metadigital

Here's hoping that it doesn't get ported to any blinking console; just made into a super PC game, that handles native resoultions up to WUXGA (1920x1200), with High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendered graphics.

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a lot of lurking being done by new posters ... or searching. "

But you are told what to do by a bunch of fish who take forever to gurgle their speech! How long before you get drunk and shoot one? They also have capital punishment. Better off on Tatooine, nice warma and sunny place to work on your tan. You could start up a nice air-con business ... (I have a friend who used to live in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia -- for those who don't know, a very, very hot place -- anyway, just about the entire population is in some form of air conditioning business. Oh, it also has the record for the only place in the world where the Alcoholics Anonymous was closed, due to lack of interest. There is nothing else to do there ...)

Or waiting for the n00bs to realise that there is a "Delete" option for everyone and their posts ...

Just coastal areas. Go further inland and the KOTOR style might appear. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> So why didn't we get to see the coastal areas? For the record, I thought that K1 conceit was a blinder -- sorry, a really good idea . :D The whole planet of desert, planet of water, planet of super-growth, where the mulch-making-fertiliser got stuck and the trees grew to be kilometers high; very neat (even if it didn't fit with the EU). I'd like to see a story leit-motif like that again, because it worked. I don't see how all the Wookies could be caught and killed in that environment, their home territory: all they have to do is hide in the shadowlands.

It's funny how prefacing a negative critique with a disclaimer comes off as disingenuous. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ahhmm, do you actually have any opinion as to what I had to say. I was trying, however, badly, to register the level of my dissatisfaction. I did play the game 3/4 of the way through once, and then retsart and complete it. There was much that satisfied me in the game. This puts KOTOR2 ahead of a boat load of games I have played in the last few years. It also makes me eager to see if Obsidian can do better in the future. Nevertheless, there were a couple of things that really dissatisfied me. Did they dissatisy you? Why or why not? Do try to respond in slightly less fanboy way. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 1. These guys were poking fun at your po-faced pretense of neutrality, made all the more endearing by your later vitriolic refusals to enjoy the plot once it was explained to you on the grounds of principle. 2.You are completely missing the "design-your-own-backstory" plot building device employed to allow you to make your character. it doesn't matter what the Exile did before the start of the game, anymore than it mattered what Revan's motivations were in K1; the point is you play the character at this point, onward. Whatever dialogue options you choose will take you to an ending. 3. For a clever summary of the plot, try reading (<{POST_SNAPBACK}>). Perhaps you should have searched for "end" or "ending".

Thanks a bunch, time for things to start making sense, lol. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You really should lurk before posting. Then you would see a lot of the info you are complaining isn't here. This is the best summary I have found (<{POST_SNAPBACK}>); it was only a couple of pages back. It is pretty naive to believe you can just turn up and post something that no-one else has commented on before.

And boy is it good! Man, you wouldn't like it, though ... Phew-ee! ... Force-Lightning has a new meaning.

Use the search function. <_< This has been posted (and answered) about a hundred times. To answer your question No.

I redeemed Atris. And Visas was a bunny boiler.

Judean People's Front crack suicide squad, Attack! *platoon of men pull out their swords and stab themselves*

Legislation is the only way to deal with this. A game that deals with mature themes must be restricted to a mature audience. The mechanism needs to be functional; if it is not, then it is the mechanism at fault, not the mature themes. Except that cigarette smoking is harmful to everyone, even people who happen to be in the general vicinity when someone else is smoking. Unlike video games, which are not harmful to most people on any scale similar. I think again the problem is not the MMORPG, but the people who need to be managed. It's okay to say MMORPGs are bad, but millions of people play them with no ill effects. Alcohol consumption is a much more costly and has a more direct correlation with abuse, illness, disease and violence than video games can ever aspire to, and I don't hear anyone calling for another prohibition of alcohol.

July 1 for War of the Worlds. The remake. Again. Starring Thomas Cruise as the everyman. And some CGI pixels as the badguys.

