Amentep

A JD may meet the qualification of holding the terminal degree in the field. But I don't know many colleges that are falling over themselves to hire JDs who don't also have some teaching experience and/or publication history. The schools here only require a masters (at least) and 18 hours of coursework taken in the area to be taught. Research institutions favor doctoral level degrees (for which JD and MD both qualify), though (but masters are fine for the gen ed courses even there). Most new hires at research institutions have a time frame in which to be published (some I know have been given 7 years, at which point the school is looking at whether to grant tenure to the faculty member...or fire them if they haven't published). While they're not making big money, I've known a few JDs who got burned out on the law profession who started a second career teaching business law courses to business majors at local colleges & universities.

And if all else fails, someone with a JD degree can also teach at many (if not all) colleges!

That's because you're not a real man. REAL MEN AREN'T ASHAMED OF WEARING FUNNY HATS IF THEY HAVE POWERFUL STATS! AS I DID IN DRAGON AGE! ROAAAAAAAAAAAR! I didn't need a vanity view to be impressed by the Dragon Age Funny Hats.

Vanity view = I hated having to run up to walls and spin the camera around to try and get a close up look at my character & what they were wearing in other games...

Yeah I've read that here - I just find it interesting how the gamesite previews have such disparate takes on the game (some that don't seem to match what the devs have said).

Hmmm, the information seems to be conflicting over the story aspect of the game.

My only hope from an action RPG is that it not be too fiddlely. And by that I mean if I have a button to attack, one to do a "special attack (magic/skill)", one to feint, one to dodge left, one to dodge right, one to block, one to jump, one to parry, one to dodge roll left, one to dodge roll right, one to switch weapons, one to switch spells/skills then I'm never going to remember it and will spend most of the fight trying to figure out what button I'm supposed to press until I die.

I thought that went without saying? You can have a different magic system that does squat in any game, or does something but requires you to sacrifice small goats every 3 minutes and isn't fun.

I have hope that we'll get something interesting and different though.

Plus you'd have to account for every possible combination of spells (otherwise its not mix and match its "occasional additional effect - find what works!" system).

Lets see: SPEED RACER - this is such a fun film; I still think its a shame it didn't find a wider audience. MONSTERS VS ALIENS - what can I say, I'm a sucker for 50s themed monsters...and fighting aliens! Also BOB is hilarious. THE DARK KNIGHT - Its still a bit longish feeling, and I think the end isn't as clear as it could have been, but its a great Batman-via-crime-drama film. AVATAR - still think its a little preachy in its pro-environment, human consumption = evil, and its not terribly original, yet it manages to compost all of its elements into an entertaining whole. BOTTLE ROCKET - didn't get into it, thought it wasn't terribly funny and the finale - "a heist" is weak.

Cover to Marvel Comics' Thunderbolts #128 by Francesco Mattina

Which wouldn't really be what I'd want, obviously.

Like that's any better. How about awesome and useful spells instead? Because its better than the typical fireball, ice cone, lightning bolt, rock toss type spells? My idea is that if the creators don't have to fall back to the old standards maybe it'd cause some "outside the box" thinking in terms of spells.

Yeah to tell the truth its been so long since I played Dungeon Seige, I honestly can't remember what magic was like there.

I would love a game that didn't use the classic elements (Greek: fire, water, wind, earth, aethir) instead looking at a different system (for example Chinese: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water or Alchemy: Sulpher, Mercury, Salt (the tri prima of Paracelsus))

Aye. Also, most consol-games atm don't involve the player at all. You end up watching a "movie", then you're allowed to click your right thumb off for 3 minutes for some mindless grinding, then it's back to a movie again.. Quite boring. I really loved the old co-ops, like Gauntlet. Imho, the more the player can be involved all the time, the better. J. My brother enjoys playing Guantlet like games with me (he's not the gamer he was) but he tends to get turned off by excessive "movies" in games that have more story than Gauntlet. It bores him to sit through the movies or cutscenes. A few games that had skippable cutscenes, I'd play for awhile and then get him to play so we could skip the cut scenes without missing out on what we were actually supposed to do or where we were supposed to go.

Thanks for the answer; I first played Diablo on the PS1 (although I did end up with the original PC version later). Playing it with a controler doesn't really make it that much different from other action based RPGs, in my experience (in fact it reminded me a lot of Arcus Odyssey for the Genesis playing Diablo on a console).

Are there any other co-op action RPGs (or even non co-op) that you have liked that stand out in your memory?

By making a good game, getting people excited about and having them buy it, enjoy it and tell their friends about who also buy it and enjoy it?

I never played Torchlight (as my game computer has been belly up since before it was released).

Action Mule!

I think as well Obsidian shouldn't be a narrow focus developer (RPG genre is probably as narrow as one would want to go). Plus - as someone who likes a good hack/slash game or dungeon crawler or aRPG, I can say its been some time since we've had a good one (IMO). Titan Quest may have been the last one I played that I really, really liked.

Most of the press remarks seem to imply its alpha or pre-alpha.

My thought on this - and of course everyone comes from a different place in what works for them in a game - is that starting off with "bad aim" and allowing the character go to "super aim" through use of skill points allows the player to get a sense of building their character and also creates a certain value to the gun skill. If a character starts with good aim and moves to great aim than the player may not feel sufficiently rewarded by their choice to spend points in guns. In fact if you start with good aim, it is an encouragement to dump points away from guns making the guns a weak skill tree because you'll probably be able to satisfactorily hit things without putting any points into the gun skills. This way - rightly or wrongly - forces players to live with their choices. Now I say this as someone who is not generally gifted at shooters but never felt that my weak gun skills in the game actually hampered anything. Sure I couldn't shoot anything early on, but I'd put more points into martial arts and quite appropriately had a much easier time rushing opponents and attacking than I did guns, rewarding me with results based on the skill points I used. As I developed my character my gun skills became more versatile in their use. I never put any points into SMGs but could still use them to waste ammo and keep opponents from rushing me.