WrathOfDeadguy

The best part was seeing all of the work I'd done over the course of the game come together during the Dam battle- with the Khans, and the Enclave, and the Boomers all kicking Legion ass. I almost got killed while I was staring at the B-29 flying overhead, because when I did that sidequest I had no expectation of ever seeing the thing get airborne. It was immensely satisfying- none of the optional quests in Fallout 3 had any effect whatsoever on the endgame; even though the battle itself was smaller than I had hoped it would be, I felt that I had accomplished something great. The worst part immediately followed the best part as my weak-END sniper character was plot-railroaded into melee combat against Lanius and ultimately won only because of a huge stockpile of stimpaks. In a game which up until then had allowed a fair amount of freedom in how to deal with plot encounters (i.e. allowing stealthy or diplomatic solutions rather than always forcing face-to-face combat), that fight was a huge kick in the immersion and just sorta deflated the ending.

Yeah, pretty much anywhere you go proper range protocol forbids drawing from concealment. Most ranges couldn't care less if you're carrying while on the range- they just don't want you using that gun to do your shooting. The greatest number of "whoopsies" tend to happen when drawing or re-holstering (that and cleaning), even to cops, so it's a reasonable and understandable rule- the range, being a business, doesn't want the liability of somebody getting shot on their premises. Add to that the potential for some dope putting a hole in the bench rest, the lane dividers, or any other piece of range property... the higher their repair bills are, the more they charge for an hour on the range. Having an established protocol for handling guns on the range just makes sense. The same generally holds true in any business that handles guns... gun shows, gun shops, pawn shops; if you bring a gun into their store, then it had better either A. remain in its holster, or B. be unloaded and in a case. If the gun is to be sold or serviced, then the gun store employee you hand it to will want to be the one taking it out of the case. Again, it's a safety and liability issue. Practicing draw & fire techniques can be done with snap-caps at home.

It's a Pirate's life for me...

This site is an excellent self-defense resource. You might note that very little this guy has to say involves guns at all- in fact, most of it is centered on conflict avoidance and much of the rest on how to de-escalate and escape. He also devotes a lot of time to the lethality of knives. The assumption that knives are somehow less lethal than guns is a mistaken one. Knives have been around longer than language. They're one of our most useful tools, but sharp edges served mankind as killing implements well enough for tens of thousands of years before guns came along... it is unwise to underestimate their potential.

I think that it is irresponsible for people as generally irresponsible as famous Hollywood-types tend to be to involve themselves in politics. They often use controversial issues as a means to increase their own public exposure, without caring what the fallout might be or even knowing the details of the issue at hand. Irresponsible is not the same as illegal, however. As long as we keep these folks in money, they'll keep using it to further their personal agendas- as would anyone, I suspect, if they had millions to play with. I also think that the public needs to not allow itself to be so easily influenced by loud-mouthed famous people who haven't got a clue what they're on about. We ought to have the brainpower to put two and two together and realize that a person whose expertise is filmmaking or acting might not have the most well-informed views on subjects like foreign policy and economics. It simply doesn't make sense to listen to these fools. If Hollywood is influencing politics, it's because we as a society are dumb enough to let them instead of... oh, I dunno, researching the issues for ourselves.

