Well, partially it depends upon whether or not you order a drink. Usually, at nice places, I don't have anything to drink but water or tea (which is free at most asian paces). Wine at Italian places, maybe Sake at Japanese places, but the rest I just drink water. My girlfriend doesn't drink, so that covers that, and like hell if I'm going to get a Coke at a nice restaurant (pet peeve). We don't have sales tax in our city/state (Fairbanks, Alaska). Cost of living is high, but not quite as high as LA or New York. So, when I say $15 per person for dinner, with tip, that really does come out to about $36.
$65 for dinner for two is kinda on the high end. I can take my girlfriend out to a pretty nice italian place, or a fine Thai restaurant with good food and a good atmosphere... get an appetizer, dinner and wine or tea for not much more than $30 (I do this often). I find that smaller familly-owned ethnic restaraunts offer the best food and atmosphere anyway, are more interesting, and charge much less than big traditionally posh places.
I get the feeling that, as a small child, Neal Stephenson was once raped by a falling action, and therefor refuses to aknowledge the existance of this litterary device.
Songs? Yeah, that would be slow. I wasn't talking songs, we all know that Bluetooth would be a dog for syncing A/V files. I was thinking more in terms of updating calanders, emails, possibly text files (like with FileMagnet). And maybe streaming A/V signals (that would be great).
For a device that has both WiFi and Bluetooth, it seems to have very little wireless connectivity. And it has VIRTUALLY NO bluetooth connectivity... I don't even know why they bother having it.
While I do agree that WiFi transfer would be nice, I would hardly call that a UI problem. That's more like a missing feature than a UI problem or inconsitancy. I've never used Lotus Notes, so I have no idea what UI element you are refering to with the last statement.
What I don't understand is, where is the BLUETOOTH transfer? Isn't this what Bluetooth was DESIGNED to do, is to sync hardware devices by simply being in proximity? My Mac Pro has Bluetooth, my iPhone has Bluetooth, so where's my auto-sync?
1) Learn as much as you can about them (because one of them WILL be your next president).
-and-
2) Vote for one of them (because one of them WILL win), even if it is, in your mind, "the lesser of two evils".
Sometimes it isn't about who you think is a "swell guy" or even about who you trust, it's about who is going to have the policies and persona to better lead our country for the next 4/8 years.
What the Wii lacks, demographically, aren't violent games, but hardcore, more involved games. The biggest complaint isn't that Wii Sports doesn't show Miis getting chopped in half, the complaint is that a large percentage of Wii games are party games without much depth or sophistication.
Nintendo's going to have ONE HELL of a time getting bloodsport fanboys onboard, that crowd was pretty much lost to them over a decade ago, but they still have a very good chance of getting fans of lengthy, involved, hardcore games, back on their side. Hell, they themselves own one of the most popular of these series: Zelda.
Now, while having violent games may, in some way, result in companies finally realizing that the Wii is a decent platform for any games, including more involved ones... it's far from cure.
Good riddence! The coming Alaska senate race is going to be one of the most interesting in history. I suggest everyone look into it. On the democratic front, we've got popular Anchorage city mayor, Mark Beigich, who's taken the election scene by storm in just the last month or so. And Stevens, being a long time incombant, is running virtually unopposed on the republican front.
In the house, rep. Don ("I'll beat you over the head with a walrus penis") Young is having even more trouble, due to falling public perception and the VICO scandal. This long-time incumbent may be KOed in the primary by our Lt. Governor.
The republicans only star runners, at this point, are Gov. Sarah Palin and Lt Gov. Sean Parnel. Parnel is running against Young in the house, and Sarah just had a child and is busy fighting some of her own battles.
Translation: the alaska republican party is FUCKED. Before the year is out, there's a very good chance we'll see our one house seat filled by a Dem, one of our Senate seats filled by a Dem, and the state's electoral votes go to Barak Obama (currently a very close race). AK is one of the most conservative and republican states in the country, btw.
Seriously, the DS is has tons of adventure games with a lot of hard non-linear puzzles. Try the Phoenix Wright series or Hotel Dusk. Those have the same kinds of puzzles and problem solving that you'll find in the old Monkey Islands, Mysts, and similar games. Then you have the more epic Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and Zelda games, that offer a combination of adventure puzzles with action elements.
As a fan of really puzzly adventure games, I really don't agree that puzzle games are disappearing. In fact, I think they're getting more involved and more difficult. Sure, the puzzles are becoming more integrated into the setting, but I think that's a really good thing.
