Cantousent

Some of us prefer brandy. I've had Christmas egg-nog with a rum, brandy, blended scotch mix. I thought it tasted pretty bad, but after the first couple of glasses I simply didn't care. I don't remember what happened after the next couple of glasses.

:D

Ain't that the truth. They'll be basket cases by the time they sign on tonight.

Okay, I'm convinced. I'll take one of the many gift cards I'm sure to get tomorrow and buy the damned Fahrenheit game. That and Dark Fall 2 so I have something to play with my wife.

The Wemic doesn't look any weirder than your avatar, Kitty. BTW: Is that the Beast from the new Xman movie? Awsome!

Merry Christmas, my Balkan friend. ...And Merry Christmas and Happy New year to the rest of you, also.

The subject of this report is Kirottu ___ Standardized Attributes: What the hell does all this mean? You know, I don

Ahh, the precise art of hand grenades!

Okay, Mothman, you're right after Kirottu.

I believe the wemic in the picture is a female. In fact, it is a female named Ann. It's a little Ann Wemic. hahahaha Sorry, just got home from a Christmas party.

In honor of Sarge's crazy notion that every BIS game should include one?

No. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ha! He's never right! Even when he's right, he's a little wrong. There's always something a little wrong about pixies. Plus, he's a doofus. 'Course, so are you. Darth Flattus

hahaha I actually prefered BG2 to BG1, but I liked them both. Mostly, I liked the huge size of BG2, but I liked taking a character through BG1 and then taking him through BG2. That's the most importa--- wait, aren't we talking dialogue and backstory here? What the Hell? No, I thought we were talking about Avellone's interview. Talk about bifurcation. One thing that I would point out is that the only reason dialogue has such a prominent place in our discussion is simply because the characters are forced to read it. Flavor text, which provides me with much enjoyment, is not vital to advancing the story. For that reason, I appreciate the design team putting some thought into the flavor text of items. For example, City of Heroes/Villains is an MMORPG. The design team obviously didn't want to burden the player with anything unnecessary to read. So, while you can read the whole speil attached to a mission, the basic information is conveyed with a single line of a text, maybe a few words, at the bottom of the dialogue box. It's something like this: I've been in this city for a long time, and I've never been able to discover BADMAN'S secret hiding place. Maybe you could give me a hand. Go out on the street and defeat some his followers. Knock a few heads together and see what sort of information you can dig up. I'm sure we can tie up all the loose ends and save the citizens of Paragon a lot of grief if we could just do away with BADMAN once and for all. ----- I hear there's a troll convention in the sewers. You never know what those bone-head trolls are going to do next. Word is, they've got someone down there, some big name in the troll "organization" who's holding an auction for something they recently unearthed. I need you to go down there and search the sewers. Take down the troll leader and find whatever it is they were going to auction. I hear it's going to start any time now, so you only have a short time to finish the mission. **** Take down 20 BADMAN'S minions or Defeat troll leader and find artifact (90 minutes) or Not now I like that setup because it's least intrusive. However, I doubt it would work nearly so well for a full blown CRPG. Most of us want to have significantly more interaction with the NPCs than my example provides. Still, outside of dialogue, the designer can provide a lot of fun text for the ambitious player to enjoy. One of my favorite passages in IWD2 was the Dykast blade. Funny stuff. That and the war bears. As far as Tolkien goes, I'm a huge fan. I've even volunteered and helped host Tolkien lectures at the Henderson District Public Libraries. I plan on visiting some of his historical landmarks in England next year. I have the hardback editions to, I believe, all of his works. ...But it's just not worth fighting over his works. Especially in this discussion. First of all, I'm all fought out on other issues, so I'm not inclined to turn this into a 20 page argument about Tolkien. Second of all, it's not really vital to the discussion of writing in games. Finally, I can see why folks would find works like Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion tedious. I hold Tolkien in great esteem, but I'll have to die on that hill another day. Right now, I'm far more interested in what the NWN 2 design team has in store for the single player campaign than I am in discerning what influence Tolkien has on one of the writers.

The subject of this report is ThePixiesRawk You know, I was going to do a standard review, but Pixies is so distinctive, I thought maybe I should start with his epithets first. Mighty Lord of

Sawyer's style, judging from those areas I recall him designing, is a bit on the anti-septic side of sterile, but at least it gets from point A to point B without embarrassing side-routes through points C, D, and Z. His writing is by and large grammatically correct and it conveys the idea in a way that most players will understand. Kind of like most of his posts. So, as a consumer, I'm happy with Sawyer

Your TOMBS report is coming up, swine!

I just think my numbered friend meant to say that he's a blue meanie.

Actually, what I thought was surprising when comparing KotOR and KotOR 2 was the fact that what I had considered BIS strengths and Bioware weaknesses were reversed. The same was true for Bioware strengths and BIS weaknesses. The dialogue always seemed better in BIS games, but I truly thought it was dreadful in KotOR 2. I like what I hear about NWN2, but I wouldn't pre-order the game as it stands now. That might change as I'm increasingly assured that Obsidian is determined to put some real effort into the single player campaign. Avellone's statements are somewhat assuring. EDIT: Good Lord, it sounded like I needed to preorder KotOR 2.

No, it's the law of the land. I wonder if it should be. I mean, is a similar communist pledge illegal? Is it illegal to have a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish message? Is it illegal to call on Horus, Zeus, or Vishnu? Is it illegal to have an atheist or anti-theist message? I actually don't have any problem with the sentence. Like most folks, there's a special place in heart for the accursed nazis. I just wondered how our hatred of nazism squared with our love of free speech. On the other hand, I agree with numbers, the man's stupidity warrants his sentence.

Criminally stupid, my numbered friend?

Apparently, a thief, convicted of possessing and fencing stolen property, was given two additional months of prison time for having the nazi oath on his answering machine. What do you think? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10573699/

I wouldn't have it any other way. Although, apparently, I was thinking of the wrong person when I made the ill-fated Hitler comment. I was thinking of you specifically and two other folks thought I mean them.

Good Lord, have none of you made Ice Cream at home? At home, at least, you put the cream and sugar and other stuff in a small bucket with a device inside of it for churning the mix, put that bucket in a larger bucket, put ice and rock salt in the large bucket so it's all around the small bucket, then you churn the cream until it's Ice Cream. Tasty.

"I know science." -- Dak'kon

Actually, I refer you to various threads in this forum, Hades. Here's one right now. Hitler was elected into power as well... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's just off the top of my head, but you write so many contradictory things, who's to say what your opinion is, Hades? No one else knows and you never give a straight answer. I mean, the following comment really struck me: "[t]he problem with Battlewookie he sees only what the media puts out. All the negativity that is out there about how they are handling the situation in Iraq. There is a difference of actually being there and being an armchair commentator." If that's not the weirdest passage. You're chastising Battlewookie for focusing on the negative?