Gromnir

future trivia question: when did the new bsg jump the shark? answer: ______________ *shrug* no doubt many here don't think that the show has jumped, but we suspect that after the series is over, lots o' former fans will looks back at the final episode o' this year and admit that shark were jumped. sure, the whole season post new-caprica rescue were under whelming, but we thinks that this last episode were the one that sealed bsg's fate. and those o' you fans who did not groan in anguish as they sees starbuck resurrected from seeming death should maybe be a bit ashamed. HA! Good Fun!

where X is a game development issue or feature, the appropriate first question is and alwasy shall be: how close does X correspond to the way TIM CAIN made FALLOUT? forget that fallout ain't what codex represents, and that tim cain weren't the CREATOR of it, but... ... btw, Gromnir fully concedes that the above is a hasty and unfair overgeneralization... just seems accurate most times. HA! Good Fun!

If a madman says that 2+2=4, it's no less true because the speaker is mad. true enough... which is why Gromnir don't dismiss all vol posts out of hand. however, from a practical pov, if a person don't know what is total of 2+2, and vol claims answer is 4, but josh or eldar or some random sane person claims answer is 5, then we can understand why maybe some people would rely 'pon josh or eldar or sane person answer, the wrong answer. again, the problem with codex madness is that there is codex dogma. spend 15 minutes reading codex editorials or news bites and you gots a pretty good notion o' what is codex dogma. ever listen to religious experts makes scientific arguments 'gainst evolution? is same kinda madness you see from codex, 'cause 'stead o' coming to conclusion based on evidence, the worshiper o' dogma starts with a conclusion, then works backwards... highlighting only those bits o' evidence that woulds possibly seem to undermine evolution's viability. heck, Gromnir even concedes the possibility that evolution is flawed, but the way a dogma inspired disciple gets to that conclusion makes Gromnir wanna knee-jerk to opposite conclusion... much as it is easy to knee-jerk opposite o' vol and codex and other mad peoples. HA! Good Fun!

is room 'nuff for lots o' different pov. difference is that josh has, on more than one occasion, gone Critical Bill on fans that make demands or criticisms o' developers w/o a corresponding offering o' practical alternatives. Gromnir were simply amused that a fellow obsidian developer would makes observations 'bout a game that seemed to come up woefully short o' josh's minimum standards... though we assume that bullock/bulock won't be so amused next time josh goes Critical on some unsuspecting fan and Gromnir points him in jb's direction. *shrug* 'course, as you and can't/eldar/or-whatever-he-is-calling-self-this-week seems to wanna takes a short trips off-topic, we will respond with extreme and uncharacteristic brevity. to a certain degree we agrees with can't. freedom is all well and good in a crpg, but that freedom is mostly an illusion, and it comes at a cost as well. not even josh would argue that every dialogue choice in game should have multiple meaningful results. the myth that is the endlessly bifurcating dialogue tree would become reality, which is in practice, impossible. josh has made obvious that he cares less 'bout story than he does 'bout freedom, but is simply impossible to write engaging dialogues and characters if you needs necessarily comes up with dialogue trees that can survive bifurcation past a very limited number o' significant branching. is an illusion

am aware that rp is feeling picked 'pon at the moment, so we gives some help. define story is not so easy as rp assumes. plot= story? no writer is gonna assume such a thing. use websters not gonna help you on this one. flawed definition leads to understandable busted notion o' narrative. if story is simply the straightforward chronological revealing o' plot to audience throughs a chosen narrator, then is easy to see how a limited notion o' narrative results. something to consider... ever heard o' the thieves world books? back in the 80s and 90s numerous publishers o' fantasy lit released collections o' short stories. a dozen authors would write short stories that all were set in roughly same universe. thieves world were most successful o' the bunch. dozens o' authors contributed to multiple thieves world books. there were sharing of characters and events 'tween writers. heck, there were even a kinda rough unified plot being advanced in a chronological manner, 'cause there were specific plot events and characters that were seemingly sacrosanct to all contributors. were nothing actually experimental 'bout thieves world... nothing wacky or far-fetched. maybe you get some notions how thieves world model might translate to a video game in which developers were focused on storytelling. heck, sounds kinda familiar. *shrug* tangent: we does suggest reading the liavek collections. a very diverse group o

codex is always good for a chuckle. not everything from codex is terrible, but their pov is so extreme, and they is so darn certain of their conclusions (in spite of often bad logic or horrible reasoning,) that debate is largely pointless. codexian staff likes to start with an initially flawed premise, which they assume is unassailable and undeniable, then they simply run with it... extrapolate out to some ridiculous conclusion which they then declare Proved.

