Feo Takahari

Every once in a while I find a book somewhere but am unable to buy it, and wind up spending years looking for it. I have finally tracked down and am about to read The Roaches Have No King (the title roaches try to get the main character to get a new girlfriend because his current girlfriend is really tidy and doesn't leave out any food they can steal.) Next up: The Gods Hate Kansas, which could be harder to find. (amazon.com is selling it for a hundred bucks!)

The sad thing is that I, for one, am getting so wrapped up in these 15 pages of argument that I've been distracted from playing the game we've been arguing about. Anyways, I think we've successfully included that both sides need to fry in hell forever. Myself, I'm logging off and going back to trying to kill Moseh yet again.

Note to Nalyd: you are beginning to seriously creep me out. (Particularly now that I've looked over the beginnings of this debate and seen that you were the one who argued in favor of a genocide of the drakons as too dangerous to live. A serious argument could be made that I'm too dangerous to live. For that matter, I'm beginning to suspect that an argument could be made that you're too dangerous to live.) Anyways, don't expose the deep demented darkness of your whatever the bleep it says in your location (I can't remember the whole thing) to the light of day, and I won't expose anything overly messed up in my mind. EDIT: Never mind, he appears to be gone.

This is really getting to be quite a fascinating debate. I'm not sure what the current record is for most pages of replies, but I'm hoping this breaks it! As for what I intended to say . . . Maybe it's ultimately irrelevant which side is more "right." The representatives of neither seem evil in the classical sense, only blinded by prejudice-induced arrogance and fear (Shapers) or canister-induced arrogance and hatred (Rebels.) Therefore, the question is not one of dispensing justice, but of going with your heart and doing what you can to save those in danger, or else manipulating both sides for your own personal profit. I trust this will remain relevant no matter how far ahead of me the debate's gotten! (Though I will have to learn to type faster.)

Originally Posted By: The Limper. You have a right to live- But only if you can survive. If you are slain, then you were obviously not deserving of life. They have a right to live, and the Shapers have a right to kill them. Sir, you do realize you're quoting Hitler's moral philosophy almost verbatim? I mean, even Ayn Rand thought that in pursuit of one's own good one must not commit immoral or illegal acts at the expense of others. And before anyone references Godwin's Law or whoever's law it is, let me state that I am not comparing you to Hitler. I am simply stating an honest resemblance of philosophy, based on what knowledge of it I have gleaned from history books and a biography of the man.

Responses to two of Ghaldring's posts: Actually, I think I least some of the examples of "is this really genocide?" might be considered genocide by official definition and maybe even morality. For instance, I seem to recall my 10th-grade history teacher telling me that one of the Allied higher-ups stated that if his side had lost the war, he would have gone on trial for war crimes after the firebombings in Germany and Japan. My Vietnam-vet father would be highly pissed at me if I called Vietnam genocide, but only because he considered it somewhat of the same situation our fictional drakons consider themselves to be in: "If we don't kill them they'll kill us." And while criticism of Israel tends to leave one sounding anti-Semitic, they have left a certain amount of collateral damage behind after their counterattacks against terrorists. Just a thought. And as to your question regarding where you save a drakon from torch-wielding villagers: well, technically, they're not villagers, but they are panicked torch-wielding people. They're at the docks when you first arrive on the final island--your previous decisions determine whether the drakon or the people are hostile to you. Hope I got this post finished before someone else replied and the conversation left me behind.

What really matters here is that everyone here can make a convincing argument for the side of their choice, using substantial in-game evidence. In other words, as we pause in our verbal assaults, we should give praise to our dear Mr. Vogel and those who work under him for creating such a morally complex game. I almost laughed out loud when I had to save a drakon from torch-wielding villagers in G3, it's such an inversion of the "save-the-princess" crud that so many companies put out. (Though if certain farfetched philosophers are right and the fiction of our world becomes true in another dimension, once we contact that dimension I know a certain company that's gonna be sued for abuse of computer-generated mutants.) By the way, if anyone cares about my own opinion on the problem, I would apply the logic Charles Dickens uses at the end of "A Tale of Two Cities" and say that the rebels commit atrocities, but they became so full of hate because the shapers ruled unjustly. Thus the only ones who are truly innocent victims are those who reject the corruption around them but are damned for it anyway, like Darnay in the Dickens story or Khryk if you support the rebels in G3. As for how that applies to playing the games, I'd use it as an argument for staying neutral as long as possible and trying to help whoever's in the right in whatever circumstances.

