Gorth

I think my favourites were Neeshka and Khelgar. Maybe it was because they were your first companions, maybe because they were the best "fleshed" out characters. It was the only ones I felt a kind of attachment to as a player. Runners up would be Qara and Grobnar. One because of her fiery temper and one because of... well not sure why. I just like Grobnar, despite him being a gnome (I hate gnomes) and a bard. As for the rest, they just "were" there. Tools that you needed to pass specific parts of the game, not party members by choice but by design. Zhaeve I found particularly annoying

True. But I would attribute that to stupidity and incompetence more than neglect and inefficiency. Perhaps a bit of corruption? The sewage tank manufacturer might be the nephew of the project manager. Maybe some kickback is involved? I have no idea how open organisations like the Red Cross are to public scrutiny and accountability, but then I don't think I ever gave anything to them.

You might spend 3.75$ on materials and a bus ticket into the city centre to go out and campaign for "Save the Sea Turtle from our cooking pots!" Being a very unsexy, yet delicious animal, you might collect 4.00$ during a days collecting. On the other hand, you might spend 25.00$ on a poster with a "Red Cross" and a good looking girl (which you paid the 20.00$) helping a little hungry looking, large eye kid... and a bus ticket into the city centre and end up collecting 100.00$ to save the starving children of Sudan. One only spends 3.75$ the other a staggering 25.00$

Or use "The Staff of Asclepius" (staff with snakes around it). Has the benefit of not being tied up with any one religion when you sell your game all over the world, never mind that the red cross may actually be a trademark. I think that's taken by the HMO Blue Cross. And I believe that if more than 50% of the donations get used for charitable necessities it's still considered a charitable organization. Just a few organisations who use it (from wikipedia): The World Health Organization The Star of Life - symbol of the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians The American Medical Association The American Osteopathic Association The Canadian Medical Association The American Veterinary Medical Association The British Royal Army Medical Corps it is universally associated with medicine and healing. I seriously doubt any of those would have much luck claiming a millennia old symbol for their own.

World History (very short): Black Isle was formed by Interplay after the release of Fallout as the "crpg" publishing division. Bioware was a developer who used to do medico software (hence their name). They made a few games (MDK, a fps iirc) and pitched the infinity engine to Black Isle as Infinity Wars, a run of the mill RTS. Fearghus and Co. said "No!". The world is flooded with RTS, go back and make it a crpg instead and add the ad&d ruleset. That is why Infinity engine games look and feel like rts games, with the real time part replaced with real time with pause. BG was a hit and Black Isle hosted the forums for the games. Eventually Interplay fell apart, failed to pay Bioware it's royalties and other nasty stuff. Bioware and Black Isle "divorced", Bioware created their own forums and looked other places for publishers. Eventually Atari picked up both NWN and the D&D license from Interplay/Black Isles cold dead hands and went on the publish NWN (it had been quite a few years in production at Bioware/Black Isle at the time). Throughout it all though, despite the differences between Bioware and Black Isles parent company Interplay, the people behind Black Isle and Bioware seemed to have gotten along well enough to talk nicely about each other when publishers went looking for sequels for Kotor and NWN. Hence, Obsidian (whose management team is made up of old BIS guys) ended up bagging both jobs. If somebody know more/corrections, feel free to correct me.

The short answer is no, you are the sole proprietor of the "modders-are-con-men" theory. As I said before, in a topic that is now locked, you are simply a noob asshat who wants us all to damn Team Ginza to hell for your own, unknown, reasons. You claim to be a fan of Kot0R II, yet you seem to have an irrational anger, or, possibly, a fear, at the prospect of people restoring content that was designed by Obsidian to be included in the final release. Until you can logically explain what doomsday scenario will arise, I will continue to believe that you are full of "guano." Maybe some kind of Freudian envy?

Cant mentioned something about having a few...

It couldn't be that most of the gaming press enjoyed Oblivion? Bethesda isn't exactly some heavyweight publisher. I could see being skeptical if the gaming press was all over Microsoft or EA, but seriously, there isn't any real benefit to grovelling to Bethesda. In fact, considering the game was well reviewed and sold well, you might want to look at yourself when it comes to "assessing quality". Clearly you have different tastes than the typical gamer, I don't know why that's the gaming press's fault. Bethesda was just a recent example. If you checked my previous post, you would notice that I stopped believing in anything the gaming press may have to say about game quality two decades ago. In the beginning, they were biased for the sake of selling ads in their pages, later they were biased to accomodate (sp?) their intended target group. I.e. howling like the rest of the pack as to not stand out in a crowd. If you deviate from the rest and you are wrong, you risk being picked upon and discarded in favour of other offerings on the market. Makes it a bit difficult to find information about a games qualities every now and then. I've learnt to trust the general consensus first on usenet interest groups and later forums/message boards where people gather and chat. Much more informative I just wish I had done that before buying a few of the games that gathers dust on my shelf

I don't own any consoles. Haven't had one since the original Pong. Makes for a simple choice in voting

Are you quitting gaming press forever? I was desillusioned with gaming press 20 years ago. Nothing has happened to raise my opinion of it

Or use "The Staff of Asclepius" (staff with snakes around it). Has the benefit of not being tied up with any one religion when you sell your game all over the world, never mind that the red cross may actually be a trademark.

After having watched the gaming press behaving like a bunch of servile, grovelling prostitutes, all bowing and drooling on the floor for Bethesda, I have no faith in anything a game magazine/site might have to say when it comes to assessing game quality.

The only Settlers I've enjoyed so far was the board game. Surprisingly funny for a game of "conquest" with no military involved (said the old tabletop wargamer)

So, you're saying it was all about revenge and the more civilians we can kill, the better?

I think it is more IP address thing than any expiry date. The powers that be knows, I have to re-login very frequently, but thats because I travel a lot I suspect

A shame that people weren't in a betting mood. I would have placed at least 5 TOMBS points on my idea

Fixed

Look on the bright side. If the numbers change, any which way, it means people are working on the project >_

Same here. Both Kotor2 and NWN2, I kept the party members around me that I liked. Once or twice did I play the games in exploration mode to satisfy my curiosity. I think it might have been better if they had left the notifications out and left it to the player to gradually discover (or not) new sides to his companions instead of the "Ping! Gorth scores/loses Influence with Xyz". If you don't know what triggers it, you might as well just play it according to your head, not your competitive instincts. Much the same way as you eroded the "Fortress" variable for your companions in PS:T

Whoa! Poor cat :sad: I've got exactly what those people need...

Didn't even know that 28 days later had a sequel... I got 28 days on DVD, might have to keep an eye out for 28 weeks when it becomes available on DVD too. I looked it up on imdb and got a good chuckle out of the "Goofs" section: "Factual errors: When Sally and Jacob steal the pizza bike, the number plate is revealed briefly as KW54 JKO, which means that the bike was registered after September 2004, some two years (104 weeks) after the original outbreak!" Seriously, some people should not be allowed to watch movies

I prefer Singapore's Underwater World on Sentosa Island. Gives you free tickets to the Dolphin Lagoon too

17 and what major? I tried to make sense of the progress thread on their own forums, but failed miserably. Any idea where to see what they still intend to restore that hasn't been approached yet? Since we can't really derive much fun from the issues list as a countdown :sad: Edit: The emoticon doesn't work either *grumble*