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Whipporwill

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Posts posted by Whipporwill

  1. - So they created Alpha by Topher messing up and accidentally imprinting him with a bunch of personalities? What?

     

     

    They didn't create Alpha. They imprinted him with a bunch of personalities, but he was always ax crazy.

  2. I thought the "eternal life" thing was overplayed. Thinking you're Napoleon is not the same as being Napoleon, and while it makes sense for Echo-as-Margaret to be fascinated by the concept, both Adele and Boyd know how the dollhouse actually works and should not have taken the idea seriously. In fact, based on the attention paid to teaching life lessons to dead Margaret, I got the impression that the writer of the episode was also confused, and had the impression that the machine could actually summon the spirits of the dead.

     

    The murder-mystery aspect of the plot seemed adequate, but I'm not much of a judge. I dislike the mystery-novel formula and have for years.

     

    "There's been a murder."

     

    "That's great! Let's see if we can figure out who did it!"

     

    The best part of the episode for me was Topher and with Sierra. Once a year Topher makes a geek friend to play with. This managed to be cute and pathetic at the same time.

     

    Ballard and November were very very creepy and dark this week. If Ballard sleeps with her he's basically raping her. If not, he risks tipping off the Dollhouse. He chooses to eat the kitten.

  3. *sigh* 0-3 today, AGAIN. Korqeldroma, 00raiser and KittyBangBang all took turns working me over. Oh, and "Pugnacious" doesnt do jack. >_<

     

    Look for brutes that you have an advantage over. Korqeldroma and 00raiser both have pets. You don't have a pet and you don't have any anti-pet specials. KittyBangBang is basically the same sort of fighter as you have, only a level higher.

     

    EDIT: Woops! I must have looked at Korqeldroma's fight twice. 00raiser doesn't have a pet, just a powerful weapon. He's also two levels higher.

  4. There wasn't an Enclave city? You're thinking of Vault City. That outcome was completely consistent. You were an outsider, who has no rights, in a fight with a citizen. Of course they're going to be on you like white on rice.

     

    You're missing the point. The situation swings out of control, you roll your eyes and reload. It's poor gameplay.

  5. It's a realistic sort of response, though. It's better than getting in a fight and everyone magically knowing you weren't at fault, or all NPCs cowing to your aggression and scorn.

    IIRC that section in question was a gang headquarters. The city goes hostile because those aren't normal citizens, those are gang members that are attempting to eliminate a nuisance to the gang.

     

    Nice try, but wrong. This was in the Enclave city, and the NPC was a relative of one of the party members. A realistic response would have been a refusal to trade, and perhaps some fisticuffs.

  6. I bought the Fallout two-pack in the post-Baldur's gate era for about ten dollars. Suffice it to say that although I don't regret the purchase, neither do I have any emotional attachment to them. I have never bothered to complete either game.

     

    By today's standards, the gameplay is poorly balanced and far too reliant on trial-and-error. I particularly remember one NPC where, if you were overly short with her, would attack you. Once you damaged her, the ENTIRE CITY would turn instantly hostile. This inevitably meant a reload. People would throw a fit if a modern game tried this, and with good reason. It's neither challenging nor fun, and exists solely to frustrate the player.

     

    Longtime fans don't step in the noob traps; they know where they are. And the noob traps didn't bother them when they were noobs, because noob traps were de rigeur in pre-millennial gaming. But a modern gamer picking up an old game like Fallout is going to find them particularly obnoxious precisely because modern games don't pull that crap.

  7. Dollhouse actually reminds me of Firefly quite a lot. It has the same mix of an unlikeable main character, a hard-to-swallow premise, and writing that thinks it's more clever than it actually is. Firefly wasn't a bad show in the sense that, say, Birds of Prey was a bad show, but it always felt slapdash and smelt of flop sweat. Its cancellation was neither surprising nor particularly disappointing.

     

    I'll probably watch Dollhouse until it goes away, but I'm not expecting it to last long.

  8. I really didn't want this thread to turn into an argument. Let's just agree that BioWare has chosen a specific type of RPG to make, and that not everyone will enjoy it.

     

    Anyways, here's a new article by Kutaku (who are these guys? I'm seeing them everywhere suddenly), on whether Dragon Age is high or low fantasy.

     

    I pretty much agree with Kotaku on this one. Bioware seems to have no understanding of the various sub-genres of fantasy. Their tale, focusing as it does on the Darkspawn and their origin of daring to enter what had been forbidden to man by the Maker, is firmly in the high-fantasy camp. Calling it "dark heroic fantasy" because people die, there's no flat-out proof of a deity, and there's blood everywhere is just plain wrong.

     

    Lots of people being wrong on the Kotaku thread, too.

     

    High and low fantasy are simply different traditions. High fantasy draws on earlier literary works based ultimately on the medieval romance, while low fantasy draws rather more directly on the pulp adventure story. Since pulp adventures are themselves derived from the medieval romance, it's a pretty blurry distinction.

  9. I think so. I don't play shooters so I don't know if they have romances, but I play point and click adventures which certainly pride themselves on good characters and storytelling and you might think would be fertile ground for romances. They aren't, though, perhaps because it would turn some people off if it weren't optional and adventures aren't big on choices with consequences - it's just not a standard feature of the genre.

     

    I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. :) Romances have been part of adventure games since King's Quest 2.

  10. I paid about fifteen bucks for Dungeon Lords and had some old-school fun with it. I wouldn't have wanted to pay forty, but I felt I got my money's worth. Dungeon SIEGE, on the other hand, was a complete ripoff even at ten bucks.

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