Ummm, I don't think that's the stort of puzzle game that the parent was talking about. We're talking adventure puzzle games, not tap-happy puzzle arcade games. But I still think it's bullshit.
My question is... how are comparable salaries for designers and developers? Engineers commonly make a bit more than designers and developers. Apple has a very design-centric philosophy, and engineers may be lower on the totem pole than they are at other companies like Yahoo and Google. Maybe they are simply leveling the playing field a little, or at least adjusting it to their needs.
Engineers can bitch all they want, but it may very well be that Apple is putting their salaries elsewhere, which would make a whole lot of sense.
Exactly. This is why I find the, "all candidates are too similar" arguement to be so disturbing. For fuck's sake, I heard it back in 2000 against Bush and Gore. "Bush/Gore...what's the difference?" Holy shit, how naive are these people? If they can't tell the difference between a philistine semi-fascist war-monger, and an intellectual-minded left-leaning "let's listen to the experts" leader... then I don't know what else to tell ya.
Now isn't quite as extreme as the year 2000, which may have been the most extreme in the nation's history. But still the differences are very clear. The main difference, once again, is in the roll of privatization vs. government. THIS IS A HUGE ISSUE. It may not be "abortion" it might not be "should we go to war", but it's the kind of decision that leads a type of decision on substantial issues. For instance, War in Iraq would not have been an issue if not for the fundimental roll that private contracts/armies played.
Do you think that massive privatization is a good thing for the country? If yes, vote McCain, if No, vote Obama... that should be a pretty defining issue.
Secondly, how do you want your leader to communicate with other individuals/leaders? This is a big decision because it shows how likely the person is to be able to convince other people/leaders to follow through with their plans. Both McCain and Obama are fairly wise individuals, and project themselves fairly possitively. But McCain has the ability to intimidate (which isn't neccessarily a bad thing), where as Obama is more likely to adopt inspirational speak. As an idealist, I tend to like Obama's style better... but there is a time and place for the kind of communicative pattern that McCain has.
And we haven't even gotten to the issues yet. But the issues aren't really as important as the philosophy behind them. The bottom line is, most of the important decisions a president will make, we can't even guess at this point (Bush's legacy, no one could have expected in 2000, for instance). Who's going to best processes the incoming issues? Who's going to make decisions that fit with your particular world view.
The fact is, Obama and McCain are wildly different candidates. If you think they're similar, you're either not paying attention, or you probably are just saying that because you don't like either of them. If that's the case, then just say you don't like either of them. I think that they're of the highest caliber politicians we could ask for, personaly. As a liberal democrat, I of course strongly endorse Obama. But I couldn't ask for a better republican opponant.
Not sure if diversity is the problem. We've got an insanely divided party system as it is, with ultra-conservative republicans and moderate democrats (we need more liberals). We don't have a lack of diversity in ideology, no matter what these brats say about "all politicians are the same", we've got a lack of diversity in PARTIES. The most efficient forms of democratic government have lots of smaller parties in which none have enough power to filibuster each other. The english have a much more efficient government than we do, so do the Japanese. Of course, they're smaller countries, which has advantages too.
I guess what I'm saying is that there will always be corruption and payoffs, but the more parties there are, the more spread out those things become, and the more breathing room there actually is.
Ron Paul may have acted like a libertarian (a socially conservative libertarian), but by awknowledging the republican party, he made it clear that diversification of party power wasn't a main priority. I'll support (though maybe not agree with) a libertarian candidate, a green party candidate, or otherwise... but Ron Paul was just another republican to me, with more of a "get off my lawn" type of attitude.
Not sure I agree. FF6, FF8 & FF9 definitely were ahead of their time, graphically. Some would argue that FFX was, though in many ways, it's more just a lighting and voice update to where FF8 was. But FF4, FF5, FF7, and FF12 were merely average graphics for their times. Granted, they made better usage of their graphics than most games. FF7 also pioneered 3D RPGs, however the result was pretty low quality compared to most other 3D games of its time. FF4 should hardly count, since most of its development was aimed at the NES and was only switched over to 16-bit about halfway through its development. But recently, FF12 was pretty piss poor considering the other things that came out around that time. FF13 looks pretty nice, but it doesn't seem all that much above Lost Odyssey which came out early this year on the 360.
How many are going to be using a PPC next november... maybe 1/3rd. How many of them are going to be clamoring to update to a new OS? Maybe 1/3rd of that.
