Hot Heart

Yeah, we could've made a spectacle of it.

Things I have learned from Chris Claremont's writing for X-Men: - If you're not sure the audience understands that two characters are in a relationship, even if the whole conversation revolves around the concept, make sure one of them addresses the other as 'lover' at the earliest opportunity. - If some of the action might be unclear, have one of the characters explains what is happening as clinically or scientifically as possible, even if they are alone. - Australians say 'mate' every other sentence. - Villains always speak their thoughts aloud, heroes occasionally do this. - I don't know if I can credit him for these but ZAM! WHAMMO! KRAKOV! CHOOMP! and ZARG! are the greatest sound effects ever. - Never write 'Wolverine, you heard it too?' followed by the caption 'The mutant known only as Logan'.

Whatevs. We all know your father doesn't love you and you never got to see Muppet Babies.

Ha. I actually meant to look for that when you said the 'could care less' thing would be a pet peeve.

i.e. They're British. I still hear them used fairly regularly (but not usually by my generation).

That does look pretty cool (except for the melee stuff), but I am recognising a lot of character actors seen across various crime shows...which I can only hope is a red herring to throw you off.

Oh, I noticed this while writing a script. 'Chaps' are those things you'd see a cowboy wearing; whereas, over here, it's more readily used as an informal term for friends or 'buddies', eg. Hello, old chap! That has to be a British thing. It's so fusty-sounding. (In case you were wondering, I was using the American term in what I was writing. )

It did? First I'd ever heard of that.

Also, have you guys ever tried to walk a cake? That is NOT EASY! (Yes, I know the true origins of the term)

Can't say I've really noticed, but a lot of the more mainstream stuff does tend to fall into that category. It becomes easily digestible, grand narrative stuff rather than a complex exploration of an idea.

I guess we'll have to see, but BioWare games have never really punished you for being renegade. It even halves the helicopter's armour if you jam that electric spanner thing in that guy's back during the Archangel recruitment mission in ME2 (and I think you possibly get a few other combat advantages with renegade interrupts at later points). I'd like to imagine that even if you succeed as a renegade, the game will make you consider your own humanity and what lengths you've gone to...but that's hefty stuff to expect from them (and something made as a 'space opera').

Love everything about this song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQprJlgiwrY

We are saying that moral choices in Mass Effect are not based on the consequence but the 'attitude' of the player, but earlier you said: And I don't think BioWare are telling you off (for the most part, they've always been about 'power' to the player). Then, later, you said something contrary to the idea of the consequences being labelled as good/bad, which led me to think you had (rightly) reconsidered.

Yeah, I kinda meant to say 'doddle' seems a bit more old-fashioned, while the others see more usage.

Couldn't see this but for something that's considered an easy task some people would say it's a 'doddle'. Alternatives might be 'a piece of cake' or 'easy peasy' (do you guys know that one?) 'Go on, it'll be easy peasy lemon squeezy' 'No, it won't. It will be difficult difficult lemon difficult' 0:10 here:

You said things like saving the Collectors base wouldn't pan out because renegade points meant it was evil. True, it's not perfect, but they knew what they were doing. A lot of the choices are pretty simple and obvious (which is probably what helps make it so popular) and it's only rarely that you get into the sort of grey areas that The Witcher does. Trouble is, I can't ever see them changing it if they wanted to try something a little more mature and complex like The Witcher.

http://www.cuttingroomcomic.com/comics/1135022/nathan-fillion/

Mass Effect Spoilers

It seemed that way from what Dean said earlier about the Collectors' base and such, but it appears he is thinking differently now. I'm not sure on the 'ordained by God' thing though. There can be different consequences, but in Mass Effect they just tend to look at how a player deals with a situation and then encourage players to follow a set path and keep some sort of consistency in their character. A lot of the 'right' and 'wrong' stuff seems clearer when it's simply viewed as 'optimist' and 'pessimist' but I think there are probably still moments in the game where it gets a little blurry (Legion's loyalty mission perhaps). Wish I could find the interview, but Muzyka and Zeschuk are clearly aware of their own design goals in Mass Effect. Shepard is a character with a backstory and, in a way, the player is reacting to the narrative (rather than more open decisions) and is being given a lot of control over it rather than developing their own blank character as they did in Dragon Age: Origins. And just to be clear, I'm not trying to fanboy Mass Effect or anything (honest!), since it is not perfect in utilising a karma meter. It just appears BioWare are not arbitrarily implementing one as some developers might.

The scoring aspect may be dumb, but it would indicate that 'paragon' is not based on a universal right/wrong outcome but merely the attitude of the player. Not executing a mercenary would be seen as trusting and optimistic whereas things like killing the Rachni Queen would simply be ruthless; regardless of the final outcome. I'm also basing this on the fact that Jade Empire's way of labelling the choices was the 'open palm' and 'closed fist'.

Hehe. Maybe that's partly why the villains are English: we're not offended by it.

Did you guys ignore my link above? In that one you get paragon points but the outcome is not necessarily good.

Grabbed Tekken 6 from Play.com because it was only a tenner.