New dlc's ideas, because EA, Activision and all the other publishers aren't pounding us hard enough yet:

Enable left mouse button = $5.
Enable right mouse button = $5.
Enable all mouse button and wheels = $25.
Enable W,A,S & D buttons = $5.
Enable total keyboard = $25.
Enable key rebinding = $10.
Buy 5 save slots = $5.
Buy unlimited save slots = $25.

Remember only you can build that executives golden toilet, and keep those $50 bills warmed to room temperature for the purpose of cleaning his buttocks on! This is no laughing matter, so think hard and give us your best ideas NOW.

Always online drm, thought it deserved its own thread, as it's a contentious subject and deserves discussing on its own merits outside of piracy threads.

Pros:

• Cloud game saves, personally I can't see the point but they exist.
  
• Automatic updates, so the latest gamebreaking patch can be downloaded straight away.
  
• Prevents piracy, until somebody invents a way around it.
  
• Can't think of any others, but i'm biased in favour of being treated with respect and not dictated to.

Agbeth adds that a lot of people like Steam.
Aver points out money talks, vast sales on Diablo 3, Simcity and Asscreed.
Volsung points out that Windows is itself a form of DRM, though not always online.

Cons:

• Servers, temperamental to say the least, and thus you have to arrange your free time around the publishers schedule. Allright for those with a surplus of time on their hands, stupid for everybody else.
  
• Privacy, i'm playing a game and that's that, you've got your money from me now fuck off and mind your own business.
  
• Security, we've seen repeatedly that no game company is secure, when our personal and financial information is at stake can we trust them to suddenly get secure. No we can't.
  
• Renumeration, what renumeration packages are available where we can claim for lost hours of free time on the software we've purchased, the trauma resulting from private information misuse and theft and the stress of dealing with a needlessly complicated online system as opposed to the simplicity of a manual installation. Not enough.
  
• Accountability, there is none.

Agbeth adds the issue of Lag as seen so often on the Diablo servers.
Guy N'wah adds that older games are rendered unplayable once the costly servers are abandoned.
Lucos adds the unreliability of internet service providers.
Blothulfur and others add why bother with any DRM when a superior service like GOG (and CDPR) exists.

Feel free to add Pro's and con's as you wish, or to make a more complicated argument, i'm easy guv.

What it says in the title.

Reading through the playing other games thread, pleasantly reminiscing over Deus Ex and was left wondering what my fellow sons and daughters think of a remake of the original Deus Ex. The style and technological level of Human Revolution so obviously trumps the original game, that going back to play it leaves one with a certain feeling of dissonance.

That said i'm afraid that a developer going back to the game would see the need to stamp the usual dumbed down aspects on to it, possibly wrecking the very core of the game. I can certainly see some aspects that need improvement, such as the small half empty cities, the rather linear main mission path and certain parts of the voice acting and dialogue. However there are some points that I wouldn't want the devs to touch, such as the skill system which gave the player a feeling that not everything was dependant on JC's augs, the differing ammo's and the feel of a day after tomorrow world.

I know it's all relative to how Human Revolution performed financially, but if there were another Deus Ex games announced bridging Human Revolution and the original, would your whistle be whetted for a remake, and what features would you want changed or kept?

Introduction.

Over the last few years I have found myself to be more enamoured of video games than traditional forms of entertainment, not only are they extremely good value for money (especially the RPG genre) but they offer us an interactivity that should not be underestimated. In the better games of the medium we find ourselves offered choice and consequence, we are asked to answer questions and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be. It is in the answering of these questions that we find our own morality, worldview and reasoning being brought into the spotlight, and thus we scrutinise our own reactions and try to know ourselves.

There are few mainstream games that allow choice and consequence anymore, let alone present logical situations where there are no easy answers, in my opinion the games of CD Project RED stand at the forefront when it comes to such interactivity, specifically the Witcher and the Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. It is because of one key aspects that I hold them above other developers, they make each choice viable, we do not have to invent elaborate theories or philosophies to justify our motives, they are self evident and undeniably reasonable.

Thus whatever the situation presented to our white haired mutant avatar, we are not left feeling sheparded into illogical and pointless situations that only an idiot would find himself in, we are treated with respect, and our actions make sense both in regards to the setting and the narrative. True it does not offer a massive amount of choice, but every choice is viable rather than being there to please the lowest common denominator, and bears logical consequences that we see born out in the game itself. There is a pleasing linearity to this, the linearity of a reasonable mind, where the more moronic options are not even considered.

This is therefore a setting, a narrative and an approach that I find worthy of study and hopefully emulation and thus I come to the point of this rather over elaborate introduction. Herein I shall present a study of the underlying themes that run throughout the Witcher, and this work will be biased because of my personal views, but through interaction with my fellow sons and daughter of Kaer Morhen I hope to reach a deeper understanding and maybe even a consensus on the themes delivered.

We are all of us aware of the theme presented in the first Witcher game, What is a Monster? Throughout the game we are asked this question and left to make choices, but as to a definitive answer, I for one don't believe the game ever truly gives us one. Even when I slammed Aerondight through Alvin/Jacque DeAldersburgs breastplate, I was not sure of his monstrosity, he had gone too far and had to be brought down but I would not stand in moral judgement of him. I had not experienced all that he had, not been tormented by the visions that would not leave him in peace, not been forced to contend with a power that could alter time and space itself, and not been left as a child to make my own way in an all too real and harsh world.

In the desperate pursuit of the Kingslayers that defines the first game we do not have the time for introspection that the first game offers us, but I hold that we find the answer to that games main theme in the person of one man: Letho of Gulet. Standing before the Viper the White Wolf finds an equal, an opposite and maybe even a friend, a vision of himself but seen as if through a glass darkly. Where Geralt is lithe and quick, Letho is massive and strong. While the White Wolfs fame has spread into even Nilfgaard, the Viper remains an enigma wrappped inside a riddle. While the Witchers of the Wolf school accept their decline and go into the night with a grumble, the Viper school seeks to reinvent itself in a changing world. Where Geralt all too often charges headlong into danger, trusting to his superhuman reflexes and experience to save him, Letho plans and manipulates until by the time he strikes victory is assured. While the White Wolfs natural charisma, fame and sardonic wit might win him friends and allies, the Viper relies on a mask of self pity, brute simplicity and simple words to manipulate those all to eager to believe the cliches they hold too tightly.

In short the second game, by holding up the character of Letho, and making us examine his actions and perspective, asks us another simple question: What is a Witcher, is this what Geralt could become if his dabbling in the game of thrones continues? The power mongers and potentates of the Northern Kingdoms do not care for Witcher neutrality, they see only a valuable tool, that may give them an edge over their rivals, they would gladly welcome his sword. Is this service so onerous when compared to their current life, a few more scars every year, with one less witcher returning to Kaer Morhen every so often, and all for the handful of coins that a frugal peasent is willing to part with? Once again there is no easy answer, I refuse to judge the Viper just as I did with Berengar and Alvin, it is not my place.

In the next part I shall discuss the theme of vulnerability within the games, and make a study of certain characters specific interactions with said theme.