Gwardinen

Just wanted to say thanks to those of you that recommended Community, and add my recommendation as well. I'd heard of it before and the brief description of the premise, etc. had left me with absolutely no desire to actually watch it. However, upon hearing some of you guys enjoyed it too, I decided to finally give it a go and now I completely agree that after the first few episodes this show really takes off.

Just played Gravity Bone, very interesting. Would I have gotten references if I'd seen Citizen Kane or was it completely original? Also, and I'm sure this is something that gets asked a lot but I can't help myself, what the hell is the name about? What is a Gravity Bone?

Fair point. There is a fair bit of vagueness and unpredictability in the choices in DA2, much as there is in the Mass Effect series. It's not always obvious who is going to approve/disapprove of your actions and it's definitely not obvious what the consequences are going to be. Sometimes I enjoy that, when it makes it feel like it's a complex world that I can't control but only affect, and sometimes I don't, when it makes it feel like it's a dialogue tree that wasn't quite described clearly enough. Without overusing the dreaded "immersion" term, BioWare games in general have always hovered in an uneasy balance of metagaming versus interesting roleplaying choice for me, and DA2 is no different. I'm aware that I'm deliberately making choices "like they'd [the developers] want me to make for this sort of character" quite a lot, which is uncomfortable, but at other times I'm genuinely surprised and intrigued my the reactions of the characters and the world to my decisions.

Seems like a game that's chasing media attention by way of being about something sensational rather than by way of being any good (which it may or may not be, but they're clearly not relying on quality for coverage). Doesn't particularly bother me, films and books do it all the time, as do news media themselves. It's just kind of ironic that the interviewee then goes out of his way to criticise the media for being sensationalist. Only real downside: games are a young medium, they have enough trouble with this kind of criticism when it's not warranted. Looking for that attention will only make it take longer for the medium to be "accepted".

I don't really know if it's a failing at all given you never lose anything by having a companion become a rival. In fact you get a bonus for having them either with a high friendship or high rivalry rating. I actually prefer how they've set that up this time; in DA:O you could actually lose people from your party if they got too unhappy, I prefer this system whereby it just changes the tenor of your relationship rather than being a metric you have to try to stay ahead of.

I think this is less of a problem for me because I view all RPGs as a potentially interesting storyline with potentially interesting characters, and I'll probably have to do some silly fighting and inventory management in between. DA2 is actually better in the latter departments for me than the original, because there's slightly less inventory management required and the fighting is flashier so it at least has some visual appeal this time. So yeah, I agree that the linear "go fight some dudes and come back" stuff that makes up a lot of the game is dull and lazy, but I don't expect anything else and I certainly don't think the first game was any better. I don't think any RPG is any better, and in fact I don't think most games are any better. As always with BioWare, I enjoy the characters and the dialogue and seeing the branching paths, and I try to leave it at that.

I sort of wondered that myself and mostly ignored the story, but I'm told by a friend who bought the full version that the story actually starts getting quite interesting. Then again he built his own Dalek, so what he finds interesting might differ substantially from the common opinion.

The Ides, eh? A pretty awesome day for a Thumb to be born on, well done.

I'm sort of tempted to get this for the PC and then just completely cheat in order to avoid the large pitfall that everyone has described regarding the gameplay. If I just cheat my way through the combat as if it isn't there, will the story and conversations and such be interesting enough to make it worth it?

I actually found that if you sign up for Alienware Arena they give you a code, so I got one. I played one game, though, and was so deeply confused and saddened by it that I may just drop it. On reflection when I already understand LoL so well it seems a bit odd to try to get into a similar game that will nevertheless have an even more brutal learning curve, an even worse community and less (read: none) of my friends playing. Maybe I should make a US LoL account so I can play with some of you guys, though. I presume the lag wouldn't be too bad.

Slightly off topic (and a bit of a necro), but does anyone play Heroes of Newerth? I've been wanting to give it a go but there's absolutely no free trial feature without having a code from an existing player.

Just wondering what the status is of those of you who might be DMs, I know a few of you aren't sure whether you'll even have the time to participate. I'd really love to get something off the ground, whether it be play by post or at a specified time (I don't know which actually would work better for our potentially struggling DMs) so any news is good news. Except the bad news.

Man, I'd love to be involved in this, but the game runs so badly on my computer it's probably just not worth doing. Damn you PC gaming!