I believe that aliens exist; there are so many trillions of stars out there that it is impossible for me to imagine that there aren't more advanced civilizations out there somewhere. Considering how many billions of years the Universe has existed for, some of them may well be quite a bit further along than we are. Do I believe aliens have visited us in the past? I believe that it is possible, but that we do not have enough evidence to say for sure. I believe that the government is hiding secrets with regards to extra-terrestrial activity, but I do not think that The Man is secretly in cahoots with ET. If anything, the government is trying to understand a potential threat, or trying to figure out some recovered technology or other before allowing it to go public- or trying to gain advantage over another Earthly power. I also think that we should not automatically assume that "secrets" means "aliens"- while it is possible that aliens or alien technology could be the secret, it is equally possible that some new and experimental human technology is what's being hidden. Keep in mind that humans went to the moon with 1960s technology, and that stealth aircraft existed for over three decades before the public knew anything about them. The general public never sees the cutting edge of human technological development, yet always seems to assume it knows everything until the next big secret is revealed. I do not believe that aliens are responsible for any of the wonders of the ancient world. We don't even know that aliens must be more intelligent than we are- we know that they are more advanced if they have the means to reach Earth, but we don't know and have no way of knowing how long it took them to reach that point... or how long it may take us. I do believe that we underestimate the ingenuity and ability of previous human civilizations. Our technology makes us arrogant; we assume that because as individuals we cannot imagine how a thing might be done without modern technology, that a person who never had that technology could not have come up with another way of accomplishing the same goal. Remember that, as long as you have mathematics, you have the means to build anything your materials will support. Advances in metallurgy made modern structures possible. The theory behind their construction is ages older. Saying that "aliens did it" is the same as saying "God did it." To ascribe what we do not yet understand to some outside influence is not rational- just because we don't know how an older civilization accomplished its engineering marvels, doesn't mean that they did not know. We know what we know because of the records that have survived from those older civilizations- our advancement as a species goes hand-in-hand with our history. Some of it gets lost along the way... do you document every idea you have? Do you not lose things that you wish you could remember? So does humanity as a whole. Even if we never know precisely how or why, we can reasonably assume that, absent hard evidence to the contrary, humans could and did accomplish great things with a level of technology we consider primitive today. Who's to say they always got everything right the first time- that they never had to knock out a wall and rebuild it? We only get to look at the ancient world's successes, not its failures. As we do, our ancestors would have erased their mistakes as soon as they found them, and a building project dedicated to a ruler who was revered as a living god would have been under particularly intense scrutiny. Some of the most compelling evidence of who really build these wonders comes from the discovery of those mistakes. When a ruler died before their time, construction would be rushed along. Human errors. Science is how we further our understanding of the Universe. Science is fluid, not static- if we learn something new that invalidates something we thought we knew before, that does not destroy the foundation of knowledge but rather reinforces it. Who knows... perhaps aliens were watching ancient civilizations. Perhaps when we make contact, they might be able to fill in the gaps in our own historical record and tell us how we did what we did when we did. So... aliens? Yes. Aliens being responsible for the Rise of Man? Not so much.