Also, think about how many apps, NOW, require Leopard? I can't think of any. How long until apps start requiring the latest OS update... a year? A Year and a Half?
So basically, what we're saying is that the very first apps that will be PPC prohibitive (because of OS requirements) could be out in Nov of 2009. By then, how many PPC users will be left? Not many.
You're too trusting of video game reviewers to be non-biased, and non-paid-off. The bigger the game, the more weight is put on game reviewers to review them favorably. There's both financial pressure from game companies, and psychological pressure from outside the industry. When was the last time that a Final Fantasy scored a meta-review of below 90%... how many of them deserve that? I'm a huge FF fan, but even I'll admit that some (particularly FFX and FF12 IMO) didn't warrent that high a score.
All I'm saying is that, from my experience, large series are rated very differently from the rest of games, and an 81% is usually a pretty bad sign.
There are definitely exceptions, I can name a few here and there, but for the most part, the chances of a movie-based game being good are very low. Sure, Duck Tales was a great game for the NES, Cool Spot was lots of fun on the Genesis and SNES, Golden Eye was unbelievably good for the N64 (probably the most successful movie spinoff game of all time), and I've heard that some of the Naruto games for the PS2 and 360 are quite well done. I'm sure there are quite a few that I haven't mentioned or played, but all-in-all, its safe to say that being a movie spinoff gives you a lower chance of being good than not.
For a major series with the weight and respect of Ninja Gaiden, 81 is about the lowest you'd ever expect to see. Main installments of large series get just about an automatic pass into the 80+ percentile range, so an 81 for a large series game is pretty bad. For a smaller series or a non-series game, an 81% is not bad at all, however.
Third biggest release OF THE YEAR, in June: "Metal Gear Solid 4"
And you spout a bunch of movie spinnoffs? And Ninja Gaiden II, which has been totally pwned by critics and in which the creator immediately resigned from the company in disgrace.
You just showed your lack of knowledge on the subject, prepare for a barage of hate mail.
I would say that most of them were, even the ones I don't happen to agree with. In recent history, I don't think George W Bush was, I don't think Nixon was, but all the others showed themselves to be far above average in terms of being model citezens. Even Reagan, whom I absolutely hate, presented himself as being more than your average Joe. Probably the pinnicle of these was Clinton, though, who is quite possibly the most intelligent leader we've had in this century, with MAYBE the exception of FDR. I still don't want him ANYWHERE near the white house now, but the man knew his shit, and knew how to attract very knowledgable people (which is even more important, IMO).
I don't think Obama has had a chance to prove that he is as intelligent as Bill Clinton, but I think he's shown that he has about as much ability to attract intelligent advisors (just look at his campaign). And he's far more inspirational than Bill, which is another absolutely neccessary skill. He's up there with Steve Jobs as far as I'm concerned.
John McCain deffinitely is far more than the average joe, and... for a republican... I think wouldn't be too bad of a president, when I really think about it. But he has a history of being very chaotic in whether he decides to play along with other leaders, or defy them. The ability to decent against party and other leaders is a good thing, however, I've never been able to figure out exactly WHEN McCain will and when he won't, and that makes me very nervous. Sometimes he's gone against party leaders when it doesn't feel appropriate, and other times he "stands by the man" when it's like, "you dumb shit... this is the time for decent!" But that said, I at least respect his ability to do so.
Both are model citizens, though... and would at least end the trend of the last 8 years of having someone who wasn't. Whether their POLICIES would be much different, on the other hand, is a different issue all together.
Not sure I see where our disagreement lies... sounds like we're in completely agreement here. And yes, I'm aware that the US isn't alone in this (isn't BioWare a Canadian company?) I guess I'm more refering to the west as a whole.
And don't get me wrong, I have NOTHING against complex challenging storylines. For instance, I'm currently reading Cryptonomicon right now and absolutely loving it... and it's far more complex than a simple architypical plot. My point is, however, that if you have a complex plot, you need to back it up with great writing and human factors (which Stephenson delivers in spades). Unfortunately, many sci-fi/fantasy stories (which 99% of games fall into the genre of) sacrifice good writing and subtle human elements for huge complex plotlines.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, partially it depends upon whether or not you order a drink. Usually, at nice places, I don't have anything to drink but water or tea (which is free at most asian paces). Wine at Italian places, maybe Sake at Japanese places, but the rest I just drink water. My girlfriend doesn't drink, so that covers that, and like hell if I'm going to get a Coke at a nice restaurant (pet peeve). We don't have sales tax in our city/state (Fairbanks, Alaska). Cost of living is high, but not quite as high as LA or New York. So, when I say $15 per person for dinner, with tip, that really does come out to about $36.
