Liverandbacon

We are obviously all still in our 20s. Over 30? ha ha as if, I'm still young, fun, and down with the kids

Just realized it's been a bit over 10 years since I joined this place, shortly after the release of KOTOR 2. Doesn't seem long ago at all that KOTOR Tool was still being updated, TSLPatcher wasn't a thing yet, and the forums were incredibly active. My posting career has been very hit-and-run, popping in then disappearing for a year or two, then popping in again, and it's been interesting to see which names are still around every time I come back, who has disappeared, and what new people have shown up. Less people I remember each time, though from their 'last visited' it looks like some are at least lurking. With the slow death of LucasArts, these forums haven't been what they once were over the last 3 years or so, but here's hoping Disney does the smart thing, hands out the license to decent devs (hoping DICE Battlefront is a sign of things to come, another Obsidian-developed Star Wars RPG please thank you), and gives us something to talk about again. Then us old folks can sit around telling all the new guys 'back in OUR day, all the Star Wars games came from a hilariously mismanaged company called LucasArts, and by some miracle some managed to be good'. To celebrate 10 years of off-and-on posting, and to thank people who'd helped me out near the start, I'd planned to finally release the silly (but fun?) KOTOR mod I made as practice years ago (turned the Taris duelling ring into a Monkey Island swordfight-style insult competition), but can't seem to find it in my backups. I'll keep looking though.

Honestly I can't blame them, trying to continue the series in any meaningful way within the constraints of the massive unwieldy EU of wildly varying quality would have been insanity. The EU stuff that I actually like, I like whether it's canon or not. Now I suppose we just have a Star Wars multiverse just like the sorta thing Marvel does. No big deal. Then again, I'm the guy who, if I'd bought Star Wars, would probably end up purging everything but ANH, ESB, and certain parts of ROTJ from canon. I'm just that XTREME and edgy I guess.

I know this is months old at this point, but it's new to me since I've just logged on for the first time in a long while, so I hope nobody minds this late post. I've popped in and out of this place over the last 9 years, and it's been oddly comforting to see a few familiar names still around every time. Astrotoy was one of them. Always being around for a few posts, then gone for months or even years (for similar reasons to the ones D333 mentions here), I doubt I made much of an impression on him (or anyone for that matter) during his time here, but he certainly made one on me. He got me into folding, though life made it impossible to keep that up for long, and I enjoyed more than a few memorable conversations on art, among other topics. His enthusiasm for the subject was both impressive and infectious, and perhaps by virtue of my absence, I mostly missed the more controversial side of him. RIP Hasan/Astro, and my sympathies to his family.

Sometimes I think my bitterness over Lucasarts, their mismanagement, and all the games I wanted that went unrealized, makes the old-school Fallout community look positively optimistic by comparison. Yes I'm talking about the people regularly called 'glittering gems of hatred'. I'm very bitter.

That cliffhanger, my god. Entire episode was the prey mistaking itself for the predator. Walt though he was hunting Jesse, then fell into his + DEA bro-team's trap. Hank thought he'd caught his white whale, then is outnumbered and outgunned. Walt thought he was top dog, but now it seems likely that he'll be forced to work for the Neo-nazis, as a subordinate (especially if Todd dies). The thing is, Walt just doesn't have what it takes to be a Gus. He treats EVERYONE, even the people he cares about, as tools, and in such an obvious way that they can tell. That doesn't inspire the sort of loyalty Mike had for Gus. In the end, he's just a guy who's good at chemistry, not a leader, and it'd be impossible for him to hold onto the top dog position for long.

Nothing bad happened to Marvel after Disney took over, quite the opposite in fact. And unlike Lucas-controlled Lucasfilm, Marvel still had some redeeming features beforehand. It might not improve, but it certainly won't sink lower, since you can't when you're already at rock bottom. Edit: On a side note, I take great comfort in the fact that whenever I take a long hiatus, even if it's for years as it has been in the past, many of the same faces are still around here.

Playing as a Sentinel for my first playthrough, this game felt outrageously easy, even playing on Insanity. If I brought Liara along, and didn't bring more than a sniper and a pistol, I could use biotic combos often enough that I almost never even used my guns until Rannoch. Most of the few times I died were from the consolitis 1-button spacebar everything system not letting me disengage from cover properly when a grenade showed up. Other than that, I only died 6 times: Other than those instances, it was pretty easy to avoid death with proper use of cover, biotic combo spam, and occasionally hanging back and letting the enemies come to you. No phantom has even touched Shepard. Atlas mechs are easy if you take out their engineers, then biotic combo spam like everything else. A lot of people have issues at the Academy, but the strategy I used made it a joke. This is strange to me, as I'm normally not too good at vidya game shooters.