I found this article a while back... it focuses on gun control in the UK and how it was implemented. It brings up one point I consider to be particularly interesting- the lack of a unified, national-level gun rights advocacy organization capable of bringing legal and political pressure to bear against the government. As much as individual gun owners in the US may not agree with everything the NRA does, its influence and value to the ongoing 2A struggle can't be denied. Lacking that, basically, the UK's smaller shooting and hunting clubs focused on the preservation of firearms specific to their niche- competitive shooters to target rifles and pistols, hunters to hunting rifles and shotguns, and so forth- which allowed the government to take a divide-and-conquer approach to gun control. Gun owners didn't start organizing on a larger scale in the UK until after most of their rights had been stripped away. In the US, we can see the (attempted) beginnings of this with so-called "assault weapons" bans which target very specific types of semi-automatic firearms. One could even argue that the existing restrictions on fully automatic, sawn-off, and suppressed firearms was the actual beginning of that process- the National Fireamrs Act was passed with the specific intention of giving prohibition-era law enforcement a firepower edge against organized crime (which oddly refused to be outgunned despite the NFA and didn't go into decline until prohibition ended... and the NFA didn't). The 1994 AWB, which expired in 2004, is a very rare case of gun laws becoming more restrictive and then loosening again without the Supreme Court getting involved. Here's another interesting essay, this one about human psychology and instinct with regards to violence. The gist of it is that the "violent nature" of humanity is a myth, and that humans in fact will instinctively shy away from harmful levels of violence, favoring blows to non-vital areas (like other species do when play-fighting or establishing dominance). This being the case, 'human nature' would thus be a misinterpretation of ordinary animal behavior, not a predisposition to maim and kill. That relates to gun rights issues in that, since humans are not creatures of violence by nature, allowing people to arm themselves will not result in a rise in violent offenses. I agree completely with that last one, by the way. In my entire life, the number of people I've known who enjoy and actively seek out violent confrontations I could count on one hand. If those sorts of people tend to flock together, well, then they do- but people by and large don't want to hurt others any more than they want to be hurt- that is to say, not at all. Guns are insurance against the small percentage of people who have no such inhibitions- and as ginnyfizz pointed out, also a valuable means of controlling pests (especially in places where humans have driven off or killed all of the natural predators- where it becomes our responsibility to maintain the balance we've upset) and putting food on the table. Yes, there are people who hunt purely for sport, but unless over-hunting is threatening to ruin an ecosystem then they provide a valuable service in preventing overpopulation of species that no longer have natural predators. Overpopulation of pest and prey species can do as much damage to the environment as human encroachment, and alternative methods (such as administering poisons or contraceptives) have proven ineffective. Also... on the point of using poisons in place of guns to control pests, one way or another you're killing the pest. Trap-and-release just relocates the problem. It might be worth mentioning that more kids die from accidentally poisoning themselves with common pesticides and household chemicals than die from accidents involving guns. Could be because many such chemicals actually do require specialized training and equipment to use safely, while all you really have to do with guns is not point them in an unsafe direction. Ammo is lots cheaper than most poisons, too, and has the added virtue of not killing anything other than the pest you want to get rid of- a bullet won't, for instance, spread and linger and ultimately kill off other wildlife wandering through the area. So, basically, people are not generally inclined to do violence to each other, guns are useful tools as well as defensive weapons, and just because the government isn't after all guns right now doesn't mean that they won't work towards that ultimate goal.

Mass Effect 3 Dragon Age 2 TES V Portal 2 Diablo 3 Them's the must-haves, the games that I know I'll like before I even see detailed previews of. I really wish Half-Life 2: EP3 were on that list, but Valve is still silent on that one...

It is rather silly to state that people cannot kill without guns, Balagor... Folks were perfectly able to commit murder before guns were invented, and they'll be doing so long after guns are replaced by something more effective (whatever that might be). Tools cannot commit crimes, and the absence of them does not prevent crimes from happening. A person with criminal intent will turn to crime regardless of what they must use to do their dirty deeds. Oh, and by the by... the overall crime rate per capita is higher in the UK than it is in the US. Actually, the UK ranks 6th in the world overall for crime, while the US ranks 8th. The US currently ranks higher for violent crime, however the US also has a greater number of large cities than the UK- as urban areas tend to be more violent, this skews the statistics somewhat. The UK tops the US for burglaries and car thefts. Note that the UK has more police per capita than the US does (along with greater police powers). Also note that the top ten most violent cities/states in the US also have the most restrictive gun/weapon laws. Linky. Remember, of course, that statistics can say pretty much anything you want them to when taken out of context. A great deal of the violent crime in the US is drug-related (although the UK actually has a higher per capita rate of drug-related crime), thanks in no small part to our sharing a very long border with Mexico... which is increasingly unstable and rife with corruption (despite, it is important to note, having more restricitve gun laws than the US)- and unwilling to secure the south side of the border. Much (impossible to tell what %) of our crime is imported, and not actually committed by US citizens. The UK, in contrast, doesn't have any bordering nations, and all of the nations surrounding it have first-world status- providing an additional buffer against infiltration by organized criminal elements.

