Amentep

My point was to say if both films are losing money why are the indies seen as "worse" to lose money? Even still, lets say that the blockbuster does $50 million and is number one on a slow week. That's (by the above scenario) 5 million tickets. That's 45 million pirated views under the 90% scenario described and $450 million in lost revenue. The thing about availability is that it holds through in piracy. Do you think, honestly, that a film that barely squeaked into 2 theaters is even going to be made available to pirate, and if it is who would know about it to download it. The stuff that gets pirated are the big budget blockbusters and the Oscar bait art films that have buzz. Could there be an audience to pirate a film like, say, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X that only showed a handful of festivals? Amentep, I believe we're both trying to say that it doesn't matter if a lot of top ten movies get pirated. Or that even a greater proportion. Your mistake - and its very understandable - is in assuming that it is the percentage return on investment which matters. But it isn't, by itself. Any investment proposal is tailored around the return, the risk on the return, and the scale of the return. Blockbusters get pirated, they even fail outright if they don't catch the pubic imagination just right. So the risks are high. But the rtruns are huge, and they are in an order of magnitude which suits big investors. So, if I am making an indie movie I have to pitch a return which won't allow an investor to put all their money with me, won't return a monetary 'win' on a scale I can recognise, and can still get pirated out of existence when people are too lazy to find local showings or buy the DVD. Most indie film makers I've met aren't even in indie films to make money. They are only in them as part of the lifecycle on the way to making big budget Hollywood films. The thing is, the loss of returns is rather important; several recent films actually made money but didn't make ENOUGH money to cover the other losses. As it was put, the studioes don't want to invest 50 mil to make 100 mil, they want to invest 50 mil to make 300 mil. And that's just crazy; but if you think about it, they think like this because they have to balance to cost of all the 50 mil films that made 50 mil or less. As to what I've seen, I saw THE CONJURING a nice classic haunted house/demon monster story. James Wan has turned out to be a pretty good creepy horror film director.

Because that was an area that much effort went into in DA2. Well they reused a handful of really small maps for DA2. DAI now uses one really big map for everything. And people thought Bio didn't learn anything from DA2 ... (I kid, I liked DA2 reused maps and all).

I like Prometheus in an entertainment way. It doesn't logically hold together that well, though. So being a satisfying sci-fi film isn't really in its DNA. That said the rolling ship crushing thing was stupid, as was the "we can't find our way out" bit. Which to me is the frustrating thing, I think they could have made a really great film and didn't, and that's always a let down. Still was entertained by it.

I should be clear I made those abilities up on the spot - I have no clue what they're doing with the actual abilities, just that was the kind of thing I thought they were talking about. As far as accuracy, I guess it depends on how they implement it. I suppose accuracy could be used to overcome DT(? - as a sign of precise hits to the weak areas of the armor) instead of hit/miss (since you reminded me they seem to have a different hit/miss ratio planned).

To be fair though, Le Morte d'Arthur would have been a bit different without "The Book of Sir Tristrams de Lyons" and "Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwynevere" as would Orlando Furioso without Ruggiero and Bradamante... I didn't want to argue that physical passion doesn't have a place in any story at all. It certainly does in some stories. But it doesn't categorically make all stories deeper. Whether PE, or any other work, would benefit from sexual relationships depends on what the themes, the story and the characters are like. (I don't see any difference between asking for romance mechanics out of context and asking for aging or art mechanics out of context, except the fact that some people are obsessed with the particular inclusion of waifu choices. Whether any of those mechanics are relevant depends on the story - sometimes they would be an artificial, meaningless addition if only included for the sake of being included. Marlow romancing Kurtz, Kurtz's women or a fluff character would have really sucked.) I agree, what's in a game should be decided by the game design and intent. Aging and romance could be very important to a story that spans generations but pointless otherwise. The game, the story, the characters all dictate whether romance makes sense or not.

