Azarkon

I don't think the Germans were stupid. They acted in accordance with what they saw to be the order of the day. It must have looked rather dire, with British colonialism then owning a third of the world and German colonialism being nipped in the bud. There was, without hindsight, little cause to believe the British and the French weren't going to use their massive colonial empires to eventually bully Germans - and worse. Had we the mentality of a 19th century European, being taught that God is dead, that only the fittest survived, and that it was only natural that the strong preyed on the weak, who's to say we won't come to the same conclusion - that Germans had to expand to survive? A lot of people today look back to WW 2 in black and white, but they fail to comprehend, I think, that the horror of it all is that what the Germans, the Japanese, etc. did - and here I'm talking about their geopolitical moves and designs, rather than their wartime atrocities - were not irrational, that indeed it was, in the eyes of a 19th century German / Japanese, necessary. Just because we don't, in the coziness of our contemporary bubble, sympathize with them, does not make them fools. The same goes for China. It must look rather dire, with the US and its allies in complete control of the sea lanes that are your economic lifeblood, in a world suddenly made small, where another civilization and race controls 3/4ths of the planet and encroaches upon you on every side. In a way, China's situation is no different than that of Germany's and Japan's - it's caught in a bind where challenging the existing world order looks foolish, and yet not challenging the existing world order looks hopeless. But there are differences, and ones that we are wise to preserve. From the deterrence offered by nuclear weapons, to the ability of market capitalism to lift all boats, to the smaller stomach for atrocities and the less stark ideologies, the contemporary world offers a way out that was not necessarily known to the 19th century Germans. That, I think, is the one hope to hold onto for this and coming generations.

Interesting point. But I haven't heard it elsewhere. Can you confirm? Sure. Here's a picture of the Japanese ADIZ and the Chinese ADIZ put alongside one another. The size of the Japanese ADIZ is so massive, especially in its northwest quadrant, that it practically ensures that a Chinese ADIZ is going to overlap with it. It's easy to see that the Japanese have a rather flexible view of how great of a distance their ADIZ ought to cover from the nearest terrestrial holding. Look at how the northern side of the ADIZ practically hugs the Japanese coast, for example, while the western side covers a huge section of the East China Sea.

The UNSC was formed in the aftermath of WWII, of course they don't. The current Japanese constitution, drafted under American patriarchal guidance, bans Japan from having a military or engaging in any proactive military activities. Combine that with the fact that Japan has an aging population and low birthrates, it's not exactly in a great position. Its only real advantage is the fact that it's basically a tributary state of the US. That said, Japan is a country where submission and servility are valued and "alpha" type behavior is something which goes against social norms. Even if Japan did have a permanent seat on the UNSC their politicians and diplomats are highly unlikely to make a vigorous argument for anything. Japan has an excessively tactful culture. Directness/bluntness are uncouth nearly to the point of taboo outside of familiar personal relations. That said, the simple fact of the matter is that the Senkaku islands are twice as far from China as they are from Japan (and Taiwan, they're roughly equidistant between those two.) China's government has no choice but to be belligerent for the sake of economic growth, it's constantly teetering on the brink of riots or revolution. When economic growth stops, the communist party is done for. There are regularly demonstrations and mass uprisings numbering in the tens of thousands throughout the country which aren't publicized thanks to the government control of the media and the entirely unbiased choices of the state-run news service. And, obviously, the idea that any Korea has any claim to the islands and associated waters is just ludicrous to the point of hilarity. They might as well claim Kamchatka and Alaska as their sovereign territory. But distance does not matter in this case - these rocks are not within the EEZ of any country and there are no laws stating that you own them because you're 100 miles away instead of 200 miles away. Indeed, what each country wants from owning them IS the 200 nautical mile EEZ they get from radiating their sovereign territory around the rocks. It's a ridiculous loophole in maritime law. What ought to happen is that such loopholes ought to be fixed so that countries no longer get to have a 200 mile EEZ from staking sovereignty over a bunch of rocks. But of course, that's too logical for international geopolitics, which at the end of the day is about taking stuff from people weaker than you, no different than it was in the hunter-gatherer days.

