Amentep

I think Tolkien's fantasy stuff has its place. I just don't think it should be the only flavor of ice cream we get. I loved it in SSI's Phantasie when creating your party you could randomly get some of the monster races to join your party. I liked the inclusion of the planetouched in NWN2 (since they didn't show up much in D&D videogames to my experience). But ultimately as long as the races in the game - standard or non-standard, Tolkien or not - as long as they're fun to play and distinct enough to give reasons to want to play them...well I'm good with that.

Romance could be a part of the content if it's well done. If Josh has already has this in mind for specific reason related to the story and story dynamic I'd be fine with that. But just adding romance because OMG I WANNA ROMANCE MAH PARTY is a waste of Obsidian's time. besides we all know the party gets hot and heavy when we hit the "sleep" button and the screen fades to black anyhow. I kid. I kid. Joking aside, I don't think most of the people posting about romances would disagree with your statement. I think - because we don't know how much of PROJECT ETERNITY is nailed down - we're seeing a lot of people suggesting that it be considered when nailing down the story / story dynamic.

To be fair, though, some people see romances as something that can add extra play quality to the game (ie make it the best game possible). Some don't. And then people polarize and start making extreme statements that don't make any sense. And then the thread gets shut down by a moderator like the last 4-5 romance threads I've seen. I think these kind of discussions are inevitable - at the very least until more concrete information about the game exists - though. EDIT - I'm more bugged by lengthy quote pyramids here myself

Well, you know how immature priviledged white straight males are, don't you? I may be confusing my long term posters here, but as I recall Jaesun, the "Burn it with Fire" suggester, isn't that.

Because this is supposed to be a return to the classic IE cRPG days, not a real life emulator. Where do you draw the line? "I am extremely ADHD so I want Obsidian to include a ritalin meter (come on, George Ziets!) where I'll go into an "interruption mode" where my character won't let anybody finish their sentences when it wears off. I want this because I have a hard time relating to people in a more appropriate format than videogames." If they could support it through the game (think of how the low int dialogue in Arcanum was done, or the madness of the Malkavians in Bloodlines), an ADHD background (or alternatively a race with short attention spans) could actually be kind of fun. But I'd only want something like that done if it made sense in the setting and was able to be carried through the game (pretty much like any character creation trait or option)

In any situation where there is Finite resources, there has to be some effect between adding element "A" vs element "B". I don't see what's "underhanded" about the poll. While I find it fairly doubtful Romances would pull resources from gameplay (which I think from a development standpoint has to be the thing which all others revolve around), i think it'd be very likely romances would pull resources from story (or more accurately put, exchange additional external story in favor of additional inter-party story)

You could, have a mage have to cast from a spell book. The book has limited pages and the more powerful spells take more pages. The spells have to be scribed in a special ink (preparation) and when cast the ink contains the components for the spell, thus rendering the book blank (lost in casting). There would need to be some balancing for pages (your 1st level mage would otherwise scribe 100 magic missles in a 100 page book). And if you had a disarm system you could disarm a mage's spellbook in combat and, if lucky have your mage pick it up... But anyhow my point is you can do the kind of limits the Vancian system does without actually having it involve forgetting spells, relearn etc.

er...if they included romances in the game, wouldn't that actually make romance's part of the game's content? Romances to me are just fairly specialized character relationships. I can certainly play an RPG where my party's relationships are left up to my imagination to draw out; but I also have no issue my PC being able to talk to NPCs and develop friendships/enmity with them either.

Seems to me if the game was going to have backgrounds ala Arcanum (something I liked a good bit) this would be something that could be possible to do within the context of the background system provided it makes sense with the setting.

The trailer for revolution didn't grab me, so I skipped it. I haven't heard from anyone yet any reason to feel like I missed anything.

I never played Ultima IV, but it sounds interesting looking it up online for how it worked.

It should be ritual based. Want to fire a fireball at a troll? Dance around for 3 minutes chanting while making mystic signs. Want to stop time? Hire three other dances, dance in tandem for 7 hours and 15 minutes and slaughter a goat.

You know, I like that interpretation!

So Ridley has answered the final open question - why do the engineers want us dead? Because we killed Space Jesus. I think the Space Jesus angle is stupid as well. Luckily since its not in the movie and I ascribe to the idea that what the author intended is irrelevant to what is in the work, I can ignore it.

I thought that bit was incredibly weak in the film - and also unnecessary. That character could have been taken care of a scene later if they needed to be offed and would have worked in context of the movie much better. I'm not going to argue PROMETHEUS is a good or great film. I liked it though. I also liked AvP to some extent (hated the 2nd one though). But then, I also enjoyed THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS so a film being good or great is not really a pre-requisite for me liking it.

Actually I'm pretty sure that it isn't Earth. The earth people believe that the Engineers created them, that the Engineers are - in effect God. But they also believe that they left the maps so that they could find them in a positive way. One thing the film does is tend to show that the assumptions the Earth people make - that they're gods, that they'll make man immortal, that they'll help us, that maps will help them find the exit - are wrong. So why not that they created us? Or created the Xenomorphs? The movie is ambiguous on the point but the evidence is that either the Engineers left the map to warn them away or left the map as a lure so they could destroy those who had the ability to find and trip the trap. At least that's how I took it. EDIT - to me then, the opening is a dodge; it makes the audience think along the lines of the Earth people until mounting evidence is supposed to make you rethink the position.

In Alien related films, this is always a bad thing!

I dunno, the Engineer's making the aliens seems a bit weird in light of the door with the relief of what appeared to be the Xenomorph before the birth of the proto-Xenomorph and the fact that the other Engineer ship found in Alien is somewhere other than this planet (ie the proto-Xenomorph isn't the first Xenomorph, so I'm not sure we can say the Engineer's created them - they could just be trying to use them for their own purposes). or something. need to watch the film again.

"Whew they left, that was real close - they almost got into our secret loot lair." "Yeah. Okay lets reset the traps before they get back." "Um...sir, they killed Krograk the Trap-Setter." "Damnit man, then get Qurda the Healer to resurrect him." "They killed her too." "Bugger."

I liked the bit in the IE games - usually very early - when archers off screen could kill your entire party before you could react to the fact that there was a group of archers there killing you.

I've sometimes wondered playing games why some of my companions would stick with me when they died so often (well at least until I got the ropes of the game down...well sometimes, strategy's never been a strong point for me ).

I'll give you that the characters acted well stupid. In some cases (the scientist boyfriend) I think it was even intentional. Didn't the geologist lose his connection with the ship (and thus the information that was being mapped)? I missed a bit during the one time I saw it at the theater in that sequence due to the call of nature.

And yet wasn't there huge fights over proper cloaks in the IE games.

Yeah, I liked Prometheus too. Wasn't a perfect film (Alien was close to perfect, IMO) but I still enjoyed it a whole lot. I also really didn't see it as a horror movie, like Alien was either.

If we're going to go with painted portraits, more choices in clothing gives the ability to make your character resemble the portrait in style of dress or hair/headgear would be good, IMO. But who knows what they'll have time for...?