$65 for dinner for two is kinda on the high end. I can take my girlfriend out to a pretty nice italian place, or a fine Thai restaurant with good food and a good atmosphere... get an appetizer, dinner and wine or tea for not much more than $30 (I do this often). I find that smaller familly-owned ethnic restaraunts offer the best food and atmosphere anyway, are more interesting, and charge much less than big traditionally posh places.
But what's so bad about snobbery?
I get the feeling that, as a small child, Neal Stephenson was once raped by a falling action, and therefor refuses to aknowledge the existance of this litterary device.
Songs? Yeah, that would be slow. I wasn't talking songs, we all know that Bluetooth would be a dog for syncing A/V files. I was thinking more in terms of updating calanders, emails, possibly text files (like with FileMagnet). And maybe streaming A/V signals (that would be great).
For a device that has both WiFi and Bluetooth, it seems to have very little wireless connectivity. And it has VIRTUALLY NO bluetooth connectivity... I don't even know why they bother having it.
While I do agree that WiFi transfer would be nice, I would hardly call that a UI problem. That's more like a missing feature than a UI problem or inconsitancy. I've never used Lotus Notes, so I have no idea what UI element you are refering to with the last statement.
What I don't understand is, where is the BLUETOOTH transfer? Isn't this what Bluetooth was DESIGNED to do, is to sync hardware devices by simply being in proximity? My Mac Pro has Bluetooth, my iPhone has Bluetooth, so where's my auto-sync?
Bingo.
I say that even if you don't like both options:
1) Learn as much as you can about them (because one of them WILL be your next president).
-and-
2) Vote for one of them (because one of them WILL win), even if it is, in your mind, "the lesser of two evils".
Sometimes it isn't about who you think is a "swell guy" or even about who you trust, it's about who is going to have the policies and persona to better lead our country for the next 4/8 years.
Violent != Hardcore
What the Wii lacks, demographically, aren't violent games, but hardcore, more involved games. The biggest complaint isn't that Wii Sports doesn't show Miis getting chopped in half, the complaint is that a large percentage of Wii games are party games without much depth or sophistication.
Nintendo's going to have ONE HELL of a time getting bloodsport fanboys onboard, that crowd was pretty much lost to them over a decade ago, but they still have a very good chance of getting fans of lengthy, involved, hardcore games, back on their side. Hell, they themselves own one of the most popular of these series: Zelda.
Now, while having violent games may, in some way, result in companies finally realizing that the Wii is a decent platform for any games, including more involved ones... it's far from cure.
Let me be the first to shout:
"Yeee-hawww!!!"
Good riddence! The coming Alaska senate race is going to be one of the most interesting in history. I suggest everyone look into it. On the democratic front, we've got popular Anchorage city mayor, Mark Beigich, who's taken the election scene by storm in just the last month or so. And Stevens, being a long time incombant, is running virtually unopposed on the republican front.
In the house, rep. Don ("I'll beat you over the head with a walrus penis") Young is having even more trouble, due to falling public perception and the VICO scandal. This long-time incumbent may be KOed in the primary by our Lt. Governor.
The republicans only star runners, at this point, are Gov. Sarah Palin and Lt Gov. Sean Parnel. Parnel is running against Young in the house, and Sarah just had a child and is busy fighting some of her own battles.
Translation: the alaska republican party is FUCKED. Before the year is out, there's a very good chance we'll see our one house seat filled by a Dem, one of our Senate seats filled by a Dem, and the state's electoral votes go to Barak Obama (currently a very close race). AK is one of the most conservative and republican states in the country, btw.
Seriously, the DS is has tons of adventure games with a lot of hard non-linear puzzles. Try the Phoenix Wright series or Hotel Dusk. Those have the same kinds of puzzles and problem solving that you'll find in the old Monkey Islands, Mysts, and similar games. Then you have the more epic Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and Zelda games, that offer a combination of adventure puzzles with action elements.
As a fan of really puzzly adventure games, I really don't agree that puzzle games are disappearing. In fact, I think they're getting more involved and more difficult. Sure, the puzzles are becoming more integrated into the setting, but I think that's a really good thing.