I gotta say I'm increasingly not impressed by the coverage of events having to do with China in Western media. Even amateurs were able to find out this little gem: http://aviationdevelopment.org/eng/sites/default/files/2011111501_Publication.pdf Which states that up till now, there have been no protests whatsoever about ADIZs being established because it's simply a logical extension of a country's security apparatus. Sure, China's ADIZ covers disputed territory, but so does Japan's and South Korea's. It's obvious that China's main problem is not that they established an ADIZ, but that they didn't ask for permission from the primary power broker in East Asia: the US.

Not necessarily. Angry people turn towards strong, nationalistic leaders, not liberal mouth pieces. Democracy by anger normally leads directly to jingoism.

I think it's rather difficult to be a regional leader when you're surrounded by the military bases of your greatest rival in the region. But even without US intervention, there's no way Japan is going to accept Chinese leadership without being beaten to submission. It's just the way politics in that region works.

Eh, China is simply doing what its rivals were doing already - declaring a massive ADIZ and using it to have a fit whenever rival countries fly over them. An ADIZ is not a no fly / air control zone, though in the Chinese case they made the mistake of not specifying that it ought to only apply to aircraft that are on an intersect course with terrestrial territory. It's obvious that they were going to establish this sooner / later given that the US, Japan, and Korea all have them.

Bypassing the UN is perilous, especially when the UN commission is due to give a report in a few days. I feel that were the US to go in guns blazing in support of the rebels and there ends up being evidence that the rebels also used chemical weapons, then we're in another Iraq WMD situation. Mind you, it doesn't matter geopolitically because the US has never needed international support to do whatever we want, but for the Democrats, it's not an opening they want to give the Republicans - ie the idea that Obama is no different from Bush.

Military wherewithal has less to do with it than the fact that China doesn't have the same geopolitical options that the US has when it comes to deploying forces in the Middle East. We have military bases in the Middle East, an entire logistic chain of allied/partner countries in the Middle East, and maritime freedom in the Mediterranean aka Europe's backyard. Even were China to develop the same weapons and military hardware, they have no great way to reach Syria with it. Their only options are: Cross Central Asia, Iraq, and Iran to reach it via land Circumnavigate all of South Asia to reach it via the Arabian Circmunavigate all of North Asia and Europe to reach it via the Mediterranean None of these are practical.

Not to defend Gaider's writing, because I've not been impressed by the writing in Bioware games, but game dialogue writing and book writing are not interchangeable. I've yet to see highly rated published authors succeed in game dialogue, and vice versa.

That's just game lore designed to justify a higher level design decision - to not explore gender/sexuality issues at all. Saying Bioware explores LGBT issues is equivalent to saying Gears of War explores the effects of violence.

Bioware games never deal in depth with LGBT issues. This is rather irritating when you think about the Dark Ages setting they have for DA, complete with religious orthodoxy, persecution of other races and beliefs, etc. But when it comes to gender and sexuality, it's downtown SF.

First impression: hey isn't this is the MoTB story hook Second impression: wait, isn't this The Black Hound story hook Thinking further: waitaminute, isn't this the story hook for every Obsidian game ever? KOTOR 2: survive attack by Darth Sidious, has to bear the burden of being an exile Jedi and a 'wound in the force' Alpha Protocol: survive betrayal by the organization you work for, has to bear the burden of being a 'rogue agent' NWN 2: survive having a sword shard being implanted in your chest, has to bear the burden of being the shardbearer MOTB: survive having the shard being ripped out of your chest, has to bear the burden of being a spirit eater New Vegas: survive betrayal by the organization that hired you, has to bear the burden of being ... Okay, so this one's different.

My thoughts on Gaider's post: This is the standard 'romances are secondary content' response we see from developers. Yet, the problem with Gaider making this argument is that not only have character romances become one of Bioware's main selling features, and the source of a lot of their publicity, but Gaider was responding to a 'in a perfect world' scenario of infinite resources, rendering the cost:benefit ratio moot. There's a lot to agree with in this paragraph, but the idea that sex = objectification is a rather blatant invocation of contemporary liberal feminist ideology, which I find out of place in the bulk of RPG settings. That this sort of talk is a de facto standard of the AAA gaming industry makes us think that the industry has not yet evolved to a stage in which it is capable of releasing a SoIF - and indeed not even a Spartacus. Game publishers are too afraid to do what TV studios have been doing for decades, which given that TV studios are themselves afraid to push the censors, puts them at the bottom of the pile. To me, this says that the attitude of 'video games are for children' persists against changing demographics - the average people playing games these days are in their 20s and 30s - and isn't going away. Ultimately, this makes it difficult for the gaming industry to break out of its kid's box to become a capable medium for aesthetic expression and mature entertainment. I do not understand why Gaider thinks that 'plausible romance' ought to be implemented only when Bioware starts making all followers romanceable, instead of the 70-80% romanceability they already reach. Further, is he saying that he's making 'cuddly bunnies' and 'sex dolls' in the current batch of Bioware games because he has limited choice as to the amount of followers he's able to make romanceable? Having said several times, earlier, that he's against 'wish fulfillment on a level that reduced the characters into romantic playthings' and that 'I have no interest in creating that, even if there are people who think it’d be grand,' Gaider's surrender to player desire and status quo in these two paragraphs contradicts his own attitude towards character writing. It's the equivalent of going on a grand and lofty diatribe about one's ideals, only to end exactly where one began with a clumsy rhetoric of 'popular wisdom': a disappointingly defeatist attitude.

