Azarkon

It will definitely be interesting to see what MCA comes up with in terms of high fantasy NPCs, as I don't think he's ever done that before in a game - BG/BG2 was mostly Bioware, Fallouts and KOTOR2 were sci-fi, IWDs really weren't NPC-centric, and PS:T was an assortment of oddities. But now elves, dwarves, and halflings? Will be interesting to see what he has to say, considering that for the past decade or so the name of high fantasy CRPG personalities was David Gaider (though Rob also played a role in NWN, and I think certain other designers, but nothing as memorable as what Gaider did with BG/NWN), and it'd be real fun to see a different take on things.

Azarkon: Good morning! Baker: What is the nature of morning? Is it the breeze that subsides over the valley's end, or the light of a fresh new dawn? Is it the end of night, or the beginning of day? Neither, I say, for morning is a continuation, a phase in some great wheel unseen. And is not the dawn made only possible by the presence of night? That is the way of the world, my friend: balance, between day and night, good and evil... All things. ... Oh, you were looking for dialogue from an actual game?

Well, there is the factor of it being British. Certain subtleties, no doubt, are missed by us American audiences. Still, there is some degree of universal appeal to the books or else it would not have been such a phenomenon. Personally, I think it's Rowling's sense of character and world building. Yeah, her writing isn't stellar, but her world is immersive. While usually we think of the former precluding the latter, that is not necessarily the case when you're younger and/or less literary minded. For instance, I remember being immersed in Goosebumps books back when I was in early grade school and that was simply because I was more innocent and naive.

Well, she writes *for* fourteen year olds (actually younger, I'd say), so what do you expect? Personally, the HP books are entertaining in terms of plot, though I imagine they'd have been infinitely more enjoyable had I been going through that stage of life at the time of reading. At the very least, they have a large following among today's impatient kids, and given that this is written text against the might of cinematic eye candy and ADD-addled gaming, that's pretty damn impressive.

What games did they compose for? Always in search of good soundtracks.

If you want historical sources, then occupation of Middle Eastern countries preluded the death of nations. The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan with a force to be reckoned with and they were eventually drained dry of their funds and kicked out. Democracies setup by the US and other countries alike have been tried before and they all failed as soon as the occupying country pulled its forces. Day to day fighting and death is the norm in many of these countries and the common, non-militant people have learned to survive changes of government: they don't care enough to throw their lives away en masse to defend "liberty, democracy, freedom, etc." because that's not their way of life. If we're in there to defend our way of life as many people argue, then imagine now that another country came to the US (let's say China), enforced upon us a new way of life (let's say Communism), and told us to defend *that*. How passionately do you think we'd defend it?

Then that just shows how ill-informed you are. Seriously, I'm not trying to insult you here, but China's economic growth *depends* on acceptance by the world community and the absence of sanctions. The Chinese government is extremely careful about its image to the rest of the world, because the entrance of foreign capital is what's fueling its economic boom. Sanctions and international distrust would be the *last* thing the Chinese government and others-in-power want, because they want to see China as a super power, not as an isolated, starving Communist state like it was before the 70-80's. China is strong enough now to no longer be pushed around by the US, and the Chinese are demonstrating that in numerous ways where it's forced the US to compromise. But China is not even close to being strong enough to seriously temper US interests, and we can see that by the Chinese government's failure to invade Taiwan and be done with it. As for the US stance towards China, lemme just say this: Rumsfeld is adopting a *very* aggressive policy towards China and you can read it in his words. And he's doing so because it's easy to come to the logical conclusion (and if you need help, there are plenty of famous economists that's published papers on this) that sooner or later China will challenge the US for the position of economic super power and that at the moment with the US's hands tied in the Middle East, it's likely that China will win the economic war. A major military conflict between China and the US *soon* can set China back decades, if not permanently, and from the strategic point of view it's either do this or be prepared to cooperate with China and allow the rise of a second super power. Obviously the US cannot declare war on China, and it's reasonably assured that China won't declare war on the US, so the end result must be either a serious excuse (ie China attacks Taiwan) for sanctions or, more likely, political maneuverings on both sides that result in more marbles on the bargaining table (ie North Korea). Either way, the US's economy is dependent on China's - that much is true - but that doesn't mean the US isn't willing to sacrifice short-term economic instability for long-term dominance. After all, we went into Iraq, didn't we?