Ummm, I don't think that's the stort of puzzle game that the parent was talking about. We're talking adventure puzzle games, not tap-happy puzzle arcade games. But I still think it's bullshit.
Ya know what else works? Blasting the notes of Also Sparach Zarathustra through a nearby amplifier.
My question is... how are comparable salaries for designers and developers? Engineers commonly make a bit more than designers and developers. Apple has a very design-centric philosophy, and engineers may be lower on the totem pole than they are at other companies like Yahoo and Google. Maybe they are simply leveling the playing field a little, or at least adjusting it to their needs.
Engineers can bitch all they want, but it may very well be that Apple is putting their salaries elsewhere, which would make a whole lot of sense.
Exactly. This is why I find the, "all candidates are too similar" arguement to be so disturbing. For fuck's sake, I heard it back in 2000 against Bush and Gore. "Bush/Gore...what's the difference?" Holy shit, how naive are these people? If they can't tell the difference between a philistine semi-fascist war-monger, and an intellectual-minded left-leaning "let's listen to the experts" leader... then I don't know what else to tell ya.
Now isn't quite as extreme as the year 2000, which may have been the most extreme in the nation's history. But still the differences are very clear. The main difference, once again, is in the roll of privatization vs. government. THIS IS A HUGE ISSUE. It may not be "abortion" it might not be "should we go to war", but it's the kind of decision that leads a type of decision on substantial issues. For instance, War in Iraq would not have been an issue if not for the fundimental roll that private contracts/armies played.
Do you think that massive privatization is a good thing for the country? If yes, vote McCain, if No, vote Obama... that should be a pretty defining issue.
Secondly, how do you want your leader to communicate with other individuals/leaders? This is a big decision because it shows how likely the person is to be able to convince other people/leaders to follow through with their plans. Both McCain and Obama are fairly wise individuals, and project themselves fairly possitively. But McCain has the ability to intimidate (which isn't neccessarily a bad thing), where as Obama is more likely to adopt inspirational speak. As an idealist, I tend to like Obama's style better... but there is a time and place for the kind of communicative pattern that McCain has.
And we haven't even gotten to the issues yet. But the issues aren't really as important as the philosophy behind them. The bottom line is, most of the important decisions a president will make, we can't even guess at this point (Bush's legacy, no one could have expected in 2000, for instance). Who's going to best processes the incoming issues? Who's going to make decisions that fit with your particular world view.
The fact is, Obama and McCain are wildly different candidates. If you think they're similar, you're either not paying attention, or you probably are just saying that because you don't like either of them. If that's the case, then just say you don't like either of them. I think that they're of the highest caliber politicians we could ask for, personaly. As a liberal democrat, I of course strongly endorse Obama. But I couldn't ask for a better republican opponant.
Not sure if diversity is the problem. We've got an insanely divided party system as it is, with ultra-conservative republicans and moderate democrats (we need more liberals). We don't have a lack of diversity in ideology, no matter what these brats say about "all politicians are the same", we've got a lack of diversity in PARTIES. The most efficient forms of democratic government have lots of smaller parties in which none have enough power to filibuster each other. The english have a much more efficient government than we do, so do the Japanese. Of course, they're smaller countries, which has advantages too.
I guess what I'm saying is that there will always be corruption and payoffs, but the more parties there are, the more spread out those things become, and the more breathing room there actually is.
Ron Paul may have acted like a libertarian (a socially conservative libertarian), but by awknowledging the republican party, he made it clear that diversification of party power wasn't a main priority. I'll support (though maybe not agree with) a libertarian candidate, a green party candidate, or otherwise... but Ron Paul was just another republican to me, with more of a "get off my lawn" type of attitude.
Not sure I agree. FF6, FF8 & FF9 definitely were ahead of their time, graphically. Some would argue that FFX was, though in many ways, it's more just a lighting and voice update to where FF8 was. But FF4, FF5, FF7, and FF12 were merely average graphics for their times. Granted, they made better usage of their graphics than most games. FF7 also pioneered 3D RPGs, however the result was pretty low quality compared to most other 3D games of its time. FF4 should hardly count, since most of its development was aimed at the NES and was only switched over to 16-bit about halfway through its development. But recently, FF12 was pretty piss poor considering the other things that came out around that time. FF13 looks pretty nice, but it doesn't seem all that much above Lost Odyssey which came out early this year on the 360.
Okay, slow down...
How many are going to be using a PPC next november... maybe 1/3rd. How many of them are going to be clamoring to update to a new OS? Maybe 1/3rd of that.
