Enoch

This actually sounds really cool. Somebody should expand on this and make it. For some reason, this makes me picture Abraham sacraficing Isaac as a quicktime event.

To answer my own question, Yes. So, the totality of teases thus far: (4) "What do the words mean?" "Nothing. The Dirge of E

Good catch. Was there anything in the page source data for the "4" page? Dyrwood is a Scottish surname. More evidence that this is something new and somewhat celtic/gaelic-influenced. "Divine champion" also implies mystical/magical/supernatural elements, so that's another point for it being fantasy genre. Why is the first sentence on the teaser page the only one not in italics?

"Wealth" probably isn't the best measure of the kind of things you're talking about. It tends to be more skewed to both extremes than income is, and less related to day-to-day well being. A family with a steady middle-class income might easily have negative wealth, if, like Hurlshot, they got hosed by the real estate crash and owe more on their house than it is presently worth. Which isn't to say that the present situation isn't one to be alarmed at, at least a little bit. For a variety of reasons, Americans in general have never been comfortable with their politicians talking about class a whole lot. Poverty, homelessness, etc., thus tend to be problems that don't get addressed in proportion to their signficance. And the degree to which certain classes of near-oligarchic elites (primarily talking about the finance and insurance sector here) have been able to effectively plunder the rest of the economy and amass and protect enormous fortunes, all while believing that it is simply their right and duty to do so, is deeply troublesome. Decades of mis-aligned incentives within financial institutions, in the tax system, in corporate governance, and in financial regulation have led to mal-invested resources that hurt the overall well being and competitiveness of the nation. The decade to come is going to be difficult. And prolonged experience with widespread hardship will eventually work its way into the realm of what is acceptable to discuss in mainstream politics. But politics is indeed slow-moving beast.

I imagine many people prefer playing it on Steam and not worrying about whether they can get the older disced version to run on their current rig. Yeah, I did it about 3 weeks ago, and it was not the smoothest process in the world. (Also, there's a substantial delay when the game transitions to and from the videos.) If I could've paid $10 to skip all that, I would definitely have done so.

Seconded. I am having a bit of trouble with nausea in AC, which I did not have in AA. Uh oh. AC has been on my to-play list for quite awhile, and AA did give me occasional wooziness issues. The camera swings while swooping around and especially when dropping into the "hanging" posture seemed to be what bothered me the most. It got better after I got into the game a bit, though-- once I got used to the animations, I trained myself to focus my vision elsewhere while they were playing. (I also do this whenever Geralt climbs up or down a ledge in Witcher 2.) And the riddles were totally the best part of AA. (Also, I never felt the urge to do any of the challenges.) Anyhow, I've just reached Malachor in my KotOR2/TSLRCM playthrough.

IIRC, where you would normally get your first "Vibroblade," you'll find a "Vibrocutter" instead. Which, I think, is in one of the corridors between the medical unit and the comm station.

Good rule of thumb: When a headline describes somebody as a "lawmaker" or "legislator" or similar title, the person in question is nearly always some unimportant back-bencher with no real influence. If he or she was at all influential or famous, the headline would've said "Speaker of the House" or "Education Committee Chairman" (etc.) or the legislator's actual name.

You're faster than me. I just touched down on Korriban, which is the 4th of the hub planets I've done. More importantly, I think I've reached all the influence-based dialogue thresholds for everyone in my crew except HK-47. (I got him to talk about Revan, but I still get a "failure" at the "show me how you killed Jedi" request.) I recall Korriban being fairly devoid of companion interaction, but hopefully there are some more opportunities to raise my HK influence in the Return-to-Onderron and Darth Nihilus sequences.

