Amentep

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...?

That's kinda the point? Read lore, ask around, keep magical weapons, use spells?... Tactics, you know. I agree that BG had *some* problems with that, cause not every player read D&D Monster Manual, but that is easely solveable with a few design decisions like rumours/lore(mythology)/books ect. You misunderstand, I'd been playing D&D for 14 years before I played an IE game. But there were in the IE games, as I recall, times where it was possible to face monsters with resistances and you might have one +1 weapon as a random drop and nowhere near enough money to buy a magic weapon on your own, meaning one person could actually do damage to the creature. Others might find that fun, but I didn't.

My preference would be that cleric or monk is a profession and not a class. Thus you'd have no need of a paladin or a cleric class, you'd have a a fighter or a mage who worked for a church. But this assumes the game would have professions, so...

Good luck to them on their future endeavors!

I put no, but to be honest it kind of depends on how its implemented. As long as their are viable alternatives to get around an immunity, I'm okay. However sometimes in the IE games, I'd face monsters that had immunities and had no way to be able to have anything in my inventory to overcome the immunity. And that's a bit vexing to me.

I hope they get creative within the confines of the archetypes as well.

I have no problem with firearms. In fact I'd like more non-standard weaponry if possible. But good balance in each weapons utility is best, so there's probably an upper limit to what could reasonably be included.

Watched the adaption of Lovecraft's THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS. Thought it worked really well through the stuff that forms the original story. The new finale I think didn't work all that great (both conceptually even though I see what they were tryign for, and exectution wise - I think they bit off more than they could chew). Still enjoyed it overall and its always fun to see a film that tries to some degree to be a throwback to the "classic horror" film style of the 30s.

I thought this was just a nostalgia thread - we all know you and a few others got us beat for longevity.

Yes this is interesting news and stops me from making too many assumptions at this point@

TNO didn't know his past either, so whatever sort of man he was had nothing to do with his past. But within those parameters, you could do whatever you wanted. The game didn't come back later and tell you about the girlfriend you'd left behind in the vault, and about how much you missed her. That would have been appalling. I suppose I'm hoping that the approach they used in KotOR2 was a one-off experiment. I don't necessarily disagree, but on the other hand if you wanted to, you couldn't create a back-story that had you leaving your girlfriend in the Vault, so again there are parameters you can't really address in game unless the game tells you. I think the issue is really that those kind of things seem to work better when they are set upfront (you are the courier) rather than later (I did what?) Mind you I saw the Exile reveal as an attempt to mirro the reveal from KotOR without resorting to telling the exact same story, too.

Fair point. It's not like a game like this--based off our memory and understanding of the old Infinity Engine games--is going to have zoomed-in 3D body/head creation (I do like LotRO's 'body type slider' that only allows large breasts on a body type that's already 'large'). But there could be more general templates covering both sexes that's obvious from the "distance" portrayed in 2D isometric-- buff average wiry heavyset small whatever For an 'elderly' character, white hair and perhaps wiry/small. We don't know just how much detail we can see in terms of game camera at this time. Obviously there are issues with animations and design of worn items because things would have to be tweaked across races as well. If they use Onyx Engine (is that right), I seem to recall Dungeon Siege 3 being able to zoom a good bit for vanity views.