Moomba

I'll be around for the conference. I should probably start thinking about what to attend... but I generally don't end up sticking to the plans I make anyway.

See, this may be true, but let's look at ME2 for a second. ME2 had day one DLC (well delayed-by-two-days-due-to-complications DLC). The huge difference here is that Zaeed and all the content that came with him was free for everyone who bought the game. This time we're being charged for what is essentially exactly the same situation.

ME3 confirmed to have day one character and story DLC only available in the collectors or for a price of $10 for download. http://www.vg247.com/2012/02/21/mass-effect-3-from-ashes-dlc-spotted-on-xbox-live/ This always bugs me. They've literally shaved off a part of the content they created and are now selling it back to us on top of the price of the game. It's not like it's supreficial content either, it's actually pretty central to the whole Mass Effect mythos.

If profit and happy customers justified everything, the world would be a terrible place. In a way, while mostly pandering to men (which is never going to change imo, as much as it probably should), Japan also does have a sector of games designed to pander exclusively to women, albeit a very specific grouping. They're called Otome games. Actually, thinking about it, there's a lot less objectification of women certain types of Visual Novels in general (discounting male-targeted dating sims obviously (yes there are other types of visual novels, no Katawa Shoujo should not be taken as a standard for visual novels in general)). Obviously, it doesn't justify the fact that the rest of the Japanese market is saturated with games which contain practically nothing but objectification of women, but the range of games designed without any intent to pander specifically to male gamers seems to be significantly larger than what we have coming from western developers.

Fixed that for you.

Honestly, that was mostly directed at the naked purple beast and the leotard, the other two images kind of came as a package deal and I was too lazy to edit them out.

Yeah, so about that: Maybe it wasn't quite the same in FFVI (didn't a sprite in FFVI get censored in the US?), but well...

I very much agree that there's a lot of oversexualisation, but I'm not sure there's much that can be done to change that. Japan in particular is likely never going to change on that front, and Western companies will always try to target the markets they think are most likely to buy their games (whether or not it's true). I tried to think of some examples of strong female characters that aren't oversexualised... I can think of a lot of awesome, strong female characters, but none of them manage to dodge the bullet of oversexualisation - Lara Croft, Bayonetta, etc. Seems like a pretty challenging task - the only thing I can actually think of that might fit is Beyond Good & Evil (note: might). Closing with something I saw recently that I think is pretty fitting given the topic:

I always enjoyed logging into FFXI because of those two tracks. It really is a pity that Noriko Matsueda stopped composing game music after the negative reactions to the X-2 OST

Ah that makes sense, I forgot Squenix like to charge per character as well as the service. It wouldn't surprise me if the forum only consisted of the most vocal and whiny of the community so as you said, it probably doesn't represent the community as a whole. During my time playing early in its lifetime I met a few cool people, though no-where near as many as I did in FFXI. They definitely exist though. PlayOnline had awesome music <3

I'm not entirely against games set within the universe. But give Bioware enough time and we'll be romancing Rachni. Additionally, as Malaki-LEGEND says, regardless of how vast the universe is, the money to be made from it revolves mostly around Shepard. I hear the tie-in novels are kind of uh um yeah. Something. I'm not sure what. Okay, google tells me full of errors. That was it. That doesn't actually have any bearing on what I was saying anyway... oh well. Suffice to say, rather than give us games set elsewhere in the universe, we'll likely get Shepard doing something or other.

That sounds like a pretty major typo - from what I know, it's 1,000 Crysta per month for a sub (3,000 for 180 days). If it's not a typo then Crysta actually sucks outside the US anyway... 100 Crysta = $1/£1/€1 Come on Squenix, those amounts don't match! >:

Damn. Beat me to it. I haven't played the demo yet, but it's on my to-do list. To be completely honest, I didn't have -too- many issues with ME and ME2, but then the Dragon Age anime happened. Nothing can survive that. I'll probably play ME3, if only for the music and to conclude the storyline (I'm a sucker for concluding storylines.) Cue: Announcement of multiple sequels despite being a "trilogy". Onore Buraddo Meiji! D:

Shoot 'Em UP RTS and Steampunk WWII are too normal! We need to go weirder. RTS Dating Simulator with a Post Apocalyptic Egyptian theme :3

Damn. Those are some awesome additions! I want to hunt vampire dwarves!

That was pretty damn awesome! The only thing is... I wanted to see a transformation sequence! Real men don't need doors!

This might come as a shock, but a violin is not a miniature guitar.

Just a random note but trading wild animals is broken. Breaking out of cages isn't supposed to be possible, but if you try to trade them, they bug out and are released when the dwarves come to fetch them I also vote that we should maintain a map with marked sections of the fortress so that we know where everything is. A screenshot of each floor with some text, remade after each year is over would probably suffice. It'd be interesting to compare and see how the fortress evolves as well!

I forgot to name a dwarf after myself! At least that means when my turn comes around I'll still have a living avatar... and I can prepare a magnificent tomb for his inevitable death!

I begin to wonder whether there'll be enough fortress left for me to put my master plan into motion when my turn rolls around... I don't think it matters too much what order we post our writeups in (I posted mine a little bit earlier than !! despite being second in the lineup). Post it anyway so we can marvel over the survival of the colony!

I have no intention of playing this anytime soon because the story and characters are downright terrible. Heck, I happened to have spoiled the ending for myself just because I'd heard so many complaints about it around the Japanese release. Incoming FFXIII-3 or additional storyline DLC for an extra ending? No thanks. I played Final Fantasy games for the story and characters... if they sell out on those just for high-tier graphics (with terrible fps at times) and to fulfill the criteria of an internet checklist, I'm not interested.

Can I possibly get whitelisted? I've been looking for a new server for a while since the one I used to frequent got shut down Username is MoombaDS

So I went through the thread and apparently no-one has posted yet.For shame!

Both gameplay and story become much more complex as the game progresses. There are some really clever puzzles. But story is kind of central to the game so there are always quite a few segments of dialogue. Most of the puzzles do pretty much leave you to your own devices, but there are still segments of dialogue within many of them.

All right. I did my year today, and completed the writeup! It's in pdf format mostly because it got a bit loooooong and pictures. Just a few quick notes: - It's kind of weird. - I didn't take enough screenshots, I promise I'll take more next time - I don't really have a vendetta against the elves... I just traded wood to them in a past game and well... it was fun. - The prohibition was unintentional. I'm sure I set the still to repeat, but apparently they either ran out of barrels or I just forgot to actually do it and so there's absolutely no alcohol in the entire fortress (or so I'm told). I wrote it in as intentional anyway. Anywho, pdf is here. I look forward to reading other people's writeups!