Yeah, I can't really disagree much there. And while I think the mod added more waves of Bad Doodz, IIRC, the core experience wasn't that different in the vanilla game. The whole "use a shield or medpac in the inventory screen" dodge is invaluable there, especially if you hadn't put much effort into twinking out your companions' gear at a workbench. I made the mistake of basing the party for the G0T0's yacht on a roleplaying call of who the Exile would trust the most. That gave me Bao Dur and Atton (the latter of whom was a Jedi, but only at, like, level 2 in his Jedi class), who got rather torn apart by the robots until they managed to find the Protagonist. I think we've all made that mistake at some point. I know you brought up suppressed memories of my first kotor2 playthrough back in the day. *shudder* It's funny how the KotOR games subtly influence the player to pay less attention to the RPG numbers. When you get down to it, Bao Dur and Atton are pretty clearly low-HP, low-BAB skill monkeys. If this were a D&D game, I wouldn't consider sending two Rogues in on a rescue mission without either Fighter or magical support unless I was intending to stealth through most of it. But for whatever reason, playing KotOR2, my RPG-grognard instincts didn't sound those warning bells. The RCM restoration of the battle for Khoonda on Dantooine was nicely done. I also keep stumbling into examples of how good the writing is in parts of this game that I had totally forgotten about. I keep marvelling at how well they manage to inform the player of things that the Protagonist knows through unselected dialogue options or lines from other players. (E.g., we learn that the Exile fought a battle on Dxun not from him or from the Mandalorians, but from Kreia's warning to Atton.) And then the game has a knack of hitting you with a laugh line when you least expect it. (The "use the reward money to build a statue of me to honor my heroism" line is a classic, and although I realize it's lame as hell, I cracked up at "[Persuade] I want to hold your gland.") That said, the writing isn't all great. Every one of the "I'd like to train you in the ways of the Force" conversations comes off really awkwardly (with the possible exception of Handmaiden's). I'm now at the point where I'm trying to decide who deserves my extra starport visas on Iziz. Which mostly means micromanaging Influence levels. I'm playing mostly lightside, but I prioritize Influence over LS points, so I don't worry about falling out of the "mastery bonus" range from time to time. I'm pretty sure I've got all the Influence I need with the LS characters, and I think that I've exhausted my conversation options with G0T0, as well. But there's at least one conversation tree with HK-47 I can't reach yet, Mandalore is of course a blank slate, and you can't get too much Kreia influence. I think that widow is going to be crying in the town square for a while yet...

I mean every single part where you're not using the PC. Miras vs the Ubese, Atton and pals, the yacht. I'm not speaking specifically of changes. It's just a bad segment because of imbalance when Jedi aren't in the party. Just to be clear, I'm not blaming you guys. Well, to be fair, the poor balance between Jedi characters and non-Jedi was very much a feature of KotOR 1, too. That game just didn't give the player the option of putting together a wholly-non-Jedi party at any point after that-first-planet-whose-name-I-forget.

Yeah, I can't really disagree much there. And while I think the mod added more waves of Bad Doodz, IIRC, the core experience wasn't that different in the vanilla game. The whole "use a shield or medpac in the inventory screen" dodge is invaluable there, especially if you hadn't put much effort into twinking out your companions' gear at a workbench. I made the mistake of basing the party for the G0T0's yacht on a roleplaying call of who the Exile would trust the most. That gave me Bao Dur and Atton (the latter of whom was a Jedi, but only at, like, level 2 in his Jedi class), who got rather torn apart by the robots until they managed to find the Protagonist. I like the thought behind the design-- follow multiple characters to effectuate a Jabba's-Yacht-style rescue scenario. But the implementation as waves of grindiness was the opposite of fun. And parts of it (mostly Mira escaping from the battle pit) require a pretty huge suspension of disbelief.

I have to imagine that we're beyond spoiler warnings for KotOR 2 by now. I'd call deception very in-character for Atris. As for the Last of the Handmaidens, it is consistent with the message you get from her when you do the thought-reading bit with Kreia later (something along the lines of "this mission is the most difficult task that she has ever sent me on"). Anyhow, I'm also giving the latest TSLRCM a go. I will confess to also not catching more than half of the things Hassat lists as new, but that's mostly because I don't remember my vanilla playthrough all that well. I'm just about through with Nar Shadaa, which was my first main planet post-Telos. (I initially went to Dantooine first, but in a fit of roleplaying I decided it would make sense to get out of there after Visas found me.) To the extent that some of the grinding-through-waves-of-bounty-hunters bit is restored content, I think I see why it got cut. And, although fixing it would've been well beyond the scope of the RCM's goals, the whole "Mira's escape from Visquis's base" bit really leaves verisimillitude behind. Anyhow, althought I can't always spot what's new and what isn't, I am enjoying the game, and it's more stable than it has ever been for me in the past. Goto's commentary as I made my way through his ship was a neat touch.