Actually, I know why I stink at RPGs. I can never figure out which stats to up in which proportions, so I always choose some to ignore and some to balance equally, and make up for the resultingly weak characters by searching for holes in the enemy A.I. Now that Spiderweb has finally eliminated such underhanded tactics as "door-fu" (see Avernum 4 strategy guide), I am beginning to have difficulties. What I am hoping for is some advice as to what I should be doing differently. On my most recent attempt at Geneforge IV, I (Tristam, or the Warrior if you prefer) reached Moseh with my equipment as follows: Oozing Sword Steel Breastplate Shaped Shield Fyoraskin Cloak Volcanic Fetish (just for the armor bonus) Girdle of Strength Piercing Gauntlets Jade Band Shaped Greaves Clover Boots Lucky Charm Shielding Trinket Unmodified, my stats were 11 Strength, 5 Dex, 3 Int, 7 End, 9 Melee, 8 QA, 9 Par, 10 Lead, 9 Mech, 3 Lck, and everything else exactly what it had been at the start of the game. (i used the Tinker's Bauble and other items to get around my relatively low Mechanics.) Having seriously screwed up my ending with canisters in G1, I only used the Spellcraft canister. As early as possible, I bought two levels of Create Fyora and made a Cryoa, balancing its stats equally and using a Student's Belt to invest more essence in it than I would normally be capable of, with the side effect of giving me zero essence to use in combat. I had no other creations. Oh, and I played mostly rebel, with just enough shaper goodwill to get the "Repair Moseh" mission. I would have liked to follow Matt P's walkthrough and kill Eliza or Shaftoe while sparing Moseh, but as it is I am not tough enough to defeat any of the three in combat. I can talk Moseh into surrendering without a fight, but that leaves me stuck working with the Shapers, who I've already pissed off quite a lot. And yes, I destroyed Eliza's neo-pylons, Shaftoe's servant minds, and Moseh's machinery before trying to take them on. Care to help the idiot? P.S. On second thought, I think I've figured out how to beat Moseh. But still, he isn't the toughest fighter in the game, and my stat problems tend to get exacerbated the higher I level up.

As of A3, Elite Warrior gave you a damage bonus, allowing you to reach the damage cap sooner but doing no good once you reached it. Apparently it now gives you Blademaster, but do you still hit the cap by the end of the game? Other than that, interesting stuff. A lot of it I never would have thought of.

This is getting kinda weird . . . About the "pig sacrifice" thing: whether or not you do that depends on whether or not the parents you're rebelling against are pig farmers. I suspect that, if you eliminate the unearnest, I'm a religion of one. And really, I don't believe this stuff--it's kind of like that story about a guy who worships a water tower, not because he really believes it's an incarnation of the "Divine Ocean", but because the religions of those around him seem to him to be ways of promoting hatred. Besides, I'm a Socialist, and in America we're expected to be Satanists.

One thing to mention, Evynissen (and I really hope I spelled that name right): the Guardian is more powerful in GF3 than in any other game in the series. I swear when I replayed as an Agent, I quit halfway through because she was so much weaker. And if anyone doesn't know what the bleep I'm talking about, I'm guessing they didn't use a Reviving Crystal on their preferred weapon.

Perhaps there are two things I should explain. One: I'm a Satanist. Not one of those people who sacrifice pigs and consider lettuce an unclean food, but someone who honestly believes the Christian devil is a better choice than the Bible-style Christian God (not to be confused with the God most Christians I know believe in, which really isn't Christian at all, but tends to turn up in every religion when you question its followers closely enough.) Now that I have set myself up to almost certainly get flamed, let's move onto number 2. I tend to come up with weird theories whenever I encounter an ongoing artwork (book series, TV show, game series, etc.) that keeps everything really mysterious and doesn't let you know what's going on. Every once in a while I catch something really major, as when I predicted that the final villain on Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be this one baddie called the First who appeared in a single episode years ago, but more often I just make people roll their eyes. ("Watched Lost the other night, and hey, did you notice that when Claire had that dream about the bloody cradle, Locke's eyes matched those pebbles Jack found in a bag next to those bodies from 50 years ago?") This is just me--don't take me seriously.

I almost can't believe I have so little to do that I'm adding on to this. But hey, it's summer, and school's out, and if I get to the movies too early I might have to sit through a preview for "Space Chimps"! Back on topic: I really loved Avernum 2, but that might just be because I almost never got to play it. (It was on my brother's Mac, which he seldom let me borrow.) A1 was really fun, even if there were some aspects they improved later on, like adding a quest list. A5 is a solid sequel, and the combat disciplines are something I've wanted for YEARS. A4 suffers from Final Fantasy syndrome: the fights are all "keep attacking over and over until you kill that blasted thing", but the plot's so good you keep on playing. It helps that the jokes are the best of any Spiderweb game I've played. A3 comes last, even though it was good, because having to rush to keep the towns from being destroyed was just too stressful. (I kept having to use the character editor to send me back to Day 1.)

Truth be told, I phrased this badly. I agree that it almost certainly is not an intentional allegory. What I really intended to play up was the humor potential in such an allegory. Think about it--if you support the Shapers and someone else supports the rebels, you can call them a Satanist.