That's what I thought, too. The only way I could justify it in my mind was that Sidious was THE Sith Master so he executed a move that no one had ever seen before. I know thats stretching it, but thats the only thing I could think of. Only Mace, being the senior member of the Jedi Council, knew how to defend against it. But all in all, I really thought the Jedi were a bunch of panzis. Especially after how they were portrayed in the Clone Wars animated series. In Clone Wars, they pretty much lived up to my imagination of what a Jedi Knight would be like in his or her prime. An unkillable bada@#. But in ROTS, they are not only disposed of by Clone Troopers, but they are completely lacking of any kind of intelligence. They just walk right into traps blindly and seem only concerned with their own Order as opposed to the Republic itself. After watching the way Lucas portrayed them in the movie, I was left wondering how they survived THIS long. Also, the way Anakin fell made him look like a complete idiot. I'm sorry, but it did. He goes from, "What have I done??!", to willingly walking into a room and killing a bunch of innocent children. WTF? This is why I've always said that Anakin should've started off the prequels older. His fall to the darkside should've started at the end of Episode I, which is also where I thought the Clone Wars should've started. The second episode could've just been a balls to the wall Clone Wars movie, while still showing Anakin's gradual fall to darkness. At the end of EP2, he would've made a decision that pretty much would have sealed his fate. By the time we got to EP 3, he would pretty much be Darth Vader. There would be nothing left to do but show the fall of the Jedi at the hands of Vader and Sidious. But oh well. I mean, Lucas is a visionary and I totally see where he was going with Anakin's fall. He planted the seed in TPM when Yoda tells Anakin in the Jedi Council chamber that fear is the path to the darkside. All this time, Anakin was terrified of losing Padme. It was this fear that lead him to be angry, but most importantly desperate. He was desperate to save the woman he loved. His wife and the mother of his children. But he didn't know how. All he knew was that there was this horrible prospect of loss in his heart that he couldn't bear. This caused unimaginable fear. That's why Yoda tells him in EP III that Anakin must learn to let go of all that because it's greedy and selfish. However, in the end, human nature got the best of him. Could any of you honestly say that you wouldn't "go over to the darkside" in an effort to save the ones that you love if you thought they were in danger? Especially if you thought that by doing so, you would ensure the safety and security of your friends and/or family? Remember: you are DESPERATE here. You honest to goodness believe the person that is THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN YOUR LIFE (your wife, husband, mom, dad, best friend, girlfriend/boyfriend, whoever) is going to die and you feel utterly helpless to stop it. And then someone who has always been in your life, a mentor to you, someone you trust and has always looked after you and showed you affection and respect where no one else would, offers you a way to save this person. Would you honestly turn this down when you feel that no one else hears you or understands how you're feeling. When you are generally confused and caught up in the vacuum of a huge war while you're only in your 20s and have been told that, oh by the way, you are the chosen one who will bring balance to the Force. This poor man was FATED to go over to the darkside. Seriously. This is why Anakin and Darth Vader in general, is a tragic figure in every sense of the word. He allowed himself to be duped because he was desperate to save the woman he loved, to defeat the aspect of doubt in his heart. But when all was said and, there was only suffering. Which is exactly what Yoda said in TPM. The problem is Lucas did a terrible job conveying all this in a script or on the big screen. It just comes off as rushed and empty. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> This is an extremely idealised interpretation of a particularly poorly written, scripted, directed and acted part of the film. I applaud your heroic interpretation of the meagre raw ingredients. Yes, ideally, that should have been something like the story; unfortunately we got the equivalent of the Antartic Shakepeare Appreciation Society's Hamlet. dunno, that seems like an important bit of info to leave out, don't you? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hmm. Didn't phrase that right, did I? What I meant, is that that is what I'd imagine happened in between the two scenes, not that Lucas left out that important information. Who knows what his ideas behind the motivation were, but if I were Sidious, I'd say that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The problem is that Anakin was given too many motivations. The primary one which seemed to be save Padme whatever the cost was shot to bits when he thought he had killed her. Gratitude to the emporer dosnt seem too likely, revenge on Obi Wan ? Possibly , that could lead to him searching around the Galaxy. Anakin as a trgic figure just trying to save his wife might have worked if he hadnt gone around butchering children. He wasnt even involved directly in order 66 so without that scene he could have been very much the tragic hero...In which case meeting Luke would remind him of his humanity. I expect somewhere along the way he would have figured out that he didnt kill Padme after all. Probably between EPV and VI which would reinforce his motivations for turning on the emporer , who had lied to him all along. To me that seems to fit together better in relation with EP IV-VI. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It speaks volumes about the quality and depth of the writing when we have to create plot and character motivations for the main character of a film sexology. Well, cheese lines are still cheese no matter who says 'em. That has little to do with acting talent. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't agree with this either. Watch a good actor say a cheesey line with panache, and you'll agree. For example, Robert Deniro was given no stage direction and the line "Are you looking at me?" in Taxi Driver. (If you haven't seen this Oscar winning film, then I recommend it.) That is the difference that a good acting performance can achieve. No, that is not my opinion, anyway. I think that ANH was a breakthrough, a high watermark for special effects and a fresh, new way to do the romantic swashbuckling film in space. The sequel was a darker film, and had a better story, and marked GL's expansion into the EU. From there, the franchise became derivative and uninspiring. You may say that the prequel trilogy was just more of the same, and you would be correct. There is nothing new in filmmaking, plot, character development, acting, dialogue script or even special effects in these newer films than what was created thrity years ago. That's why the first and second films were better, they were original. I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of "... and then, a bit later ..." moments in the film; like there was a summary going on, because so much was happenning. Interesting that it appears the Emperor wasn't able to communicate with all the clones at once, instead he had to make a bunch of back-to-back trunk calls ...

