Amentep

I thought that the Vox Populi being as bad as the Founders was part of the point of the story. Because, in essence the Founders create the Vox Populi by their own actions; they are - from the story's perspective - a dark mirror of the other. (I'd argue that the themes ultimately aren't racism and discrimination - the theme is about how the past creates you. Comstock, Fitzroy, DeWitt, the Luteces are all trapped by their past. The question of the game is, can Elizabeth - in being freed from her literal cage, free the others from their historical cage? Can the past be changed (or metaphorically, can one escape ones own past?)) At least that's how I saw it. I think the idea, with respect to your spoiler is I enjoyed the game. Mostly for the novel setting and the "look". I thought the story was okay but not great. Can't really speak to the shooter stuff that much because its not really my style of game, ultimately.

I have never seen so much pretentious hogwash written about a computer game (games journalists = contradiction in terms) as I have about Bioshock Infinite. According to the online hivemind it was like John Paul Satre meets The Seven Samurai. I watched a live feed and it looks like a very average steampunk-ish FPS. WTF? While I liked Bioshock Infinite, I can't say that its story is terribly compelling. They telegraphed the "twists", IMO, and the primary thing I think that catches one is the somewhat novel setting (which isn't steampunk) and its use of old-style-feeling pseudo-Americana. The shooter aspect of it is serviceable but the maps aren't terribly interesting (not sure on how it plays tactically as I had it on a lower difficulty setting - my reflexes just aren't what they used to be). To me its a case of style over substance and probably how much you like it will tie into how much you like its style.

Which one? You can find Corto Maltese English editions on ebay. From what I can tell, Sous le signe du Capricorne, La maison doree de Samarkand, and Mu (and possibly one other) have as yet not been translated (completely) into English. The other question I'd have is, as an uninitiated person, which story would be the best to start with?

Drowsy I am concerned that your understanding of the conflict in Chechnya, Beslan and the USA involvement is incorrect Can you explain why you think the USA funded the Checknyan extremists in any respect? And more: Not to mention open propaganda support (TIME magazine covers and all). The first one is, I believe, from The Crescent International Magazine, the second appears to be from The Middle East Quarterly. I'm not terribly familiar with either, so can't say what kind of sources they (or, the authors articles) are / have

And Sawyer does not like Baldur's Gate 2, he strongly dislikes it. Actually that's not logically true; what he says it that there was not much he did like about it. That doesn't mean that there was a lot he didn't like about it. He actually only mentions disliking 3 things - he could be neutral to the remainder. Now - even supposing that he does indeed dislike much of how BGII did things - since the game he's making is supposed to be partially inspired by games that include BG I don't believe that he's going to ignore BGII in that. I think what he'll do is see what expectations fans of BG might have and find ways to address that in ways he thinks are better design. The three things he mentions not liking are relatively easy to avoid when creating the story and characters, I think. Don't make the plot about saving someone, don't cluster so many quests in singular locations that npcs actually interrupt each other giving you quests and don't weigh some joinable NPCs with much more reactivity than others. Boom all of his concerns addressed and without - necessarily - saying the game can't be "like" BGII (of course, maybe this is a problem of your "like" BGII being vastly different from my ""like" BGII) However, by your argument standards saying "there is some room for minor improvement" means you're admitting to not like it too... It depends. I don't like shooters that much, but if I was to make one I'd try to make the best one I could. And I'd address the things I don't generally like about shooters without compromising what I think would be the best shooter that we could make. Because that would be my job. BUT I'd also say that PE never promised a "Baldur's Gate 2 style game". They promised "an isometric, party-based computer RPG set in a new fantasy world developed by Obsidian Entertainment" and a game that "will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.". Which as I mentioned earlier is not - to me at least - equivilent to BG2 + IWD + PST = BG2. I don't remember that - do you have a link? I remember him saying that he wanted to do a game like BG and IWD and PST - I think all the Obs people did. But I don't remember him saying that he wanted to do a game that specifically was exactly (or nearly) like Baldur's Gate. Not saying it didn't happen - I never read all the interviews and press and things so could have missed it, but it'd certainly elucidate your feelings on the issue. I'm not trolling, you are just pissed off that I am pointing out that the lead designer strongly dislikes the Baldur's Gate series. Abnd you keep on nagging me about that too. Must suck to live in denial. I'm not pissed off not sure how I gave you that impression. I just think you're willfully misconstruing what Swayer actually said to fit a preconceived notion that PE is violating some rather arbitrary standards you've created. I accept I might be wrong in this, which is why I ask questions, and try to present how I'm seeing your argument so that we might - if not agree - understand each other. Now, PE may come along and suck and it may suck for all the reasons you're worried about. But - and perhaps I'm being over optimistic - at this point in time I'm not seeing the same concerns you are; nor am I seeing the same disregard for Baldur's Gate that you do (and, conversely, I don't feel as strongly that PE should be as devoted to recreating the BGII experience as you seem to). And that's okay.

