Azarkon

This game requires a very beefy PC to even begin exploring its awesomeness, unfortunately. My PC, which was top of the line two years ago, slows down to a crawl in any major battle such that I'm basically watching a slide-show. *sigh*

Perhaps, but then I wouldn't have made Nartwak put me on his ignore list and sparked a discussion on my sexual deviancy. Now what would be the fun in that?

It's not just making her short, though. It's also making her sex hormones not develop, which presumably would make her look like a child... Until age begins showing, in which case I'm not sure what the heck she'll look like. But you're right that I can't predict the result. That's why I posed my initial observations as a question, in the hope that someone will post some pictures as to results of the procedure on past subjects to either prove or disprove my implication. Instead, what I got was a question regarding whether mentally retarded adults are freaks. Obviously not, since the term freak is negatively connotated and the reason I phrased my question with the term was to suggest my potential distaste for the procedure. Imagine if I had asked "isn't this like creating a disabled person" instead. Would that have made any sense?

It might help to ask for my definition if you do not think I expressed it clearly. Nowhere did I say that all human intervention is unnatural, freakish, and/or unethical. I did, however, state that human intervention is subject to ethical examination whereas nature is not. That's why freak of nature is an oxymoron, as I define it - such negative connotations associated with what is natural implies imposing a human value judgment upon something that is inherently amoral. That is not to imply that human beings should not intervene in nature, but that we should not use words such as "freak" to denote what is natural. I'm not redefining the word, merely suggesting that it is inapproriate to use with respect to disabled people, whose only fault was to be born the way they are. I'm perfectly fine with calling a human practice or the result thereof freakish because assigning human values to human activities is perfectly logical. If "freak" did not have the negative connotations that it did (and I do believe that it's latent with negative connotations - it's not simply a neutrally descriptive word like, say, disabled), I would not strive to adopt this usage, but as it is I feel offended when someone mentally retarded is suggested to be a "freak," as if they were on the same level as those engineered by humans to look freakish.

Perhaps, but a person born without a heart is still not a freak. Nature must at times be subverted, but it (as in nature) is in no way ethical. There is no "little world" mentality about this, only the watery grave of Ahab. I would also be wary of making universalizing comments towards the truth. My "mis-"definition of freak is deliberate, as a way of anticipating the argument of "disabledness" versus "freakishness." One thing does not imply the other, given the connocations of freak. However, human intervention can be interpreted as being freakish, as it takes upon an ethical dimension, which nature does not possess.

Of course they are, at least for the purpose of debate. As I said, no one would question the ethical qualifications of nature, but we are all too capable of doing so towards man. Of course. But that does not make my point any less salient. I did not argue, you see, that what the parents did was wrong, all things considered. I did, however, argue that certain aspects of their argument are wrong, and that a strong argument against their point of view is that Ashley will be seen as a grotesque guinea pig of human modification. Let me pull a metadigital here and point out to you the dangers of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Please respect me, and I will respect you. Fail to do so, and I will do one of two things: ignore you or say things that are likely to get this thread closed down. Your choice. Pure idiocy. The risk of rape is minor, but the risk of disgusted stares is extremely high. And by ignoring me, you demonstrate your own ignorance

Not at all. There are no ethical issues with nature, nor would anyone make a thread about what do people think about this if Ashley was "frozen in time" by nature, rather than man. Freak of nature is an oxymoron, where I'm coming from.

Nope. Nothing nature creates can be considered a freak. What man makes, on the other hand, is debateable. This plays into the central ethical issue of this debate - how does becoming chemically neutered and physically small help the child? The parents talk, on their blog, about issues such as sexual abuse by future caregivers - but from my perspective, Ashley is likely going to get more abuse (or at the very least, disgusted stares) by virtue of being a man-made deviant than a mentally retarded adult. That's what the article says. It's not, from what I understand of biology, what the treatment does. You cannot prevent aging. What the parents are doing is "dwarfing" Ashley and making her sexually unable to develop. What the result will be of this procedure... Only time will tell.

Okay, this isn't entirely on topic, but she's not going to be "frozen in time," is she? She's still going to mature, to age - just at the physical size of a nine year old and with no sexual development, to speak of. Isn't this like creating a freak?

