditional truth, though. I'll be back with a non-trivial riposte to the points you made... tomorrow, perhaps. It's late over here. And why the hell would you think I'm an Objectivist? Just having fun here...

Guitar Hero, indeed.

Growing up with one extreme and then seriously think that the other extreme on the far end of the scale is the solution, is pretty moronic in my book. Especially if you call yourself a philosopher. Funny that, believe it or not, the stated ultimate aim of soviet commies was the abolition of the state (when the last peasant had reached the level of a "professional" revolutionary, but still), and yet, that wasn't what Rand wanted...

Yeah, I thought my connection was acting up when I first saw the thread. ZOMG Obsidian fix teh bugs! Anyway: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2S...etail&id=99 That's Spell Fixes, but has a component for increased challenge. May or may not be compatible with different combinations of other mods and expansions.

*preorders*

Actually, that's how things are, in all but name. Whether law should be made to reflect, impose or reinforce that is a different matter. Also, for the parallelism to stand, there is a need for a notion, even if it's not stated explicitly, that the "chosen" and the rest are closed sets predetermined somehow, and cannot intermingle. This would effectively define elitism, but it's not a necessary consequence of Rand's thought, outside of the choice to act irrationally. Yep, she did despise that kind of people, though - "be reasonable or die!" Elitism may not be new, but other than that, her ideas hadn't been articulated and grouped together, so Objectivism couldn't be critiqued as a whole. I suppose "formulate" isn't the right word.

I actually find that sort of customization more of a chore than actual fun, as it ends up with me wasting time finding a combination of features that isn't hideous for something that has zero effect on gameplay. Choosing between premade heads a la KotOR is good enough for me, but even if that's not present, I won't miss it.

Yeah. Call me obtuse, but how does Karamazov Bros sum up the flaws of a philosophy that hadn't been formulated by the time it was written? Other than arguing that the average human is a weak, unworthy wretch secretly willing to give up his freedom in exchange for comfort?

Ah. So you mean "restricted" as in movement, as opposed to map continuum. I don't think that's what open world refers to. edit: slash that, "open" may very well refer to what you said. I'm just used to thinking "boundless" or "transition-less" (mostly), when I read about "open worlds".

Whoa, blast from the past.

And you aren't restricted to a predetermined set of maps in Fallout? How so?

I haven't read the whole PDF (though I intend to, is it part of a series?), but it doesn't look like a particularly solid critique, other than the is/ought problem, which is little more than the kernel of the text. A glaring hole in the system, but one that requires individuals to want other than to survive in order to be a factor. That way she minimizes (even if she doesn't really solve) the thing with the need for an ethical code. This essentially renders the "objective" aspect of her ethics not-quite-so-universal, but to me Rand rather sidestepped the issue, than outright contradicted herself. I may be wrong, but the name of her philosophy isn't important here, as it's more inspired by the epistemological take than the ethical one. *shrug* I did like the "rational choice of irrationality" thing, though. But that's a very complex issue on its own, and I don't appreciate the author forcing his very shallow and poorly explained deductions down my throat like he does. Here we go again. Read up on the comments, and you will see the author herself admit that it's the novel she has a problem with, as opposed to Objectivism itself. Yeah. And in the ultimately unregulated field that is geostrategy, can you name one single monopoly (of power) that didn't fail eventually? The idea that perpetual monopolies can exist is as loony as the idea that monopolies can't exist at all, if we look at the evidence. I don't understand. doesn't Dostoevsky predate Ayn Rand?

Yes, but to crit on a 15 you will need a weapon with a normal crit range of 18-20, say, scimitar. There are better feats to take for Druids, too (ie Natural Spell), as you shouldn't be spending too much time in human form during combat. The feats for Weapon Focus (Creature) and Improved Critical (Creature) weapons are in the game, but you can't have them without cheating, which is a shame. On the down side, Diplomacy is the only dialogue class skill Druids get. Not that you *need* more, but a bit of variety is always fun.

You are allowed 3 NPCs for the first act, and 4 for the rest of the game. I'd recommend a build similar to what MC proposed, mainly to take advantage of the huge amount of skill points afforded by the rogue levels. Spend those preferably on dialogue skills, as that's about the only thing NPCs can't do for you. In my current game I went with a Ftr/Rog/WM/BG. I chose human for flexibility and the extra feat, which went to Able Learner (MUST HAVE!). The sneak attack from BG stacks with the rogue's, so it's pretty fun. And critting on a 13 is just obscene. Other than that, straight melee characters are fairly boring - monk is a total snorefest. You may want to get the mod that allows you to muticlass NPCs, too.