Chris

Yes, your character will carry over. I've asked the BioWare guys on a few occasions to confirm.

It doesn't really bother me in a game like this. I'm sure if they had had a great writer on the team it would have been a slightly better game but I can't imagine they found it a high priority to seek such a person out as they were making a hack-and-slash game in 11 months on what was likely a fairly limited budget. Same reason they don't have multiplayer--they chose what was necessary to make the kind of game they're making, and they focused pretty intently on those bits. I don't think just saying "try harder" would have resulted in a more unique story.

Jake also recently ordered a new PC's worth of parts. As for games to test new hardware, I am a horrible example. All I've played so far on the new rig is Torchlight.

We're still at it! "Did you hear BioWare is working on a Star Wars MMO set in the KOTOR universe? Oh, you did? Nick and Chris talk about their day at the Old Republic reveal event, Thumbs alum and BioShock 2 designer Steve Gaynor of 2K Marin joins us as a special guest, Jake turns into an old man, and more. Listen in!" Games discussed: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Fable II, Far Cry 2, BioShock 2, Yakuza 2, Diablo II, Oblivion iTunes RSS http://www.idlethumbs.net/

Holy shit, this looks awful. I hadn't seen any shots until now.

Who's the fourth!?

Oh God what have we done "Salacious Thumb" With Nick Breckon out on assignment, things go a little bit wrong. 2K Marin's Steve Gaynor joins us for this week's descent into a tempest of hard-boiled corruption and deceit, where no one knows who to trust or where to turn. And when Master Chief is suddenly kidnapped, Salacious Crumb is on the case. We're pretty sure ODST is like a film noir, so we took some cues from that. Games Discussed: Halo 3: ODST, Scribblenauts, Policenauts, Dante's Inferno, Flame-Sim, Dora the Explorer: Dora Saves the Snow Princess, Cabela's Monster Bass

Haha this is the weirdest thing ever

Man, tough crowd. It just looked to me like a talk show host who isn't in the top tier but who is clearly a massive fan of the Pythons got some of his idols to come on his show and participate in a skit with him. Fine it wasn't the cleverest or most well-executed thing they've ever done, but Fallon was clearly thrilled and grateful for the opportunity, it wasn't joyless or dry, and they all seemed to have a good time. Give it a rest. And as far as Idle playing with the Roots...what exactly is so distasteful about that? They're the house band on the show. You've got a solo musician who's going to play a song, and an entire band whose running function in that scenario is to provide accompaniment. Is there something wrong there?

Which one? The new one or the original? I haven't seen the new one, but the original film is badass as far as I'm concerned.

It's only mainstream in the sense that supermarket tabloids are mainstream.

Hey it's Nick "Episode Forty-Five" Bred in a top secret government lab, or maybe an orphan or a robot or something, this episode hopes to punch you in the face and call you a bitch. Our marketing research shows that this appeals to you. Really, though, we talk about some games. Games Discussed: Mass Effect 2, Halo 3: ODST, Left 4 Dead: Crash Course, The Shivah, Majesty II: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, Blaster Master, Perfect Dark

This is so unfortunately true

I saw it in the theatre (with Jake) and loved it. I imagine if I were constantly adjusting the volume, it would have been a completely preposterous viewing experience. Do you frequently do that? Are you a fan of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films? If not, it isn't surprising that you didn't like this. If so, that's too bad I guess. It's not supposed to abjectly terrify you, it's supposed to surprise you and shock you in a hilarious way. Raimi's horror films are as much about comedy as they are horror. It's not for everyone, though. I remember after we saw it there were a bunch of people in theatre talking about how they didn't know if various scenes were intended to be funny or scary, and how they didn't like the film as a result, and the answer is you aren't supposed to think about which it's supposed to be, because it's usually somewhere in between, and at a different point in between for different people. On a purely filmic note, I also found the sound editing in this film to be incredible. There were never any "dead" moments, except for when there were supposed to be. Very few horror films (or comedies for that matter) successfully pull that off consistently--usually a beat will go on a little too long, or end a little too early, and the music cues won't transition the right way. It's a minor thing, but it was so well-done in this film that it caused me to actually notice because it was good, instead of noticing because it was bad (or not noticing at all). Overall it felt like a movie being made by people who really know their craft well, which is nice to see because usually this genre is more rough--and that includes Raimi's own earlier works in this genre. It was interesting to see Raimi return to this style of film after having worked in a broad range of film for a decade and a half, and then bring what he learned back to his old style.

