Arondell

A demo has been released! http://store.steampowered.com/app/200510/

Basically they made all the aliens tougher. Examples? Lobster Men : Very high health points.(100+) Decent Time units. On top of that every ranged weapon of any kind did a fraction of full damage. 30-40% of full damage. The melee weapons introduced in TFTD actually did 200% damage vs lobster men. The downside of course being you had to be in melee range. Often not easy. Tentaculats : Basically the "chrysalids" of the game. Enormous amount of TU. Could effectively "fly" in the underwater areas. Fairly high health points. Upside is you wouldn't have to worry about them in land missions. These ones alone taught you the advantage of disciplined use of covering fire. ALWAYS Tsaoths : A cross between the mutons(?) and etherials(?) from the first game.

I felt the first was pretty well balanced with difficulty. The sequel X-com : Terror from the Deep could be ridiculously difficult. Especially the tentaculat aliens which were effectively flying chrysalids. Also two level missions were really common and often turned into a bit of a slog fest as you hunted for that last alien hiding in some remote corner.

So the remake to X-Com is coming out next month. So far from the preview videos its looking pretty good. Note this is not that FPS version that was in development but a tactical turn based combat like the original. Its being developed by Firaxis the same guys who do Civilization so I have high hopes. Yes they are including some form of competitive multiplayer. http://tinyurl.com/9tcuupz www.firaxis.com

I have to admit I still feel a bit disappointed about the ending even after the Extended Cut. I got the feeling that we didn't so much defeat the reapers at the end as we were handed a victory. Hmm...Not sure if it quite catches the feeling. To put it a different way. If you play a sports game and you know the only way you won was because the other side let you win does it still feel like a victory? Especially when its more or less spelled out that your being handed your "victory" on the other teams terms? I've actually retreated to some of the fanfics out there as a consolation prize. Several of them I think are better writing then the actual Bioware team. (At least for Mass Effect 3) Edit : I still think the Tali picture was inexcusable lazyness.

Well it has been officially announced. The Extended Cut is being released this coming Tuesday on June 26th. I'm basically viewing this as Bioware's saving throw and while I'm hoping for good results I'll admit to not being optimistic.

I don't have a reference but I was sure that Brandon was reported to have said that unlike the other magic systems the stormlight one was based on behavior not genetics.

Kind of lost my suspension of disbelief at the end of the last episode.

Anyone play City of Heroes/Villains? I've played it for quite a while and it went free to play in the last year. My global is Arondell and I tend to hang out on the Guardian server.

We haven't really had much of a chance to get to know Toph's daughter.(Lin Beifong) All we can really tell is that she seems negatively predisposed towards Korra. This suggests some past issues that haven't been revealed yet. As of the last episode I'm pretty sure Toph had a brief cameo in that past life flashback Korra had. I suspect that if Korra could talk to her past lives she could probably figure out a lot of these problems. She doesn't seem to be in touch with the spiritual side of being the avatar though. Which is probably part of the issue she is having with air bending since that form is the one usually associated with spirituality. I also get the impression that with the last episode all the primary stage pieces are now in place. Though I keep wondering if the cabbage guy will show up.

Well its been the better part of two months now since ME3 came out. The panel at PAX East basically said that they will be releasing an "Extended Cut" to provide clarification and closure. It will come in the form of free DLC sometime this summer. The official press release has stated that it will not include any new or remade endings. Fan response to this seems to be generally negative. In addition to this more tech savvy fans have started uncovering cut dialogue that is hidden in the current game. This is causing even more discontent since some of the dialogue is pretty cool stuff. The cut dialogue that apparently occurs during the last mission is one great example.While the whole issue with the ending is still getting most of the gripes quite a lot of smaller issues that under most other conditions would probably be considered significant issues still bother quite a lot of fans. The poorly done photshop photo as a Tali face reveal, the day 1 Prothean DLC, and crappy mission tracker are on the list. Oh yeah Bioware hiding behind the excuse for the ending. Lets face it "artistic integrity" is the consolation prize of excuses in creative works. Its what you use when everyone thinks you suck.The weird thing is that as glaring as these issues are its still a great game. I can't not recommend it. Just....Well....Instead of walking into that beam of light at the end just turn the game off. The prior 20-40 hours of game play will thank you for not playing the long dark shadow that is the last ten minutes. I might change my mind if the "Extended Cut" DLC is better then I currently expect it to be. Edit : I forgot to add this. Including Jessica Chobot a real life IGN journalist as Diana Allers was rather tacky. One of the more blatant cases of pandering I've seen in the industry. Then killing off Emily Wong a minor if well liked recurring character in a twitter post put the icing on the cake. Especially since Emily Wong would have been the most obvious character to use in the position they used Allers.