is tough to draw conclusions 'bout entire dialogue system based 'pon a single screenie. that being said, one wonders why gamespy or bio or whomever chose that particular screenie to shows to potential future purchasers. *shrug* me confuses Gromnir. based on feedback from bio and from articles we gots so little interest in me that we might even concludes that we gots more interest in obsidian's aliens project. however, every person we knows who has actually seen and or played some portion o' me seems to rave 'bout it. not makes sense. oh well. oh, and we thinks that josh would be disappointed with bullock

but we all lose. "Ah. Well, good luck then. I'm a games journalist. I review games, I don't report the news. All I have is a (somewhat educated) opinion which I try to convey as objectively as possible to the readers of our site." review games gets special qualification? is too bad. that being said, is not like mkreku is alone in incompetence and is not as if games is only class o' reviews that has such a poor group o' technical writers. is music and books reviewed better than games? maybe, but the gap is getting smaller. there is still a ny times book review, but what is music equivalent... Rolling Stone? and what 'bout movie reviews? is thousands o' movie review sites on internet and every major newspaper gots a dedicated movie reviewer. how many o' those reviewers do you thinks is excellent at their craft? sure, you may find a reviewer who gots some similar taste as you, you may even find a reviewer who is entertaining, but how many reviews has you actually read that you would you rely 'pon if you not knew the track record o

I'd love to see them try to pioneer in the dialog as much as they are trying to pioneer with the system. RPG dialog is tricky, but I'm sure they could switch it up a bit, and if nothing else, hopefully make the "evil" options a bit less psychotic and a bit more subtle than their previous titles. josh always complains when people not offer plausible alternatives. you not wanna cheese off josh, do you? evil options that not gonna break quests/critical path needs be insular. so, how you makes mature evil options that not gots impact beyond the immediate quest, and still seem evil 'nuff to be recognized as evil w/o resorting to thuggish kinda crap? in traditional stories the mature evil stuff typical involves the Evil Plan, which requires stringing together multiple actions that in and of self probably not seems overt evil. is at least as much effort as a typical romance to put together something like an Evil Plan.... and there is some obvious obstacles even so. Gromnir made some suggestions 'bout integrating an evil plan sequence o' dialogues into a bio crpg, and developers not seem to thinks it were worth effort. so, what is bullocks ideas... mature evil that not break the otherwise heroic critical path, and at same time not seem petty or small. don't make josh angry. HA! Good Fun!

slightly disappointed. kotor 2 had some inexplicably terrible characters and dialogues, and the ending were horrible. mostly a good game, but obsidian/bis has a bit o' a problem with conclusions. iwd might be only bis game we weren't disappointed with conclusion and it seems like obsidian ain't learned much in the intervening years, 'cause kotor2 and nwn2 both had mostly terrible conclusions. nwn2

*chuckle* persians v. greeks? miller's new comic book? seems like most o' the folks seeing a political angle (including azar) is seeing w/o actually considering STORY o' 300. people is seeing what they wish to. if you ignore the movie itself, and focus instead on details, you can see whatever you want to in 300... just as people can see the virgin mary in a grilled cheese lunch food. HA! Good Fun!

Its all the same to me. Bias, preference, opinion, reasonable or unreasonable. *nods* is exactly why we said your pov is screwy. HA! Good Fun!

what a screwy pov. bias ain't same as preference. bias is an unreasoned preference, so no, an opinion does not always have a bias. The biggest problem with reviewers that Gromnir has is not that they gots preferences or tastes that is different than Gromnir

am not a fan o' moderation... multiple meanings intended. regardless, we doubt Gromnir ever gets a Christmas card from fergie... not his biggest supporter. oh, and oblivion is kinda like all-you-can-eat cafeteria food. sure, there were lots o' oblivion, many hours o' game play, but Gromnir were full after the first few hours o' gameplay. can only stomach so much mystery meat... fact that there were a seemingly endless supply o' crap not somehow make it more palatable . however, please note that Gromnir were happier to see oblivion do well than we were 'bout any other game in past 5 years. virtually every developer since bg2 has been telling us that games of such scale as bg2 were no longer possible. bio developers and obsidian developers and pandemic, irrattional, troika and others all claimed BIG and 3d were mutual exclusive. is oblivion success that helped put a stop to fergie 20 hour nonsense? maybe. heck, if toee had been as big a hit as oblivion, then we would have seen bunch o' tb crpgs. oblivion helped slow trend in favor o' ever shorter crpgs, and for that alone we is thankful. HA! Good Fun!