It's certainly a thorny issue for the reasons you've mentioned, but that's what makes game development difficult. The tradeoff, as I see it, is between making preset "intended" paths (and if they were preset, you might as well make them transparent - ie with indicators like [corrupt]), and modularity, which allows for a greater degree of freedom in what the player can interpret. Still, while on a theoretical level there are definitely issues, things are, in my experience, somewhat easier at the implementation level. There are times when it's obvious that a choice is non-commital. Take the compliment, for example - perhaps the player *is* trying to seduce the NPC as opposed to simply praising her. But if so, is it realy necessary that you make the fact that you have/don't have such a path transparent to the player? What is lost if, later in the game, there isn't an option to seduce the NPC? Well, obviously the player has just wasted an opportunity to insult the NPC, but even if so, the inherent weakness does not lie in your presentation's lack of clarity, but rather in your game's lack of options. If you had put [this will make the NPC like you better and is not meant to induce a scenario of corruption later down the line], you might have saved the player some ambiguity, but it would not have solved the inherent problem (ie that you did not have an option for seducing the NPC), and would've made modularity more difficult (since you'd now have to commit yourself, with each dialogue option, to some preset path that you must reveal to the player beforehand - hence the transparency of "good, evil, neutral" paths that people now take for granted in Bio games). It's not unacceptable, in my mind, for the player to be wrong at interpreting the result of their actions. After all, the same happens in real life - things do not always go as planned. Btw, Afterfall looks intriguing, but what are the Fallout community's impression of the game?

Why assign (read: force) a motive to a compliment? More modular development can be had if a game just took statements like "you look good" to a NPC at face-value. Whether such a statement works for good or for ill should depend on the player's later actions. This is why having the game try to "adapt" to a player's mindset or "offer" good/evil points for non-commital actions are bad ideas. If I compliment a NPC, I might be doing it for a number of reasons - whether I genuinely mean it or is simply being a nefarious sycophant has no bearing on the game world or the NPC's reaction, and should not thus factor into the gameplay. The NPC should, based on my past actions and speeches, react the same in either case, unless he or she can read minds (in which case the situation *is* far more complicated). In other words, dialogue should represent *actions*, not *intents*. As such, the ideal case would be for every possible action to be represented at every stage of the game, so as to maximize the number of possible "intents" being represented. Naturally, this isn't possible given limited development times. That's part of what makes game development an art - deciding which options to give, given that you can't give them all.

Mercenary (and I call them mercenary because their loyalty would clearly be to the organization, and not the nation) armies of the size you imagine would play very well into a future dominated by mega-corporations and their private armies. But in terms of how it'd help America, I'm highly cynical. Such a blatant display of imperialist overtones is bound to unite the world against the threat posed by the US, and though the French Foreign Legion is renowned as an elite fighting force, it is kept so by virtue of being relatively small and focused in its objectives. What you seem to want the Foreign Legion to do (ie be the bulk of an invasion against massive countries like China) precludes such a criteria, as you'd have to favor quantity over quality. It's also highly questionable whether granting citizenship to such a large body of soldiers is in the American public interest. With small, elite armies you can keep the membership down to a premium and elect only the best for citizenship. With a massive army - the size of which can defend the US empire - the situation is alot more complicated and you could easily descend into the "unruly masses" category of Legion composition, which would leave a bad taste in people's mouths both in the US and where the Legion is deployed. And of course, the larger the army becomes, the harder it is to control. If the French Foreign Legion should revolt, not much would happen because it's not capable of doing significant damage beyond its immediate deployed vicinities. But if an army the size you imagine should revolt, the results could be catastrophic. Course, you might argue that USMC discipline would keep the Legion in order, but my impression of large mercenary armies in history is that they tend to go sour, sooner or later, and eventually contribute to the decline of the empires they served.

The US does not have enough manpower, conscription or no conscription, to divide and isolate a country the size of China. The sheer logistics would spread the lines of armor so thin that entire regiments would be able to move through the gaps. Besides, they know their land alot better than you, and there are many hills and forests in China to hide in. Considering that the US can barely divide and isolate in a country the size of Iraq (actually, it's more the opposite, with the insurgents in the country side and the US being hemmed into strategic points) despite having 130,000+ troops there, I really can't imagine how it'd work for China, which has something like ten times the landmass, twenty times the population, and sophisticated military weaponry. The sort of tactics you're arguing about sounds like something straight from the US invasion of Iraq - but then Saddam's standing army barely did any fighting prior to the transition into guerilla warfare, and once guerilla warfare began the US started losing ground. For a conflict between major powers, the US won't simply be able to waltz in and shock & awe the enemy into submission. In fact, the US wasn't even able to do this in Vietnam - despite utilizing some of the most destructive non-nuclear weapons ever invented. I can't, therefore, see how think tanks would still consider the strategy viable as a means of conquest. Warfare has moved on since the days of trench captures and blitzkriegs - today military conflict between major powers is waged by proxy and technology, and battles are fought between guerillas and occupiers. In such an environment, beating the enemy on the battlefield is no longer what determines victory in a war - being able to occupy, rebuild, and effectively deal with an invasion's aftermath is. And really, in this arena, the US can't even wage an effective campaign in Iraq, much less tackle the billions of China.