Some things are classified for a good, justifiable reason. Some secrets are kept because they could do tremendous damage and cost people their lives if they are leaked out. We certainly don't want detailed plans of upcoming military operations being public knowledge; all it takes is one person who sympathizes with the enemy and all of a sudden our battle plans are being used to kill our soldiers. Likewise, we don't really want every person on earth to know how to create a thermonuclear weapon, or an incurable plague- even some things that aren't classified are certainly not safe in the public domain. However... The government, and by that I mean every government, has a habit of keeping secrets which, if leaked, would be beneficial to the public. We are not told, for instance, what is in upcoming legislation... sometimes not even after it has been passed. We are not told which countries our government is making deals and seeking alliances with, sometimes to the detriment of our economy, our other alliances, our citizens abroad... and sometimes the government keeps secrets because it has done something horribly, terribly wrong and does not wish the public to know for fear of the people imposing limits on its power. Sometimes things are done to reinforce the government's power and they are kept secret because the people would simply never stand for it if they knew. These are things that the people have a right to know, and which the government has no justifiable reason to keep secret. The affairs of the government with regards to the people, legislative, executive, and judicial acts which affect the people directly, should never be kept secret. They should be published by law in the interests of maintaining the standard of a government by the people, of the people, and for the people. To paraphrase a rather famous document, governments are instituted to serve the people, not to rule them. In short, "National Security" is a phrase which is applied far too broadly, but it does have a proper application.

I believe that censorship enforced by law or public majority is a cancer on free human society. Those things which are most often used as justification for censorship would otherwise already be illegal because they violate somebody's actual rights- child pornography, for instance, is wrong because is violates the rights of the children featured in it. Most of the things that are subject to censorship, however, are censored simply because they offend people... and I hold as most sacred that nobody has a right not to be offended. The person who is so infantile that they cannot or will not look away when something offends them, and thus require some outside authority to 'make the bad thing go away,' is just about the most pathetic and repulsive creature I can think of. What a person allows in their home, on their forum... that's their business. I might not agree with the limits, but in their space they have the right to impose those limits. However, once those limits are taken out into public and applied in everyone's space, they become fundamentally wrong... opinions are subjective, and opinions are what makes anything offensive to begin with. Censorship represents the imposition of one specific opinion on an awful lot of people who don't necessarily agree with it, and amounts to making all opposing points of view effectively illegal. Kids watching porn? Exercise your parental authority and turn it off. Bothered by the DJ uttering four-letter profanities? Switch the station. Censorship is not the answer that a civilized, free society should be turning to.

The newest form of entertainment media will always be the most controversial and the most demonized. It has happened with everything back through the ages, even literature. Don Quixote- which is widely regarded as the first novel in the modern form- was arguably written as a satire of this phenomenon (though Cervantes could never have admitted to such for fear of his life and livelihood, so it's impossible to know for sure). The story centers around a man who reads tales of knights-errant and decides to become one, failing miserably at it and causing a great deal of trouble in so doing. As it so happens, around the time Cervantes was writing his best-known work, the authorities in Spain were getting themselves into a moral outrage over the effect that those chivalrous tales were supposedly having on the population (mind you, most of the population couldn't even read). Among other things, like being Jewish or Muslim or generally anything other than Catholic, and sometimes even that wasn't good enough, especially if you were a woman. Funny story- there never was a rash of people running about reenacting the exploits of fictional knights, while the damage the authorities did in trying to 'protect' people from all that devilish fiction and other 'satanic influences' became quite legendary. Mel Brooks and Monty Python had a grand old time with the material those outraged moral guardians provided. Fiction doesn't make people make bad decisions. People make people make bad decisions. People who try to restrict fiction on the grounds that it might make people make bad decisions tend to be the ones who make the worst decisions of all.

^ You win 10 Internets. I feel as though the Courier should have been a little better known in the area. You're working for the Mojave Express prior to the start of the game, yet nobody associated with the service or managing any of their drop-boxes recognizes you. "Hey, haven't seen you come through in a while, got anything for me?" when going through some of the towns would have been awesome.