Just started replaying Geneforge 3, and I suddenly noticed--this entry in the series makes a pretty good allegory for the war between God and Satan in Christianity. On the one hand, you have humans who in this game are capable of summoning hails of fire and all that, and hence might as well be angels. They created the less-intelligent beings, including serviles who remind me, at least, of normal humans. On the other hand you have other humans who desire the power of the more powerful humans, and who are aided by serviles who desire freedom from the control of their creators. The powerful humans are arrogant and controlling, but the rebels may actually be the more evil side due to their willingness to slaughter indiscriminately in the name of freedom. There's even a Devil in the person of Master Hodge, a former high-ranking Shaper who has become a rebel leader but is steadily going insane. Too bad this doesn't work for the other games--the Barzites could be the angels who sided with nobody but themselves and were cast out to wander the Earth for all eternity, but there's just no equivalent of the Trakovites. (And yes, I have nothing better to do than this. Could be how I lost my last job . . .)

My search for "The Secret" in "Geneforge series" turned up exactly 1 result. Would you please be kind enough to provide a link? Thanks.

Hmm . . . has anyone else noticed that the world of Geneforge has very advanced and very primitive technology side by side, as if some really high-powered stuff survived an apocalypse of some sort? And did anyone see in G3 that not even the Shapers can remember the origins of, say, a Vlish, indicating that their records are lost? And might it not be coincidental that almost everyone who has funny-colored skin (green, blue, etc.) has magical potential? (Sadly, it's no longer everyone.) Furthermore, has it struck anyone else that it seems the people who have natural shaping and magical capabilities start out as arrogant and people-hating as characters who use canisters to improve themselves to an equivalent skill level? I myself am hoping we find out in the final game that all the people who use magic are descended from users of the original genetic modifications, and that it was warfare among those people that sunk the Geneforge world into barbarism. One can always hope. (And yes, I've had this theory since the first game, but I only just figured out the technical problems that kept me from using the forums. Oh well.)

They're allowed. False alarm, everyone.

It actually does look like if you build up Leadership and Mechanics really, really high, you can get through to the end of the game and the final battle without going into combat mode. (Luring a foe to an NPC that kills them apparently doesn't count, based on the message when you repair that pylon after using the Geneforge.) What you need combat to do is play the side quests--there's no way to negotiate with that drake with the dent in its head. Oh well. The fellow just to the south of the first rebel hideout who gives you all those quests does say that trying to beat the game without fighting is "a difficult path. Perhaps unreasonably so."

Dammit, I've got to learn to check and make sure there isn't a second page of comments before I post! I just had a little thing about how almost anywhere works to stash items. I myself used wherever I went to heal up and sell things. (Then again, I had a small stash. I swear I bankrupted every merchant in the game with all the stuff I sold. Bought myself 30 points of luck with the money.)

Regarding Mystic (still can't figure out the quote function, sorry): actually, Barzahl says that he was among those sent to destroy the Geneforge after the protagonist of the first game discovered its existence. He did so, but he copied the design. Therefore, it must not have been destroyed by the hero. Other clues: In game 2, some servile (sorry, don't remember who) references "another [shaper] who did not treat us as slaves." Therefore, the first hero didn't join the Obeyers. Also, the first Trakovite in game 4, Dewey or whatever his name was, talked of how Trajkov "sacrificed himself" in a way that implied he used the Geneforge! (Maybe canonically you choose that dialogue option about "It was a mistake to help you, Trajkov." But were you really expected to survive that fight?) All in all, this seems like a question only one man can answer. Don't be shy, Mr. Vogel--we may be pissed at you over Blades of Avernum, but we're still grateful you created Geneforge and satisfied everyone's need for no-holds-barred deathmatch Pokemon! P.S. In case he doesn't answer, hehe, I just remembered a possible way around the conundrum with either the Awakened being free or the Obeyers becoming a new level of servile slave. If you kill either Ellrah or Rydell, their group will get a different ending. Maybe our hero was a Taker before turning on Trajkov.

Hello you all, Does the company Wild Tangent have permission to be selling copies of Geneforge 1, 2, and 3? It was through a program similar to Steam, named something redundant like Gamemachine Games and made by Wild Tangent. There was no mention of Spiderweb Software as the maker of the game, and the whole thing looked really shady. (Not to mention that according to Task Manager, the computer that had this program was using 80% of its CPU on 70 tasks even when nothing other than Task Manager was running--malware, anyone?.) P.S. According to my web search for ["Diner Dash" Geneforge] (Diner Dash being another game they sold despite apparently not making), Wild Tangent is in fact behind this thing. I know they're a real company because I own a collection of arcade games they made, but I'm still a little suspicious.

I've been going up to the posts by which Tobias marked his claims, but nothing's been happening. I thought maybe I had "checked" the claims and just not been told, but when I went back to Arianna I couldn't get a reward from her. Would someone be willing to help me out? (I'd like to get that quest off my list before I free Anemona and anger the entire town.)