Enoch

Ich las die W

A couple of the status updated in the lower-left corner of the screen were new. They indicated that the player earned the "Due Process" perk and the "Suave" perk. I don't believe that either of those have been discussed.

I'm trying to figure out how long it will take to drive to Dulles Airport in rush-hour traffic tomorrow. 7:45 flight, plus time to get there, park, clear security, etc., probably has us leaving home around 5. Which means leaving work around 4. Which means working until around 6:30 tonight (or getting up rather early tomorrow), if I want to conserve my leave balances as much as possible.

"Dialog and the Reactive World"? Sawyer's not going to be happy about that one.

Charles Mingus -- The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

The game defaults to the conversation stance that you last used. Edit: Actually, I have a question, too. Given the one-off nature of in-game conversations, and the impossibility of going back to a character and getting them to repeat a piece of information (as most RPGs allow), we're really going to need a thorough journal function for players to reference if/when they've forgotten something important. Is there anything you can tell us about this part of the user interface?

This jives with my general understanding (although the presence or absence of min/maxing remains to be seen), but I would offer one refinement: I would expect and hope that the attitudes of the various factions towards MT will be determined primarily by the actions he takes, and secondarily by his manners in conversations. That is, you pick your alliances in the way you perform your missions (handler choice, treatment of NPCs, use of intelligence assets gained, etc.). The dialogue stances can unlock other benefits (or disadvantages), but ultimately I would expect that if you do everything that a faction wants, you're going to be their ally regardless of whether you're polite or rude to them.

Wait a minute-- are we talking about Carth Carth, or the ME version? Or does it matter? Personally, I always thought that KotOR Carth was a clever device. The player needs a companion to provide exposition and ensure combat survivability on Taris, but the problem becomes explaining why such a well informed, comptetent NPC would follow the direction of the n00b player character. Bio got around this by making Carth an emotional wreck. The end result was somewhat "unpalatable" to many fans, to use Grom's term, but popular with others, and it served its purpose in informing the player and ensuring that combat-weak builds could survive Taris. Does this skirt on being a "poof" cliche? Maybe. Is that any more objectionable than any other cliched character design? I don't think so. Importing him wholesale into ME was pure fan-service (or laziness, I suppose), but at least they gave the Carth-haters the option of killing the character off. Everybody wins?

Yea... I think people don't understand this concept. There is no "right way". Play how you want to play. I like the thinking behind this. But we all know that gamers are a sneaky lot, and there will be online guides and threads on this message board within days of release detailing the min/max consequences of all the various in-game choices. To lots of gamers, those sources will determine a "right" way to play the game. It's not an easy task for Obsidian to make players' decisions matter in tangible ways, while keeping the results reasonably balanced so that the temptation to meta-game is low. On the one hand, you risk "gotcha" outcomes that dramatically advantage/disadvantage the players in ways that they had no reason to expect. On the other hand, you risk the players not investing themselves in the decisionmaking because they know the game will ensure that each option will "even out" eventually. I hope they can pull it off.

He's also the only joinable NPC who never ever shoots your character in the back of the head.

actually, this was not reagan, in his first term, but i think he was eventually worn down by the direction his party wanted to go, in expectation of bush sr. for the next term. too bad. in the end, he caved like they all do. Well, you and I are almost certainly thinking about different long-term underlying problems. (And that I think that Reagan's idealist side wouldn't have done much of anything to address the issues I'm thinking about.) But we've had that conversation before, I think. I do agree that Ronnie's most defining achievement-- the fruits of his personal diplomacy with Gorbachev-- came from his idealism and against the advice of most of his advisors (even though he acted like something of a buffoon in doing so).

Vick's career stats He has a career 53.8% completion rate, good for a pitiful 5.6 yards/attempt. Comparing to 2008 QBs, that's Derek Anderson - Ryan Fitzpatrick level. And, on top of that, he took a sack on an astounding 9.8% of all his dropbacks and threw an INT on 3.0% of his passes (which would be in the bottom-5 of 2008 starters). He also averaged 13 fumbles per 16 game season, which would've been enough to tie for the league lead in 2008 (with Tony Romo). Based on subjective observation, the guy simply couldn't throw with any 'touch' on the ball, nor could he consistently read complicated professional defenses quickly enough to get the pass where it needs to go in time. Vick had one great year in 2002, his second, when the Falcons upset the Packers in the Wildcard round at Lambeau. At that point, everyone (including myself) thought that he was the Next Big Thing, and would continue to improve into a dominant player. Instead of improve, though, he regressed after that point, never again matching the passing efficiency he achieved that year. He remained a dynamic runner, though, and the threat of his running really helped open things up for the other Falcons RBs. Even if he spends the summer getting "whipped back into shape," he simply isn't going to have the same body he did when he was 25. Plus, those years away from the coaching and film study can't have helped his already mediocre recognition and comprehension skills. @ Volo, the overly dramatic trolling for reaction was fun the first 726 times, but it has worn a little thin since then.

