Eh, a lot of the people who once worked at BioWare still work there. It's true that several people have moved on but not everyone.

I will admit the comparison was out of hand and over the top, but the principle is the same. Treating someone poorly because they've done something bad doesn't make it a good thing. So while I'll admit my comment was more inflammatory then I intended, I stand by it.

Depends which games you're talking about.

It's hardly news at all, really. It's not just that the talent is gone. Interplay doesn't have the rights to any of its old properties anymore either so any game this new Black Isle put out would be with new developers, new management, and new IPs. So it's not just no Urqhuart, Avellone, or Cain; it's no PS:T2, no…

Tim Cain also recently joined Obsidian, which means they've got just about everyone besides Boyarsky and Fargo.

Even good authors can get pretty self-righteous and entitled about their own opinions. Just look at Karen Traviss' defense of her writing from fans in the Star Wars community for one example.

My understanding is that A) Obsidian doesn't QA test their own games (and nor do most developers for that matter) and B) Black Isle games were plenty buggy on release as well.

Basically, I guess. I was thinking more like a blend of GTA and Mass Effect with spies, but your comparison works also. DA2 was another game that could have turned out much better than it did: the idea of setting the game entirely in Kirkwall is actually an interesting one, but unfortunately the city isn't any more…

Everything she's said makes it seem accidental. That doesn't mean it isn't racist, but it seems obvious to me that wasn't her intention.

Basically. I liked Alpha Protocol, but I am retroactively disappointed that it wasn't more like Burn Notice (which I hadn't seen at the time).

Possibly, but while the book was in bad taste (in part accidentally, I assume) I honestly do think people are making a bigger deal out of it than is necessary.

Which is nice and all but you can look up the melting point of C10H15N on Wikipedia in a few seconds.

And it sounds to me like the author probably deserves criticism. But I'm just uncomfortable with the glee that seems to be surrounding this announcement about the chapter being pulled.

I'm not saying it's wrong to think the book is bad or to criticize it. But it's the circular, self-congratulatory bashing that I see all the time that gets to me. I honestly think more people hate the Twilight books because it's cool to hate Twilight. That doesn't mean it isn't a bad series. Again, I know enough…

But it must still be possible for creatures to sport extra limbs in other ways. Otherwise, as in my second example, we wouldn't have any.

TBH I'm more or less with you. I'm willing to believe that the novel is poorly written and handles controversial topics poorly and with naivete. However, I do feel that a lot of people (not everyone, I know, but a lot of people) are making snap judgments on what others have said about the book, rather than from their…

But that's clearly not true. There are well-documented cases of animals that develop extra limbs and survive to term.

To be entirely fair to those raising the issue, Lovecraft was a bit more xenophobic than your average American. I mean, this was a man who did not only consider non-whites to be inferior to whites but was convinced all non-Anglo-Saxons were inferior as well, disparaging the Welsh as a people of "little account" and…

I've never played a single Diablo game so I don't really have a dog in this fight, but a few of my thoughts nonetheless.