for all the genius of lucas, he is rubbish at getting actors to act <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's because he over-directs them. And he directs badly, too. RotJ was crap. SW:ANH was a landmark film. It was a brand new concept in SF, after Flash Gordon, it was innovative and interesting and a very romantic swashbuckling film. The sets looked dirty and used: this was a new concept for SF, whereas normally it was expected that SF = sparkly new sets. Ridley Scott was so impressed he used the look for Alien. ESB was the dark image of ANH, and it featured the Empire taking a leading role; Darth Vader came into his own and GL began to create a big SW universe. (No-one, not even GL, expected SW to be more than one film.) The newer films are all less innovative, being derivative, and equally appalling -- or worse -- in acting, directing, scripting and charcter development. 'cause it were tolkien who came up with dragons and elves and orcs and trolls 'n such. george lucas made american graffiti... a pretty innovative movie in terms of narrative style. and keep in mind that george lucas funded Empire... $30 million of his own money so that he could do his way, and most folks seems to think that Empire turned out ok. star wars were a pretty clever movie... took traditional hero myth and set it in space... and space movies were not all that profitable at the time... is why fox were willing to sell lucas the merchandising rights for star wars. can lucas write? no. his dialogues, in particular, is awkward and tends to be overwrought. oddly 'nuff, lucas admits that he cannot write. even more odd is fact that in spite of lucas' acknowledged shortcoming, he continues to write. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What is interesting is that GL studied anthropology at university. You'd think he'd have a better idea about story-telling with this sort of background. Obviously he has never had a decent romance in his life, judging by the remorcelessly tedious dialogue. What a lost-cause nerd.

