metadigital

Abstracted vs. direct control. Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout. It's possible. They pretty much maintain the necessary levels and differences between player control and character role. I'm not asking for a complete separation of both, neither would I want to. I want games that go for attempts at combining a sense of character and direct player into the same context to do a better job, or at least a coherent one. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But the only point of contention for you, then, is the player's direct control over the character in combat. Because the player is directly controlling the PC in Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Fallout from a cognitive perspective. I.e., the player can still recognize that the terrain looks like a perfect trap, or use their mathematics skill to solve a puzzle.

But I don't think that is possible. The character that YOU create, is a part of you (to a lesser or greater extent). You are arbitrarily creating a very limited character. As I said, I think that is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation: you play the game via your PC, it is true, but the puzzles are solved using the player's brain, and the player's knowledge of >spacial conception / learned behaviour / knowledge / whatever< so the player is always ineluctably inextricable from the PC. You can never divorce the player from the PC, lest you end up with WATCHING a play.

It does look very interesting.

Mmhmm. Lovely fairytale. I'd say Idi Amin or Pol Pot, to name just TWO from the last few decades, are pretty good examples of EVIL.

Hasn't been too forthcoming about his brother ... "

The New Statesman is equally as biased as Fox News (just for the left), so I would take their spin with a pinch of salt. I'm not sure what your point is, though, still. That there might be some other information that isn't released to the public domain, in the time of war? Not a big surprise, really. That the coalition is some sort of evil invasion force trying to kill Iraqis just because they have a surplus of munitions?

Do you watch them with English dub, or in Japanese?

I didn't know James brown died 15 years ago. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Psst.

Just because I was in north Italy, I was given a crash course in their Renaissance history: the French spent a lot of time camped on Italian real-estate, with Venice and the Vatican being the only independent states for a long time. Lots of neat wars in that area of time and space. I still think, though, that the ancient civilizations that became what we now call China would make the best source.

I was just reading the "master class" in this month's PC Format, which is a detailed explanation of how to complete the Baron 45[/i] quest (to get the phat Tier 0.5 armour). However much others like it, I don't want to have to have thirty-six health potions and magic buffs, etc, all on hotkey. I barely use health potions in RPGs as it is. If it's impossible to beat the game without them, then I'm already reaching for the Deus Ex game disc.

In fact, I think I'll go and play a game of Deus Ex right now!

They are already completing the next engine, which will be used for the next title.

I am sure you, and they, will get just deserts.

He will return.

It sounds like you weren't paying sufficient attention to the maintenance of your firearms. ^_^ No, you are trying to rationalize your own peculiar requirement; I am not aware of anyone else who wants this, certainly not a minority significant enough to warrant the extra investment of resources that might better be utilized doing something

You'll note I'm not asking for player skills to be removed altogether nor for a PC in a CRPG to be automated; the simulation of personality is always required and that requires player input. While we would probably disagree on just how much player skills are required in order to infuse personality in a CRPG character, I'm simply pointing out that there are issues when both things are allowed to clash together and that they usually tend to bring down the importance of a character's role. Because of this I'm suggesting that there should be an attempt made to at least make the entity of the character to remain as separate from the player as possible so as to avoid this issue. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't think that is even possible, let alone desirable. I think this point is a valid one: PnP and cRPG games aren't about creating a new PC that is totally divorced from the person playing it. The person playing it is still in command of all their memories, experiences, expertise, etc ... that is unavoidable. Also, that's the point, really, I would argue: the player is enabled to use their meagre skills to play a super-hero, balanced according to the achievements of the PC over time (translated to experience for levels, traits, feats and bonuses, etc). Yes, I could shoot moving targets that way. And I spent no points at all into firearms other than the game automatically allocated (which was one point for Pistols, if I recall correctly). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's called metagaming. Nothing to do with supplementing his poor skills with some degree of player ingenuity. Unless you want to tell me that countering the machinegun's recoil and accuracy by simply dragging the mouse down - in the opposite direction of the gun's recoil - and thus removing any deficiency associated with using it at poor skill levels is some form of "strategy"? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, actually, I would call that strategy (as opposed to your mouse tinkering, above); if you were using a real machinegun, you would learn to counter the natural (and predictable) movement of the barrel as you fired, in much the same way. That's just YOU

Lolitaing?

They both suffered from Pneumonia!

There are only two types of games: chess and pong.

No, you are trying to rationalize your own peculiar requirement; I am not aware of anyone else who wants this, certainly not a minority significant enough to warrant the extra investment of resources that might better be utilized doing something

Yes. When I get around to playing.

Pressure is needed and healthy, in correct proportions, otherwise there isn't any requirement to actually complete anything. Interestingly, I just read Philip K. Dιck's transcript interview; he used to write his novels in a self-imposed "crunch": he would barely eat, nor sleep as he sat and typed for a week or so, sipping scotch. That was how he wrote his last novel, The transmigration of Timothy Archer (which, incidentally, was not SF), and indubitably led to his fatal stroke. (He observed that he was bleeding internally as he finished the novel, because

Yes: how dare someone express a pov that is DIFFERENT!