Saw it. There are more plot holes than you can shake a stick at.
The new characters are terrible as usual. The old characters are either being sidelined (Chewbacca) or being forced to act completely out of character (Luke) in order to promote the new characters.
Star Wars used to be one of my favorite franchises but Disney has killed it for me. I won't be seeing the last episode because I just don't care what happens any more.
Oh well. There's plenty of sci-fi franchises out there that are still good so it's not the end of the world.
At first I did not realize the movie was switching through three different timelines, but by the middle of the film it was pretty obvious that's what was happening.
And Dunkirk was such a huge event, it's simply impossible to show everything that was going on. I've seen reviewers lament that Churchill was not shown, that the generals/admirals planning the evacuation were not shown, that the Germans were not shown, that Hitler's decision to stop the tanks was not shown, that British cabinet discussions about making peace with Hitler were not shown, that more civilians were not shown, ect, ect. If all those things had been shown it would be a 4 hour movie (and a lot more expensive to make).
As a history buff I really liked the authenticity and realism; rather than having digital animations of dogfights, they actually got some real World War 2 planes and had them flying over the English Channel - awesome! Some Dunkirk vets who saw the film said it was very realistic.
It's a powerful true story about ordinary people put in an extraordinary situation and I'm glad I saw it.
What's the future of the Democratic Party? It has no future unless it enacts immediate radical reforms.
To me the #1 reason why Clinton lost the election is she should NEVER have been the party's candidate in the first place! Why was she? Because she used backroom deals and party cronyism (the good ole boy system) to lock up the superdelegate vote.
Now ostensibly the whole point of a primary election is to make sure your party has the strongest candidate going into the general election. But when Clinton locked up the superdelegates it became mathematically extremely unlikely that anyone other than Clinton could win the nomination.
I'm not just talking in absolute terms, as each superdelegate vote is worth about 10,000 votes of rank-and-file Democrats. I'm also talking of the blatant voter suppression effect of locking up the superdelegates, as any rank-and-file Democrat considering voting for say, Bernie Sanders would have to do so knowing full well that the vote was HEAVILY stacked against them before the first rank-and-file Democrats had cast even a single ballot. This point was driven home time and time again in reporting by the largely pro-Clinton media in the run up to the actual balloting.
And so what was even the point of holding a primary at all, if a handful of out-of-touch party elites are determined to swing the results to the weakest candidate, damn constituent representation or democracy in the process!
To me the most shocking thing about the Democrat defeat was how little real introspection has been done on why it happened. We've all heard various vague platitudes from Democrat leaders and even in this thread about how the party needs to get more organized or reach out to people who have been alienated from the party, but very little specifics about how any of this could be accomplished.
Strikingly, not a single major Democrat leader is currently calling for the immediate and total abolition of the party's superdelegate system (although there has been some progress in increasing the number of pledged delegates, it's not enough). Until this is done, discussing any other reforms is rather pointless, as party elites can and will continue to lock up the primary vote and nominate weak candidates. These weak candidates WILL lose in general elections, and all the other talk of reforms in the world isn't going to change that.
This is probably the biggest electoral upset in modern American history.
What's funny is that my relatives are all pro-Democrat fanatics for some reason. They have actually gone out and torn down GOP signs in previous elections. This year one relative bragged about how he had gotten some Trump campaign funding solicitations in the mail, and he had mailed them back an empty envelope purely out of spite (so the Trump campaign would have to pay the back postage).
But the best part is my relatives actually all voted for Trump in the primaries. They thought they were sabotaging the Republican party by doing so, and thus ensuring Clinton's victory.
They probably were sabotaging the Republican party's ruling elite, but that ended up hurting Clinton much more than helping her. Because when Trump won the GOP primary the election essentially became an establishment vs anti-establishment contest.
Hillary's numerous Big Media, Big Business, and Big Hollywood backers (and my relatives) simply have no idea how many long-ignored voters have nothing but seething contempt for the Washington DC elite of both parties, and we've been waiting for a chance like this to come along for a long damn time. My whole life.
I had told my relatives that I had given up on the American political system. That I would never vote again (after one furtive protest vote for Kerry against Bush). That there was really no difference between the Dems and Repubs on the issues that I cared about. That it was a good-ole-boy system full of gerrymandering, superdelegates, and rules designed to make it impossible for a third party candidate ever to win high office in this country.
Then Trump unexpectedly came along and I had to tell my relatives I would actually vote one more time. Because a huge electoral upset had put an anti-establishment politician in play for the presidency, and I doubted this chance would ever come again.
Trump would lose of course, and America's ruling elite would get together to make sure another anti-establishment candidate would never rise. But I wouldn't be staying true to my beliefs if I sat out this probably once in a lifetime chance.
So imagine my surprise when Trump is doing so well. My pro-Clinton relatives who voted for Trump in the primaries but for Clinton in the actual election are probably having fits right now!
I just saw it at the premier. Was very disappointed. I give it 2 out of 4 stars.
The theater was full. I bought my tickets weeks in advance, got there 40 minutes early (plus there's 15 minutes of previews) and the theater was PACKED. People were wearing costumes and everything. I've never seen anything like it.
