Enoch

Finished Orzammar. The grinding through the tunnels was indeed overlong, but it did have a nice payoff-- the area had the best "boss" battles in the game thus far ( ). I doubt they'd be equally fun on a second playthrough, as figuring out how to deal with their little surprises is a good part of the fun, but I felt it was on the whole a worthwhile experience for a first-timer.

It is possible though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_I...Great_Escape.22 Ha! Shortly after I wrote that post, I mused that I should've appended "for any purpose other than escaping a Nazi prison camp" to the first sentence.

Odd that they would have us download it without notification (or asking for approval). Bonus Items are for the weak.

The toughest 'moral' choice I've had to make in the game so far was right up front in the Mage origin.

Really, would anybody want to use a tunnel that one oddly obsessed dude carved all by himself? I doubt that the guy has the engineering or geological expertise necessary to assess and ensure its structural soundness. (Indeed, the difficulties in making the passageway safe might well be the reason that the local government refused to take on the project.)

@GD: Not to defend Harlie's (equally extreme, on the other side) point of view, but you're overstating. The powers of government are unquestionably greater than those of a private company, but in a modern representative democracy the restraints on the use of those powers are greater, too. Seizures, arrests, etc., require due process. Eminent domain requires just compensation. And public accountability through watchdog organizations, the free press, and the electoral process also provides a strong check on governmental overreaching. (Note: these are U.S. examples, but similar provisions are in place in most other western democracies.) There are statutory, common law, and contractual restraints on what businesses may do in their interactions with ordinary people, but they often aren't as rigorous, and enforcement of them usually requires some (often prohibitively expensive) litigation. Both businesses and governments sometimes give the citizenry reason to fear their power-- which fear seems greater and more reasonable is going to depend on your particular situation. (Sidenote: After working in gov't for a number of years, it always boggles my mind a bit to think that things like nepotism and bribery are legal in the private sector.) Edit: Also, I is slow-- I see that your tone moderated somewhat in your 9:22 (EST) post.

I'm not finding the Deep Roads to be all that bad. But that may be because I'm playing them spaced-out, basically going through one area per weeknight. (Finished Ortan Thaig last night; the fight against the was actually one of the most fun ones yet in the game.) I also discovered last night that you can jump right from a Deep Road exit grid to your party camp (which is in the same sylvan glen as always). Odd.

I suspect that many of the high-damage-dealing rogue builds I've seen over on Bio's social site are dependent on both Lethality and the 2nd tier Assassin ability "Exploit Weakness," which boosts backstab damage based on your Cunning score. If you're getting consistent backstabs (via positioning, stealth, Dirty Fighting, Coup de Grace, etc.), it probably gives a better raw damage boost (raw meaning disregarding armor-based reductions) than does investment in Strength or Dex. Edit: Apparently, one of the rogue-specific abilities that you can get in the Wardens Keep DLC also provides a Cunning-based boost to damage.

I hate that argument. It might have carried some weight if the game were based on a licensed property, but this is an original IP that Bioware had full control over. They wrote the lore to support their efforts to make a fun game. If the lore is screwing up game elements and making it less fun for the players, you don't just shrug your shoulders and point at the lore, as if Moses brought it down from the Mountain. You change the freakin' lore! However, I think that most of the balance issues will recede into the "OK for a single-player game" margins if a few select spells are toned down some. (Increased chance to resist CoC freezing, enemy AI accounting for invulnerbility of Force-fielded characters, Shimmering Shield dispels on exhaustion of mana pool, and a few others.)

Pretty much every culture on the planet has some kind of festival that celebrates the conclusion of the seasonal harvest (most have religious overtones, but not all). Really, apart from societies that never developed large-scale agriculture, or that occupied regions without meaningful seasonal variation, it's a pretty universal thing. In the States, those various holidays have been amalgated into the Thanksgiving holiday, and has taken on the symbology of a legend from the early English colonization of the land. Sure, everybody knows that the history progressing from that point with regard to realtions between the colonists and natives was quite ugly, but that doesn't change the fact that the legend in itself is a lovely little parable about cooperation across the boundaries of culture and tribe.

I've only yet done the first area of the Deep Roads, but so far it isn't looking promising. (And the progression through that crimelord's den was grind-tastic, too. I just finished that before quitting last night.) I'm still in Orz for the first time (was away from the PC over the holiday weekend), and I've been working for the Prince. Yeah, he seems to be a manipulative bastard, but I'm thinking that the Dwarves could use some ruthless (read: effective) leadership to dig out of the holes that their traditions have gotten them into. Also, Lord H's demand that I jump into gladitorial combat in his name just to prove that I'm trustworthy enough to meet him was rather off-putting.

Seduce would be pretty lame. It worked in Bloodlines because teh secksayness is something of a vamp genre convention. But even then, getting enough seduction options into the game to put it on par with the other dialogue skills in usefulness felt forced. In a more traditional fantasy genre, it would be laughably forced.