Correct, and that's the pity. Not at all, if by correctly analyzed, you mean disputed back and forth for decades, moreso ignored by the public, who would rather listen to propaganda. History books are at times as biased as anything else, especially the history books used in the education system. Specialty history books written by eye witness scholars may carry more weight, but they're still often one-sided sources. To get the whole picture you must not only look at both sides of the equation, but you must be personally involved in it. Anything less and your information source is at best second-hand and more likely third or fourth hand, and more often than you believe that information is lacking. The books are rarely wrong - they seldom lie - but they are often lacking in the sense of not presenting the whole picture. And that, in history, is as dangerous as telling a lie. Here's the key problem: you can't *prove* easily that one source is correct whereas another is wrong, because your information is mostly a network of sources, seldom first-hand accounts. Without going into conspiracy theories, I hope you at least recognize that the flow of information is heavily regulated by government interests, and that while the media has a certain degree of mud racking capabilities, true breakthroughs of held secrets are far and few in-between without the presence of cooperative insiders. The irony of the whole situation is that grand failures, such as Watergate and Black Hawk Down, are often picked up by the mediau by virtue of the fact that they were failures and could not be controlled. But successes are seldom known, because they represent situations in which the perpetrating organization is in control. Add to this the natural ability of people to bend the truth to their interests, and the information that flows to you, the public joe, is always in danger of lacking key details. And this they must, because if you were to go out and look and mud rake yourself, as I did, you will find that with regards to Iraq there are multiple perspectives on almost everything. Nothing, in the real world, is in black and white. Terrorists and suicide bombers that target innocent civilians do not do so because they are evil, but because they are desperate and easily corrupted by those who control their flow of information. Standing on a safe moral high horse it's easy to argue otherwise, until you yourself are put in the same situation of day to day live and death. People condemn soldiers that shoot civilians and torture prisoners without knowing the paranoid and feverish psychology of war. People condemn terorrists without knowing that they too are essentially soldiers caught in the same situations. In the end, it's ignorance on every side that creates the atrocities - and yet we continue down this road of fighting ignorance through ignorance.

Yes, because then they'd be shunned by the international community. See, the Chinese have to worry about that, whereas if the US were truly on our own we wouldn't, and the world will be worse off for it if we ever do get pissed off enough to nuke the place.

And America didn't retaliate? Foolishness. We *want* to retaliate but **** we can't do it, no more than the Russians could've and no more than the Chinese can. No country, world power or not, has ever defeated the Middle East. Russia tried and they got kicked out by insurgents. We tried and we got kicked out by insurgents. If China tried, they too would be kicked out by insurgents. The only truly viable solution is to level the whole place via nukes, and that's something that even you, I hope, is not suggesting.

That's not what I complained about. I'm merely observing the miserable state of ignorance we ALL live in, since no one has the truth in the big picture and everyone's experiences determine the facts they know. That's a terrible way to judge, and yet it is the way the world works. And no, checking up on facts do not help: a stroll through google will not give you the truth anymore than reading the newspaper will.

A thread like this cannot be anything but a vehicle for political discussions. Seriously. Politics is debateable; tragedy and people dying are not. There is no need to make a thread for tragedy, unless you are willing to discuss the basis behind it, because the only thing we can do other than discuss politics in such a thread is to offer our condolences. Unsurprisingly, it's difficult for me to offer condolences through a message board about games. It feels absurd, and I'd rather do it over the phone or in person.

It's clear that people's political opinions aren't going to change over a message board, but what I find disturbing is the discrepancy that exists between the information people tend to have. It's my experience in political debates that they eventually result in every side bringing in their heavyweight facts and trying to cow the other side into submission with "reality", but if they were truly a reflection of reality most political debates would not exist, because there'd be a single set of facts and the only thing that'd be debated is one's opinions - and that's seldom debated in a political thread. It seems to me that the absence of the complete set of facts is seriously hampering judgment on all sides of the political debate, and it of course suffices to say that a search through google isn't going to net you the truth anymore than watching the news will. That's what I personally find sad, that with all the avenues of information in the modern age, most people are still left to conceive of facts based only on their experience which, more often than not, are the facts constructed by their political climate and national interests.

