Enoch

I'm pretty sure that the installer on the BG1 disc version supports a full install. If you do that, the only disc check you have to deal with is the one when you launch the game. I can't speak to OS-compatibility other than that I got it running fine on Vistax32. Hopefully, the GOG version will include support for higher resolutions. The "Complete Saga" 3-disc version doesn't work with the general IE widescreen mod; I was only able to get BG1 working at higher than 640X480 by installing one of the BG2-conversion mods (Tutu or the BG Trilogy).

That's the stage I'm at. Sadly, I had to work until about 8PM on the day it releases. Might not get much further than starting a game and exploring the menus, options, feedback, etc., tonight.

Maybe the 'publicity stunt' is a cover for something else. Off the top of my head, they could be in a cash crunch. Taking everything down for a couple weeks probably saves them a pretty penny on their bandwidth/hosting costs. It is near the end of the fiscal quarter; it could very well be that they're waiting for some anticipated funding to kick in on Oct. 1.

OK, I bought the MI dual-pack. They've been on my "I should play them someday" list for a while now, so at $7.50 for the pair, I figured this was a good opportunity. I missed out on most of the LucasArts adventure games back in the day (although I played a lot of their Sierra competitors), and based on their reputation, I have always regretted doing so. Of course, whatever game I start playing now is doomed to be dropped (at least for a while) when Civ V falls in my lap. But sales don't always come at convenient times.

My problem running KotOR2 on Vistax32 was that I could never get the sound to work at all. Tried every trick I could find, and no dice. (Although I think the problem was more with the driver for my mobo-onboard sound.) The sale on the MI remakes is tempting. Even if it's just something to entertain me until I get my hands on Civ V...

Nerve-stapling.

For one, we never learn Revan's MO while he led the sith (I didn't at least), so it can fly.OTOH, he tried to kill his rivals at Malachor. Still, yeah, as nice as it sounds, it's pretty bull. "Hm, how could we beat the sith? ..I know! Let's kill our best generals, pretend we're all sih then attack the Republic! I'm soo brilliant, if I may say so myself." It sounds ridiculous, but filtered through Kreia's (and, by extension, her student Revan's) philosophy about a society only being able to know itself and gain strength and focus through conflict, it sort of works. (Really, said philosophy is best understood as an in-game cover for standard RPG character progression, but if you buy that Kreia and presumably Revan actually believed it, Rev's plan almost makes sense.)

In Bloodlines, there were certain missions where you got extra whatever-they-called-ability-points for doing so stealthily. I don't think we yet know whether and how stealthy approaches will be rewarded in FO3.

I'm totally on board with not having lockpicking as a skill, and if gameplay mechanics require lockpicking of all characters, then having a "skill" for it is pretty bad game design. That being said, ideally, in a crpg loot acquisition and infiltration through lockpicking is a route that is only really accessible, especially at higher levels, to stealth type characters. For a combat character, they don't need to be able to pick locks since they can loot the piles of dead enemies they leave behind, nor do they have to worry about sneaking through the back door. Combat characters just go right through the front door with the weapon of their choice. And a diplomatic character likewise has their means of proceeding through the game. So yes, loot access is a powerful element of a crpg, but all skills, ideally, generate their own ways of acquiring loot. That's assuming, of course, that "stealth-type characters" are well supported. If, as in FO3 and many other games, the primary role of stealth isn't so much enemy avoidance as it is a way to get some easy crit-kills (the primarily murder-based XP system pretty much confirms that this is the case), the 'combat l00t' argument washes out. And I probably was exaggerating when I said that FO3's mechanics 'required' lockpicking in all characters. What you actually get out of lockpick-only accessable areas and containers is kind of underwhelming, and many of them can be accessed by either Lockpicking or Hacking. But the psychological impact of their existence on the player is probably more significant than the in-game effects. In a game whose biggest selling point is finding neat stuff/encounters/etc. tucked away in corners of a huge open gameworld, finding a door that can only be opened with a particular skill at a particular level is probably more troubling than it should be. Gamers know what they're giving up when they tank their Melee or Repair skills. If they tank their Lockpicking, they're giving up the Unknown, which is much much harder to do. Furthermore, people who most enjoy this kind of game are often motivated strongly by exploratory curiousity and a somewhat-compulsive completionist drive that takes particular offense to a game marking an area "off limits" because they made their character a particular way.

I had always felt that lockpicking was kind of out-of-place as a skill in the Fallout games, anyway. Loot access is a powerful element of an RPG, which makes it very difficult to balance a skill that governs it. My preference from back when we were suggesting new rules for Van Buren was to make locked doors and containers much less common, eliminate lockpicking as a skill, let boots/crowbars/shotguns/explosives open what they logically should be able to open, and otherwise govern basic locks with Repair and electronic locks with Science. That said, I didn't hate FO3's minigame. The whole "lockpicks snap like breadsticks, so you'd better bring a few dozen" thing wasn't particularly strong in the verisimilitude area, but the overall balance between player skill, character skill, and resource management wasn't bad. (And the game itself was a lot less annoying than the one they made for Oblivion.) The problem was that, as I mentioned above, loot access is too important to leave to a player's skill allocation to decide-- the game simply required you to put piles of points into lockpicking.

I want a time-travel based RPG, wherein the protagonist is summoned by a 15000BC tribal shaman's ritual and forced to use all of his/her skills and wits (and no knowledge of the rudimentary local language) to both save and return to humanity's future.

Well, now we know that "child of a FO2 companion" that MCA was writing.

