Amentep

You know, I knew that at one point and forgot. Oops! I can remember **** that happened on Black Isle's forum a decade ago, but I can't remember something about one of their actual games...kinda sad, actually.

But there can be only one! Or is that immortals and not Bruces? Maybe we can lop some heads off until we're sure? Not yours of course, other Bruces.

For BG2 and ToB, there was Gromnir, Mencar Pebblecrusher, Del, and Lanfear. I may be forgetting a few. But there were definitely a lot of crybabies. Including Lanfear herself, who couldn't quite get a joke. ...Typical humorless German not understanding American/Kanedan making funny. Lanfear is a name of a fairly major character in The Wheel of Time books, which were extremely popular books in the 90s (and 00s) if you're somehow unaware. It would be a very safe wager that the forum user took her/his name from these books, and that bioware did as well. And on that note, I'd wager that most of the names you guys are thinking were taken from forum posters that made it into games were really not, and the game creators were just taking the name from the same place the forum poster got their name from, wherever that was. In the case of Lanfear, it was about the poster, who was a fan of Coran in the first game and lobbied hard for his inclusion in BG2. When the game comes out, lo and behold Coran is in it. For about two seconds before he and the PC confront Lanfear who promptly kills Safana (and IIRC if the player is a female PC she kills Coran too) and then leaves (if not killed) after Lanfear is killed by the party. My memory is the original poster was outraged about this and made a big fuss before leaving the boards. Gromnir was about him as well (is there another Gromnir?). I don't even remember Mencar Pebblecrusher at this point. But do remember Del and Draconis. Still hard to believe these things that happened on the boards are now being lost to time...

I know what you meant, but I had a sudden flash of Russia requiring proof that rational people were only marrying irrational people as they forbade "interrational" marriage between two rational people such that the irrational people get forced to wear φ armbands so they can be properly picked by those represented by the set ℚ...

Is that the explanation for why that end credits song on PST sounds like its from a different game? I'd always wondered about that.

I thought Amway was like Avon, Mary Kay or Tupperware - it was a direct selling company.

Well - what about the classics like David Lynch's Eraserhead? If not that, have you watched any Alejandro Jodorowsky films? El Topo and Santa Sangre are pretty good; Holy Mountain certainly has a cult following but I've never been as satisfied by it as others are. If you like dark comedies at all, you could do worse than cult film The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole.

I got to admit, I've never understood the appeal of the Evangelion series.

I've never tried to get all the trophies or achievements or whatever in any game, I don't see SPSoT changing that at all.

Its a video of the first "one of these things is not like the others" song & sketch from Sesame Street.

The thing that I don't get is that the first paragraph is being accused of "[erasing] queer sexuality in men and women and totally [being] a transphobe in [Jensen's] opening paragraph" and yet the opening paragraph is about her experiences: "When I attend a show like GDC or E3, I tend to get a number of questions from the press related to the fact that I have innie genitalia rather than outtie." (emphasis mine) And that there are people agreeing with the poster is mind boggling seeing that he or she seems to fails at reading comprehension. I really don't get it. Add in that people seem to be thinking that Jensen is stating some form of "gospel" about design rather than her preference...it kind of makes me sad that people don't actually seem to want to understand what people post rather than just read what they want to into it and go off on their own tangents. I mean, sure "the author is dead" but that doesn't mean you had to waylay him in the parking lot like a ninja and put two in the back of his head.

Well in that case I'd argue - as you recognize - the problem is really the player doesn't want to go into the combat the combat theme signals is forthcoming rather than a problem with the music itself, but it is a fair point that people would find themselves in that situation given the circumstance and repetition over time.

Okay...I'm a irredeemable game re-starter. If I can create my character I'll tinker around with race/class combinations (add a moderately deep character appearance editor and I may spend hours before I start the game). I like being able to skip cutscenes because of it so I can get to test driving the character I created. But weirdly I also feel like I've cheated my final character if I don't playthrough the entire game with that character. Weird, I know, but even thought the Elder Scrolls allowed you to change the character at the end of the prologue (and you could save right before there and come out with any character you wanted) I always played the prologue because that's where I got to see the character in action.

The only time I've ever had problems with repeating music is when I didn't like the song. If I liked the song and was tired of hearing it, mentally I just stopped paying attention to it.

I don't really see a similarity other than the orchestration and being slower mid-tempo songs. The actual unobtrusive melodies in each don't actually sound much alike to me.