Man, I forgot how easy it was to screw up the whole "Visas likes me more than Handmaiden" thing in this game. Now it looks like I have to roll back to an earlier save and avoid conversation with Visas until after I've "finished" all the Handmaiden interactions. The whole "Handmaiden locking you out when Visas influence gets too high" thing is a pretty poor design decision when coupled with the fact that you can essentially max Visas' influence in one conversation. (I realize that this is not particular relevant to TSLRCM, but it's a frustration I've encountered in replaying the game for the first time in many years.)

I haven't played through the game as-modded, but my impression is that there is little reason to play the original release if you have access to this instead. It's goal is only putting content back in the game that was cut rather late in development. (Also bug-fixing.) While a first-timer isn't going to appreciate what's new about the mod, he or she will presumably find the last third of the game to be much more cohesive and less WTF-inducing. I also find it surprising that nobody has mentioned the typo in the thread title yet.

I managed to get it working acceptably in Win7x64, which I could never do on my Vistax32 machine (it ran, but with no sound, which was simply unacceptable). I'm through with Telos and it hasn't crashed once yet-- a far better record in that regard than I've had with the game before on any machine. The annoying problem being that it takes a full 30 seconds for the game to transition from the "game" part to the "movie" part. (Also in reverse.) So sequences like going from Citadel Station down to the Restoration Zone go something like this: [30 seconds of black screen], Video of the shuttle leaving the hangar, [30 seconds of black screen], in-engine Atton chatting at the controls, [30 seconds of black screen], 2-second video of an AA gun, [30 seconds of black screen], Atton again making some comment, [30 seconds of black screen], video of shuttle crashing, [30 seconds of black screen], back to the game and a chat with Bao-Dur. Speaking of Telos, I find it somewhat amusing that there's a popular mod out there letting you skip Peragus. I really like Peragus-- there's tons of clever design going on. What I want is a "Skip Telos" mod. If I could just bypass everything between docking with the citadel to arriving at Atris' base, I'd be all over that. (The whole B4D4 episode being the one thing I would miss.)

I will admit that my first reaction to Calax flying to Long Island (locally known as "Lawn Guylun") was "hopefully he's just changing planes at JFK."

That "free promotion" thing would make an interesting case. I doubt anyone has made a federal case out of it yet, but I could easily see a non-religious military enlistee having a pretty strong Equal Protection case, in that he wasn't considered for an immediate bump up to E2 that was available to members of an organization that discriminates based on religion. (Although I haven't looked at the actual policy. It's possible that it's phrased in a neutral way-- e.g., the test is something like a demonstrated committment to public service, for which an Eagle badge or a Girl Scout Gold Award would be possible, but non-exclusive, qualifications.) My experience with the Scouts was pretty similar to Calax's. The troop wasn't very well led, and by the time I hit First Class, all the guys who I enjoyed hanging out with had quit. So I followed them. As for adult Eagles returning their badges/medals, I don't see anything wrong with members of an organization lobbying to change that organization's policies. There is a faint scent of hypocrisy, in that the Scouts' policy on gays and atheists has long been quite clear. But in many cases, a boy's participation in Scouting was more a parental decision than the boy's own, and I don't think that decisions that a guy made when he was 15 can be credibly used to undermine his political and moral views as an adult. Plus, many of these medals were earned well before gay rights was in the mainstream of political discussion in the U.S.

