Mr. GOH!

You know my console remarks are pure snark. Not that a console gamer would understand anything but the most simplistic interpretation of any utterance.

No hard feelings at all, Gerbil. I suppose my 'negativity' towards Nintendo comes as a reaction to the unjustified optimism (and fanboyism) regarding Nintendo I see coming from all sorts of different places, though not necessarily here. I intend my over-the-top thread names to be somewhat snarky rather than totally objective. I don't think my actual posts about Nintendo are negative, in the sense of trolling or just insulting Nintendo; I generally try to base my opinions as to their business decisions and the messes they find themselves on reporting in the business press rather than the gaming enthusiast press.

Geeze, Gerbil, you make it sound like I hate Nintendo. I do not hate Nintendo. I grew up with Nintendo. My greatest early gaming moments were all on Nintendo. What I would *like* modern Nintendo to do is to abandon the home console hardware market and make great multiplatform Nintendo games for console and PC. I don't necessarily think this would be great for Ninty's bottom line, however. What I think Ninty should do if it wants to save itself is to embrace mobile trash gaming with DeNA, make a mint of of the sort of people who spend money on F2P mobile games, and reinvest the earnings in their handheld offerings and making their next console a real competitor with the PS4/Xbone, hopefully to be released in 2016 or 2017. I would not advise them to chase the home fitness market unless they can somehow make their fitness offerings work with a wide variety of third-party fitness tracking devices (like smartphones, the iWatch, for example) in a compelling way.

DeNA reveals its plans to make trash F2P games with Nintendo licenses. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/dena-nintendo-idUSL3N0WY2PO20150401 Nintendo has sold its soul to save the company.

DC is fun, too, what with L'Enfant's bonkers radiating streets layout, or downtown Boston with it's colonial layout.

Yes. It was great and a testament to the fact that Bioware knew, on some level, that lots of folks would ignore the mounts.

For me the speed bonus never outweighed the annoyance of dealing with summoning a mount. And the quests associated with the mounts are boring to me. I ignored them on my second playthrough so far.

I'm midway through my second playthrough and I only ever used the mounts once.

Ostagar is not in this game, though the marshes are nearby, I guess. Read a spoiler summary of DA2. DA:I heavily depends on the events in DA2.

Me too. I'm enjoying PoE the most of the three, but they're all good. Excited for Torment next year, too.

No controller support, sorry. It wouldn't be very much fun with a controller, I'd think. I say this as a PC gamer who uses controllers on almost all controller-supported games and who laments the lack of controller support in the Mass Effect ports.

Double post, I know, but here's an interesting addendum to RPS's review that explores PoE's animancy and faith themes. Although I'm only about 1/3 of the way through PoE, I mainly agree with the essay.

I got the game and the beta, that's it.

There are a lot of tombstones and each one has something like 20 names on it. Lots of $500 backers.

I don't want to spoil it for you, but I will edit this post when I get home today with the story. One of the non-spoiler morals of the story is that the camping supply system really fixes the problems with the "rest anywhere" aspect of the old IE games.

Wish there were a demo so folks like you could try a short adventure to figure out if you'd enjoy it.

I know double post, but this is separate from my convo with ST. Spoiler public service announcement for Endless Paths: God I love this game.

Culture and background are separate options. You pick your culture first, which determines where you come from, and your background establishes what your job was. The jobs list is the same no matter what culture you were from (leading to a few odd possible combinations, like if you're from one of the low-tech barbarian cultures yet have an aristocrat background). The culture option has a pretty decent-sized impact on a lot of things. It affects your starting gear, adds a point or two to specific attributes, and opens up a bunch of conversation options. As far as dialogue options go, culture has more of an affect than race by a long shot, at least so far. In most standard fantasy RPGs your race usually unlocks a bunch of conversation options, but in PoE's world your culture is more important; there really isn't much fantasy racism in its world. There is a lot of prejudice based on other things, though, don't worry. In fact, the only real race-based dialogue and interaction options I've seen are for godlike and that's it. Background is finer-grained and establishes what role your PC had in whatever culture s/he hails from. It opens up a few dialogue options and gives you a bonus to one or two skills. It has less of an impact on dialogue options than culture, at least so far.

It will wait for you, ST. If you liked the Infinity Engine games, PoE is a no-brainer. Obsidian nailed the feeling perfectly while fixing some of major problems, like the terrible AD&D system. I ended up rolling a dual-wield elven rogue with high MIGHT and DEX, moderately high INT, and normal Resolve and Perception. Her culture is the Deadfire Archipelago and her background is merchant. I went with this build because I plan on using only voiced companions for my first run (the game lets you generate your own companions in addition to the eight traditional companions) and there are no rogue, barbarian or monk companions. My choice is working out well; my main is very good at sneaking up at enemies and unloading a ranged sneak attack before closing in with dual weapons for lots of damage. I keep her more armored than I would a D&D rogue to make up for her low CON. The classes are quite well balanced, too. And the engagement system is great.

Your origin has some affect on dialogue and interactions. I got more information about one of my companion's background because of my origin(nothing earth-shaking; just more detail). I have seen a substantial number of locked-out dialogue options based on class, culture, background, and even a few based on sub-class options. They're as prevalent as any other stat check in dialogues and interactions.

Played a few hours so far and am absolutely loving it. Obsidian has made a game that captures the feeling of playing one of the old Infinity Engine games perfectly. The new combat and stat system is better than AD&D by a long shot, too. The writing is also better and more mature than the writing in BG, BG2, or Icewind Dale. I don't mean to say it's mature in the sense of grimdark or lots of swearing, but rather that it reflects a more complicated view of people and the world than the rather simple writing in the BG series. I have noticed a few typos so far in the text, but they're very minor. I have not encountered any trademark Obsidian bugs or jankiness; Obsidian has shown that it is capable of producing an extremely polished game when it can set its own schedule. I am loving it and am very, very happy that it got made.

It's Telltale GoT. It's kind of amazing how Telltale has written a story that, so far, both parallels and interweaves with the show's story. The game has touched upon some of the main themes of GoT very well and does a great job exploring the tensions among loyalties to one's House, to the Iron Throne, and to one's direct lord. It feels a lot like the show, except focused on a smaller number of characters and locations. Well, there's less nudity, so far. Violence aplenty, though! I am also impressed at just how much use the game gets out of their 'maggot' models; it's very appropriate for a GoT game to have plenty of scenes featuring squirming maggots in different roles.