And if there are a bunch of dates happening this year or next year--for example, events to attend--the actual year portion of the date is not necessary. When naming files and things like that, I use YYMMDD (there are very few situations in which I actually need a four-digit year to usefully identify a date), but otherwise in writing I use MM/DD/YY, because that's how you actually read a date aloud. It just depends on the particular context. (As an aside, I hope you do in fact process dates you read in the way you illustrated, because that's awesome. It's like an adventure game protagonist.)

I'm playing on Normal, which is what I play most games on.

That's Emil Pagliarulo. He was also the lead designer and writer on Fallout 3. It's amazing to me how influential the Looking Glass crew has gone on to be, even post-Looking Glass. It really drives home how important and ahead of its time that studio was.

Yeah, our forum artwork is amazing, and I can say that without being self-aggrandizing because I had nothing to do with it. Back when Idle Thumbs was a text-driven website, we had a lot of original illustration done for articles and the site, by several volunteers but most notable Dan Lee, who did the forum and a lot of our other cool article artwork. Also, the Idle Thumbs fists and typewriter logo was done by Stevan Zivadinovic, otherwise known as Kingzjester on these forums (and in this thread).

The kind of comic books I'm talking about are largely modern-day comic books. There's plenty of bullshit that comes out of Japan and Europe as well, particularly Japan; America too of course, but no country produces only one kind of artist. When I say "non-superhero comic books" I don't mean "non-American" comic books. For example, here are some currently-working American comic book creators of the type I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burns_%28cartoonist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Clowes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Deitch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Huizenga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Bechdel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Bell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Pekar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Matt There are also quite a few Canadian cartoonists in that same kind of general group, and most of the American and Canadian guys know each other. There are also lots of European cartoonists in the same "school" and I could list a bunch of them too; they're slightly more dependent on what gets translated. I don't really know of many guys from the UK doing this kind of thing for whatever reason, most of the Europeans seem to be from continental Europe. As far as Japan, I also am not aware much of this type of work coming out of there (it could just be another translation problem), but some of the best collections I've read in the last several years have been first-time translations of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's comics. It's older than the work of the other guys listed here, but awesome. EDIT: crap I did all my URL tags backwards

The kind of comic books I'm talking about are largely modern-day comic books. There's plenty of bullshit that comes out of Japan and Europe as well, particularly Japan; America too of course, but no country produces only one kind of artist. When I say "non-superhero comic books" I don't mean "non-American" comic books. For example, here are some currently-working American comic book creators of the type I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burns_%28cartoonist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Clowes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Deitch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Huizenga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Bechdel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Bell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Pekar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Matt There are also quite a few Canadian cartoonists in that same kind of general group, and most of the American and Canadian guys know each other. There are also lots of European cartoonists in the same "school" and I could list a bunch of them too; they're slightly more dependent on what gets translated. I don't really know of many guys from the UK doing this kind of thing for whatever reason, most of the Europeans seem to be from continental Europe. As far as Japan, I also am not aware much of this type of work coming out of there (it could just be another translation problem), but some of the best collections I've read in the last several years have been first-time translations of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's comics. It's older than the work of the other guys listed here, but awesome.

I'm thinking of trying to make it out on my own dime rather than for work. That would depend on being able to swing a frequent flier plane ticket though I think, since cross-country flights aren't cheap.

Comics are more than a century old at this point really. What you're saying applies more to superhero comics specifically, which is an area of comics I'm not really interested in. It's true though, the neverending continuity lines of superhero comics are completely absurd. Sadly since they cater to similar audiences, games will probably go in that direction, although they will be limited by the fact that you can't release games in a given series with the same frequency as you can release comics pertaining to a given character.

They also have a long way to go before they can compete with comics' more thoughtful material, however.

As with adaptations, one interesting product of remakes can be to tell the same story but say something different with it. That sort of demands a director who actually has something to say, which Aronofsky probably is in this case, but most remakes can't claim that.

"Rad" is a great word. I like to think I was in on the ground floor (or earlier than that, whatever building-centric metaphor that is) on the post-80s "rad" revival. I've been saying it for a long time.