OK, who went and encouraged Volo in his "pity the poor millionaire athletes" schitck? Yes, there is an emotional reaction at play here-- fans feel betrayed when someone they previously believed in and cheered for turns out to be have despicable aspects to his habits/personality-- that sometimes generates overreactions. And the prosecution was understandably focused on Vick as the money behind the dogfighting and gambling operations. (From the NFL's point of view, the latter element is the more serious one, along with the fact that he lied to the Commissioner and the Falcons owner when asked directly about his involvement.) But, public/media reactions aside, Vick's treatment by the authorities and by the League has been, in my view, pretty reasonable considering the scope of his actions. Personally, my guess is that Vick won't play in the NFL again. Not because he'll get banned, but because after 2 years in prison, away from NFL-caliber conditioning, training, diet, etc., he's just not going to have the athleticism that made him such a dangerous player in the first place. (And his passing skills absent that athleticism were never strong enough to make him a credible starting QB.)

Pre-2004-ish, the media as a whole wasn't remarkably critical of Bush. Sure, the late night comedians always had fun with his malapropisms, but even major left-leaning media outlets like the NYT and WaPo were essentially carrying the administration's water in the leadup to the Iraq invasion. There is some ideological bias in American media, but it's nothing when compared to the bias in favor of what sells. And stories sell when they tell people things that agree with their pre-established opinions. Before the Iraq invasion went bad, Bush was popular, and the media in general reacted to that popularity by being generally supportive of him and not going out of their way to criticize the administration. Sure, the op-ed pages had backed the opposition in the campaign and argued against many of Bush's policy proposals (like the tax cuts), but they were also remarkably credulous with regard to everything the administration told them on foreign policy issues. After the lack of planning for post-invasion Iraq became evident and other criticisms of the Administration began to add up (Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Kanye West, etc.), public opinion turned. That's the point when media presentation of the administration became far more critical, and only grew moreso as public opinion shrank. It is axiomatic that chief executives get more credit than they deserve when things go well, and more blame than they deserve when things go poorly. Comparisons are all conjecture, as no two presidencies were presented with anything close to the same set of circumstances. As such, the Carter administration probably doesn't deserve the full measure of the scorn it is regularly assigned. They were unquestionably poor managers, delegating too little and totally screwing up relations with leaders in Congress who should've been their allies. But I'm not so sure that better managers and politicians would've have reached significantly better results if confronted with the same massive **** sandwich that the world gave America in the late '70s. (William Miller's appointment as Fed Chairman in '78 is probably the most obvious point where a different Admin could've done better, but Carter did learn from this mistake and appointed Paul Volcker-- who would be largely responsible for the recovery Reagan took credit for in the '80s-- to replace him a year later.) Plus, they were pretty much the only administration in the last generation with anything close to an effective energy policy. The pro-conservation policies initiated during the Carter administration are a big reason why America has been able to continue it's international dominance in spite of its ratio of energy use to domestic fuel production. (In the the face of my above statements, though, I must admit that these policies were to some degree or another a product of the times rather than of the Administration's acumen.) Well, his "single term" was 14 months longer than most single terms... In sum, though, none of the presidential administrations of the past 30-ish years strike me as particularly impressive. They have all been too cowardly with regard to addressing long-term underlying problems in American policies, economics, and diplomacy. Too concerned with short-term partisan advantage at the expense of the country as a whole over the long term.

Gruden in the booth should be interesting. The most entertaining aspect of NFLN's draft coverage was watching Gruden squirm while on camera, visibly uncomfortable at having to deviate from his normal "4+ F-Bombs per sentence" mode of speaking.

It's not a "rival NPC party" setup, but I do recall that the later Wizardry games (the 7th one, and possibly the 8th as well) had something similar. There was a series of McGuffins your party was trying to collect, but if you got to them late, one of the game's rival factions would have beaten you to them and you'd find the treasure chest empty. I agree with Gromnir's point that it's more important to define a strong antagonist in a CRPG than it is to define a protagonist (unless you're willing to greatly restrain player choices in character creation/development).

