I’d say Babylon 5 is very hopeful. Londo’s entire story arc is about someone who tumbles head first into the abyss, then actually achieves redemption.

G’kar goes through a similar arc - both men are consumed by their hatred of one another, until they realise that they were never the real enemy. At which point they…

Fear 2 was great, and the Reborn DLC was great (in which the whole point was that Paxton Fettel gets a new clone body).

Then Fear 3 came along, and Fear 3 had some neat ideas but was developed by different people, written by different people, and its story just... didn’t really line up with the first two games that…

Certainly I think the developers should win awards for the raw *stuff* they’ve managed to shove out the door. And for the art direction.

What I find really strange though is how Destiny managed to rip off a large number of Warframe’s elements without anyone noticing. Even the general story runs along similar lines.

In terms of content, I’d totally agree. I’ve been playing since the earliest days, and it’s incredible how much they’ve added (player ships that replaced the main menu, new tilesets, new weapons, new enemies, new story missions, space missions, competitive modes etc)

But in terms of long-term appeal, it kinda suffers a…

That was always the problem with the EU though, they never knew when to quit. Personally, I preferred Kyle Katarn in DF1 - when he was just a mercenary with a troubled past who went around shooting the crap out of everything with blasters and grenades.

It seemed like the EU had this tendency to do the same thing Star…

Except in The Matrix, they were all comfortably seated in chairs, and already had sockets built into their heads. And the chairs didn’t fling them around the room.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Dark_Forces

“...Dark Forces begins with Katarn being recruited by the Rebel Alliance to recover the plans to the Death Star...”

Well, an entire generation of gamers certainly cared. 

I find it interesting that nobody is suggesting that this movie should basically be the sci-fi version of The Guns of Navarone. Like, the whole thing should have been shot primarily as a war film - all low-key, no mystical stuff, no epic good vs evil stuff... just a small team and a potential traitor in their midst.

Yeah. It was Kyle Katarn who stole the plans to the *first* Death Star, but his epic little tale of terminator-esque robot stormtroopers seems to have been completely abandoned now... despite the fact that Dark Forces would have made for a fantastic movie and potential computer game franchise reboot.

Also, SHAKY CAM AAAAGH

All the most beautiful, memorable shots in movie history are relatively motionless, or have some component of the scene which is motionless (like, even in the case of that amazing single-take action sequence in Children of Men, you have a clear common frame of reference at all times).

You can’t do…

As a point of interest, it might also be worth looking at the “Devs Play” series of videos in which BioShock level designer JP LeBreton plays through Doom 1's first episode with John Romero, and they talk about the development of the game, its architecture, how it works etc.

That’s not entirely true though, is it? Intelligence *does* lend itself to gaming on PC - while there is no direct and absolute correlation (plenty of idiots using a PC), the complicated nature of the PC is such that “hardcore” PC gamers (that is, enthusiasts who are likely to tweak and upgrade their machine rather…

Kinda reminded me of Tiberian Sun.

Why did that franchise have to reach such a fantastic post-apocalyptic state, then move *away* from that state in subsequent games? There need to be more Tiberian Sun-era games, with a desolate shattered world and cyborg villains, and 90s b-movie live-action cutscenes.

Yeah but was that actually a written-in moment, or was that just a natural “You’re part of both factions, same rules apply” situation?

The point is, Morrowind was *aware* of who you were and what you were doing. NPCs would actually comment on such things. That awareness was actually written into the narrative of the…

Er, except the entire opening to The Matrix is very social-commentary-ish.

After all, you have a whole world of people living in “the system”, slaves to it, and a rebellious young man who breaks free of that. They even labour the point with his dull grey office environment, and later with the emphasis that “anyone…

Yeah, I have to say I’m with the other guy below - that’s *your* bit of weirdness. Parallels is a very old idea - it’s not only the same as Sliders, but essentially it’s the same as Stargate: SG1 (in that you go through a magical doorway/building, to get to strange other worlds).

You might not have found the film…

Anyone else notice the *ahem* parallels between the building in Parallels and the Tree of Life in the Darksiders videogame franchise?

In Darksiders, the Tree of Life exists somewhere on every world, and though it might look a little different, it’s the same tree and connects those worlds to one another. In Darksiders…

Eeeh, forget Bethesda remastering it. Just download the code patch and the graphics extender or whatever it’s called - you can make Morrowind look beautiful, and modders have been working to strip it of bugs and fill in any gaps for years now.

Seriously, google the Morrowind Graphics Extender, and look at the image…

Did you though? Really? Actually feel like an epic hero? I sure didn’t.

Because none of the NPCs ever actually acknowledge anything you do, ever.

In Morrowind they still had the fame system, and NPCs would often comment on such things. In Skyrim, you could be thane of every city, Archmage of Winterhold, Harbinger of the…

Skills. All boils down to skills. The game was merciless if you tried to use a weapon you weren’t skilled in. BUT.

You could always take a non-combat approach early on, steal things, trade things, make potions to sell, enchant things, whatever (there was seriously so much money in so many non-combat professions), then…