1) Anytime politics gets this deeply involved in a scientific issue, there are going to be some people (on both sides) who get too emotionally invested in their side and care more about "winnning" the political battle than they do about getting the scientific support correct. 2) Even with this evidence of shady conduct, the vast vast majority of credible science still shows that carbon emissions from human activities do have effects and will result in climatological impact of some degree over the next several decades. And, really, if you're looking for financial incentives to falsify results, Gore's profits from books/movies/speeches, etc., are pocket change compared to the research grants that come from energy companies. With that in mind, I agree with Wals' concerns about the difficulties of creating policy based on the science. It's a cost-benefit question to which the answer is not clear.

But they don't tell you that until after you've picked the spell and tried to use it. And even then it's hidden on a tooltip that only pops up when you mouseover a very small icon.

Yeah, the names could've been more distinctive-- I got those names confused a bit at the beginning, too. And, between all the "Arl" and "Teyrn" being bandied about, every discussion of Fereldan politics sounded like it was going to break into a chorus of Tuvan throat singing.

I didn't notice it in effect, but for some reason I thought that the rule was there. Maybe one of the loading screen infobits?

I think that an idea where continued focus in a particular school of magic improves the potency of all spells in that school of magic would have been an interesting way of doing things. I was under the impression that heavy investment in each of the 4 major groupings (elemental, spirit, entropy, and whatever) would decrease the mana costs of the spells contained therein. But that's less significant than an increase in potency would have been-- you can always address cost issues with lyrium potions.

Well, magic is the only way to explain how massive suits of platemail take up the same amount of space as a pair of earrings. And how 99 potions take up the same space as 1. CRPG inventory is always an abstraction, geared more towards game balance and fun than it is towards realism. The "backpacks for sale" bit is a rather inexplicable inclusion, though. Yeah, it's a tradeoff of upfront cost for the ability to carry more 1007 back to sell, but what made Bio think that players enjoy playing that kind of inventory-management minigame? Seems like the whole thing would've been simpler and better if they'd just given us 100 spots to begin with and cut the "buy moar 1007 storage" stuff. And a storage device in the party's camp would've been nice.

My problem with Sten was that his default Tactics were poor-- IIRC, he was set to use Threaten (and maybe even Taunt) as if he were a tank. Run into combat with those unchanged, and he's going to go down often. But if you keep him next to Al or Shale in tank mode, turn their Threaten on, and set them to Taunt if an ally is being attacked, he's a useful damage-dealer.

Paralyzed enemies don't shatter. Are you sure you're not thinking of Petrify rather than Paralyze?

Yeah, when I posted that I had just finished a few levels where it was really really useful (the caves near Haven and the Blood Mages' hideout in Denerim). The mobs you face in those areas become far easier with the ability to immediately eliminate the white-named "______ Mage" standing behind the grunts. My group is just getting to level 15, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if more opponents start resisting or outliving it as we get higher up. After that jaunt through Denerim, I stopped off in the woods to wrap up Wynne's quest and take down the Revenants that wiped the floor with me 5 levels ago. The Dwarves are up next, although I'm debating whether to first go do Morrigan's little errand or not. It's a standard meta-gaming v. role-playing debate. My character has little reason to trust Morrigan or want her to like him (my PC mage does everything she does, but better), and the risk to my character's overall mission is pretty great. But I hear that the fight involved is a fun one, and it might be a good chance to loot a nice staff.

In my experience, mages drawing attacks seems to depend on them either dealing damage to the attacking party (e.g., by opening combat with an area-effect damage spell) or on them being in the process of casting a long-casting-time spell. Incapacitation spells (sleep/paralyze/forcefield/etc.) don't seem to draw as much attention as damage casting. Also, Crushing Prison Ownz.

Working on making some fruitcakes this weekend. Did some shopping in the afternoon (dried blueberries can be difficult to find), and did some prep work tonight (soaking dried fruits in rum overnight). Since I'm making 3 of them, I'm tripling everything in the recipe, and I bought sufficient quantities of all the dried fruits to make 3 cakes. But silly me forgot to triple where the recipe says "zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange," so I'll be running out to the store again tomorrow morning. As a side-note, my standard-to-metric conversions do need some work. I was surprised to discover how little was left in the 750mL bottle of rum after I'd poured out 3 cups. (My nickname for this recipe is "Fruitcake that Doesn't Suck.")

Di, whilst in the city the little 'Change Party' icon should glow gold at the top of the GUI, you can just access the 'Cast 'O NPCs' screen automatically. It doesn't work in other areas, you need to access camp. That's my problem, I only have access to the market district, and my little icon is black. When you say the city, do you mean further inside the city, like in the castle areas? I can't go there yet, only to the Pearl and back allies. The same is true in my game-- no insta-party-change in the city. I have to get to the travel map, hit the "camp" button, and leave again to change anyone out. Waxed the last night with a L13 party of my Mage, Shale, Sten, and Wynne. Sten was knocked out, but the rest of us got through-- Wynne at long range alternating magic attacks and heals, my PC at max-cone-of-cold range doing the same, and the bashers up front. Also, Sten and Shale were hilarious in the area where you finally find the Ashes. ("Congratulations, you've found a wastebin.")