Gromnir

the following is lifted from some interview linked at the front page of the obsidian site Strauss: What kind of input has Wizards of the Coast had in the story, mainly on the protagonist and the hero? Ferret: The story and the protagonist

check out the old twilight zone episode, "an occurence at owl creek bridge," or read the short story of the same name. both were better than jaccob's ladder... an not simply 'cause they were the source material. HA! Good Fun!

"Again, it depends how you roleplay. " no it doesn't... not if we is talking 'bout quality of writing.

"As for the art, Oblivion is a beautiful game. I don't see how it could be considered ugly, by any stretch of the imagination." you not gotta stretch 'magination very far at all... simply look at the flat, vacant faces bethesda has given their characters. bethesda shoot for photorealism, and came up short... landed at creepy instead. am not a fan of blizzard. we don't play wow and got no urge to try. however, we thinks that the folks over at blizzard made the right choice in opting for a disneyesque primary color kinda world as 'posed to trying for photorealism. sure, we would prefer something more dark and more grim than the rainbow hued landscape and peoples of wow, but blizzard seemed to recognize that trying to inch closer to realism were a wasted effort. blizzard instead took art inspiration from cartoons & comicbooks. maybe someday personal computers will be goodly enough to run games that got cgi to rival peter jackson's gollum or Kong, but we think that anything short of that will be tending to look bland or... creepy. HA! Good Fun!

for some, fo ain't a game as much as it is a religious icon. did the holy grail ever exist? ultimately does it matter if it did or did not? HA! Good Fun!

for a long time Gromnir had a 78 cherokee jeep. we loved that car. went everywhere in that car. did lots of stuff in that car. ended up flushing a great deal of money down the drain as we attempted to keep that car in working condition. replace rear differential. replace transmission. replace radiator. replace tires and replace battery and get 12 miles to the gallon if we were lucky. during the last two years we owned our 78 cherokee, we spent far more money maintaining that car than we ever could have gotten for it if we had sold it... and the money we wasted on that car trying to keep it rolling were money we coulda' used to buy a new car. computers get obsolete much faster than does cars, but principle is same. at some point the best thing to do is to take the thing out behind the barn and put her out of her misery. HA! Good Fun!

There are a lot of people who believe that writing an ultra-tight story with minimal amounts of mostly insigificant player choice = role-playing. I know that Oblivion seems to be going very far away from that concept and that annoys a lot of people, but it seems great to me. Bethesda tries to do a lot of experimental stuff in their games. Sometimes it fails (spectacularly), but I like the fact that they are doing it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> don't hurt yourself beating on that strawman. good writing does not necessarily require that a protagonist be coddled as he is forced down the critical path towards a fulfilling and coherent story. tangential and optional side quests were numerous in morrowind, and each of those tangential side quests offered an opportunity to be seeing how committed the bethesda folks were to exploring development of character and story w/o wrestling the pc into the necessarily confined choices available when advancing the critical path. instead, the bethesda folks introduced a legion of forgettable characters who were offering largely mundane and uninspired quests. in other words, morrowind were dull... 'course, as we know that josh is far too smarty to suggest that player freedom needs necessarily lead to lame characters and boring story, we will ease up on him as soon as he eases up on the scarecrow he is knocking the stuffing out of. personally, we is willing to give bethesda a second shot. morrowind reminded us a great deal of bg1... w/o some of bg's few redeeming qualities... and look how much bio improved the bg model with bg2. however, we dislikes the pov that oblivion has chosen, and the art looks hideous... so they better have overhauled morrowind's gameplay and writing in a big way if Gromnir is gonna be won over HA! Good Fun!