That's a mistaken assumption that comes up all too often when the Second Amendment is discussed. Guns weren't generally reliable enough to be used for that purpose in the 18th century. They were single-shot, slow to load (three shots a minute was considered exceptionally quick), and could be disabled by so much as a single drop of water in the wrong place. People who could afford to carry pistols generally carried more than one because, if they needed them, not only could the first not be counted on to work 100% of the time, but if they needed a follow-up shot they would likely not have time to reload. However, that is not the same as saying that nobody carried weapons for self-defense. Knives were as common then as they are today. Frontier colonists in America often carried hatchets or tomahawks, and men of high status, especially politicians, nobles, and military officers, were pretty much expected to wear swords and have at least rudimentary training with them. Bear in mind that cities as we understand them today did not exist. The largest and most populous of cities in America at the time of the revolution had a few tens of thousands of residents- a far cry from the hundreds of thousands or millions we'd expect of an urban sprawl today. It is a well known and documented fact that as population density increases, so does crime- there was simply less crime to contend with in those days. There was no such thing as a gang that would commit murder on the grounds that someone was wearing the wrong color shirt in their part of town. Crimes were generally committed against travelers, who were more vulnerable since they could not easily summon help. If a crime was committed in a town, especially a violent crime, there was an expectation that every able-bodied man in the community would pitch in to bring the offender to justice- and odds were that everyone involved knew both the offender and the victim. The Founding Fathers did foresee technological advancement, and they did take more into account than just the formation and regulation of militias. They had just fought a very new kind of war (as they would have seen it), utilizing then-new technologies like rifles, modern tactics like guerrilla warfare and sniping... they understood very well that the weapons they used were not going to be the dominant technology forever. These were well-educated statesmen, students of history, inventors and craftsmen, as well as brilliant military minds. No, they couldn't have accounted for the advances which made modern firearms possible- the technologies used in making them hadn't been invented yet. However, they did intend for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to be documents which would allow a new nation to endure long after they were dead and buried. They knew that the language they used in its construction would have to take progress, both technological and political, into account. They were very, very careful not to phrase anything in a way which would render any part of its intended purpose obsolete. The Second Amendment refers to "arms"- not "guns." Weapons which may be practically carried and used by a single person. Yes, it was intended to keep the People on equal terms with the government. But what use is protection against the government when you need that same government to protect you against a common street thug? The two needs are connected by necessity, the higher need (defense against tyranny) supported and reinforced by the lower (protection of self, home, and fellow man). Further evidence of this may be found in the various State constitutions- remember that, when the Constitution of the United States was ratified, the States were regarded as largely autonomous. Many of their constitutions also guarantee a right to keep and bear arms, and some of them are quite specific about those arms being used for self-defense. Not guns, but arms. The weapons of the day in common use- guns, blades, canes, and so on and so forth. In our terms, that would mean the inclusion of tasers, pepper spray, blackjacks... you name it. While military arms were the primary focus of the text, those arms would have been owned and kept by the men who bore them- and it would have been unthinkable to tell him he could not use them except to make war. If a town even had law enforcement, there weren't more than a handful of constables for the entire local area. There is no specific provision for self-defense in the Second Amendment not because it wasn't considered a right, but because it was considered to be so obvious that it didn't bear mentioning. People had no option besides self-defense; even if there were policemen about they were not just a phone call away, they did not have rapid response capability, and they would be armed and trained only as well as everyone else because the municipality would not have shelled out for (at the time) very expensive pistols for each and every lawman. The very thought of a man being forbidden by law from using a weapon in self-defense- or to protect another person, or his home, or his land, or even his reputation- would have been abhorrent. Remember that men were legally able to challenge one another to duels right up until the latter half of the 19th century... that several of the Founding Fathers themselves fought duels (Alexander Hamilton was killed in one by Aaron Burr). If that practice, now something we find to be rather barbaric, was legal- men carrying weapons to defend their honor- what do you imagine the chances are that anybody would have even considered the possibility of writing a law forbidding the use of weapons for self-defense against a violent attack? Context is important when determining intent.