I might go back and pick up the DKs since Cornell left and the time jump(?) to see if it lives up to the potential I saw in the title.

What makes you think that disliking aspects of something translates to hating something? There are precious few - arguably no - games, books, or movies that are flawless; ergo there are precious few examples of these things that are immune to criticism. I loved BGII. That doesn't mean I think its perfect. But under your logic, if I were to state my opinion that it was short sighted of Bioware to give Nalia a repeated banter line about "How are we helping the less fortunate?" that triggers while you're completing her primary quest means that suddenly I have a raging hate for BGII which isn't further from the truth. Unfortunately, I have to conclude you've decided to troll these forums since you're not actually discussing anything anymore (something I know you can and have done in the past about your concerns of the direction of this project).

Anyone who takes a poll or survey that involves self-selecting votes through the internet seriously is deluding themselves that there is statistical value or meaning in what is being "said".

Yeah it looks to be a fairly dumb fun film.

Another series that is only spottily available here (unless you import and can read French).

I was older than a teen when I played BG2. I thought Minsc was bland (thought he was bland in BG2 and wouldn't have used him but I thought Dynaheir was the best of the bad mage choices). Edwin I didn't like, he was IMO banal evil. Aerie could be a useful party member but a lot of her dialogue is overwrought and as subtle as a brick to the head. Jan Jansen was funny though, but even then it was broad and unsubtle and very easy to see why it'd turn people off. Part of the benefit of the Torment NPCs IMO was that you only got out of them what time you invested in them. BGII had a overabundance of character - in both positive and negative sense. Great game, but again I see no problem taking a critical eye to it and seeing what worked and trying to figure out why it worked (and what didn't work and avoiding it).

When the new 52 was announced, Demon Knights was the title I was most interested in. There were a lot of DC's fantasy characters and others that could fit the title. Paul Cornell was coming off two well done comic book works KNIGHT AND SQUIRE and CAPTAIN BRITON AND MI13. Cornell in interviews was playing up the idea of an adventurous fantasy story lobbing around references to LOTR and Dragon Age. And then the book we got was a group of people stuck in a town being snarky to one another while the big bad went around killing everyone in their path (for no clear reason) while searching for some MacGuffin. Needless to say I thought it was terrible. After four issues I gave up on it; sadly it was the Paul Cornell who'd written some really poor Doctor Who stories, and not the one who wrote some really good Doctor Who stories who showed up. That said I'd agree the SoS 1st issue was bad. If I hadn't bought the 1st and 2nd issue together I'd probably have dropped it with #1. Same thing happened with the recent KATANA title; although in KATANA's case, I think the 2nd issue was actually intended to be the 1st and the published 1st issue was a last minute editorial edict comic. Mark Waid's 75th Anniversary Quiz: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44987 I only got #3 and #8.

I'm going to try and see Oblivion tomorrow. See how that goes. RE: GI Joe, I think they were trying to do a "soft" reboot. That said the way they did things, I think a lot of the characters (if not the actors) from the first film could come back. And finally G. Reeves is the best Superman, IMO. What can I say, I was an impressionable kid and I've never liked the modern Superman films.

I just finished Sword of Sorcery's most recent 3 issues (I think the last hasn't came out). it's amazing for a fantasy semi-anthology that they shied away from fantasy world, instead doing modern age urban fantasy. Also too much New 52 John Constantine.

They gave away the bullet in the eye in the trailer though, so it was hard to be impressed by it. Heck they had Noel Neill in it for a cameo and they made it creepy. So it was impossible to enjoy even that (at least Jack Larson fared a bit better). I did think Routh did his best though; there's just no way he could have saved it.

I was trying to come up with some way to describe PST that I could then combine it with elements from BGII and BGI and not come up with IWD. Forgive the word choice, as its not really the point of my statement. I was merely trying to counter's argument that Josh hating (elements) of BGII meant that PE was IWD + PST /= BGII with a similar comparison that BGII + BG1 + PST =/ IWD; in essence there's no transitive property with this type of equation. I feel its misleading because of the reasons you describe above. It so nebulous, so open to interpretation, that's its virtually meaningless. Its a carefully constructed term designed to evoke positive responses yet leave so much wiggle room as to not mean anything. I didn't expect the same mechanics because Obsidian doesn't have the DnD license, but I also didn't expect for most mechanics to have a random turd (a "twist" specifically designed to discourage use) attached to each either. So, for me, "spiritual successor" just turned into throwing $52 bucks in the toilet. No biggie, but lesson learned. Eh, if someone said they were doing a spiritual successor to Wizardry I'd expect magic, variety of classes, party based and a 3d view with turn-based battles. Beyond that...well here's the thing, I care about the mechanics being fun rather than some absolute position. I haven't liked or agreed with every design choice I've heard but (and its a big one) if the game ends up being fun and balanced, IMO, how the game does it is irrelevant. PST didn't do inventory the same as BG1; IWD2 didn't use the same rules as BG1; IWD had little character interaction, BG2 did. The IE games in between themselves gave a wide variety of options and implementations. Heck, IWD2 tried to address a lot of the inventory issues people complained about in the other games by adding a lot of containers so people could get around various inventory limits. I'm not surprised to see some of these things being looked at for another "IE like" game.

