jrrtoken

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I haven't played Skyrim yet, but everything that I've seen across the web gives the impression that this is just an upgraded fork of Bethesda's Gamebryo, and not the fresh-from-scratch Creation Engine. Of course, the UI seems to be an overhaul (in the negative sense) but everything else is just plain old Oblivion 2.0. The Radiant AI is wonky as seen by the buckethead stealth action, but this vid pretty much confirms that the ragdoll physics system and the death sequence is lifted straight from Fallout 3, bloody lens blur and all: [YOUTUBE=hd]-0Gw5DM4TIo[/YOUTUBE]

Got the invite. Kinda ironic, as I have no real intention to buy this game at all, but here I am. Maybe, just maybe, it'll change my mind about TOR. Nah; who am I kidding?

The funny thing is, there's a great probability that that'll be the end-result. Feel free to see the plethora AAA-calibre MMOs retrofitted into the F2P model a year down the road. I'm really not expecting them to do it F2P from the get-go - that'd be immediate financial ruin - but I'll wager that somewhere it'll be brought up as a possibility.

Haha, nope. I'm sorry, but regardless pf what the subscription fees have been for every other MMO since the dawn of time, that's still a reedikulous amount for a bloody video game. And don't give me the speel about "it's an MMO, it's an ever-persistent stream of new content"; you can't convince me to invest $60 down plus ~3x that per year. Honestly. If this was free-to-play, or took the Guild Wars route, I'd be much more convinced to shell out my burning money. Sadly, I have more important games to invest in.

Well, if we define the hundreds of government officials and civilians that have been systematically murdered by Mexican drug cartels in the past two years as "drug-related violence", then I guess that does that does narrow the playing field to AQ as prime terrorist #1.

Can't believe we haven't had a thread about this yet... Well, there's not much to say, other than organizations with hardline, anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism views, like the EDL, are pretty much crippled. The same goes for the whole anti-Sharia sensationalism in the U.S. It'd be interesting to see how the legal system in Norway will respond to Breivik's crimes... specifically the maximum sentence of ~21 years.

Hated the new music number at Jabba's Palace; I'm embarrassed to even watch it. I mean, the music isn't really at fault, it's just that f****** cartoon character's solo at the end. Hell, compared to this guy I got nothing against Jar-Jar. The same goes for the ending of RotJ, and how they replaced the stupid Ewok song with an even stupider orchestral arrangement. I mean, the scene is edited specifically for the Stormtrooper-helmet marimbas, and all of the sound effects of the celebration is basically dubbed over by the piece. Just how necessary is it, really? Still, all of these are over-shadowed by the heresy of heresies: the replacement of kind, elderly Anakin with a demented would-be rapist.

That's the overarching issue: the to-be canon FemShep is ultimately what the masses want rather than what the developers would deem "appropriate" for the game. As per the first installment, the "appropriate" FemShep has already been selected, and I'll give BioWare credible props for making her look more believable than many other female video game protagonists. Hell, she's more believable than ChauvShep's Cro-Magnon-inspired space marine pastiche. With the FemShep candidates, all of the options have been based on analyses and aggregations to what "the public would want" as a FemShep, rather than what everyone would be perfectly a-OK with if they just stuck with the default. It's an "ideal" FemShep, and elicits feelings on what would be the "ideal" woman in player's minds, in this case Victoria's Secret Model #L45J1. Sometimes, the people can make stupid decisions, and ultimately it's better if the developer just makes up their own appropriate design rather than listening to any other bloke. It's why we often can't have smart things in games (or any mass media), because the "what's popular must be right, right?" mentality caters to the perceived lowest common denominator. It's lowering the bar for a trope's sake. As do I, but the thing about default FemShep is that she isn't hypersexualized and is actually believably-designed. With this contest, I'm given a predetermined render of six variations of the same face, and am asked to pick "what's the best?" Apparently "what's the best" implicitly corresponds to "what's the most attractive", and in this case the sample population seems seems to favor the protagonist's typical blonde love interest. By this reasoning, I guess Dr. Chakwas should also be in her mid-20's and have a C-cup. Mm. Yeah. But they didn't have to pander to f****** everyone. It shows some sort of insecurity with their already-decent standard for FemShep, frankly.

Irrelevant. If any of the candidates aren't possible FaceGen permutations, then this is all just marketing fluff. The key difference in all of this is that I can play box art ChauvShep, even if it is a direct scan of a model's face; any of the FemSheps are basically impossible to recreate in ME1&2. So... it's all just marketing eye-candy. Additionally, this entire competition is really just about what pleases the aggregated masses, particularly the majority of the player base that will never play FemShep, rather than the 18% that do. This is particularly apparent when the leading candidate is white, blonde, and blue-eyed. Mm, so much for space democracy.

The faces are too perfect to be based on the in-game facegen... I don't think you can get anywhere close to #4, 5, or 6. None of them also resemble anything close to default FemShep. Then again, that isn't exactly a downside considering that FemShep has an ever-lively expression shared only by the Borg Queen.

I'm not shelling out any money to EA until I know the explicit details of their subscription model. That being said, do they really expect us to spend $10 more than standard PC titles, just for an MMO? I mean, people are going to be paying hundreds more in the long view, so why value it as a standalone, AAA console game? Why not $30, or $40? What if I end up hating this game after the free 30-day agreement expires, and I want to cancel my subscription? There's $60 down the crapper. FFS. And if I were to pay $150 for the ubermenschen Collector's Edition, all I really want is the damned soundtrack.

Anyone else expecting this to be another tumor of a port that was GTA IV? Rockstar's stance on the PC market is apathetic and half-assed to the point of passive aggression. It's a big "piss-off" to PC gamers, as if it's aimed to spite everyone who wanted to throw money at Rockstar for a game.