NOTE: This post does not reveal hat Tali's face looks like, but it does contain my opinion on the work Bioware put into it. Don't know if that counts as spoilers, but you've been warned. Oh it's real. They claimed that they really thought hard about Tali's face, but what they did makes that pretty obviously false. As a fun test, I started from the same photo they did, and tried to reproduce their Tali face using Photoshop. It took me 6.5 minutes, and I reproduced it almost exactly. If it were a background character, it wouldn't be an issue, but considering so many people are so excited about Tali's face (see ChAiNz), it's pretty shameful that they put so little thought and effort into it. If I were a fan of Tali, I'd be annoyed. As things are, I just find it amusing and a little depressing due to what it shows Bioware prioritizes (like, as I mentioned earlier, putting some Z-list celebrity like Chobot in-game for pretty much no reason).

I would have preferred the French Revolution, a lot more intrigue and plotting going on there. It's pretty stupid that the protagonist is half English half Native American, yet is killing redcoats. Realistically he'd almost definitely be firmly on the side of the English, considering they at least semi-respected the agreements made with Native American tribes, while the colonists wanted unchecked expansion into native lands. It would even work better from an AC story perspective, what with so many founding fathers being freemasons and stuff like that. But no, it has to be FREEDOM AMERICA JUSTICE LIBERTY! Kill those evil Englishmen! I mean, I love my country enough to risk my life for it, but an important part of true patriotism is having a realistic view of both the good and bad aspects of your country, not some BS propagandist fantasy. The Revolutionary War had a bit to do with liberty, but much more to do with money, land, and other economic interests, like any other war. If they'd only done the French Revolution, they could have avoided this stupidity.

She's also a rather lazily photoshopped royalty-free stock photo... Show spoiler (hidden content - requires Javascript to show) I think I vaguely remember a dev claiming they'd been having a bunch of serious discussions about how to design her face. Clearly they were focusing on more important things, like putting the ever useless Jessica Chobot in the game. :lol:

Or you could go to: http://www.gamersgate.com/DDB-DBAMC/dungeons-and-dragons-anthology-the-master-collection $6.78 for a DRM-free collection that contains: Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 + Expansions Icewind Dale 1 & 2 + Expansions The Temple of Elemental Evil Planescape Torment For anyone who lacks even 2 of these games, this is a very good deal.

It has been quite a while since I saw that movie. Space piracy has its hazards.

Yeah, I'm actually with mim regarding McQueary. He's one of the few involved I believe to be only a coward, not a bad person. While I wouldn't call a 27 year old a kid, he was far below everyone else involved on the power ladder. He reported it to the people with the power to stop things, and even when it became clear that the right thing hadn't been done, there wasn't much he could do about it (Unlike Paterno, who had enough reputation to really make a difference if he had chosen to). Even if he had gone public, it would be his word against that of people with far greater reputations. He could easily have been ruined. The only way he could guarantee an end to the abuse would be if he had killed Sandusky, which would effectively end his own life, since murder sentences are long, and getting a job isn't going to be easy with a serious criminal record. Yes, he put self preservation ahead of the welfare of children. Yes, that is not a brave thing to do. No, it is not evil. Few people are really willing to risk their entire future for the sake of others. Focusing anger on McQueary, instead of the people who could have definitely made a difference at no risk to themselves, is an awful thing to do. Few of the people attacking him have ever risked everything they hold dear for the sake of strangers, which makes them rather hypocritical.

I'm really sorry Darth Calo, I know this isn't Kavar's, but this discussion is inevitable, since i He reported it to the athletic director, and the senior VP for finance and business (who apparently had some oversight over the campus police). The only action they took was to forbid Sandusky from bringing children from the Second Mile charity to the football building. In other words "do what you want with the kids, just don't do it in our building". When these were the only consequences, the right thing to do would be to report it to someone without an interest in avoiding scandal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't get me wrong, I think Paterno was a genuinely bad person, but he's nowhere near the worst of the people involved. His death makes me think nothing of value was lost, but I'm not actively happy about it. The athletic director and senior VP, who pretty much gave Sandusky permission to rape kids anywhere but on their property, are significantly worse. They are legitimately evil people, and I would love to read their obituaries. This isn't vindictiveness, hate, or rage, whether you consider those concepts immature or not. I just happen to take happiness from any improvement of the world, and less evil people is a net improvement to the world, by my (completely subjective, as any ethical ideas are) standards of moral mathematics.