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Comments
What I dislike about Elder Scrolls lore is essentially what I dislike about Forgotten Realms lore: too many answers. The gods are definitely real and there's definitive laws for the supernatural. I think is runs exactly counter to what makes fantasy settings like Warhammer Fantasy's Old World and the lands of The Witcher so interesting. In Warhammer, magic lacks definitive explanation, and the line between deities, luck and the Winds of Magic isn't so much blurred as a squiggly rainbow mess. The only deity that can be definitively said to be real in a literal sense is Sigmar; even the Chaos Gods are more abstract forces than divine beings.
Warhammer Fantasy has this way of combining history, mythology, creativity and blatant fantasy cliche that makes it equally suited to stupid fun and serious consideration. It's a world where a reasonably accurate expy of the Holy Roman Empire exists alongside ratmen that ride into battle within giant hamster wheels, blasting lightning bolts from arcane gatling guns. Vampires can be Stokeresque, more along the lines of original folklore or something else entirely. It's like this huge love letter to everything that goes into fantasy, the only downside being how bloody expensive the models are.
^ In my opinion, that mystery element works for Warhammer where the setting itself is murky and barbaric/Medieval, but for a setting like Morrowind, with its advanced culture and (comparatively) advanced technology, the clarity about magic and gods makes for a better fit.
Don't know about Forgotten Realms, though.
So, I've been playing Blue Dragon.
I sunk 16 hours into it before I even got to the second disc, and my cousin was sitting on my lap the entire time. My legs are so sore.
What... Did... But... Bwuh...
...Fucking speed runners!
The thing about Warhammer, though, is that the perspective faction (The Empire) is smack dab in the middle of the Renaissance. I think the murkiness works wonderfully in this context because we get to see the Empire's attempts at rationalising the unknowable with primitive versions of modern sciences, so it really feels like an age of discovery with a push towards enlightenment.
It's a setting where knights make heroic charges, witch hunters burn those of indeterminate guilt and engineers construct amazing steampunk technologies side-by-side.
Personally, I think Kirino is worse. I'm not sure why, since I haven't seen much of her. But fact is that I really like Yozora, while Kirino got so badly on my nerves that I dropped the Oreimo manga. After three chapters.
Concerning Fallout 2, I have the restoration mod installed. Are the children restored there too?
Speaking of which, I should get back to it. I stopped at the rat quest near the beginning, which annoyed me because I missed all the time. I played (part of) the German version and it worked fine there, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Well, actually it's obvious: My Melee Weapons value is too low. Obvious solution would be starting a new game and tag Melee Weapons, but I'm not willing to go over the damned tutorial again and one should only tag skills one expect to use a lot (and I doubt that I will use melee much, as soon as I get guns and a decent supply of ammo). I'm also not willing to just skip this quest.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas were kind of high on ammo. I've heard that the earlier Fallout games made melee weapons a reasonably big deal because ammo was so scarce for so long, but the latter games festoon you with rounds, magazines and shells as soon as you make any kind of progress.
Oh a tip,
If you want to play New Vegas, you kinda need to know about Fallout and Fallout 2
Not really. Even in Fallout 1 and 2, it's usually very easy to buy more ammo then you need in bulk.
I'd disagree, I'd say ammo was plentiful in Fallout
I never had any problems with ammo in Fallout 1. Admittedly, ammo in the early game of Fallout 2 was pretty scarce and your guns were pretty shoddy most of the time (and ammo for the assault rifle was very difficult to find), but eventually you were absolutely swimming in it (cannot for the life of me remember when that point was though).
@MadassAlex: I'll admit, I don't know much about Warhammer, but according to Wikipedia:
>The Elves were the first truly civilised race to walk the world. Brought into creation by the Old Ones, the Elves showed a natural talent for magic and superlative skill at arms. The once glorious civilisation of the Elves was torn asunder many thousands of years ago by a bitter civil war, resulting in the sundering of the race into three distinct kindreds: the evil, twisted Dark Elves, the proud, noble and magical High Elves who continue the ancient traditions from before the sundering, and a third group as the rustic, sylvan and mysterious Wood Elves.
So there is still an inherent element of instability to the situation that befits the cloudy understanding of magic, while I imagine the Elvish civilization before the sundering had an understanding more like Morrowind's (which fits because Morrowind's society collapses later on, along with the Empire's).
So the settings of Morrowind and Warhammer represent different stages of societal development is what I'm saying, and their individual handling of magic and divinity fits each of them uniquely.
Magic in Warhammer is inherently different, though. In TES, magic (to my knowledge) is stable, with predictable and reliable results based on laws. In Warhammer, even the High Elves can miscast a spell and be pulled into a nether dimension or summon a daemon -- and such occurrences are even more common for factions that don't have their grasp on sorcery. All magic is thought to come from the stuff of Chaos, and thereby a result of the Chaos Gods. There was some fuckup with the Old Ones and bam, Chaos Gods. I'm not sure on the details, but then I don't think anyone is.
In any case, the Chaos Gods are the source of all magic, but they're also the greatest enemy of the civilised factions of the setting. Unfortunately, all things pertaining to their particular realms empower them. All bloodshed empowers Khorne, for instance, even when it's done justly. Even the gentlest, most innocent sex between timid newlyweds empowers Slaanesh.