It makes sense, really. In KotOR1, HK was sui generis-- the emphasis in the voicing was being "the robot companion who speaks," so the VO didn't have to worry about differentiating his performance from other similar characters. (Really, the comparison they were no doubt looking to emphasize differences with is C-3PO, who was constantly flying from one fit of emotional despair or hysteria to the next.) In KotOR2, though, there were all the other HKs out there, and the writing emphasized that the difference between them was that the HK50s (etc.) were soulless killing machines, while good ol' 47 had some artistry and introspection behind his love for murder. The VO was no doubt asked to emphasize the differences between these characters in recording their parts. Anyhow, this is a bit far afield from AP, which will almost certainly include some assassins, but surely no protocol droids. Here's hoping that Obsidz have found a role as suiting to Mr. Tabori's talents as the various HK units were.

Well, any time one tries to talk about nations/regions/religions/cultures in a sub-doctorate-thesis-scale manner, there are going to be some rather broad generalizations used. Any causes discussed are always going to be "contributing" rather than "direct 1-to-1 causation," and some liberties must be taken in describing comparative elements in institutions/populations/cultures/faiths/etc. If any of the ones I mentioned offended at all, I apologize. And the point about the increased cost of emigrating from East Asia is a good one.

Agreed. First-world nations that used to be European colonies, like the U.S. and Australia, have a much easier time of this sort of thing because cultural norms simply have shallower roots and are more easily shifted. In Europe, so much of the national identities are based on deeply rooted cultural traditions, so a large-scale influx of people who don't share these traditions has a more profound effect. Also, the more socialised economic systems you find in Western Europe create a rather heavy economic incentive for the native-born population to dislike the newcomers. Also, per the earlier comments on East Asian immigrants assimilating more easily, I don't think it's necessarily reflective of work ethic or intelligence. I think it's more a result of the culture in their home countries, which tends to value things like humility and non-confrontational attitudes, and respects and strives for secular education.

I've played FO1-2 several times, and I know what the in-game effects of eye targeting are. (Answer: they're an extremely unbalanced way to manipulate the games' very powerful critical hit systems.) I get that fans of the tactical details of FO1-2 want more options than arms/legs/head, and that targeting the eyes/groin were useful tactical options in the older games. (And by "eyes/groin," I mean "eyes." And by "useful," I mean "the clearly optimal strategy in all situations once your skills are high enough to get a success rate over 70% or so.") But my core question, I guess, is why should Obsidian spend the time and resources to add more targetable body parts to the FO3-based system they'll be using in F:NV? Now, I admit that I was thinking about guns, and wasn't considering the melee targeting rationales that Gromnir mentions. That's a point in favor of more options, but only if melee combat targeting is already on the "add" list. (It seems to me like this would involve a lot of additional animation resources, so I could see it being skipped as too costly.) But still, the majority of combat in the game is gunplay, and I still don't really see how additional targetable body parts would be worthwhile in that context. (If you want to be even close to realistic, the chance to hit the eyes with a firearm should really never get higher than 10%, unless you're firing at a paralyzed Bette Davis from 5 feet away.)

Fixed that for you.

I never got the "eye shot" thing. Unless your target is 2 feet away and completely motionless (or 10 feet, if it's a japanese cartoon character), there is no difference at all between aiming at the head and aiming at the eyes. How does giving us an option to target eyes improve the game in any way? (Groin shots are more plausible, but pretty embarrassingly childish. Really, when is the last time anyone over the age of 10 laughed at a groin injury joke? And, yes, I'm including the FO1-2 flavor text in this category.)

Wals' post reminded me of this WaPo story from a few months back: Facebook doesn't like people named "Batman"

I'm trying to figure out how to report my wife's student loans and 401K on the annual financial reporting forms I have to fill out for work. My info is all the same from last year, but this is the first time I've done the forms since we got hitched.

I don't like the idea of messing around with running speed based on attributes. It would end up being either too miniscule to make any difference, or too gamebreakingly powerful. (Like the Dart Gun, but selected on character creation.) Also, nobody would ever want to play a low-AG character simply because of the associated trudging around the gameworld more slowly. (While this AG-supremacy would be true to the imbalances of FO1-2, I wouldn't consider that something to be emulated.)