Civ 4 had a feature like that-- it preserved the seed for the rng with your savegame, so that a reload would give you the same results. (Unless you did things in a different order than before.)

It doesn't really look like much has changed in that regard with New Vegas. From the previews/videos the enemy variety looks just slightly better than in Fallout 3. On the one hand, you're probably right in that we'll have Geckos and Bighorns in the place of Mirelurks and Yogis. But, on the other hand, I have some hope that the wider scope of human (and ghoulish and supermutant) factions and the larger selection of available weapons leads to a more varied experience in fighting humanoid enemies.

Results-wise, that was a beautiful weekend of football. Giants won, Eagles lost, both teams looked awful in DAL-WAS, and we had 2 straight nights of arrogant teams (Dallas, NY Jets) getting humbled on national TV. Oh, and my fantasy team won by a huge margin! Quality-of-play-wise, though, that was an awful weekend of football. The enormous effect that injuries have on the game has led teams to scale back their practices to mere walk-throughs and play roster-fodder for the bulk of the preseason. Which leads to guys just not looking ready when the games start to matter. I watched all of CAR-NYG, GB-PHI, DAL-WAS, and BAL-NYJ, and half of SD-KC, and I didn't see a single team that I could say played well, on the whole.

Still a whole lot of ambiguities in those rules. Which cards can be "played against"-- all cards in a caravan, or only the one most recently played? Does "continuing the numerical direction" mean just the next number up or down, or can we skip numbers and play a 6 as the second card after a 4? It's an interesting idea that it doesn't use a complete card deck, though. Possibly explained by post-War scarcity? (Not that there would be a shortage of complete decks of cards in Vegas, of course, but by the name the game probably originated with the traders out on the Waste.) Also, every time I hear the name, I start humming this.

You mean like the Favre-led Jets missed the playoffs in 2008 and the Favre-led Packers missed the playoffs in 2005-06? There are 52 other guys wearing the uniform, too, you know. (Also, he just had a pint of WD-40 injected into his ankle. Something happening would hardly be "out of the blue.") Criticism is easy-- let's see your picks, Vol.

I'll go with calling the whole playoff slate: AFCN: Baltimore AFCS: Indy (Tennessee could make some noise here, with the further development of Vince Young being the key factor.) AFCE: NE AFCW: SD (They are waning this season-- that defense is going to be pretty awful-- but I'm not quite daring enough to hand the division crown to the Chiefs.) AWC1: Pittsburgh (A healthy Polamalu leads a defensive revival to offset their losses on offense.) AWC2: Kansas City (A frighteningly easy schedule helps the 2nd-best AFCW team get in. The Chiefs addressed their biggest weaknesses (Center and Safety) in the offseason, and have some underrated playmakers in Jamal Charles and Tamba Hali.) The AFC, in general, is the much more divided Conference between "elite teams" and "other teams." Over the past seasons, each of the elite squads has had an off year here and there, but it tends to be Indy, Pittsburgh, NE, SD... and then all the rest. I think the Ravens break firmly into that category this season, with offensive improvements making up for the aging defense. (I was at the NYG@BAL preseason game, and Flacco looked very good.) NFCN: GB (A tough one for me to call. I think their secondary is going to be pretty awful, but with the way they're scoring it might not matter.) NFCS: Atlanta NFCE: NY Giants (As has been the case for the past several years, whichever of NY, PHI, or DAL stays healthiest will win this one. Assuming relatively even health, I like the Giants-- their huge glaring weakness last year was deep coverage by their Safeties, and they've addressed that well with Antrel Rolle, Deon Grant, and the recovery of Kenny Phillips.) NFCW: San Francisco (This division is soooooo baaaaad. I'm quietly rooting for the fightin' Alex Smiths to be the first ever division champ with a losing record.) NWC1: Philly (I love their front-seven on defense.) NWC2: NO The NFC, on the other hand, is a mess of parity. I wouldn't be all that surprised by any one of 9 teams representing the Conference in the big game (the whole NFCE, the NFCN excepting Detroit, ATL and NO). Super Bowl: Baltimore over Atlanta First pick in the '11 Draft: Buffalo

We could sign up for a free pick'em league on yahoo (or some other host). That'd take care of the tallying. (And email reminders when picks are due are helpful.) Probably not worthwhile if we only have 3 or 4 participants, though.

I feel the need to post some Jimmy Smith.

On my original run through ToB, I finished the whole of the Keep. But when I replayed the BGs, 6 or 7 years ago, that's right about where I stopped. It wasn't so much that particular encounter as it was the accumulated IE ennui getting to be too much. And from what I rememberd of the rest of the Keep, I didn't see much to look forward to.

And, of course, the Squirrels.

The greatest thing to come out of this whole endeavor: It is now my mission to work "and, of course, the Squirrels" into conversation as often as I can. Really, there aren't many sentences out there that wouldn't be improved by adding "and, of course, the Squirrels" to the end of it. "I'll have the house salad with basalmic, the roast chicken, and, of course, the squirrels" "Unfortunately, the cancer has spread from your lungs to your liver, and, of course, the squirrels"

I'd think that the greater problem would be sleeping during the day rather than staying up at work during the night. The outside world is usually a lot brighter and noisier during the day (depending on where you live, of course). I suggest some very heavy drapes to block out outside light and noise.

Oh thank god the Mythbusters are safe. Oh goddamn! the Mythbusters are safe. I was thinking the same thing with regard to Kate Gosling.