I agree with people who say that it's ultimately about pacing. An exciting encounter every five minutes makes the game feel urgent, while an uneventful stroll for 15-20 minutes makes the game feel slow. Slow games don't have to be boring, but they do have to make up for the slowness: great atmosphere / scenery, banter between companions, meticulous world building, etc. Wandering in a vast wilderness ought to feel that way. But at the same time, there are ways to not make this a boring affair. World building is rather important here - what is it about the journey that stokes a player's imagination? Tolkien is a great example. A lot of his books are about trekking through hills and swamps without major encounters happening, yet the world building in them kept readers reading. The question is how you transform this into games.

Standard dog companions are so cliche. Knowing Obsidian and MCA, this is what we're going to get - The Shadow of the Dog: you think he's the evil archmage's familiar, but the evil archmage is HIS familiar. Plato Dog: because people whine about lack of deep interaction with their dog companion. The Traitor Dog: because canine loyalty is so passe. The Dog Who Transforms Into a Human: because weredogs are so yesterday. The Dog Who Thinks He's a Cat: only trumped by... The Cat Who Thinks He's a Dog Romance with a Dog: Bioware supports LGBT, you say? Don't worry, we're one step ahead... All of the above put together: now we're talking Obsidian.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that. It's not a matter of not having morality, obviously morality should be present. It's a matter of depicting morality as it is in real life; nuanced and subjective. When I say the game shouldn't have a a morality system, I don't mean that the actions you take should have intentionally counter-intuitive results or none at all. I mean each different npc should react differently to your actions, based on their own personal morality. You could choose to do nothing but deeds you considered to be decent and selfless, but that doesn't mean they will be perceived as such or that you are automatically entitled to any reward for doing so. Suicide bombers actions are doubtlessly selfless, but they are still (I'm sure most would agree) pretty evil. A rich man may think its decent to offer some scraps from his table to a poor beggar, but the beggar may consider this patronizing and cruel. Thematic elements don't really enter into it, you just do what you think your character would do, the game reacts accordingly, and you reach your own conclusions. Rather than always choosing one option or another so the game can pat you on the back or tell you your a d*ck, respectively. Thematic elements don't have to enter it, but in its absence, a default - ie the designer's - moral compass inevitably does, because it is he / she who has to craft your options, the game's reactions, and the presentation of outcomes. My conveyance is that even when you think you are simply following the logical maxim of choice and consequence, the end result is never independent of an a priori moral system. Indeed, the very act of deciding the choose events in a game requires the presence of such a system, because practically speaking there is no way to offer the player every choose event imaginable. To make it concrete, consider the following example: The PC finds a torture victim in a dungeon. He is allowed to: ? ?? ??? ... The result of <X> is: ? -> ___ ?? -> ___ ??? -> ___ ... I argue that how you choose to fill in the blanks is a function of your moral compass, even when you think that you are just roleplaying the characters. I would argue it is not the designers (personal) moral compass but the compass of the theme/story they have decided to portray that leads to their choice of options to offer you altho different writers working on different sections may skew the theme/story towards their own take on the theme/story which may differ from others to some degree (likely a small one as I assume they are managed (or possibly edited) well enough to keep them all on the same page most of the time.) Ideally, that is the case, and that's what I was arguing - a designer ought to know that not having a thematized moral compass is equivalent to having a personal / random / generic moral compass, which results in weaker design. In the same way that the events of a plot are not arbitrarily selected for narration in a novel, so the same holds for the choices in a game.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that. It's not a matter of not having morality, obviously morality should be present. It's a matter of depicting morality as it is in real life; nuanced and subjective. When I say the game shouldn't have a a morality system, I don't mean that the actions you take should have intentionally counter-intuitive results or none at all. I mean each different npc should react differently to your actions, based on their own personal morality. You could choose to do nothing but deeds you considered to be decent and selfless, but that doesn't mean they will be perceived as such or that you are automatically entitled to any reward for doing so. Suicide bombers actions are doubtlessly selfless, but they are still (I'm sure most would agree) pretty evil. A rich man may think its decent to offer some scraps from his table to a poor beggar, but the beggar may consider this patronizing and cruel. Thematic elements don't really enter into it, you just do what you think your character would do, the game reacts accordingly, and you reach your own conclusions. Rather than always choosing one option or another so the game can pat you on the back or tell you your a d*ck, respectively. Thematic elements don't have to enter it, but in its absence, a default - ie the designer's - moral compass inevitably does, because it is he / she who has to craft your options, the game's reactions, and the presentation of outcomes. My conveyance is that even when you think you are simply following the logical maxim of choice and consequence, the end result is never independent of an a priori moral system. Indeed, the very act of deciding the choose events in a game requires the presence of such a system, because practically speaking there is no way to offer the player every choose event imaginable. To make it concrete, consider the following example: The PC finds a torture victim in a dungeon. He is allowed to: ? ?? ??? ... The result of <X> is: ? -> ___ ?? -> ___ ??? -> ___ ... I argue that how you choose to fill in the blanks is a function of your moral compass, even when you think that you are just roleplaying the characters.