Yeah, I have to wonder if Yoda's increasingly goofy speech was a result of Lucas' desire to stick to rules he believed he'd made for Yoda's sentence structure in a more reliable way. In the Original movies, Yoda would very frequently break the rules which normally apply to his sentence structure arbitrarily, just to make the line more coherent or less goofy, or more accessible to the audience. In Ep III, Lucas seemed to throw any intent to make Yoda's sentence structure not sound ridiculous out the window, and the result was the audience laughing at all sorts inappropriate times, during seriously delivered Yoda lines. Unfortunately, there's no way to get around the badly (well, probably not at all) thought out jive talk Lucas invented for his little green puppet at this point. I think he should have just gone on breaking all the rules of the aphasic dialect he'd invented here as well. We know Yoda doesn't actually follow any logical rules in his speech. We know Lucas really has no better idea what he's doing than having his puppet "speak all backwards" or some such thing. So enforcing the irrational variations on English he'd invented when they sound so ridiculous seems silly. The frustrating thing about it is that it's grammatically such a mess. It's just English word order, usually with phrases which would normally begin a sentence ending them, with some English grammar rules enforced when they break Yoda's rules, and some of Yoda's rules enforced when they break English rules, in a confused and incoherent pile of linguistic uncertainties. Since English itself has a very messy, often broken set of greatly varied rules on word order, you can apply Yoda's variations to those rules and claim he's speaking according to certain grammatical rules to derive a subset of English grammar's, but in reality, he's just speaking every-day Modern English with a couple words which appeared significant to Lucas moved from the sentence's beginning to the sentence's end. One can say things like "in first person indicative phrases, the nominative pronoun and its auxilliary verb will normally be sentence final if the auxilliary verb is present, or the nominative pronoun and the main clausal verb will be sentence final if no auxilliary verb is present," but that's just a fancy way of describing the result of Lucas sticking what he saw at the beginning of a sentence on the end of it instead, so it seems like a pointless exercise. I think Lucas should have stuck with having his little green man "talking all weird" in whatever way had originally occurred to him, but being strict about rules which don't even really formally exist when it makes lines sounds so silly strikes me as pointless. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I other words, GL can't write dialogue. Even screwey dialogue that he invented in the first place he can't write successfully. If it's like EVERY other series made currently, it will be made eight episodes at a time, with the option to extend. I agree that the plot is completely ludicrous. The film itself I went in with no real (positive) expectations; I was still somewhat underwelmed by it. Yeah, there was some pretty laser cannons at the beginning. Seen it before. Yes there were some citiscapes. Seen it. Yes there were lightsabre battles. But now all rather boring (although I did chuckle at Grevious's twin hay-maker windmill attack). I thought the series ended up being more about Obi_wan than Darth Vader. Or R2D2 ... he survived all the films intact, after all. I found the acting woeful (with a few small exceptions: Ian McDiarmid carried his scenes) with Hayden Christensen again making hard work of the -- admitedly dire - dialogue. I agree totally that the whole raison d'

It was never implied by the poster or myself that the first language should be C. I said that the C family was a good language to learn, for all of the above-mentioned reasons. I don't know why I have been singled out for special mention by so many people, heck, I had to learn 24 computer langauges in my first year at university (SNOBOL, anyone?), and I can tell you that if I had to do it all again, I would just learn BASIC and C/C++/Java (oh, and C#, if you must). The danger with BASIC is that it is easy to focus on it to the detriment of C, and I don't know how many computer games use BASIC. :D It's true that Micro$oft make enviable development environments. It's also true that what language you chose to use is dependent on a lot of different factors, but familiarity ends up having a large -- yes, even disproportiate -- impact. If I can write a complete script in a language in hours rather than days (including debug time), then it makes more sense to do so. But, if that routine is going to be run thousands of times a day, and it will save expenses (computing overhead, user time) to programme in a language that you are not so familiar in, then it obviously behooves you to write it in the more unfamiliar / difficult language. I remember (early on) writing C programmes one week, then going back the next week to re-use some of the code and having to re-write the first algorithm to understand what I had done in the first place! Anyway, back on topic, the poster will gain most benefit from understanding C for a longer time. Hence my encouragement to learn it, or one of the sister languages.

I was referring to 3D modelling as the hardest computational stuff. If I confused anyone into thinking that I referred to graphic designers, e.g. such that re-decorate rooms, then I apologise. I did think I made that pretty clear, though. I don't know about you, but I was taught art at kindergarten all the way up until I chose not to further it in favour of the sciences, when I was a teenager. And I was not forced to learn swathes of Art History, just fingerpaint, paint with oils, watercolours, etc or create clay models or whatever. The reason mathematics is taught is that numeracy is a more essential skill in our society. It is a great pity that it has such bad press and poor practitioners that teach it. I guess most of the interesting mathematicians are making millions in the stock market and are not interested in teaching their skills to ungrateful little snots in grade school. <_< I was suggesting that a (right-brain dominant) artistic outlook is something that is not common in the (left-brain dominant) IT field, and if you have both artistic and mathematical flair to do both well, then you will go far.

Planet numbers are not important. I want a deep story for any RPG that I play, and I want immersion. That can happen on one planet. We've managed to live on planet Earth for a few millennia, and there are not a few plots to tell from our experiences; we don't need ten planets, we need some sort of grand design. I would like to see the PC working in the near-normal society; like Telos or Taris, where the evil and bad lurk just beneath the surface, and brute force is as likely as not to end up hurting innocents as well as the guilty. This will help balance the game: I want non-lethal combat for lawful good characters, otherwise they are all just different shades of chaos. PS I note also that the Kashyyyk of Epsiode III had no resemblance to the Kashyyyk of KotOR. Ah, well, at least it had Wookies on it.