... how many movies is capable of making grown men weep? oh sure, women tear up watching notebook and titanic and crap like that, but how many movies can put that kinda ache in a man's chest? the reason why filmmakers keep making king kong is 'cause it managed to reach those producers or directors on an emotional level as few other films has. unfortunately, the original kong were done in 1933, and it is dated. show 1933 kong in theatres and nobody would come to see it save for a few hardcore film buffs. directors and producers want to share kong... and they wanna somehow become attached to the kong legacy. update so that kids and young adults will pay to see? make your name synonymous with kong? "everyone cries when the monkey dies." real men walk out of "titanic" and they secretly curse their girlfriends for having forced them to sit through that schmaltzy romantic tragedy. watch men leave theatre after seeing kong. more than a few has watery eyes. sexist? bah. maybe jackson's attempt will fail

American? Just asking... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> know what? we did some teaching in europe... got to see how smarty were the english and irish and spanish university students were. ... let's just say that the belief that american is all fat and stoopid compared to their european counterparts is more myth than reality. our euro friends expected Gromnir to be dumb and uncultured. when the reality did not mesh with their preconceptions, they simply discounted us as aberrational... Gromnir were one of those inconsequential plot points that were not fitting within the bounds of their imaginary bell-curve. change one's opinion of americans after actually interacting with one for a few weeks or months? nope. HA! Good Fun!

like most threads on this board, it is the same dozen people arguing back and forth for 13 pages. tragic. HA! Good Fun!

anybody who actually suggests replicating bg2 size, given the realities of game development today, deserves whatever derision and scorn josh decided to eventually level at them. thankfully you clowns is an easily ignorable minority. HA! Good Fun!

Glass Soup HA! Good Fun!

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod...rch=ST3200826AS HA! Good Fun!

maybe, but the suggestion is also pretty damn meaningless too. A) people want a compelling core storyline. B) people want lots of choices and they want those choices to matter. this would be okie dokie if the (A) people and the (B) people were not the same, but they are... and they not seem to see no tensions 'tween what they is asking for. HA! Good Fun!

regardless, if there were a board geek HoF, ss probably would deserve a nomination. is rare that one of us clowns actually goes out and backs up the bs with the effort and sacrifice required to actually become part of the game industry. you deserve much credit... or a swift kick in the head. tough call. HA! Good Fun!

good luck. am aware that you ain't coming in as cfo or anything, but try to convince the bethesda guys that compelling characters is at core of good crpg story... and character development starts with well-written dialogue. so far we ain't seen evidence that anybody at bethesda knows how to write. push 'em in the right direction and you will have our thanks. ... screw it. you got our thanks regardless. HA! Good Fun!

"Yup BG had the best level progression, levelling up was a HUGE deal especially since there were only 7 (iirc) levels in the game." you and hades and Gromnir like slower level progression. too bad, 'cause the handfil of us not mean squat to developers. anybody who read the bg boards post release and the bg2 development boards will tell you that one of the big complaints 'bout bg1 were the slow leveling. so gve it to 'em. you can give the folks who play crpgs primarily to level exactly what they want w/o screwing up the game for Gromnir and others. sure, is more difficult for a developer to come up with balance and options for 20+ levels as 'posed to 7, but that is what they get paid for, right? make sure that the rule system has depth and we doubt that anybody complains 'bout spending 1 minute every hour or two to level-up. and bg1 were a crappy game for levels 'cause we could make almost 0 meaningful choices as we level. HA! Good Fun!

You are assuming that the MAXIMUM estimate of the developers is the correct one. However normally even the minimum estimate is normally an overexaggeration. This is from my experience, at least. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ... it had to happen sooner or later... roshan managed to be making a genuine point. anybody 'round here live near the ocean? has the seas turned to blood yet? while Gromnir would be perfectly satisfied with a 40 hour game, developer estimates is typical ridiculous. vol points to ps:t as being 40 hours... but estimated hours were 60+. anybody recall HoW? that game were so short and so underwhelming that to salvage some of their dwindling reputation with fans, fergie had bis develop a free add-on to HoW. get josh on the board and get him to tell you what were bis announced estimates of the 10-15 hour HoW. even if you is one of the folks that does every possible quest and dialogue in a crpg, a safe bet is to cut bottom end of developer guestimate by 1/3. 30-40 hours becomes 20. *shrug* regardless, the important thing to 'member is that roshan had a real point. so please excuse us while we go get started on our bomb shelter. HA! Good Fun!

