newc0253

yeah, they should have a cheesy training montage, with music from 'rocky 3'. and a benny hill sequence. also, they should use the standard lucas-style wipes for the scene transitions. and a few 'twin peaks'-style kind of bizarro dream sequences as well: giants, horses, strobe lights, that sort of thing. just remember: lucas originally asked david lynch to direct 'return of the jedi' but he was too busy doing 'dune'. if lynch had directed ROTJ, i reckon KOTOR might have been a lot cooler.

i agree the rule isn't hard and fast but gladiator's actually a fair example of the rule in action - despite having richard harris as his stage dad, Commodus is the only one to have an american accent. the senators are represented by the great shakespearean Derek Jacobi in full "I, Claudius" mode and even the Aussie lead and the Danish chick playing Commodus's sister are doing plausible english accents. so in gladiator, the english accent represents respect for tradition and republican virtue, whereas the american accent represents callow, ruthless ambition. i think oldman was doing a southern accent. no idea why, though - although maybe it's something to do with the director being french. maybe the french think the american south is more evil than the rest of the US.

just so long as they don't do another lame-@ssed plot twist like the first one: i.e. it turns out that the PC is actually .... Malak!

in american movies, 'proper' english accents (e.g. RADA-trained shakespearan accents, not working class ones) denote intelligence and - by extension - either near-angelic wisdom (e.g. obi wan, gandalf, dumbledore) or its polar opposite, fiendish intelligence (e.g. the emperor in star wars, sauraman, alan rickman in die hard). so sarevok represents evil as brute force, whereas irenicus represents evil as goodness gone wrong (cf. satan). the only inversion of this rule i know of is 'dangerous liaisons', where the aristocrats spoke with american accents and the servants spoke english accents. interestingly, malkovich has just been named to play voldemort for the harry potter movies.

hmm. do all protocol droids have to be gay like threpio? and when i crash my x-wing, can i fix my astromech droid to use his side rockets to get to dry land instead of falling in the bloody swamp and getting eaten?

Chewbacca has a dad named Itchy? and a kid brother named Lumpy? Bea Arthur singing in the cantina? Jefferson Starship? and Han Solo saying to Chewbacca's family, "all of you are an important part of my life"? and all this before the Empire Strikes Back? classic? i think the word you are looking for is 'abomination'. p.s. do you suppose all that stuff is canon?

huh, i've hated kashyyk ever since i saw the star wars thanksgiving special as a kid. singing wookies, singing princess leia, it was enough to put anyone off.

Yeah, but even so, I was disappointed. The Cantinas on Taris weren't much better either... so bland. Agreed! actually, it's "scum and villainy" never forget to bring the scum. the scum is very important.

the title music. everything else was only okay.

and i am still saying the same thing: it looks like another dungeon siege.

it's Britney's Dance Adventure - a new direction in CRPGs for the American Idol fanbase. trust me, if you were working on this game, you'd probably want to keep it secret too.

uh? how can Vader's purge explain the rarity of jedi/lack of cortosis weave in episodes 1 to 3?

except that the lack of NPC control in NWN meant that the tactical feel of NWN combat as against the IE games was utterly different. KoTOR was better. but my complaint against KoTOR isn't with NPC control. it's the D&Dization of the combat, which leads to phony combat scenarios where people face off with blasters at point blank range. now maybe that's your idea of realistic gun battles, but it sure as hell ain't mine. what purge?? is this some extended universe thing? because, if it is, i gotta say i don't really pay attention to that stuff. as for the idea of cortosis weave, that's just plain stupid. if it were so effective against jedi, why wouldn't the more advanced society 4000 years later have it as standard? how come the droid army didn't have cortosis plating? or the stormtroopers? hell, in 4000 years you could probably have developed cortosis weave evening-wear. face it, if a jedi in the movies can use a lightsabre to cut through most metal like it was butter, then they would be a lot more devastating in hand to hand combat than they are in KoTOR. i'm sorry you feel the need to come up with lame excuses to justify why its different in KoTOR, but then i guess you wouldn't be fulfilling the role as a fanboy.