The Chaos Gods feed off conflicts, passions, schemes and whatnot. Every virtue upheld and every sin committed contributes to their power, and they are the source of magic. So magic becomes an abstract measurement of the setting's turmoil. The theme of the Empire runs counter to that. Even though the Dwarfs have better technology, they're complacent; only the citizens of the Empire push for new scientific advancement. Where every other faction fails because of their reliance on mysticism, the Empire has the potential to defeat Chaos because of the advancement of science. Even that's a tough conflict, though, because the Renaissance was a time where scientific advancement and foklore collided head-on, and so it is in the Empire.
This is the kind of thing that makes the Warhammer setting stand out to me. Most of its core narrative elements express some kind of theme about the world. Every army book is written from that faction's perspective, for instance, and each one contradicts the others about certain events. Ergo, finding canonical answers to many matters is impossible because they don't exist. The Old World is one without answers, just the endless struggle of mankind's advancement against Chaos.
Can't say that I had much of a problem to get hold of ammo in the first Fallout. That's a way Fallout 2 caught me off-guard at the beginning with is (initial) scarcity of firearms and ammo. In the first game, you start off with a handgun and enough ammo and it's not hard to get more.
In the words of one Let's Player, "you start with a fucking gun, and that's just great."
We had another cube draft last night/today. This time I went B/u not-quite-control with Crystal Shard and a bunch of things with Come Into the Battlefield abilities (mostly discard), including both Gravedigger and Entomber Exarch. I really liked that deck, though I didn't fare too well anyways.
Should I buy Fallout 2?
I have Fallout 1, but I haven't played it. I am not sure whether I'd enjoy it. Fallout 2 is currently discounted on GOG, for the weekend.
(I will not get Fallout 3, Tactics, or New Vegas anytime soon.)
I'll admit that Yozora is more likable, but the difference between her and Kirino that makes me question which one is worse is that Kirino's physically abusive and temperamental, whereas Yozora's petty and cruel. Her bad behavior is pretty funny, but she's more outright antagonistic than I remember Kirino ever being, and that's become fairly grating in its own way.
It's more of a "Hey, you don't want to do this thing that you're really expected to do, but you have to do it because not of who you are, but of the people around you and it's not really much of a choice, sorry pal" thing
but Kirk and Spock's reasons for not being best pals is not the same reasons why McCoy and Spock were always the opposite on the movie. It's simply a matter of discipline vs freedom, which is supposed to be seen as a false divide because both of them are incredibly similar once you get down past their outward personalities.
So, you're saying that a scene involving Kirk making someone hating him doesn't work because you yourself hate Kirk?
Excalibur in Fate/zero was amazing. Helped, of course, by Yuki Kajiura's brilliant version of Sword of Promised Victory.
I preferred the rendition from the Fate/Zero audio play, to be honest, but it was still awesome, especially the chanting. I did greatly prefer the new Excalibur effects to the old one though.
Still peeved Ioniai Hetairoi's theme wasn't on the Season 1 OST. At least the Season 2 OST will have a lot going for it.
(Ioniai Hetairoi is still the best moment in the series in my opinion).
But Kirino being such a bitch was what made Oreimo so great!
fucking bastards do not understand the appeal of a tsundere, harumph
Honestly, though, I seriously liked Kirino because she was such a selfish bitch, not even because she was tsundere.
IJBM: TVT became less useful by the removal of pornographic or otherwise sketchy works.
I have repeatedly used TVT to get a basic idea of what a work I haven't heard of before is like. Wikipedia gets me production information, but is not so useful for story and presentation information. TVT is more likely to get me information about the plot, characters, setting, and such, giving me an idea of what I might be getting myself into, before I read/watch/hear it.
Well, I haven't even ever read the page on Fate/Stay Night.
I wish we had more non-TV Tropes members.
I'd say we'd need some kind of a focus first, one that wouldn't be TVT refugee camp. After all, this place's still named after axed TVT's subforum.
What I'm getting from this post is that you haven't gone deep enough into TES lore to realize that there aren't any answers. Ever. Stuff you don't see firsthand is always biased, and stuff you do see firsthand is often fairly tenuous.
For example, gods. It's very vague if they exist in and of themselves or if stuff they supposedly did is just caused by the combined will of the people who believe in them. And even if they do exist, different myths about them say different things. For example, at the end of Skyrim, you might have just killed Akatosh, since Alduin was historically considered to be just what the Nords called him. Or maybe Alduin is just a god who gets confused with Akatosh a lot. Or maybe he was just pretending to be a god. Nobody in-universe really has the slightest clue.
And that's not even getting started on the implications of CHIM.
I don't like the way Excalibur is expressed in F/S in general. While it's very regal and all, I think its powers are too blatant, and I don't think its visual design carries the grace I'd like to see in that sword. To be fair, there isn't really a visual depiction of Excalibur I am happy with, since I think they all sort of miss the point.
^ But you've still killed a god, who is objectively considered at least one of those gods.
And what you define "god" as changes some things. Argh, now I'm going to have to explain CHIM. Gimme a minute; I just woke up.