I could be wrong but that's not how I understand the post by Sawyer. I read that as there will be one stat, lets call it "Damage", that will influence all damage output whether it be physical or magical. I don't know about you but that's one stat Im going to be pouring points into as it influences a gigantic portion of the entire game. I'm probably wrong, but what I thought he was talking about was something like: Intelligence: All Bonus Damage (represents knowing where to strike to be most effective with spell or steel) and all bonus healing (knows the best ways to fix what ails you) Perception: All Accuracy Bonuses (high perception allows you to better make adjustments on the fly, etc...) Strength: Weapons access Dexterity: speed of attack So three warriors Warrior 1: Moderate Str, mod Dexterity, Mod Int and High Per = dual wielding fighter (mod base dam sword and low base dam knife) with a flurry of strikes with sword and dagger Warrior 2: Low Str, high dex, High Int mod, mod per = rapier (low base damage) wielding character hits often with critical strikes Warrior 3: High Str, mod dex, low int, mod per = axe (high base damage) wielding warrior with average speed and accuracy but hits indiscriminately. Or something

There's a few times where you do that. IMO one of the issues with Tomb Raider has already been stated. The other is that, thematically, it matched itself to Far Cry 3 a wee to well. Both games are ultimately a 20 something being stuck on a primitive island with semi-mystical forces at work. Far Cry arguably handles it better because not everyone on the island is pure kill crazy, while on the Tomb Raider island, EVERYONE Lara meets that didn't show up with her, is attempting to kill her. Also, Lara was IMO a bit to... weak(? probably not the right word but I'm tired) at the start of the game, with her barely being able to survive and the ENTIRE TIME you're listening to her panicked "Oh god! Please! Oh God!" over and over again. Tossing on my Faux Game Dev hat, I'm gonna say that were I constructing Lara's reboot adventure, I'd have her being a grad student who's part of a dig or something. The tutorial has her unlocking and opening a tomb that they found, which kids off the main plot. Make it an Indiana Jones style "Magical Macguffin" chase, rather than "Are you the Predator? or the Prey?" with her first kill (that she spends some down time coming to terms with) being a bandit who attacked the crew and tried to make off with said Macguffin. I think the setting lore explains why everyone wants to kill her, but I think it would have worked more interestingly if there had been multiple factions on the island that perhaps react to what Lara's done as opposed to being kill crazy (technically there are two excluding Lara's own group, but they're virtually indistinguishable in their "kill kill kill" approach to strangers).

My point was to say if both films are losing money why are the indies seen as "worse" to lose money? Even still, lets say that the blockbuster does $50 million and is number one on a slow week. That's (by the above scenario) 5 million tickets. That's 45 million pirated views under the 90% scenario described and $450 million in lost revenue. The thing about availability is that it holds through in piracy. Do you think, honestly, that a film that barely squeaked into 2 theaters is even going to be made available to pirate, and if it is who would know about it to download it. The stuff that gets pirated are the big budget blockbusters and the Oscar bait art films that have buzz. Could there be an audience to pirate a film like, say, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X that only showed a handful of festivals?

I'm saying for every literary fantasy where romance doesn't make sense there's one that its rather important to. Which is really the key here, you can do a story with or without romance. Both stories can be crackling good. That's why I keep trying to stress that really, ultimately, if romances are in or out and if they're in what kind of romances they are really has to be dictated by story and character. There's not a "one size fits all" solution here. I thought plopping out a kid in the middle of combat without missing an axe-swing was the definition of barbarian women?

Nah, Planescape didn't allow you to have that deeper interaction and connection with party members that a sexual experience provides. That was the one thing unrealistic about the game for me. The ideal Romance implementation for me is BG2 or the DA series where you can court Morrigan and Isabela So do you think Divine Comedy would have been deeper if Dante ploughed Beatrice? To be fair though, Le Morte d'Arthur would have been a bit different without "The Book of Sir Tristrams de Lyons" and "Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwynevere" as would Orlando Furioso without Ruggiero and Bradamante...