I know you're just using China as an example but as someone familiar with the politics there I can state with confidence that this strategy won't work. The vast majority of the Chinese people do not feel repressed by the government and certainly won't rally to any "PsyOps" propaganda, sponsored by the US or otherwise. At best, the US would be able to utilize Taiwan and Tibet - but given that they represent maybe 1% of the Chinese population, there would never be any mass revolts. Thus, if a land invasion was to be planned, it'd have to be planned against the backdrop of million-men armies, guerilla and standing. I can't imagine, post-Iraq, any self-respecting military strategist depending on the contingency of people rising against their own government as the means by which to win a war. Saddam Hussein was about as bad as they come, after all - he's certainly no Hu Jintao, who commands significant popularity (moreso than Bush in the US, certainly). Which is partly the reason why all this talk about the Army and the Marines is missing the forest for the trees - war with another superpower will, foremost, not be fought with volunteer forces! No great war in the history of modernity was fought between volunteer armies - conscription is a necessity of scale, and any conventional war with another great power will require conscription on a massive level. Of course, that's why many military strategists believe that the great wars of the future will not be conventional (precisely because the countries are too big to invade and conscription is too taxing on the modern life style). We're getting way off-topic, by the way.

Why would a Foreign Legion abide by US commands after they have established themselves in the world? In other words, what makes this different than, say, a mercenary army? And in gamer terms, what prevents something akin to what happened in the MGS series from happening, assuming that multinational defense corporations will be involved (as they very well might be, given the current military-industrial complex)?

Nice website! Let the hype begin...

Now that's a mouthful! From this, I deduce that Guelfa is quite the lady charmer. After all, what self-respecting woman could resist being compared to hairless slimeland canines? You simply must have Guelfa as a female romance option, Josh. :D In all seriousness, I do sense a tad of irony here, considering that Guelfa is utilizing the sort of language here that an Edwin might use. I'm reminded of hardcore nationalists among the intelligentsia of ex-British colonies, speaking against the oppressor while speaking their language. Or perhaps all Sembians are like that, which would be scary. Either way, and keep'em coming!

Woot, always wanted to see your handiwork, JE, and what's shown so far is very exciting indeed. I like the epithet idea as a means of transferring reputation, undoubtedly it makes the scenario design much more modular. The icons also look good, though I'm not enough of an artist to know whether they were done by hand or photo manip Would be very interested in seeing some sample dialogue, too. Mayhaps in another thread! To the FRW modders - how is the NWN 2 Editor working out for you guys, performance wise? I was planning to make some mods myself, but the editor runs pretty sluggishly on my computer, and the learning process has, therefore, been pretty slow. I assumed that the problem was a lack of memory (my video card is 256MB & my comp has 1G) - does the editor run much faster with more RAM?

Doom 3 could've been good if they focused less on the "monsters jump out of the closet" factor and more on the "ancient, fathomless evil" feel of the original game. There was something epic about the mixture of loneliness and being stuck in a hell world consisting of ancient world architecture hybridized with occult symbols and high technology. Anyone who played the originals can probably attest to this trend - you were literally fighting in Aztec mazes at one point, in Inferno at another... Somehow, the lack of narrative explanation added to the sublime attraction of the unknown. Doom 3 just wasn't as good at keeping a secret - the demons were too obviously from Christian Hell, and all the action was limited, more or less, to either the repetitive level designs of the spaceship or the too-often-used imagery of a burning abyss.

What. The. Fudge. Nevermind the fact that we don't know the first thing about how to construct truly intelligent AI. Nevermind the fact that we still haven't been able to get robots to move gracefully on two legs (at least consistently). Nevermind the fact that we don't even have the most rudimentary idea on how to generate "consciousness" (nor a definition of what "consciousness" is), or a clue about how the billions of neurons in the human brain connect to form who we are. Nevermind any of that - let's just give robots rights now, because you never know when they'll need it :D Sounds like some people have been watching too much Battlestar Galactica.

When Gamespot says "story," I have the feeling that they're not just talking about the plot but also the presentation (cinematic techniques, etc.), the writing, and the level of interaction.

Rather than argue in the abstract, it's much easier to point to a game and give examples.

Indeed; still, I'm curious as to why the NWN 2 romances weren't all that well developed. While blaming JE for it was obviously assinine, Obsidian did sort of drop the ball here, assuming that romances were planned at all as part of the game's feature set. Without pointing fingers, I wonder if it was simply the fact that even the original designers didn't feel that romances were all that important? I mean, even KOTOR 2 had better romances and I just can't see how we could've went from the memorable "if you ever think your alone, play pazaak in your head because when you do, you'll be playing pazaak with me" to one-night-stands in NWN 2.

Oooh. I'll check it out.

Ah. Hmm, I must say you've piqued my interest as to how you'd write/design a game, as I tend to enjoy unconventional stuff, as well. I really hope you have some NWN 2 mods planned