On a micro level, there is, indeed, only choices and consequences. A selfish action - ie demanding reward for rescuing a child - ought to be no different than a selfless action other than in how it affects the PC's reputation with the NPCs who learn of this action. Said effect is simply a function of the NPCs' own moral compass and level of caring. Indeed, this is the way a lot of modern games handle morality. In Dragon Age 2, for example, being moral just gives you +friendship with characters who are also moral. On a macro level, however, there are thematic principles at stake. Which NPCs favor decency? What far ranging consequences do selfless actions have? What sort of content does being selfless, versus being selfish, open up? These are questions that, when answered, assign a value - ideally a thematic value - to morality within a game. As a designer, you have to decide what, ultimately, is the outcome for a 'nice' PC versus a 'douchebag' PC. How you do so affects the moral undercurrent of your game, and the best designers are cognizant of this and make use of it. Thus, though morality is, at one level, simply a redundant artifice that is easily dismissed by jaded gamers bored of AD&D alignments, at another it is an issue of utmost importance in game design. Because it is humans who are behind the design of games, and because the best games are expressions of themes, how situations are resolved by moral vs. immoral actions are never just the cranking of indifferent machinery from which rational choices and their logical consequences emerge. Indeed, because morality is a subject of thematic exploration, there are tropes and subversion opportunities. Take a player who meticulously tries to be decent and selfless in every decision. How is she going to react to a game design that sarcastically and cynically punishes such actions? Appeasing players at every turn is not a great game's goal. Instead, at times it is needed to go against what the player logically desires to drive home a theme. For example, to imbue the notion that the world the player inhabits is a very different world from ours, it is useful to give actions that are morally correct in our own world the crappiest results in the game world. The craft is in how to make such a design poignant rather than random. In the same way morality is never just black and white, morality in games is never just 'have' vs. 'not have.'