There was a similar thread not too long ago... I think I made my views pretty clear in that one, so I'll just link to it rather than re-post the same walls of text here. I believe that it is not the government's place to enact any regulations or restrictions on any citizen doing or owning anything unless that person demonstrates that they represent a direct and immediate danger to other people. I believe that people have a sovereign right to protect themselves, their homes, and their loved ones, and that there is no government or municipal agency on Earth that can guarantee that protection. I believe that whether or not a person "needs" a gun should not be a standard used to judge whether or not they may own a gun, or anything else for that matter. As has been demonstrated repeatedly and conclusively by Prohibition, the War on Drugs, and gun bans like those in the UK and Australia, simply making a thing illegal does not do away with crimes associated with it. "Gun crime" is a nebulous concept at best, and as the UK amply demonstrates guns are simply tools- and when the scum of society can't get their hands on one weapon, they're more than happy to use another. Gun bans do not eliminate "gun crime"- they simply transform it into "knife crime" or "bludgeon crime" or whatever hot-button term you want to use this week. What gun bans do is remove from the hands of average people the most effective means of ensuring their personal security against those criminal elements. I would not ever consent to live in a place where it was illegal to own guns, nor would I live in a place where it was illegal to make use of those guns to protect my home and loved ones. I have a carry permit that is valid in over 30 of the 50 United States, and I do carry a concealed handgun wherever it is legal for me to do so. I try to avoid going to places where it isn't legal for me to carry, but since I live in one (New Jersey), that isn't always possible. I fully intend to move to a carry-friendly state as soon as I am able to do so. Gun control is knee-jerk reaction to what appears to be an unstoppable tide of violence... it is feel-good legislation that slaps a band-aid over a wound that needs sutures. Repealing the various prohibitions on drugs and non-violent behavior would do more to reduce violent crime than any gun laws ever could- cut off the demand for crime, and the criminals that provide the supply will soon vanish as well. Lastly, there's a reason why the bad news seems to outweigh the good news where guns in the media are concerned. Have you noticed, by any chance, that bad news always gets more media coverage than good news? A murdered shopkeeper makes much better headlines than the robber who saw that his victim was armed and ran away, just like a car wreck makes better headlines than the new traffic light that was installed to prevent another accident in the same spot. People don't pay any attention when things go right... only when they go wrong.

Just a minor annoyance here- what I'd like to see are the NPCs, specifically Loghain, wear clothing appropriate to their current situation during cutscenes. It always seemed silly to me that the man is wearing his war-ready plate armor while relaxing by a fire, greeting Arl Eamon, and so forth... no matter how paranoid the guy is, it doesn't make any sense at all given how crushingly heavy that stuff really is (wearing armor to the Landsmeet makes sense, since he knows you'll probably be there, but beyond that?). What I'd like to see is for non-guard NPCs to be wearing class-appropriate clothing or light armor during cutscenes where they aren't in or preparing for combat. That's it, nothing fancy... just a minor annoyance. :)

Wynne can be a little patronizing, but she means well- she's the only one in the party who's lived a full, rich life and remembered it all... she's learned from her mistakes and doesn't want to see you, the party leader, repeat them. She says herself that she was more than a little b****y in her younger years, but several bitter lessons caused her to mellow out. I like Morrigan... she reminds me a lot of a character I wrote some time ago for a project that never quite got off the ground. Once she lets you in, you'll be best friends forever and she's loyal as a dog, but getting there is fifty miles of bad road on three flat tires and god help you if you ever piss her off. She doesn't strike me as evil, just callous and self-serving with an admittedly tiny warm spot for her one friend/lover (you). She'll do what you ask her to, regardless of how little she likes it (unlike *certain* other party members who'll outright betray you or leave you), but she won't hesitate to tell you exactly what she thinks of your decisions and it's pretty clear that she's playing the long game from square one. Now, Flemeth on the other hand... hardcore, manipulative evil. First time through I was seriously expecting her to be revealed as the true Big Bad. Her influence on Morrigan's personality is clear, but if Morrigan is an ice queen then Flemeth spits liquid nitrogen.

