Redwall

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Posts posted by Redwall

  5. Posted

    The 4400 sort of meanders between decent and really, really bad. Though nowadays I just have it on in the background when it's on rather than actively watching it.

    I'm watching Stargate, Atlantis, Monk, and Psyche, all of which have a similar okay-to-crap range of quality.

  7. Posted

    The secondary click would teleport you to a small cave in Xen filled with goodies (maybe somewhere else too, I remember teleporting into a part of the training obstacle course at some point, only it was full of evil animals) .

    That's what happened if you tried to secondary fire from Xen (i.e. after you already secondary fired) IIRC.

  8. Posted

    I don't even remember the Portals. Were they on Xen, or what?

    The scientists at Black Mesa were experimenting with portal technology. That was sort of the whole reason for the resonance cascade that started everything in the first place. There were portals all over the place in Lambda complex (remember that awful jumping puzzle in the core?) as well as in Xen.

  9. Posted

    It's been suggested that all the praise for Darwinia was simply because most of the industry initially ignored Uplink. I'm not sure I believe that, but there may be some merit to it. Uplink is awesome.

  18. Posted

    The Half-Life Saga Story is crap. It hasn't been updated in forever and lots of recent information contradicts it. Yes, the Vortigaunts were enslaved in HL1... by the Nihilanth. The Nihilanth was a tinpot dictator running from the real big bad, the Combine. Its massive organic power over teleportation apparently allowed it to hold back the Combine portals... but once Gordon killed it, the Combine were free to invade Xen and then Earth. (Note that HL2 mentions that the Combine have lots of problems with teleportation, to the point where they can't teleport locally, only between universes, which is clearly not the case of the Nihilanth's minions in the final levels of HL1.)

    And of course I can't find the reference now. It was just in some interview or other. They give lots of them. Admittedly, I much preferred the idea that the Combine were on Xen, as it would explain the slave Vortigaunt at the beginning of HL2, along with a myriad of other things... but they said it. But hey, maybe they'll change their minds. They've also said something to the effect that if it wasn't in the game, it isn't certain.

  21. Posted

    The Sci-Fi channel airs both BSG and Stargate, and Stargate's 8th season was written, rather conclusively, as the last season because everyone involved believed it was. Except no-one thought that the ratings would go up as much as they did in that season, so even after they'd actually ended the show, Sci-Fi brought it back for a ninth. And now it's pretty clearly running on empty.

    That's happened every year since the sixth season, actually... I'm not sure why I still watch Stargate, really.

  22. Posted

    Yeah, the White Dragon's big sister is April. In the original TLJ, the (elder) White Dragon refers to April as "daughter" and is protecting an egg. When the (elder) White Dragon dies, the egg hatches and the new White Dragon emerges, which is the one you see in Dreamfall.

    Also, Cortez is (probably) dead. I, too, was surprised that the Balance featured so little in Dreamfall; the Dreaming/Storytime stuff seems to actually be even bigger than the Balance, though, which means I don't think it's going away.

    Additionally, I really liked Zoe's voice. Maybe it's the accent.

  23. Posted

    Faith was causing the Static and the corruption of the Dreamcore; something of her was left in the Wire after the massive Morpheus overdose killed her body.

    She was also being visited by the White Dragon, who told her to tell Zoe to save April Ryan (but why isn't really clear, nor how Zoe "saved" April by witnessing her "death").

    Also presumably, if Faith would have brought down the Wire as she (through the Static) threatened to do, the Dreamer would have never been released and the Tower in Marcuria wouldn't have succeeded in its purpose (as shown at the end). Of course, the Tower's purpose has yet to be revealed, though it appears likely that the Prophet is behind both the Tower and the Dreamer... and the Prophet, as shown by the screenshot earlier in this thread, appears to be Brian Westhouse. Which is spooky.

    Perhaps the concentrated dreams collected by the Dreamer and focused in Tower can be a weapon against the Undreaming? Probably not, considering Brian (as the first chapter title tells us) is "tainted" (presumably by the Undreaming). Maybe they're just bringing them together so they can be easily destroyed...

  25. Posted

    One more thing. Gameplay is very similar between games. It is difficult to invent a new genre, which is what you have to do if you want your gameplay to truly stand out. Graphics and art style only seperate you a bit, again unless you come up with something that looks truly different. So, story is often essential to seperate your game from the hundreds of silimar games out there.

    I think that for the most part stories suffer the same problems, and that distinguishing a game through a good story is at least as difficult as distinguishing a game through original artistic design.