Both elves and their subversions have become cliche. They are little different from vampires in that respect. In essence, what Sacred_Path said is correct: elves have to have certain qualities that make them elvish, so just putting pointy ears on humans and calling them 'elves' is not enough. Bioware's city elves barely pass for elves; they're elvish only because the Daelish are there to remind us that they were. Of the cliches developed for elves, my favorite remains the type exhibited in the Age of Wonders series. The issue with the bulk of the post-Tolkien elves, and indeed Tolkien's elves as presented in Lord of the Rings, is that we only see them in their 'fallen' state - proud to the level of arrogance, aloof, pretentious, indifferent to mortal concerns, constantly boasting about their past glories, and generally unsympathetic. It is this combination of tropes, which form the cult of D&D elvishness, that make elves loathsome and an easy target for nerd hate. Yet, by concentrating on these features of 'fallen' elvishness, we forget that one of the fundamental attractions to elves is that they are, in their unfallen form, 'the perfect children.' For Tolkien, the elves of Valinor were obedient, angelic beings who never stepped outside of Eru’s Garden, and who were to be juxtaposed with the humans and the 'fallen' elves who passed to Middle Earth and mortality. Elves are supposed to be above all that: their wisdom and skill are only matched by their kindness, their compassion, and their innocence. They're the Adam and Eve that never gave in to the temptation of the serpent, the Biblical Chosen People who never strayed from God's side. The passing of the elves is, in this respect, supposed to produce a catharsis in man. The loss of innocence and immortality is designed to be a metaphor for the Biblical fall of man. It’s there to remind you, the reader / player, of the distance between us and our ideals. Elves are better than man not because they’re elitist douchebags with innate magic resistance and munchkin attributes, but because they are the finest caricature of what we find valuable in our idealized conceptions of ourselves. The modern D&D elf lacks the sympathetic qualities that such a conception requires. That, I think, is why elves these days are better off dead from the player’s POV. It’s also why Age of Wonders, in its hailing back to a prior style of portraying elves, is rather unique.

Silly role players, a dungeon is a cell where prisoners were tortured in olden times. They're not adventuring areas.

For the record, a scene, taken out of its context, is rarely moving. This is why it's difficult to convey the emotional effect of your favorite story simply by showing a video / script of the dramatic moment. You have to have been sufficiently immersed in the world, narrative, and characters to be affected in the first place. Otherwise, the effect is ludicrous and melodramatic. It's the same logic behind the cliche 'you had to be there' rule for comedy. As far as games go, neither Bioware nor Obsidian has produced a game with the level of emotional impact found in Planescape: Torment. This is one of the few games that have moved me to the brink of tears in its final act, not out of the use melodrama, but through the meticulous execution of a narrative and world concept, combined with effective dialogue and music scoring. The final conversation with the incarnations, in which with a high enough Int and Wis, you were able to grasp the entirety of your personal tragedy, was a sublime moment in gaming. But it took the whole game to get there. By itself, the conversation within the Bronze Sphere was no great literary feat. But as the culmination of your journey through the game, it was one of the highest achievements RPGs have attained. This is the conversation that I'm talking about: The sphere wrinkles in your hands, the skin of the sphere peeling away into tears and turning into a rain of bronze that encircles you. Each droplet, each fragment that enters you, you feel a new memory stirring, a lost love, a forgotten pain, an ache of loss - and with it, comes the great pressure of regret, regret of careless actions, the regret of suffering, regret of war, regret of death, and you feel your mind begin buckling from the pressure - so MUCH, all at once, so much damage done to others... So much so an entire FORTRESS may be built from such pain. And suddenly, through the torrent of regrets, you feel the first incarnation again. His hand, invisible and weightless, is upon your shoulder, steadying you. He doesn't speak, but with his touch, you suddenly remember your name. ...and it is such a simple thing, not at all what you thought it might be, and you feel yourself suddenly comforted. In knowing your name, your true name, you know that you have gained back perhaps the most important part of yourself. In knowing your name, you know yourself, and you know, now, there is very little you cannot do. But of course, you had to be there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAsA2nU6TDs&feature=related

I think it's a given that PE isn't going to be a AAA game and therefore won't have high fidelity 3D graphics. The terrain is going to be painted over; the characters are going to spend the bulk of their time in small, isometric avatars, etc. This isn't Mass Effect. With that sort of budget you're able to do a lot to convey emotion: facial & body animation, full voice acting, etc. - the standard Bioware fare. But for PE, I don't think Obsidian is going to make high fidelity 3D models for the characters to begin with. The idea behind this thread is how to do it in a minimally expensive fashion. Portraits and detailed avatars are, in my opinion, still the best options - but they require the proper aesthetic style. Emotive portraits work great when a certain degree of 'toonism' is present in the world. Otherwise, it feels hackneyed and out of place.

One way to make dialogue 'visual' / 'expressive' is via the use of stand up avatars. Before games switched to fully animated / voiced dialogue - ie AAA games today - this method was employed by a variety of isometric games. JRPGs are what people think about when they see this: But Western style games have used them too. You have to sacrifice a bit of verisimilitude, however, because portraits of this sort do not work very well in stand up avatars: Disciples II, which is where the middle picture comes from, has a great aesthetic style for those looking for a Western take on the fantasy comic book aesthetic.