yes, i agree. apart from the fact that the party-based, turn-based approach makes it very different, it is otherwise completely similar. dynamic? not sure what you mean there. for me, IE combat was essentially turn-based in a way that was only slightly less formal than TOEE. of course, you could play using henchmen AI and not use the pause key but that would have been pretty retarded. sure, but that's only because my idea of how lightsabres work comes from the star wars movies. stupid me, huh? the bottom line is that KOTOR combat looks like D&D combat. whereas it should look like combat from the star wars movies. with the exception of light sabre duels, it does a pretty terrible job.

that's some weird-@ssed basic model you've got there, given how different NWN combat was from the IE games. i liked IE combat. i disliked NWN combat. but neither is especially appropriate for what is basically an SF game with laser swords. KOTOR combat was okay for lightsabre duels, but for everything else it was silly.

good ole Volourn, always willing to tow the line no matter how much he disagrees with it... KoTOR combat suffered precisely from what someone else called 'D&Dization of Star Wars': 1. blasters first of all, have you ever seen a blaster battle where both foes simply stand out in the middle of a corridor like it was the main street in a western? unless they were both blind and crippled, one of them would be dead within seconds. almost all blaster fights in SW takes place with cover. 2. lightsabres a duel should only be possible b/w two opponents with lightsabres. the idea of someone with a vibro-blade (wtf?) or a blaster holding their ground within swinging distance of a lightsabre is just dumb.

me too. it was a cliche, and not a good one either. if you were really a former sith lord, why the hell didn't more people take one look at you and run away screaming? at the very least, there should have been a hell of a lot more blanching and folks unwilling to look you in the eye (however you communicate that in a CRPG). i mean if hitler had his mind wiped, you don't think he would be able to join the British army as a private without anyone commenting? "bloody hell Higgins, you're the spitting image of that Furher chap who disappeared mysteriously last month! and what's with the german accent?" oh right, 'cause Revan wore a mask, right? laaaaaaaaame. the plot twist in KoTOR was stupid, stupid, stupid.

i remember the mind-wiping remark, but it seemed utterly silly that my newbie green recruit could actually be a sith lord. nothing that happened later on in the game made me change my mind on that either.

as though it had any to begin with. i liked KoTOR but the whole "you're actually a sith lord who lost his memory" was hokey as hell.

how do you do a sequel to KoTOR2 with the same character? at the end of the game you're either a hero of the republic or a sith lord. doesn't seem to me that there's any neutral starting point between those 2 positions. i'm not doubting that Bio will do another KoTOR-type game under the Star Wars franchise. but i doubt it can be a proper sequel to the first one.

i think it looks like another dungeon siege - great graphics, empty hacknslash game.

sorry. i didn't realise calling morrowind dull was technically a spoiler, although bestheda would understandably want to keep its dullness a secret from potential customers.

i had to dig out my copy of clifford geertz's interpretation of cultures to find the quote i was attempting to parrot: but nothing beats a case study, right? someone called morrowind compelling? i wish i had bought that version then. the story in my copy was so uncompelling i stopped playing before i found out what it was.

i've no idea how this matters to your argument - i can barely figure out who is arguing what any more - but fyi a child 'raised' in complete isolation wouldn't be a blank slate - they'd be a complete and utter vegetable that would be incapable of having a personality in the first place. not exactly what you'd call great roleplaying material. just a thought.

depends entirely on what they'd written. it's pretty hard to respect something like 'parents killed by orcs' because it's such a cliche. and it would be pretty hard to invalidate something like 'lived on a farm until 17' because it don't exactly demand much by way of validation. my point is that the 'total character freedom' of PnP is about as illusory as that in CRPGs. you can give yourself any backstory you want in either, but most of the time it will be politely ignored.