Moreso that it was a masterpiece of world building. Linguistic proficiency? Certainly. But plenty of poets and writers possessed greater skills than Tolkien in his time and in ours, and critics have lambasted Tolkien for exactly that reason - that his narrative and language use at times were less than stellar. But that's not the reason Tolkien was loved. When I think LoTR, none of the characters stand out, because all of them do, not as characters, but as types. It is less accurate to say that LoTR was about Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas than that it was about a King, a Dwarf, and an Elf. LoTR mirrored the type of characterization we find in legends, myths, and fairy tales, and by this I do not mean later, post-Freudian adaptations or even Shakespearian interpretations, but the tales at their source, filled with people who are not psychologically complex, who stand more as symbols and emblems than real individuals. It is no secret that Tolkien set out to write a legend, a story of origins. It's no secret that he modeled his work after classics such as Beowulf. Beowulf did not have great characterization by today's standards, but few do not know of Beowulf, just as few do not know of Gandalf. They are types, and while some lambast the use of types, many of the greatest classics you study in English literature deal with types. Deep, complex characterization is not a prerequisite to great literature, fictional or not. Great literature comes in many forms. Some are loved for their characterizations. Others are loved for their styles. *Many* are loved simply because of their literary innovations, or else you'd never see works like Pale Fire on the classics list. The truth of the matter is, LoTR is a work of great literature by virtue of its influence - and yes, that is a necessary gauge in this line of work, despite the opinions of certain academics. Because when it comes down to it, an art form is defined by its masters, and to say that Tolkien is not a master is to ignore the existence of a entire genre of writing - namely, anything to do with high fantasy - and while some would prefer that the genre never existed, it is nevertheless the duty of responsible scholars to study what is, rather than only what they'd like to see.

Sounds more interesting than FFXII, at any case, though the ideas of immortality and reincarnation are hardly derivative of PS:T. A man that cannot die? I seem to recall books and films that dealt with such long before the advent of games.

I think it has alot to do with the fact that the US is the most powerful country in the world. When you're up on top, you're more prone to be criticized, and with good reason, because you hold the most influence out of all the nations, and can do the most good / cause the most harm. This is especially true when we proclaim ourselves as the symbol of freedom and civilization: after all, if the US is supposed to be (and it certainly thinks itself to be) the grand model of human nations, then every human being has an obligation to ensure that it is worthy to be considered such. It's like with celebrity. People like criticizing the life styles of celebrity, but seldom mention their strengths or the basic human flaws inherent in all of us, which simply become more pronounced as a person becomes richer and more famous / powerful. Ultimately, what I'm arguing is that alot of the criticism we receive we brought upon ourselves. Grand ambitions and ideals lead to grand critiques, because they have the potential to become grander failures. The US is very proud of itself and, unlike smaller nations that realize their own limitations, the US continues to believe in its own manifest destiny and centrality in world affairs. Part of this is because the US is still pretty much the only power player in the world. But that is changing, as countries like China continue to grow, and the key issue here is whether the US would ever be able to adapt to a position of co-habitation, rather than dominance. When you strive to rule the sky, you attract commentators on the scale of your hubris, whereas if you merely crawled upon the earth, no one is likely to care. That is the essence of why the US receives alot of flak, and in my perspective, that's a good thing, because it's always wise to check and balance the ambitions of great nations, lest they become too proud and too powerful, and destroy us all.

Happy 4th of July, and three cheers for the Empire of America!

The quality of a film is not subjective. Quality in a product refers to its objective measures, its "inherent or distinguishing characteristic; a property", if you believe dictionary.com. For instance, you may not like Half-Life 2 as a game because you hate FPS's, but that does not mean that it's not a polished, quality FPS. Similarly, a person might not like Peter Jackson's directing skills, but that doesn't mean he isn't a quality director. What is subjective is whether you enjoy something as a work of art/entertainment. On that battlefield I'm not trying to win any medals. I believe in the subjectivity of art and that people should be free to have their own judgment even if everyone else disagrees with them. However, that does not mean a director's objective "qualities" are subject to the same argument, which is what I'm saying.