It appears at the moment that anger over on the Bioware forums has receded to a constant dull rumble of dissatisfaction while people await the Mass Effect panel at PAX East this coming weekend. Most seem to expect Bioware to make some kind of statement regarding the ending during the panel. There has been a lot of YouTube videos made because of all this. My favorite so far is a 40 minute video that effectively gives a detailed critique about why the ending doesn't work in relation to the rest of the series. Specifically covering the issues of genre, character focus, central conflict, and narrative coherence. Yes it contains a lot of spoiler material.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Katara. I had the impression from some public statements last year that none of the original cast would be involved. I suspect that she'll have very little actual screen time. Her involvement seemed to be a pass-the-torch kind of thing. Other then that I thought the first two episodes did a good job of introducing characters and setting the stage. I'm kind of hoping the'll get into a little more detail about the nature of this republic. How exactly does that work? Oh...A quick search over at the Avatar wiki pretty much described it.

The sheer contrast is part of what makes it such a let down. Part of me keeps wondering how the developers could possibly have thought this was a good ending. I suspect there was some sort of group think going on inside the company and anyone who did have doubts was afraid to speak up. If nothing else it does indeed seem to be the case that Bioware was totally blindsided by the near universal revulsion to the ending. Edit : Its especially bitter because the writers changed the ending from what was originally envisioned when they started the series. Remember all that talk about dark energy from the Mass Effect 2? That was foreshadowing about what the original reason for the reapers actions. For whatever reason after Karpyshin left the team the new head writers decided to change it. I'm not sure why. Being bitter about the whole thing I have unkind opinions about the why.

Ha. I love this quote by Ray Muzyka. "We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received,” he wrote. The "artistic integrity" argument lost a lot weight with me after I heard about how they made the image of Tali without her mask. Granted this is a rather trivial issue on the whole tapestry that is Mass Effect 3 but it was still a pretty chintzy way to do that big of a face reveal. Artistic sloth at its finest.

There is a rather interesting post on the Bioware forums that is giving an updated analysis of the whole "ME Ending" issue from a public relations perspective. The original post doesn't seem very "spoilery" by itself but if your worried about that kind of thing you might want to avoid it. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10084349

Yeah its about the ending. Without getting into too many specific story details of the ending it kind of works like this.

I first got Mass Effect 1 and 2 last November when steam had a both on sale for $20. I got Mass Effect 3 about 9 days ago and recently finished it. Overall I thought it was great. There was one rather important aspect of the game that I felt was very disappointing. Since this seems to be a no-spoiler thread at the moment I won't get into it here. Though if you go to the actual bioware forums its causing a bit of an uproar in the Mass Effect fan community.(With good reason.) For the most part though I felt it was a darn good last chapter. Though it seems pretty clear that there going to be releasing some DLC over the next year for it.

Its not? I don't keep a super close eye on the forums but it still states that Skai's Shard is Dominion on the wiki. Including the link to the forum post saying Mr. Sanderson confirmed it. (With accompanying picture of his written statement.) Has this changed?

This sounds more like a misunderstanding of the term. I had the impression that Dominion was something that related to governance or rule. Granted there is a great deal of scope inside those parameters but it would certainly have been a powerful unifying force. Its probably why Odium put it on the list of shards to take out first. It would have been interesting to see what kind of world Aona and Skai would have made if Odium had not shown up.

An interesting issue with technological advancement in all areas of science is at that some point all fields start have an interconnected dependency. I would expect a lagging development in electricity to really start to hold other fields back until it can "catch up". Past the roughly 1910 tech level it just becomes so critical to just about everything. Another aspect of course is just serendipity. Developments in many fields of science happened because a researcher by chance noticed an odd effect and wondered why that happened.

A bit off topic but being something of a fan of airships I've long had a rather whimsical desire to go back in time and do whatever I had to do to make sure that radio announcer during the crash did not get on the air. Preferably involving a heavy blunt object.

I suspect it might be Mr. Sanderson showing that there is a metaphorical gun on the mantelpiece. There are quite a few things that have been mentioned in passing for all the major characters that haven't been looked at very closely yet. I'm betting most of those passing references will be brought up in greater detail in later books.

There was also two passing references to a girl named Tarah. and I got the impression whoever she was/is she had been fairly important to him.

I seem to recall the inspiration for the telegraph was the fundamental understanding that electricity traveled extremely quickly. If you have enough understanding of electricity to be able to make public city lighting you pretty much have to have enough theoretical understanding to know that it could be used as a communications system. The only reason I could imagine for it not being developed would be a perceived lack of economic incentive. Even then I would expect there had been simple experiments in university labs and such.