Man, Crusader Kings 2 just sucked up most of my weekend. It's been a while since a strategy game pulled me in like that. Most of the guidance I had read suggested that Ireland (specifically, one of Munster or Dublin) was a good place to start while getting the mechanics down. So I did that: Murchad Ua Cheinnselaig of Dublin. And I had good luck forging claims on some surrounding counties, so I gained territory pretty rapidly. Just as I was trying to pick the right time to declare myself King of Ireland, my starting character died. And his eldest son (primogeniture) didn't have sufficient Piety to create the Kingdom right away. But there was a bigger problem-- It seems that I didn't quite understand the primogeniture rules. The new Duke only had one child, and it was a daughter. I had operated under the assumption that Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture would mean that the new Duke's brother would inherit before his daughter would. This is not the case, and that daughter had been married (non-matrilineally) to an English Duke, with whom she had a couple of sons. Which meant that it was game over when her reign ended unless I did something. Anyhow, I proclaimed the new guy the King of Ireland when it let me (which was probably a mistake), and got some of the other Irish Earls to swear fealty. I then raised the crown authority to Medium so that I would be able to change the Succession law to Seniorage once I had reigned for 10 years. That didn't go over well with the vassals, who already didn't like the new guy nearly as much as they liked ol' Murchad. I managed that OK-- had to put down a rebellion or two, figured out that I should give away one of my 3 Ducal titles, and was building up the Piety and Prestige of the new guy. After a quick bribe to the Duke of Munster, he got the whole island united under his rule. Until he died of some disease about 5 years into his reign. Which left the Duchess of (somethingEnglish) as the Queen of Ireland. And that did not go well. Within a year or two, she had a full-on vassal revolt on her hands. In hindsight, I may have been able to hold on if I had called on her husband for military support. But I instead decided to start over. I had a slower start the second time around, but that's mostly because my Chancellor wasn't quite as adept at the dark arts of claim fabrication. But I was making better decisions regarding marriages, economic management, vassal management, and child-rearing (i.e., I figured out that you get the best results when your dynasty leader raises children himself). Entertainingly enough, the starting character once again died just as he was saving the cash to Crown himself. He was succeeded by his 14-year-old grandson, with Muchad's 2nd son serving as "no, really, I'm not bitter at all!" Regent, Marshal, and Master of Horse. I tore myself away from the game just as I was poring over the list of eligible bachelorettes to be his future Queen. (Hmm... the King of England has a 15-year-old daughter with not-terrible stats...)

Oh, cry me a river. I'm playing the game with Sawyer's mod installed-- my (5 STR) character's max carry weight is 100. And Stimpaks weigh a quarter-pound each!

Gotta accentuate the positive. Sure, you're a short, asian, fuddy-duddy doctoral student. But I'm guessing that you are also a short, asian, fuddy-duddy doctoral student who speaks English with a non-American accent. That there is gold!

IIRC, the only connection is one crossover-- the "evil-only" joinable-NPC in MotB appears as an optional-quest-giver in SoZ.

Ooh, fantastic. I bought this game a few weeks back, but haven't gotten it up and running yet, as I've had to send the video card in my primary gaming machine back for replacement due to a fan that went all clicky on me. Teach me!

On topic, my newest PC's video card is being mailed in for replacement (fan is ticking), my home internet is still out from that storm last Friday, and Steam needs an update (which means offline mode ain't working). So my options are considerably limited. But a friend tipped me off that New Vegas will run without the Steam launcher if you use the launch button in the Fallout Mod Manager. Which is true! So my playthrough with Sawyer's mod has now gotten as far as Novac.

I am certainly one who gets stressed by games that try to rush me or scare me. But the stuff with the radios and thick fog appealed to the puzzle gamer in me, so I was perfectly happy to quicksave, charge off in a particular direction, try to find a way out, fail, come back with Christine or Dean to try again, etc., etc. I was a nervous wreck when I played Dead Money, but it was because of the Hardcore-Mode persistent damage that the Fog did. That essentially put a timer on explorationm, and I hate feeling like I have to rush when I'm exploring a game environment. It wasn't until I got the code that let me buy Stimpaks from the vending machines (and, of course, I explored the area where that was hidden last) that I felt comfortable enough to explore at my preferred pace. And the narrative payoff was pretty great. The story of the Sierra Madre is right up there with Vault 11 and the main plot to Fallout 1 as my favorite narrative threads in a Fallout game.