junior

I think I can discard this.....I gave my characters after the 4th playthrough 999 AP(spent all I could too) and my minigames didn't get harder....though on the Hard difficulty most of all minigames are VERY difficult but the tutorial ones were still easy though as far as I remember. He's at the start of the game so starting a new playthrough wouldn't cause any great loss...that should fix it. It's AP. Bump your AP up to 10,000, and then go try and hack/unlock/rewire something. And then go find a mook and hit him with a shock grenade.

That was one of the fun things about ME2 - the ability to interrupt conversations with enemies and catch them off-guard as they exploited what would be considered "conversational immunity" in any other game. Probably the best example was the conversation during Miranda's loyalty mission when you had the opportunity to shoot the opposing mercenary leader as he taunted you about how he was using the conversation to get his men into position. But no. You can't do that sort of thing in AP. And there's more than one occasion where you're basically stuck saying, "Well... THAT was stupid..."

Eh... have to disagree there. While she's serious on the missions and only sends you one flirtatious e-mail, she also responds positively to tasteful jokes in your e-mail responses (for instance, the one in which you ask if she's going to have to show on the doll where Darcy wanted to touch her, and suggest that sending Darcy on a wild goose chase to Siberia might get him raped by a polar bear) indicating that she's increasingly at ease with you. Scarlet's is more subtle, but she definitely has her moments that are easy to miss - the "hot lesbian sex" e-mail she sends you comes to mind. SIE is a hoot, although I don't know if I'd like her so much in real life. Madison was pretty boring, imo. "I found a file that suggested that Marburg wanted to assassinate you, so I had to warn you. Sleep with me."

It's actually "earned" AP that's taken into account and not "spent" AP. It's just that usually people spend every AP that they earn, so it's difficult to tell the difference. But if you hack the ini file to give yourself 10,000 AP when you level up (which is more than you can ever use - the most you can ever spend is a little under 500), then you'll instantly fail any hack job that you attempt. Well, that explains why I'm finding the hacking much easier in my playthrough with a "Recruit" background. And Hacking isn't the only thing affected by earned AP. When I increased my AP to 10,000, one of the things that I did was Darcy's "bet". I set the stun traps as usual, and the guards triggered them... but weren't instantly knocked out! Instead they were dazed - stuck standing in place semi-conscious during which I could walk up to them and disable them just as if I'd managed to sneak up behind them. After a few seconds, they returned back to normal and started pursuing me again.

It's actually "earned" AP that's taken into account and not "spent" AP. It's just that usually people spend every AP that they earn, so it's difficult to tell the difference. But if you hack the ini file to give yourself 10,000 AP when you level up (which is more than you can ever use - the most you can ever spend is a little under 500), then you'll instantly fail any hack job that you attempt. Unfortunately, you do need to keep track of the general position of the cursor. There's been more than one hack job that I've accidentally aborted out of because I didn't notice where my mouse cursor was hovering at the time... And while by and large I agree that the problem with the clumsy hacking interface is due to inexperience in using a mouse that way, I did have one incident that made me doubt wonder if I wasn't mistaken. Specifically, twice during the same hack job I moved my mouse down only to see the alpha-numeric string that I was positioning move up instead. And it wasn't just a twitch up - it actually jumped up a couple of rows on the display both times. But I haven't noticed that since, so I'm not sure if it was just a fluke or not.

It depends on the computer/lock/circuit board (though admittedly most of the latter are alarm controls, and thus setting off the alarm via failure usually isn't a concern when you're rewiring these...). I've found that on many computers you can freely cancel out of the hack without setting off alarms. With others, cancelling will set off alarms. So far as I can tell, there's no way to determine beforehand whether the object that you're about to try and hack/unlock/rewire will trigger an alarm upon aborting. I even found one computer that didn't set off an alarm when you cancelled out but did appear to spawn an enemy directly behind you... I think that the difficulty of these is primarily tied to the amount AP that you have. I ran the Rome hub last during my initial playthrough, and the hack/unlock/rewiring jobs there were - by and large - much more difficult than they were in Taipei (which I ran first) and Moscow. Given that you have considerably more AP during the hub that you run last, you end up with more difficult hack/unlock/rewire jobs. Though given how drasticly the difficulty ramps up between the last hub and the hub immediately before that one, I think the equation that determines it all needs to be looked at... Later on for fun I modified the level up ini file to add 10,000 AP to my character at level 1. I restarted with a new character, reached level 1, and then ran off to go hack the e-mail computer next to the spot where you change clothes. Instant failure (and I mean a very *literal* instant here). Same thing happened when I tried to run the obstacle course and couldn't hack the door to get in. By and large I like the mini-games, but the dramatic upshift in difficulty as the game progresses is a massive strike against them imo. And the mouse controls on the hacking are far too clumsy.

With regards to a certain antagonistice (male) Jedi...

When I made my run, one of my party members (possibly Bao-Dur - I don't recall) hadn't been in the party for a while, so I reverted to a save just prior and cranked him up several levels while putting the majority of the skill points into Sneak. Then I gave him the Defel belt and one of the visors that boosts Sneak skill. This was the final planet for me, btw, so I had quite a few levels to play with. Still no luck. The moment I got into sensor range, the thing went off. Finally, after yet another reload, I switched back to Mira, ran her straight through the mines (since they don't go off if she's on point), and shut off the alarm before the guards came around the bend. Apparently shutting the alarm off quickly kept the guards from coming to investigate.