Loghain is at least a short, straightforward fight. I think it was meant to be over quickly... but yeah, it can be a hangup for melee-weak non-mage PCs. I'd imagine that's why the game lets you pick a champion; I guess the devs figured you'd have at least one person in your party who could take him out without much trouble. And it is just so immensely satisfying to pick Morrigan/Mage Warden/Wynne and lay the total magical smackdown on that arrogant jerkwad with high-chance paralyze/knockdown spells. Or, for that matter, the higher-up sword-and-board shield whacking skills. Or rogue stun skills and an endless chain of backstabs. With the right setup that duel feels (to me) like a vindication of all the time and effort you've spent catching up with his treacherous armored arse. And the beheading? I grin ear to ear every time I see Anora bathed in daddy's blood. I pick her for ruler sometimes, but it's still fun to knock off two birds with one stone and traumatize the scheming witch while putting the cap on your revenge. Of course, if you don't win the Landsmeet vote, then it becomes royally irritating. There really does need to be an autosave straightaway after all the dialogue... I can't remember there being one; I remember having to redo the Landsmeet several times on my first playthrough and being put off enough to put in the extra effort and just make sure that I didn't lose the vote ever again.

As a distribution platform, I really, really like Steam. I like being able to install a game before official release if I've pre-ordered it (yeah, it'd be nice to be able to play right away, but being able to play within a few minutes of release is the next best thing). I like that games and the platform itself stay up to date without any effort on my part. I like that I can install and play pretty much anything on pretty much any computer provided I've got my login info handy. I also like the addition of the in-game Steam Cloud overlay for organizing games with friends with a bit less hassle ("Oy! Get on Steam you lazy dope!" *send invite, start game*). It's missing a few things yet, and still has the occasional crippling hiccup: 1. Needs a true offline mode. At present, offline mode cannot be activated while there is an active internet connection; it only pops up with the option after it checks for a connection and fails to find one. The online/offline choice should be presented every time at startup unless otherwise specified in options. 2. The ability to "decouple" a game from Steam. Wouldn't it be grand if you could buy a game, download it via Steam, then bump it over to another directory and not have to be running Steam to play it? Especially with singleplayer games? Yeah, that's what I thought. 3. Forced default to offline mode if Steam detects an active internet connection but fails to contact the Steam servers. Right now, when this happens, you get booted to the login screen and have your password cleared, which effectively disables offline mode until the server connection is re-established (IIRC offline mode won't accept your pass unless it is saved). If the servers are down for an extended period (as has happened on occasion, once for about a week), anyone who isn't aware of the problem before trying to log on can be denied access to their games until the problem is fixed, even though everything would have worked just fine if they hadn't been online when they started Steam. Steam reverts to offline mode when the servers are lost and the program is already running, so why can't it just do so at startup too? 4. The blasted glitch that occasionally causes Steam to 'forget' the validation/download status of games that have already been installed and validated. I've had this happen more than I'd like even in offline mode, and occasionally when I was unable to establish a connection and fix the problem. It's irritating and shouldn't still be happening six years after the platform came out. 5. Ability to "gift" any game on an account, not just duplicates or games bought specifically as gifts. Say you've had your fill of a particular game but your friend wants to try it... why can't you just give it to them? We're talking about games that couldn't be sold as used even if retail stores still accepted used PC games; they're 100% digital content. Since the precedent exists for buying additional licenses then transferring them to other accounts free of charge, no argument against the feature holds water. If you can transfer any duplicate license, why not any original as well?