they were all half-baked. is a shame too, 'cause shandra and ammon jerro and some others had potential, but it were as if somebody decided to only writes 2/3 o' a npc... and in casavir's case, 1/3 at best. khelgar were actually not one we enjoyed. were all surface, but as no character got 'nuff development, the dwarf suffered least due to obvious paucity o' consideration... though we suspect grobnar were also pretty much complete after initial encounter. kotor2 had better npcs, and worse npcs... more dvelopment gave Gromnir more chance to like or loathe. HA! Good Fun!

you got a funny notion 'bout how govt. works. anybody wanna tell calax which branch interprets laws? if Congress or Executive tries to clarify by anything short o' a new Amendment, then the Court will smote'em... 'less they is named andrew jackson. ... the rest o' your post is just so much gibberish... for multiple reasons. HA! Good Fun!

you really don't understand how "the Government" works... even school kids know the basic separation o' powers stuff. also, you surely not thinks a thread on an obsidian message board would result in clarification by... whom? you got clarification from Gromnir and others 'bout what is current situation regarding 1st Amendment establishment clause application to use of "god" by State. congratulations. oh, and God is not universal accepted as christian, not by a long shot. HA! Good Fun!

short answer: is a tough road to slog to proclaim that intent o' the 1st amendment prohibits use of word "god" in various State supported activities simply 'cause the folks who ratified the Bill o'Rights opened their sessions with a prayer that mentioned God over and over and over... and the actions of the early Congress shows that nobody thoughts that 1st Amendment prohibited use of "god" word by State. longer answer: meaning of first amendment free exercise clause and establishment clause is subject of some debate. Gromnir is a proponent o' using an original intent approach when trying to comes up with answers to Constitutional questions. sadly, nobody kept useful records of the debates regarding the Bill o' Rights, so we is left in dark concerning an actual intent of the framers. Madison kept notes, but they is not all that illuminating insofar as intent is concerned. however, we can looks at framer actions and we can also looks at the various drafts o' the First Amendment to see what alternatives were discarded. also of note is fact that the first amendment clauses looks similar to the Virginia's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which were penned by Thomas Jefferson... though Thomas Jefferson were not one o' the geeklings who were present to frame the Bill o' Rights. reason for scholars limping back to this Virginia Bill is two-fold: 1) James Madison were the first person to suggest a wording for the First Amendment Religious Clauses, and Madison were a supporter o' Jefferson's Bill. 2) In Everson v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court finally got 'round to discussing establishment clause for serious, Hugo Black uses Wall o' Separation language, which were taken from a letter by Thomas Jefferson in which he rejected the notion o' the State setting aside a day for Religious Observance. 'course the problem with J. Hugo Black's interp is that Madison's wording were not adopted to become the language o' the First Amendment. first draft: The Civil Rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, nor on any pretext infringed. No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases. second draft: No religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed, third draft: Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience. fourth draft: Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience. fifth draft: Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. sixth draft: Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. seventh draft: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. please note the abandoning o' the "rights o' conscience" language. *shrug* the Virginia Bill, which were debated hotly and for which we do have records, had 2 effective portions: 1) we, the General Assembly of Virginia, do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. 2) and though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right. yes, yes, all very nice... but the parts o' the Virgina Bill that may be most enlightening is the preamble portions, which sorta gives persons a notions o' the WHY behind the Bill... but is very long. google the Bill and you will not be spending your effort in vain. main reason for adoption o

never been a big cthulhu/lovecraft fan... always preferred the hellboy kinda variant 'stead... Dark Elder Gods, The Church & modern pseudo-science mixed together with some magic. am not saying we is a big fan o' hellboy, but we likes the setting. *shrug* have always a sucker for the traditional iconography o' the Church, and all the attendent baggage... the good and the bad. HA! Good Fun!

is like arguing wit the tide... if all you is arguing is that 300 is open to numerous interps, then fine... scroll back up and sees where Gromnir has said over and over that we do not disagree. so much for obvious politically charged material, and conspiracies 'bout timing of release and suggestions that it were pretty clear that new material were added to make more political. whatever. even moriarty didn't see no political agenda, and fact that there is a split 'mongst the people that does see political motives should be telling you something as well, 'cause as been said already, hollywood ain't aiming for subtle. and trying to come up with a possible explanation to make moriarty's comments work for you, rather than simply dismissing or disagreeing, is symptomatic o' the problem we got with your arguings. bah. this were a waste o' time a couple pages ago and as you seems to be fighting this battle alone, we got no great urge to waste time beating the breath out o' one lone voice in the dark. HA! Good Fun!