Eh...? I got the "Ebon Hawk Falling" sequence as part of my normal gameplay.

Nope, you need the Exile to have the skills. Minimum for the first upgrades is very low ~6. Minimum for the final upgrade is ~20. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The problem is that you can only do it as part of a conversation sequence. If you have another character as your active character and attempt to start a conversation, you'll only get a perfunctory, "Yeah?" from them, or something similar. No conversation options appear.

Someone posted what appears to be a picture from that level that apparently turned up in the Prima Guide, so apparently it was a VERY last minute cut from the game. And yeah, there's a lot of disappointment all around over it. Still, there's about a 0.000001% that Raven will make it the subject of the next Star Wars FPS game, and stranger things have happened...

As a result, its quite possible that Force users, particularly ones that don't constantly channel destructive dark side energies, have bodies that don't age as quickly. Constant renewal from Light Side energy seems a reasonable explanation for it, although its merely conjecture on my part. And, of course, as Sion demonstrates, dark side users can come up with other methods of using the Force to keep themselves moving around. Finally...

Doh. You're right. Probably the one place I didn't sift through in my mind in a mad attempt to remember who he was. I'm not sure why he's relevant to the discussion, though.

I'd have no problems either, but that kind of game doesn't sell copies in this market. See above. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The obvious proof that such games do sell is the original Baldur's Gate, which maxed out at level 7 (level 8 if you had the expansion). If you make a solid game, people will buy it and play it even if you can't level up as much as you might like.

Presumeably, this would have been a part of the "HK-50 factory" mission, but this particular mission was cut at the last second.

If that were the case, they'd also have put in an option to get it from her if you didn't kill her. For whatever reason, it didn't make it in. I've spoken with Handmaiden, but even with maxed persuade at level 11 and a small charisma bonus, I still haven't been able to get into where the artifacts are stored. Also, its mentioned that the artifacts are kept in Atris's meditation chamber, so I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be an "auto-fail" thing... i.e. Handmaiden provides a little additional information about the artifacts (i.e. that they were warm, and some of them seemed to think she was a student), but that's it.

Go into stealth mode with Visas and carefully walk between the mines. There gaps are wide enough for her to weave her way through them, and after the sensor's been disabled, have Bao Dur retrieve the mines. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Unfortunately, this wouldn't have worked in my game. I'd put a character in stealth mode, and the moment they reached the outer limit of the sensor's detection radius, the alarm always went off. I reloaded it several times, but never had any luck with it. No idea why, but I suspect a bug of some sort.

Revan is supreme when it comes to tactics and strategy. This is made clear at various points in the game when people talk about just how far ahead Revan may have been thinking during the Mandalorian campaign. In raw power of the Force, I suspect that the Exile will eventually surpass him. This is largely because of what we learn about how the Exile gained so much Force power so quickly. There may, in fact, not be a finite limit to how powerful the Exile can become.

Keep in mind, however, that Sion is nuts, and probably clinicly dead, as well. The doctor onboard the Harbringer dumps him in a Kolto tank, but isn't sure exactly how someone in his condition could actually be alive. Sion might merely be undergoing a love/hate relationship with Kreia, albeit considerably different from the one that another character in the game suffers from. I know I should remember who Coorta is, but his identity escapes me at the moment. Was he the crime boss on Citadel Station? I never really interacted with him.

I didn't play a female, so I wouldn't know. However, as I said, if she ONLY hooks up with you, then its not a bisexual relationship. Its either hetrosexual or lesbian, depending on the gender of your character. Its only bisexual if she's involved with two or more people of different genders at the same time. Since there's no evidence of that, its clearly not a bisexual relationship. She might be bisexual, but the relationship isn't. And truth be told,

Really, it depends on the character. A character can perceive themselves as being "Lightside", and endorse actions as such, but they might have actually slipped to the Darkside due to their motivations or for similar reasons. People with high standards often have to walk a fine line between doing good and being a self-righteous hypocrite. But for some characters it does seem inappropriate.

The problem is that HK-50's advice makes sense regardless of whether he's working for Sion or not. If he's working for Sion, then presumeably he knows that Sion is coming to get you. So his advice makes sense because he wants to keep you from running off before Sion catches up to you. If he's not working for Sion, then his advice still make sense. He wants to keep you from running off on your own without his supervision, and he doesn't expect that the next ship that stops by will be under the control of a homocidal Sith Lord. He's expecting a ship that's come to investigate the distress beacon, not a group of bloodthirsty assassins. After all, what are the chances of that? The problem is that Sion never provides any suggestion that he wants you alive. Every encounter with him suggests that he wants you dead. But on Peragus, HK-50 goes to great lengths to keep you alive. If HK-50 were working for Sion, it seems more likely that he'd just casually kill you and be done with it. Its not as if it would have been that hard to do while you were in the Kolto tank, after all.

If you read this Chris Avellone post with certain emphasis, and particularly pay note to one of the comments that he doesn't touch on as much: http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=25810 I think its clear that the above was more or less what was intended. Not as much fun, perhaps, but you have to admit that there is a little more realism to it.

The only thing I'll say is that the Ebon Hawk is an integral part of the story, and as far as I know, its impossible to wreck the plot while in the pursuit of a quest.