Maybe they're the same guy?

What he said. If I refused to buy from any company that has ever been in any way associated with a game that wasn't top notch, I'd have a different hobby. And probably a cheaper one at that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What they said, and especially Steve's comments on absolute bans and different hobbies. I think the best strategy for all of us, as a group, is to only pay for games that are worth it to us. I for one will not be buying any games, review-sight-unseen, again. It is the supreme act of wishful thinking over hard-won experience to do so ... and any publisher that releases a game before the review code is sent to the game mags for review is obviously doging a bad review, too. I will make a special effort in future to wait for an extra month for previous egregious behaviour, like that displayed by LA with KotOR2.

I'm sure they'll put out a "My Little Pony" interactive game soon, Darque. PS InfogRames?

This just keeps getting better. So now you are proposing to suppress something that has been a constant in human society since the dawn of time, and even something that may arguably be hard-coded into our DNA, instead of just containing a relatively new form of "culture" whose desensitizing effect could potentially increase the incidence of violence. Yes, that's a sound argument alright. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was not trying to suppress human nature, I was pointing out the ludicrous proposition that you are propounding: removing violence from video games will prevent violence in society, the same violence that was present before video games were invented! To illustrate this, I was being sarcastic with the "worthy" comment. A "worthy" game is meant to be a curse: sure it would be a worthy cause -- but No, no-one would play it if it sacrificed portraying reality in a real way. It would be like making a game where chess pieces politely talk to each other on the chess board and trying to sell it to draughts players. Nice, "worthy" but altogether irrelevant: because it places the sanitization of reality above the enjopyment of the game. No. Your drinking cola doesn't affect me at all. However, it is debatable whether a violent game may bring you over the edge if you are already unstable, or under another set of circumstances that are beside the point. That is the difference. Uh... you are really trying hard to come up with absurd analogies, aren't you? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I am trying to dislodge your unrealistic adherence to a nonsensical ideology with rather extreme (not extremist) examples of why absolutes that may be well-meaning will just not work. And it is just as likely that an unstable individual taking 1,3,7 Trimethyl xanthine as well as the large dose of sugar present in cola, is more likely to become unstable than simply sitting and twitching their mouse in front of a computer. Coke is more widely available than computers (over 75% of the world's population have never made a telephone call), and excess sugar in the diet is a known and proven cause of ADHD and Type II Diabetes. So there is more imperative to ban cola -- which has few intrinsic redeeming values, per se. Risk management. This demonstrates the same hysterical arguments in a different zone of affect. Nice try at changing the topic. It's not sex we're talking about. Sex doesn't harm anyone, and I'm all for ultra realistic sex games. Violence and sex are not in the same league. Next. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sex is another example that has been brought up previously. Since you readily accept that the realistic portrayal of sexual acts in a video game are okay, then I wonder how far this extends. Is just the missionary position between married people acceptable, or are we permited to break societal norms and aspirations with sex, but not violence? Bondage? Micturation? Rape? Oops, we're into violence. I can imagine a world where conflict is solved with online combat rather than war. Sure that's far-fetched, but it is close in societies like South Korea, where the lines between virtual and real life are already blurring: In 2003, a group of thugs burst into a Seoul [PC arcade] and proceeded to kick seven shades out of a man who killed one of their characters in [Lineage].

There is a more important factor you are glossing over to the peril of adult discussion of this topic: flims reflect the societies more than they affect them. If you don't believe me, watch a film from the fifties, or even the eighties. What does it tell you about the era? Look at the differences with today. Not just the fashion (wow, look at those shoulderpads -- powerdressing?), but the way women are portrayed, the norms of sex and violence and manners. One curious trend -- if you haven't noticed already -- is that there are better roles for women in the fifties than right now. After the sexual revolution of the sixties there are fewer strong roles for women older than thirty than there have ever been. Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis wouldn't have a film to star in during this last decade. As Woopi Goldberg said at the 1996 Oscars, all the female leads were prostitutes (Sharon Stone in Casino, Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas). At least video games have strong female lead characters.