I'm about two thirds of the way through now and desperately trying to pace myself. I find myself wanting to just keep on reading and reading (usually I limit myself pretty easily to about two hours of reading a day, in a couple of sessions) and the book that seemed so long when I started is rapidly disappearing. I don't want to go another 5 years without!

Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much. I appreciate not having to deal with giving them different armour all the time, particularly because the inventory system is still missing a few simple features that would make it less annoying to use. Main one: let me see everyone's inventory! Not just the people who happen to be with me! Do you know what I do when I want to check whether I can better equip my party members with a new weapon/accessory? I go to a "choose your party" area and I just play musical fucking chairs with my party members until I have gone through everyone a couple of times to first re-equip people and then move the unequipped items to other people who now may want to use it and so on. I don't mind the fact that I can't just change everything everyone in my party is using in the middle of an encounter, but at least let me go home and be able to see everyone's inventory since you don't have a party at home anyway.

I'm a big fan of Discworld but it is a little bit of a problem, because the start is not particularly great so if you insist on reading them "in order" it may take a while to get to the good stuff. That said, there are many standalone novels in the Discworld "series" that don't really require having read any of the others. One of the better ones for that might be Monstrous Regiment, but there is also a genuinely standalone novel of his called Nation. No relation to Discworld, and I found it quite enjoyable.

I actually know what you mean, I had sort of grown used to reading whole series in one go, but as time passes it's getting less and less common. Maybe I've just read most of the good completed works of sci-fi and fantasy now, so I'm not going to find too many more that are already done and dusted. On the up swing, there are quite a few series, and authors in general, that I'm enjoying when they do produce a book. So that's a positive thought - there are books worth reading being written still.

I just fought that guy and had the exact same thought. Being in Act 2 now I'm getting a better sense of the effects of choices. There do seem to be a lot of follow-on quests from the first act, and they appear to adapt to the decisions you made, so my opinion of the dynamic story is improving. I'll probably have to replay the game to see how much it truly changes, but so far I'm pleased by the fact that it is at least internally consistent and the world isn't ignoring what I've done or allowing my choices to be bulldozed by the main story. On a related note, despite the fact that being in (more or less) the same place all the time can get a little dull, it does allow your choices and the general story progression to have more context. When you completed quests in DA:O they were only generally relevant within that area, with the exception of your origin story, so as soon as you left to go to the next major area nobody really cared what you'd done before.

I'm about a third of the way in and loving it, but the five year thing you just mentioned made my heart cry, Orvidos. I've been trying not to think about it.

I quite like this game, but since I own it on XBLA already I don't think I can really shell out for another version of it. Enjoy, though!

There's a little bit more branching stuff once you hit Kirkwall, but I'm about 8 hours in and still no decisions that I can see being really major. That said, I do tend to go for side missions a lot and avoid the main plot for as long as I can, so perhaps if I did more of that I'd be getting more pivotal choice moments.

Seconding that the Way of Kings is really good. To be honest anything by Brandon Sanderson is good, I'm finding. The Mistborn trilogy is great.

I'm intending to start reading that tonight too. I happened to read the Name of the Wind just after its paperback release so I've been waiting for this one for a while.

This might be more appropriate for Halloween than Easter, but I bet it's tasty.

I have to sort of follow Patters here, while I'm all for good debate about important issues, this one has been talked to death with no way to make any real progress. It's fairly obvious to most people that if you can afford it and are physically capable of doing so, you should buy a game if you wish to support that franchise and/or developer and/or publisher and/or the games industry in general. Additionally it is safer from a legal standpoint. There will always be people who don't care about supporting said organisations, or who just put the value of their own money far above that of the support they'd be providing (not an entirely unreasonable position, though ultimately somewhat short-sighted in some cases) and yes, even those internet dwellers who just think they should get everything for free for some reason. Piracy and copyright infringement are not going to stop, they have existed for as long as intellectual property has existed and I don't see anything ending that run any time soon. The only thing that I think is strange and worth mentioning about the whole affair is that those on the "side" of piracy often seem to take a stance that what they are doing is not only justified but somehow noble. In almost all cases that seems to be the triumph or ignorance, self-delusion or a combination thereof. Other than my desire to see the games industry as strong as possible, I don't particularly care about piracy, but if you're going to infringe copyright at least be honest with yourself about what you're doing and why. I don't think I've ever seen someone with a genuinely "noble" reason for it.