Was LOTR deep and visceral? Probably not. But fun? I have a hard time believing otherwise, especially compared to Star Wars, which, ironically, fit better with your idea of quirky humor and "magic flashlights". As for being "successful" in the film industry, there are several factors. One is, obviously, the studio profits. You don't (and can't, really) deny that LOTR made ALOT of money, and that any argument specifying its "lack of fun" is futile against the millions of movie goers who apparently considered it fun enough to watch. But profits are not all there is to a film, of course. There is also the response from the critics and academia, in which case LOTR not only received over 90% positive for all reviews, but won more academy awards than any fantasy trilogy to date, including Star Wars. The natural argument against that is that the Oscars are rigged, the Golden Globes are rigged, the critics are crap, the academic is a bunch of bull****ting ivory towerers who follow the crowds, and that the eccentric (since you can't be average, as the film was so popular) film seer alone hold the truth in the matter, right? But then there is the technical and aesthetic achievement factors. Has LOTR broken a record in the film industry? Sure, it has: it is 1) the only fantasy epic to have been critically acclaimed throughout its three films 2) a technical marvel that resulted in numerous CGI innovations and 3) the first HIGH fantasy film that was more than a curiousity or genre piece. There is a huge difference between Star Wars and LOTR. Star Wars created its own franchise through the films. LOTR drew on a much older and richer tradition of Tolkien and D&D. The fact of the matter is, we don't know whether Star Wars makes alot of money because of the film quality or of the fact that it's the Star Wars world, as there have not been a single Star Wars movie that has "flopped." Yet we know that PLENTY of high fantasy films have flopped in the past, such as the D&D movie, the LOTR animated version, etc. Even including one that Lucas himself made (Willow). High fantasy itself does NOT lend very well, by its tradition, to critically acclaimed blockbusters that break industry standards. It does NOT lend itself to anything other than children films as far as the academia is concerned. Yet LOTR broke that tradition. It captured the imagination of a nation and brought an old Hollywood taboo down to its knees. Peter Jackson is not solely responsible for this, but even if he simply got lucky, even if King Kong will suck, Jackson still would've been no less credible than George Lucas, who I can just as well argue got lucky with the first three Star Wars films, since his aftermath hasn't exactly been stellar, either. To conclude, let me just say this: it's fine that you don't like LOTR, fine that you didn't enjoy it. I'm sure there are films that I don't enjoy that you consider masterpieces, as well. That's a matter of taste. But when it comes to calling a director a "hack", especially against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you had better possess arguments other than your own personal preference and vague generalizations about the movie. Really, calling Jackson a hack is the equivalent, in the gaming industry, of calling Bungie, Bioware, or Blizzard "hack developers" Sure, you might not like their games (I personally did not like NWN or KOTOR all that much), but no one in the gaming industry would ever take you seriously if you called them bad developers. So the question you have to ask yourself is this: do you know more than 90% of the people whose life pursuits are the gaming/film industry? Because if you do, then I advice that you get into the industry asap and show us all how it's done.

Given that no one has ever successfully filmed an epic high fantasy trilogy other than Peter Jackson, your words mean very little. Coercing the movie going masses to sit through eight hours worth of the kind of stuff they make fun of you in high school for liking... Now that's talent.

Well, besides being the transition point between human soldiers and robot soldiers, you also have the added benefit that you're not relying on the AI for intelligent behavior. Realistically, human soldiers operating machines have no chance in hell against the kind of AI depicted in sci-fi, but cyborgs, which enhance human soldiers, can bring them to levels close to or matching pure robots. Maybe that's just my fanboyishness talking. Cyborgs vs. Robots for teh win.

Yeah, but it's somewhat harder to make a joke about Terminator . I guess Arnold being the herald of our apocalyptic future is comic, but T3 actually had a good, poignant ending, imo. :cool: I'll be back.

Depends on the kind of "dream science" you're talking about, I'd think. The problem with scientific research in general is that it has to operate in competition with other scientific research. Countless proposals are submitted by researchers every year, and the question that is posed to societal and corporate interests is then, which scientific research should be supported and which not? Obviously, corporate interests will be self-serving, but let's talk government support. You can't support all the research, not even close. So do you support the proposal to find a cure for major diseases, or do you support the proposal to build a trash can that can talk? Obviously, that's me exaggerating, but really it comes down to a matter of responsibility. I for one would like to see all the research that currently goes into making better weapons go into curing diseases and world hunger. Is that a practical view? Sure. But I'd rather feel like we're doing all that we can to end human misery, than taking stabs in the dark in hopes of discovering something useful. Not that the latter is unworthy, but that the former is more psychologically appealing to me as a person. And that's all there is to it, sometimes.

And then the robots will take over and we'll become their batteries! (w00t) After which we'll debase ourselves in massive orgies while Keanu Reeves will go "whoa" and make peace with the robots by debugging their software.

How do you know that you don't lose your soul each time you fall asleep? After all, your consciousness could've been recreated each night, and the current you might be a entirely different person than you were yesterday, only with the same memories. I mean, famous thought experiment: assume that I replaced your neurons one by one with electronic neurons that served the exact same purpose. At what point do you "lose" your soul, assuming that the transistors do the exact same thing and that the result is a person with the equivalent neuronal connections? And what's more, what if I used the replaced cells to construct another brain that is neurologically identical to the electric one? Which body will your "consciousness" inhabit then, if any?