Shins splints are usually caused by an imbalance (flexibility and/or strength) between the calf and shin muscles, the bone bends as a result. If you stretch both throroughly before and after running you should be ok, toe and calf raises also help. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> like many football players, Gromnir played football in fall and ran track in spring. would get shin splints lots in track... asked track coach what we could. "loose some weight." *grumble* HA! Good Fun!

as this is rugby season, am spending 2+ hours in the gym 4-5 days a week. get in 45 minutes o' cardio and then 2 body parts with free weights. when rugby season ends, we go back to 5-6 days a week. have been doing same basic stuff since high school... which were a long time ago. took some time off from almost all excercise earlier this year... for health reasons. go figure. am almost 100% again. however, Gromnir is not a health nut by any stretch o' the imagination. bad work schedule. bad sleep schedule. bad food. etc. working out is for stress relief. HA! Good Fun!

is the first 2 quarters... six months. divide a year into 4 equal parts, etc... not two weeks. six months is a considerable period of time. "Im just sayig that being able to show hat your game has a high chance of continuing to sell for years ater its release opens many financial opportunities if only the publishers were interested." nope. again, like it or not, the game publishers is slaves to the process almost as much as is the developers. they got a relatively short period of time to be showing success. HA! Good Fun!

not make sense... unless sweden education is so terribly socialized that there ain't no ranking of med school programs or law school programs or graduate study course. all the same. even so, some schools, simply because of the profs teaching there or quality/age of facilities or geographic locations, have to be more appealing than others. more people is gonna apply to the more prestigious schools and there has gots to be a way of choosing why swede A gets a seat in class as opposed to swede B. have lottery? even if you not gots your Harvards and your Yales compared to your University of Wisconsins, there has got to be schools that swedelings would prefer to attend. we spent some considerable time in euope cultivating familiarity with higher education in england and ireland and spain, but our knowledge o' swedish education is pretty much nil. just seems so... alien. HA! Good Fun!

"They turn a blind eye to the fact that games like PsT are STILL selling well enough to make the top #20 more than 5 years after it was released. Or that Vampire:Bloodlines is #1 on the RPG sales charts this christmas" they not turn a blind eye. am sure that they do notice where ps:t ranks... they just don't care. first 2 quarters. the realities of the business has resulted in providing games and game publishers with a relatively small window for sucess. that window is 2 quarters. a game can continue to sell for years, and such a thing not really help the publisher in a cost effective way unless the game were succesful in the first 2 quarters. publishers know. developers know. little old ladies know. am always confused as to why a handful of game fans don't know. and we is getting WAY off the trail of chrisA and his interview. HA! Good Fun!

yes, the labeling of url gave some things away to board folks, but even if url had been disguised, it were still pretty obvious that melissan were the baddie once the tradition of picturing the UBG (ultimate bad guy) in adverts were continued by bis/interplay. the rules of character development must needs apply after all. melissan were female. melissan gots sizebale character development. never could interact with melissan save for in controled dialogues (no opportunity to cast detect evil or holy smite or some other spell to test her pathetic d&d good v. evil meter.) *shrug* after seeing the picture of a babe with clawed gloves we knew that some female character would be the UBG in tob. were only a couple of other female characters that gots more than a few moments of game time in tob, and one of 'em were drow. besides which, we knew that Gromnir must needs be correct... even if it were half-orc Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

anybody who wants to do post-grad had better be concerned with grades n' such. med school, law school, masters program, teaching credentials, grant programs and any number o' other thingies require a person to maintain or excel as far as grades is concerned... but one semester won't kill you. we gradated in three years, and one disappointing semester did not prevent us from following further academic pursuits. HA! Good Fun! btw, there is universiteis in the US that does the pass/fail thing... but if you wanna go post-grad, you gotta request grades anyways... am not seeing how it would be different in sweden.