Anyone else entertained by what just happened here? Anyway, I've never heard of that movie either. Doesn't matter. Let's posit, hypothetically, that 90% of all films is pirated. Now I'm going to painfully exaggerate this, but let's say: If 90% of a blockbuster's views are pirated, that still gives them a couple million. If 90% of an indie flicks' views are pirated, that means only about ten people actually paid for it. Obviously this is the most hyperbole version of events there is, but indie films have a much smaller viewer base in the first place. Piracy, even at the same rate, hurts indie filmmakers far more than big studios. Okay lets say a blockbuster cost $150 million. Lets say a indie film cost $150,000. Lets say that based on movie ticket prices, it can be shown that the "people" behind the films get $10 a ticket. Lets follow the common wisdom that a blockbuster has to make 2.5 times the money it cost to make to make a profit (because of advertising, prints, shipping). Lets say the indie film has to make 1.5 its cost to cover advertising, prints, festivals. So Blockbuster needs $375,000,000 and indie needs $225,000. Blockbuster must sell 37,500,000 tickets worldwide; indie needs 22,500. Lets say 1 million people see the Blockbuster and 1 hundred thousand see the indie. 90% are pirates. So there are 100,000 paying Blockbuster customers and 10,000 Indie customers. The "people" behind the blockbuster are $374,000,000 in the red. "People" behind the indies are $125,000 in the red. I don't think either "win".

Worked for me. YMMV I guess.

I thought the locations only showed up as rewards for collecting tomb treasure and/or geocaches (otherwise they only showed up if you "spotted them")? That said while I'm not sure that I want to see a return to some of the really painful timed jumps of the earlier series, I think some harder puzzles - particularly for "optional" tombs should be a must.

"Little Computer People" for a new generation?

I dunno, I can't say I agree with your experience. I liked Tomb Raider a lot and the only Tomb Raider I can say I liked before that was the original one. Weirdly I feel the complaint of too much combat could be leveled at most of the series (it was the London level and the heavy focus on combat in II and III that turned me off the series). And for me I felt that while there weren't a lot of specific Tombs to raid on the island the exploration and finding artifacts and the history of the island and inhabitants was just as interesting. I'm not sure how they can turn this game into a template for the series, but I thought it did well for what it set out to do (which is mainly to re-establish Lara Croft in a good modern game).

How does Ambition Mode work? It doesn't seem clear on the website.

I liked Dark Shadows - its a mess of a film, but I though it was fun. I think the subplots were a nod to the fact the original show was a soap opera (so always had subplots going on). Having said that, I don't remember was the deus ex machina at the end was (at least anything that hadn't been somewhat set up earlier in the story).

To be honest, I took the frailty of the spouse in FO2 as a challenge. Managed to get her through all of the game to the Enclave base where the auto-turrets (IIRC) chunked her. It was sad.

I like both!

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I think there is some logical stretching by fans to "justify" bugs by pointing out publisher issues. But again I say this as someone who hasn't experienced Obs games being worse than others with bugs.

The last I read was that we'd be getting a Southern Belle voice and a French accent.

Have you forced vertical sync off in the .ini file? That apparently causes all sorts of weirdness. Sadly I'm playing it on a console. Otherwise I'd have modded the **** out of it for a better experience like I did Oblivion and Morrowind. No, it's just plain and simply bad writing and it doesnt limit itself to the main story. Every time I have gotten a new quest, there has been a good chance the dialog was so half-assed that questions like "why?" and "what the hell just happened?" have been emerging to my mind rather strongly after I've got the quest. You know when I wrote that I hadn't really given it a thought, but there was a bit in Dawnguard where Serena was telling me something important and the only response I could choose was "Just get on with it" which seemed a bit weird as an only response. So I can see where you're thinking about it being half-assed in someways since it actually didn't make sense in context (at least they didn't give me two choices where both went to the same response). Some of the quests do seem rather...random. But I do think part of that is the nature of the game and the radiant AI making spot quests very basic.

To be honest, I've never found Obsidian's games to be more (or less) buggy than other game company's output. And pretty much every Gamebryo game I've played have had game ending bugs. But Bio's games have had some bugs (usually graphical glitches, but some others as well).

BTW if you pledged through Kickstarter, you can log in and check to see what tier you backed at. For those who can't remember.