My impression of Bhelen is that, while he's a ruthless (pick your foul description), he is not ultimately a self-serving individual. He has a very clear vision of what he wants to do, believes that he is the only one who can get it done, and sets off to do it no matter how low he has to stoop to get there. He sees the bigger picture- that Dwarven society must either change or perish- and is determined not to let the latter come to pass. I don't get the impression that he particularly cares how he's remembered as long as he succeeds in turning Orzammar around. His ideas upset the status quo far too much for him to trust any of the other major players in Orzammar; he knows that if he tried the diplomatic approach it would fail miserably if only because the rest of the politicians don't see a problem with the way things are. They're comfortable, so they're content. Dwarves are stubborn by nature; they only accept change when it is forced down their throats, so when a reformer comes along the only way he's ever going to get results is to be underhanded and absolutely ruthless. Comparisons with Stalin really don't hold water- Stalin was concerned only with power and prestige, and his paranoia led him to murder millions of his own people. Bhelen is perfectly willing to roll heads when he doesn't get his way, but he doesn't see power as an end unto itself- the end is reform and the recovery of the Dwarven empire; power is the means to that end. Bhelen limits his purging to the people who really are in the way- he doesn't kill people out of hand just for disagreeing with him, or for consorting with his enemies. He disposes of his siblings (and probably his father) because he knows he is last in the line of succession and that his plan will never come to fruition if anyone else gets the throne. He executes Harrowmont because He knows that he has to attain power first and foremost, and then work on bringing everyone around to his way of thinking. Does that make him a tyrant? Absolutely. However, his would be a benevolent tyranny rather than a malignant tumor feeding off the spoils of his nation. If he refuses to let go of power, it will be because he does not believe his successor will follow through on his reforms- not because he's power-hungry.

I just hate being separated from my party. I hated it in every other Bioware pattern game I've played, and I hate it in Dragon Age. The game is designed for party-based 'puzzle piece' tactics, where each party member brings something different to the fight, and stripping away the party for a long section of the game that requires combat robs the game of all its vitality. That one series of rooms is arbitrarily difficult for non-mage characters, so it stands apart as a particularly bad wall-banger, but the whole area is just terrible. There are other party-less sections, sure, but they're all short or require little combat. Every other battle, regardless of difficulty, is less of a pain in the rear simply because, while it may be hard, it still feels like playing the game- as opposed to: "we're going to punish you for making progress by taking your party away, then make you work your ass off for at least an hour to get back to actual gameplay again." I'm not at all ashamed of using one of the mods that rips that gawdawful compost heap of tedium right out of the experience. :/ If I had to pick a second-worst fight, it would probably have to be the Spider Queen along the Anvil of the Void path. I've never found that to be a particularly difficult fight (unless the spideys decide to chain with webs), but the battle feels completely unnecessary and out of place. It can't compare to the epic feel of the Brood Mother and Branka fights, or the running battles through Bownammar. There's also the "false anvil" fight, which- while screwy- at least feels like it belongs somewhere in the sequence of events. The spider bossfight is just... in the way. "Oh, here's a boss. Have fun kthxbai." Even the setting is depressingly underwhelming. It's not even as if the Paragon of Her Kind questline needed the padding; it's already the longest and deepest in the game. Boss battles need to have a purpose; if they're just there then they detract from the experience.

I've installed the barrier remover and played around with it a bit, and I must say it is a breath of fresh air. I ran across a few places where it was possible to get stuck between objects and terrain features, but that's really a design oversight- being able to fart around and really explore more than makes up for the few hiccups. You really have nothing to lose by trying it out, and the game feels much truer to its own design that way.

There's one series of rooms in the Fade that is positively stuffed full of mages... since mages are horrendously OP in this game to begin with (though in an evil-cackle-and-glee sort of way when playing 'em), and you don't have your party around for backup, it makes for an extremely tedious choke-point for non-mage PCs. They can chain on you with fireballs and other knockdown/paralyze effects pretty easily, and once they get lined up like that there really isn't much you can do except watch the show.

^ Truth. Only one human/mutant/ghoul companion is allowed at a time, plus either ED-E or Rex. You have to dismiss Arcade before Veronica will join you. If you haven't been to the Lucky 38 yet, do so before switching companions so that you can send them back to a common base once you acquire them... then just change out as desired.

I get the odd inexplicable CTD, but I'm obsessive about updating my saves so I never lose more than a few minutes. Subterranean enemies show up every now and again, but they're mostly just funny. I've never had that happen with a quest target.