Also, think about how many apps, NOW, require Leopard? I can't think of any. How long until apps start requiring the latest OS update... a year? A Year and a Half?
So basically, what we're saying is that the very first apps that will be PPC prohibitive (because of OS requirements) could be out in Nov of 2009. By then, how many PPC users will be left? Not many.
"Ocelot" would be a great name (and attract some Metal Gear fans too), but wouldn't it be more appropriate for a stripped-down, portable device?
You're too trusting of video game reviewers to be non-biased, and non-paid-off. The bigger the game, the more weight is put on game reviewers to review them favorably. There's both financial pressure from game companies, and psychological pressure from outside the industry. When was the last time that a Final Fantasy scored a meta-review of below 90%... how many of them deserve that? I'm a huge FF fan, but even I'll admit that some (particularly FFX and FF12 IMO) didn't warrent that high a score.
All I'm saying is that, from my experience, large series are rated very differently from the rest of games, and an 81% is usually a pretty bad sign.
There are definitely exceptions, I can name a few here and there, but for the most part, the chances of a movie-based game being good are very low. Sure, Duck Tales was a great game for the NES, Cool Spot was lots of fun on the Genesis and SNES, Golden Eye was unbelievably good for the N64 (probably the most successful movie spinoff game of all time), and I've heard that some of the Naruto games for the PS2 and 360 are quite well done. I'm sure there are quite a few that I haven't mentioned or played, but all-in-all, its safe to say that being a movie spinoff gives you a lower chance of being good than not.
For a major series with the weight and respect of Ninja Gaiden, 81 is about the lowest you'd ever expect to see. Main installments of large series get just about an automatic pass into the 80+ percentile range, so an 81 for a large series game is pretty bad. For a smaller series or a non-series game, an 81% is not bad at all, however.
Not sure what Grid is, can't comment on it... but I haven't heard much buzz about it, so I don't know why it's reliavant.
Third biggest release OF THE YEAR, in June: "Metal Gear Solid 4"
And you spout a bunch of movie spinnoffs? And Ninja Gaiden II, which has been totally pwned by critics and in which the creator immediately resigned from the company in disgrace.
You just showed your lack of knowledge on the subject, prepare for a barage of hate mail.
I would say that most of them were, even the ones I don't happen to agree with. In recent history, I don't think George W Bush was, I don't think Nixon was, but all the others showed themselves to be far above average in terms of being model citezens. Even Reagan, whom I absolutely hate, presented himself as being more than your average Joe. Probably the pinnicle of these was Clinton, though, who is quite possibly the most intelligent leader we've had in this century, with MAYBE the exception of FDR. I still don't want him ANYWHERE near the white house now, but the man knew his shit, and knew how to attract very knowledgable people (which is even more important, IMO).
I don't think Obama has had a chance to prove that he is as intelligent as Bill Clinton, but I think he's shown that he has about as much ability to attract intelligent advisors (just look at his campaign). And he's far more inspirational than Bill, which is another absolutely neccessary skill. He's up there with Steve Jobs as far as I'm concerned.
John McCain deffinitely is far more than the average joe, and... for a republican... I think wouldn't be too bad of a president, when I really think about it. But he has a history of being very chaotic in whether he decides to play along with other leaders, or defy them. The ability to decent against party and other leaders is a good thing, however, I've never been able to figure out exactly WHEN McCain will and when he won't, and that makes me very nervous. Sometimes he's gone against party leaders when it doesn't feel appropriate, and other times he "stands by the man" when it's like, "you dumb shit... this is the time for decent!" But that said, I at least respect his ability to do so.
Both are model citizens, though... and would at least end the trend of the last 8 years of having someone who wasn't. Whether their POLICIES would be much different, on the other hand, is a different issue all together.
Not sure I see where our disagreement lies... sounds like we're in completely agreement here. And yes, I'm aware that the US isn't alone in this (isn't BioWare a Canadian company?) I guess I'm more refering to the west as a whole.
And don't get me wrong, I have NOTHING against complex challenging storylines. For instance, I'm currently reading Cryptonomicon right now and absolutely loving it... and it's far more complex than a simple architypical plot. My point is, however, that if you have a complex plot, you need to back it up with great writing and human factors (which Stephenson delivers in spades). Unfortunately, many sci-fi/fantasy stories (which 99% of games fall into the genre of) sacrifice good writing and subtle human elements for huge complex plotlines.