Enoch

Is this choice made at character creation, or at some point later in the game?

As I'm sure other married forumites will agree, this depends entirely on the circumstance and her mood at that particular time.

am more surprised that shep were allowed to keep his commission. commander o' an Alliance warship gotta take orders from a bunch o' bug-eyed and blue-arsed aliens? wouldn't give him command o' the s.s. minnow much less a warship after he became a spectre. wanna make him Fleet Admiral o' the Klingon or Harkonen navy? go for it, but any Alliance rank should be pretty much honorary after he becomes subject to a different command structure. am not sure 'bout other navies, but the typical rank o' a U.S. Navy officer commanding a frigate is a Commander. pretty much the rank needed to keeps command o' the Normandy. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, I wondered about that too. The story made such a big deal of how Spectres answer to nobody but the Council, but Alliance admirals clearly had no problem with popping by to inspect the ship and sending Shep out to pick up every little probe they couldn't find. I did catch myself wondering who was paying Shep's salary a few times-- which led to a few good laughs imagining gameplay that includes filling out forms for Spectre HR-- before concluding that all funds must have from the supply dude hanging out in the cargo hold. And the complications of a Council-authorized commander and an Alliance crew were mostly swept away for narrative convenience. I didn't know that bit about naval command traditions, but it's not at all surprising. Frigates are crewed by, what, 200 people? (A cousin of my wife's is a Navy LT who spent some time on one.) Hard to imagine anyone above an O5 running a ship that small. Although the Normandy (assuming sea-space equivalency) was a high-profile prototype with a Capt. initially calling the shots.

Don't forget the "kiss the hawt alien chick" option.

Is Shep still just a Commander? You'd think that saving the galaxy from annihilation would merit a promotion.

Raymond Chandler-- Farewell My Lovely

Also useful: Have the Druid cast Barkskin on as many of your characters as you can. And Stoneskin (Qara can learn this one, too) if you can manage it. Both are long-duration spells that dramatically increase survivability.

It's a mite tedious, but the most effective way to go through those areas is to have the whole party stand their ground in a doorway and send out one character to pull the enemies towards the others. The doorway takes away the possibility of the enemy rogues flanking your group, so you can all gang up on one or two of them at a time. (Put Khelgar and another high-AC type in front and have the others use missile weapons from behind them.)

Solid points, but I don't know if it always has to be a supernatural tie. I'd argue that the Exile-Bao Dur relationship was more based on their common history than it was on the Exile's force-vampire nature. And although the supernatural element was present in Torment, I think the past emotional connection with TNO that kept Morte (the emotion being guilt), Dak'kon (honor, tradition, guilt, duty, etc.), and Deionarra (love) tied to him would have held up just fine without the supernatural element. In other words, I think there's room to make more mature relationships (mature in the temporal sense) feel more realistic in a game if you base them on a history between the characters that pre-dates the player's involvement. And, as an added bonus, the slow revelation of this past to the player serves as one of the more compelling hooks to the story. (The slow reveal of the heroine's backstory is the main thing that kept me playing through the slow-ish middle chapters of The Longest Journey recently.) This is probably not particularly relevant to AP, though-- as I noted above, a spy-movie-based game is one of the few areas where brief sexual encounters based primarily on faux-clever banter and otherworldly beauty can plausibly carry on without the load of emotional baggage normally consequent to such relations. "Feeling like a ****" is just part of the fantasy at the heart of the genre. I think there are ways that mature, interesting relationships can be done in a modern-day game; that just isn't likely the kind of game they're trying to make this time around.

Scythes just don't pass the laugh test to me, so I avoid them. The idea of a scythe as a workable melee weapon on par with weapons that were actually designed to be such is ludicrous enough to me-- that the scythes in this particular imaginary world are in fact demonstrably superior as a melee weapon makes me wonder whether the people who wrote the system know what a scythe actually is. Paladin or monk, I guess. The monk probably doesn't have the HP to be considered a true "tank," and their attack bonus lags behind fighter-classes, so the extra end-of-round attacks are going to be less effective, but they've got AC and resistances out the wazoo. Also, whenever you find yourself up against a group of wizards, Safiya's "Wail of the Banshee" spell is your win button.

Err... has it? Can you give a few examples so we know what you're referring to specifically, and what standards are you measuring against? There were parts of Fallout 3 that really stood out to this DC-area resident. The Metro stations, the Capitol, Dupont Circle, and the National Archives were particularly impressive. I was on the lookout for ghouls on my commute for weeks. Edit: Just noticed that alaschu pre-empted this particular comment.

I did find the misogyny a little off-putting. Particularly coming from a critic who has spent a not-insignificant amount of time mining humor out of the misogyny rampant in many of the games he reviews.

Ah, Riven. First time I played it, I got stuck at that big grid puzzle Maria mentions in her blog (which is a good read, by the way). I had the grid mapped perfectly and the marbles placed correctly, but I was expecting some sort of reaction once the last correct marble was placed, and never noticed the "check input" button that is on the screen just prior to the zoomed-in grid manipulation. I remember getting quite angry at what I thought was rather shoddy design-- punishing the user for not noticing a button on a transitional screen. But in retrospect, I was probably expecting too much of a game that clearly delights in making the player search locations for hours because they forgot the golden rule of "always look behind the door you came in." Continuing the adventure game theme, I'm still pushing through The Longest Journey. Just entered the village of the bat-people. So far it's been a worthwhile experience, but a bit drawn-out for my tastes. The stuff I've found most interesting-- the tidbits about the heroine's background and life back home-- have been too few and far between. The bit in the mole-people barrow where the "angry April" spirit was berating April for being too weak and running away from her problems by leaving home was fantastic, and renewed my somewhat-flagging interest in the storyline. Hopefully, as the game goes on, I'll see more of that kind of revelation and comparatively less of the long expository dialogue and time spent watching April's clubfooted jogging across transitional areas. I am tiring a bit of linear adventure game gameplay, though. The feeling that my input doesn't really matter much (other than to fumble about until I arrive at the solution the game wants me to find) is starting to get to me. At least Riven was a bit more open of a world-- there was a lot of flexibility in the order you took on the puzzles, which helped give the illusion of more player choice. I might take a break into something else before I get around to finishing, but I do intend to finish it.