by TheRealMoriarty Mar 10th, 2007 12:38:13 AM Actually, my point was that the film is not a political screed, but that I'm sure people will project in order to pump up their own point of view. But thanks for calling me an a$$hole anyway. moriarty explained what he meant... you simply continue to ignore. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

just a quick aside, 'cause this thing is cooked, none of the reviewers at aicn claimed that 300 is political. a guy named moriarty mentioned politics in his review, but azar-class reading skills led to confusion among the rabble: by TheRealMoriarty Mar 10th, 2007 12:38:13 AM Actually, my point was that the film is not a political screed, but that I'm sure people will project in order to pump up their own point of view. But thanks for calling me an a$$hole anyway. the posts at aicn is almost all non-political, and those that is went off onto a tangent 'bout whether or not israel or palestinians is more worthy o' terrorist label. the other aicn posts is usual mish-mash: claim that reviewer is paid by producers, questions 'bout whether or not is appropriate to take kids, note that this is not historical accurate, replies that people demanding historical accuracy from an obvious fantasy-adventure flick is morons, i like pie, etc. as noted above, some few people at aicn talks politics, but not many, and those that do talk of 300 politics is split. why? 'cause that moriarty clown actually were correct. 'cause 300 ain't political ('members our lesson 'bout hollywood subtlety and propaganda,) it is easier for viewer to read nonsesne into 300. and you don't recall the reviews and responses to lotr very well. were just as many reviewers that complained 'bout the obviously muslim/black aspect o' the human portion o' sauron's army, and a complete absence o' minority actors for the Good Guys, as well as other increasingly ridiculous observations. as to astro's observations 'bout norbit and taladega nights, if you makes a claim that bush is representing norbit and come up with some wacky conspiracy theory 'bout how a black movie released at this moment in history is obviously done to garner a politically charged reaction, we suspect that at least one person would respond and identify your theory as nut jobish... no doubt the movie cars would lend itself equally well to azar political commentary, after all, the movie cars were relaeased just as nascar was debating 'bout whether or not to allow toyota to enter teams into their series, which is pretty much the extent o' our nascar knowledge. even so, nascar is far more Aerican than a bunch o' greeks circa 480bc. HA! Good Fun!

gotta love reply/quote. that way you not answer the post, but instead respond to sippets... mostly we see that you rest on notion o' mid-east v. west, with leonidas somehow standing in for bush simply 'cause he represents west (HA!) or somesuch nonsense... but this bit really took cake. "Lord of the Rings, another film you brought up as a possible candidate for the same sort of "political foolery," did not receive nearly as much flak, either among major critics or the average netizen." HHHHAAAA!!!! we gotta thank you for that bit son... made our day to get such a laugh, though we did stop reading at that point. you gots a mighty selective memory, and maybe a streak o' narcissism to deal with if you think lotr, book and/or movie got less political commentary. HA! Good Fun! ps how many copies o' 300 were floating 'round previous to last couple months? you mention the debate raised by 300 previous to release, but most o' that were relying on as shallow an interp as you got: simple west v. mid-east. why? 'cause aside from the comick book geeks, nobody really knew the miller 300 story, and the miller fans were, as we has said til we is blue in face, near unanimous in acknowledgment that 300 were an anti-establishment tale that made bush looks bad IF you were to make 300 a political allegory.... which, as you may recall, is reason why you keep bringing up the ADDED material for your support. *shakes head sadly* we been going so long that you forgot how you got started. HA!

that is precisely Gromnir's point. people has been reading political agenda and content into miller writings for a long time... and virtually all of it is imaginary... is people seeing what they wish to. the crazy thing is that azar comes to a conclusion

poor azar. is not like he claims that 300 is pro-bush propaganda, per se, but he Does see the added material as being OBVIOUSLY politically motivated, and over and over he explains how leonidas can very easily stand in for bush and how the timing o' release somehow proves that 300 is mid-east allegory, or some such nonsense. ... yeah, you is really being misrepresented... and don't even get started on the logic bit, 'cause you clearly abandoned that route early in this thread. tell us again 'bout the conspiracy theory you got 'bout timing o' 300 release adn Gromnir will be able to devote an entire page o' material illuminating all the logic fallacies and bass ackwards reasoning. "What, Leonidas can't stand for Bush because he can also stand for Xerxes under a different reading? Who made that rule in cinematic interpretation?" loosen up the tifoil hat. sure you can see into 300 whatever the hell you wish... just as Gromnir can argue that miller ripped off the smurfs. you gonna go the pure subjective route... claim that there ain't no way you can be wrong 'cause it is all just subjective interpretation? HA! that is a slippery slope indeed, and pretty much kills the last few pages of your contribution to this thread, but go for it if you wish