Aka Super-Creepy Stalker Man Returns Really, really disliked that film. The plane set-piece being the only thing of merit, IMO.

A lengthy isometric fantasy RPG with a number of well drawn, well written joinable companions, with a strong story and sidequests and a fun and involving combat system. And an emotional/philosophical exploration based narrative like Planescape Torment combined with the stronghold building of Baldur's Gate II and the explorable map areas of Bladur's Gate I doesn't sound much like Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter. I'm not really sure how you can combine these three games and ever get Baldur's Gate unchanged back. So I'm not sure how you can take a concept that promises "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment" and assume it'll be exactly like Baldur's Gate II. PE to my mind is a game that pulls elements from all of these games; by its nature it can't be BALDUR'S GATE III or ICEWIND DALE III. Really? Because what I read was: and the above quote about how they planned to use elements of all three games, neither of which to my mind promise a continuation of Baldur's Gate replicated ten years on. YMMV of course; but that's not what I got out of the Kickstarter video.

Since when is PE the spritual successor to Baldur's Gate only? Seems to me there is a lot of room in being the spiritual successor to BG, BGII, PST, IWD, IWD2 and expansions than you want to acknowledge to do a variety of things. And really what I take from a line like "I really disliked most of the CNPCs, I really disliked being forced to go find Imoen, I really disliked the style of dialogue, and I really disliked being flooded with a million quests by every shmoe on the streets of Athkatla. Basically, there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it." has more to do with disliking the way the story, joinable NPCs, and quest design was implemented. We already know that the system is different (different engine, no D&D rules). I'd imagine the "impact" of Sawyers "hate" is that he won't tell the story the same way BGII did or implement quests the same way it did or have NPCs built the same way and interact with the party the same way. Which, to be fair, neither did BG1, PST or IWD and IWD2. And I doubt PE is going to be exactly like them either. I'm not sure where the problem is, to be honest because I never expected PE to be slavishly devoted to recreating any of those games, but taking the style of game and making something new.

I have two people who work for me now who started their careers (long ago) as tellers. Looks to be good work - particularly for those putting themselves through college.

I dunno, Dan wasn't looking so good when Isabel "Izzy" Dare visited after becoming Smasher in Hickman's AVENGERS (yeah I know its just a fun wink & nod) I need to look into some of the Dan Dare Frank Hampson reprints from a few years back.

Silver-Age Superman built all kinds of super-science stuff, but it was all very wacky silver-age stuff as compared to the Kirby-Tech of Reed Richards.

I stand corrected then on Hulk in vacuums; I blame my memory. I don't remember the Superman bit in the new 52 - was that in Lobdell's Superman or Morrison's Action (or some other book?)

They haven't announced anything on how reputation would work in P:E. How is this even supposed to work? Like Bingo? Reputation is a broader concept than individual reaction, and the words you've placed tend toward personal perceptions. How can an entire faction feel "affection" for an individual? Unless this entire faction is a hivemind, your idea doesn't make sense. You haven't actually added an additional dimension to the concept of reputation, all you've done is placed a linear reputation scale vertically, repeated it three times and given positive, neutral and negative reputations different names in each column. What the grid is is showing what the parts of the Cartesian graph would be Sympathy (X,-Y) Affection (X, 0) Admiration (X, Y) Indifference (0, -Y) Neutral (0,0) Respect (0, Y) Disgust (-X, -Y) Hatred (-X, 0) Fear (X, -Y) I'd quibble on the naming system (as some of the names are loaded), but really the idea is "quantitative value vs qualitative value" and there maybe better ways to describe it, but it is two dimensional. Now in terms of reputation, I'd argue that having "Liked" as a status per the Fallout example in a large group is pretty silly too. For example I might get my reputation with the NCR to liked without having met more than 10% of the NCR people. How is an entire faction suppose to "like" me when they haven't met me. Being villified by some powder gangers (who attacked me first and who I killed to the man so WHO TELLS THE POWDER GANGERS I DID IT?) is also silly. But that's how game reputations work. If you were trying to be less abstract you could have a "reputation" for factions and a seperate "opinion" for individuals in the factions.

Just like nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition? Only with more duckbills and poison spurs.