LOL at the pedantic piracy advocates insisting on the terms that make their crime seem least odious. To get back to the discussion on length/replayability, I'm one of those for whom length is sometimes a detriment to my enjoyment of the game. On an average week, I can usually manage 10-ish hours of playtime. 15 if I'm really into a game and let it keep me up later than it should. And I seem to often get sick of whatever type of gameplay after 3 weeks or so and start yearning to play something different. If I'm not close to finishing the game by that point, and if the story/characters/etc. hasn't really hooked me so that I can overlook the gameplay getting dull, it usually goes on the shelf for a while. (And once it's there, it may not come out again.) I'll probably be working my way through Alpha Protocol when Dragon Age comes out, and if the general reception isn't terrible, I'll pick it up at some point within the following couple months. But if they actually deliver on the rumored 80+ hours of gameplay, odds are against me finishing it.

Translation: Will I get to see a half-second of naked ass-cheek? (Editorial comment: The idea that either the ME or KotOR "romances" were at all "deep," or even worthy of the name "romances" is pretty laughable. Call it what it is-- they threw some sex into the game for titillation and fan-service purposes. Obsidian is essentially doing the same with AP, but I'm a bit less hostile to it, because the idea of one-off disposable "conquests" with no discernible "romance" is so ingrained in Bond films/books that establish much of the audience's expectations for the genre. Criticizing a Bond-inspired film/book/game for having sexual content absent well developed romantic plotlines is a bit like criticizing an AC/DC album for being to loud and vulgar.)

Tired of playing defense and repelling their occasional invasions to the interior of the house, I went on the offensive today and yesterday, wielding a lovely 10 lb. bag of poisonous granules in my campaign against the ants in our yard. Hunting down their nests and watching them squirm after I moisten the little pile of poison I sprinkle over the entryways is quite satisfying-- much better than finding them crawling over the cereal bowls and squishing them by hand. Kind of like a child burning them with a magnifying glass, except that you can get hundreds of them in one go.

As I recall, there are a lot of WIS checks in dialogue in MotB, so a high-WIS class might be a good idea. If I were about to start playing it again, I'd probably play a Monk, or perhaps a Monk mixed with that priest-spell-casting Monkish PrC.

True. I remember reading somewhere at work that CIA was one of the chief rivals of the agency I work at in terms of attracting qualified, promising entry-level employees. With a limited number of exceptions, the people who work at my agency are desk jockeys who are valued for their writing, analysis, and similar boring old white-collar office skills. And a frightening number of them are in fact accountants.

I was assuming this would be Gamespot's call to make, rather than Obsidian's. And Gamespot presumably has plenty of data from past sales and can analyze how they are influenced by pre-order exclusives. If they found that offering pre-order exclusives on PC titles didn't get them enough of a sales bump to justify the cost, they wouldn't do it.

Maybe they've figured out that in-game pre-order bonuses don't entice many purchases from PC gamers, since they inevitably show up on the web within a couple days of release?

People really care what the box looks like? I mean, I could understand it affecting casual players browsing through the aisles at Best Buy, but we're all here participating in the developer's online forums. I say let Sega/Obsidz do whatever they want on the cover, if they think it'll help the game sell. I'd rather discuss the game than the marketing.

Hmm, so there are exceptions. Wondered me why people also say "an RPG". It's because it's spelled AAaaaaarrrr Peeee Geee. Interesting. So, "a" Youniversity, then. It depends on pronounciation, not spelling: "RPG" gets an "an" because it is an initialism rather than an acronym, and the letter "R" is, as you note, pronounced "arr".

Exactly. Genre conventions were in the cards from day one-- I mean, they named the damn thing Dragon Age fercrissakes! I'm guessing that their second choice was either "Sword Quest" or "Knight Land."

I'm not a huge liver fan, but there's an expensive 'special occasion' restaurant about a half-mile from my house that serves a fried chicken livers appetizer that is out of this world. Crispy garilicky batter fried-ness, surrounding creamy smooth warm meaty flavor, topped with a lovely habanero jelly. Actually, now that I think of it, the appetizer itself is only $7 or $8, and they do have a wine bar in the restaurant. I could probably stop in for a glass of a nice crisp summer red and wash it down with some chicken livers, without having to go through the whole "making a reservation" and "paying $25 for a piece of fish served over some orzo and vegetables" things...

Granted, I lost interest in Deus Ex somewhere towards the beginning of the Paris level, but I don't recall it having particularly strong support for optional quests. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any other examples beyond the ones the original post mentioned and the optional M12 base in the sewers. As RPGs go, that's not much optional content at all. And I'm not really sure why Mass Effect is the go-to counter-example here. Although the game was littered with disconnected time-sink optional content, I can also think of several minor quests that pop up in the course of larger missions and help to reinforce the mood and themes of a particular location (e.g., the Citadel quests given to the player by that news reporter, and the optional smuggling and industrial sabotage quests in the first area of Noveria). That said, I appreciate that the little side-missions in Deus Ex enhanced the general atmosphere of the game's core locations, and I do hope that AP includes comparable little details to flesh out their areas and themes.