Well, you just break the law. Jaywalking is pretty common here, occasionally the cops do a crackdown because too many pedestrians get killed by cars but for the most part they ignore it (like everything else, heh). Or because you're black. Supposedly the whole thing is a scam, legislation pushed through by special interest. The whole 'jay walking kills' campaign. Not supported by stats. Eh...there's a school across the street from where I work and a lot of the community kids jaywalk to get to the campus. Also about four bus stops for the public transport system (not school bus) along the street where community adults go to catch the bus. There's a high number of accidents on the street but I've not heard of anyone being killed because of those accidents. That said, I've never been late walking either - its not like you can't know how fast you walk and how the lights are timed if you use the road paths more than once. (And at least locally we have crosswalks that aren't at lights now where traffic is supposed to stop for pedestrians using the road to cross)

There's still some issues (I don't know about nursing, specifically) in some situations. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full Nice read, still I would had liked if they had gotten to the bottom of what their bias was specifically. While the story is interesting, 127 is a rather small sample size. Given that the reviewers were science faculty from similarly situated universities, not only do you have a limited sample size you also have a specific test pool that could skew the data Is the bias endemic to research institutions, institutions of higher learning, to the sciences or the greater culture? We can't know from this study. I'd also argue that with such a small pool you also have a problem of being able to extrapolate to larger populations. Given that we also don't know the backgrounds but do know the faculty were all science faculty at intensive research institutions there might also be a question of whether the "random faculty" coincidentally don't have random backgrounds (ie they end up being products of very similar personal, professional, educational, and life experiences - perhaps enough so that the bias is explained because the random group has become comprised of people who have through similar development brought similar outlooks to the experiment and thus wield a similar bias). There would really need to be follow-up studies on this with broader populations to really understand the bias and where it might come from and whether it exists in the way the study describes on a wide scale. EDIT: Learned a new word today - Doxxing.

^I understand your criticism but not really my feeling. Sure I felt it was stupid when she shouted in the scene mentioned. I didn't mind the hiding information since that seems to be a pretty common occurrence in today's fiction (heck the entire series Lost was based on people not telling things that if they had would have saved people and probably got them off the island faster).

What bunker were they living in to not hear of Erin Brockovich when the movie came out (it garnered a bunch of award nominations)? Unless you told a bunch of teenagers or something who were like...3 when the movie came out...

Once Upon a time in America is good; its been awhile since I've heard his The Mission. But he is so prolific that he did it all from crime films, to dramas, to comedies, to actions films and westerns. Diverse stuff like mod spy film Danger: Diabolik to John Carpenter's The Thing. Always liked his The Untouchables soundtrack too... I like Goldsmith but he has a lot of good sountracks on bad films to be fair (I don't recall Gremlins 2's music at all, though). And for me Hans Zimmer is a bit hit or miss; like some of his stuff but others don't grab me. I do like Giacchino a good bit though. And I'm fond of Danny Elfman's work although I understand why others don't like him as much. RE: Rita - caught a bit of Cover Girl the other day and the look stuck with me. Was a pain finding a picture I could use though...

Gah...read the comments on the Jensen interview...

There used to be an adage in film reviews that if a modern film held significant narration it was because the developers tested the movie with audience who came out confused so the now panicked producers decided to do verbal info dump to explain the stuff the movies natural narrative failed at conveying. Now I don't think that's 100% true (I like a number of films that use narration) but I think it is true that often narration is a crutch in storytelling - and one that I'd be wary of using but sparingly in video games for fear of the player losing the immediacy of playing the game (and if 99% of the players are going to hit spacebar to skip the narration to get to the gameplay...there's no point in having it).

good stuff. am partial to ennio moricone for movie soundtracks/themes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oag1Dfa1e_E we can be a bit cynical at times, but is tough to be complete jaded when you hear something so beautiful. that being said, we thinks that jon brion is one o' the most under-appreciated composers doing movie themes today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s0VetAuYDY HA! Good Fun! You can't go wrong with Morricone; and Ron Goodwin did a number of fine sountracks including Where Eagle's Dare, Force 10 from Navarone the 1960 Village of the Damned and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. I'd still probably stake Bernard Herrimann's soundtracks higher than either personally (for adventure soundtracks, his Mysterious Island is great but for me North by Northwest is the best title theme in film, probably (and probably just me personally) closely followed by Ronald Stein's The Haunted Palace in second place... Not sure who I'd go for for modern composers in film, there are a few I like (I've liked Brion on Paranorman and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but can't say I'm as familiar with him as I am with others).

Only time I had green or red show up on a monitor (old style, not new LCD screens) the monitor was going bad. But that was the whole screen while yours sounds like its only part. Since you're on PC - are your drivers up to date? Have you verified the game files through STEAM to make sure there's nothing wrong with them? Have you downloaded the latest patch?

Have you tried switching buddies before trying to go to the next screen? Is the PS3 patch available internationally yet (it seems its available in the US, but I don't know how the international scene is shaping up) to see if the patch helps at all?