There were cheers as the opening scrawl started, and as each of the characters from the original trilogy were (re-)introduced. I was surprised and impressed with how many of our favorite old characters made a return for Episode 7.
Also, there were some ok action scenes, but nothing special. Typical JJ Abrams fare.
The movie failed for me because the plot was awful and so were the new characters. The old characters tried to make the movie work with the limited material they had available, but unfortunately 90% of the screen time was devoted to the horrible new characters.
I'll go into more detail below, but there will be MINOR SPOILERS (nothing that isn't revealed at the beginning when the main characters are introduced).
The new characters:
The Bad guys -- Ren, Hux, Snoke, Phasma. They all deserve the Darwin award. Yes, they are that stupid. Part of having drama in a film is having bad guys that are a threat -- the good guys must face risk or where is the thrill of action??? 30 minutes into the film I had lost all respect for the "First Order." How did the First Order manage to survive for 30 years? I'm surprised they didn't blow themselves up in 30 minutes due to the extreme incompetence of their leaders. It cheapened the victory of the heroes, argh!!!
Kinda wish they had just made a film of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. Yes, we'd all know the plot, but at least Thrawn was an intelligent, resourceful adversary worthy of respect.
Dameron Poe -- the Superflous hero. He's introduced at the beginning as a super-important character, and then promptly forgotten about for most of the rest of the film. So why include him at all?
BB8- The cutesy droid. Fails at comic relief, but never quite approaches the level of Jar-Jar Binks annoyingness.
Rey -- The only new character with any hope. Too bad JJ Abrams completely forgot to develop a backstory for her! I guess we'll have to hope for it in the next episode.
Finn - Imagine you're a soldier and your squad gets in a fight with some rebels. The rebels are trying their hardest to brutally murder you. Your comrades are falling all around you, their blood splattering on your uniform. These are the only comrades you've ever known.
Do you:
A) Steel your courage, stuff a clip in your blaster rifle and avenge your fallen comrades?
or
B) Chicken out and decide to join the rebels who just tried to kill you?
If you chose option A you're a credit to your unit, soldier! If you chose option B then I question how you ever made it out of Stormtrooper Bootcamp. Perhaps you'd be better suited to a career as a Hollywood filmwriter?
Finn chooses option B, so he makes no sense as a character. Even more inexplicably, he's completely useless when he's a stormtrooper, but as soon as he joins the rebels he becomes the biggest badass in the galaxy, single-handedly cutting through squads of his former comrades. Are you freakin' kidding me?!
It's a B grade action movie. I doubt I'll be rushing out to see Episode 8, if I see it at all. Sigh...
What actually happened during the Thrawn trilogy again? It has been 20+ years since I read it, but I remember it was set VERY recent after the first trilogy... and don't remember any real lasting effects. There was a luke cloned from his lost hand... I think an emperor clone maybe? Some Moff's still trying to restart the empire and failing... I remember luke wondering if Yoda even used a lightsaber as he'd never seen him with one... (/deletes prequels)
We still have a 30 year gap between old and new... what was there in that trilogy that would even be mentioned 30 years later? Is there any reason that we can't STILL consider that Canon in our heads? Impossible to really know till we see it I'm sure... but they would have to be pretty specific in order to completely negate things I suspect...
The Thrawn trilogy was one of the most popular, probably THE most popular part of the EU. Its success paved the way for the rest of the EU, some of which was good, some of which was OK, and some of which was terrible.
The basic plot:
Spoilers:
After the end of episode 6 the Empire schisms into warlordism and the rebels take advantage of this to push them out of two thirds of the galaxy and create a New Republic to replace the old one.
But a previously unknown high ranking Imperial officer (Grand Admiral Thrawn) returns from uncharted space at the head of an armada. He unites many of the Imperial factions behind him and proceeds to win a string of major victories against the New Republic. Thrawn is a tactical genius, sort of like a spacefaring Napoleon who comes up with many complex and clever battle plans.
The series ends with the death of Thrawn at the hands of one of his bodyguards (an action which was indirectly caused by the heroes).
Of course we won't know until the movie comes out, but the above plot does not sync well with what we know about episode 7.
This trailer made my day, it was so much better than the first one.
On the first trailer it introduced the new main characters Rey, Finn, BB8, and Kylo Ren all of whom I immediately disliked in the admittedly few seconds I saw them. There was no sign of our beloved characters from episode 6, no sign of any interesting plot (the main failings of episode 1-3), and the trailer music itself was jarring and annoying.
Trailer #2 makes me excited about the movie all over again. The scene with the crashed star destroyer? Awesome how it almost looks like a mountain at first, then as the camera pans across the desert you see it for what it is.
Then the characters from episode 6 were re-introduced, huzzah!
And then at the 60 second mark things really got awesome. The trailer music really synced well with the action going on at that point. The action clips themselves were great, I especially liked the scene with the stormtroopers in formation turning around to face the audience, almost as if to say, "We're back!"
Then having a dogfight inside the wreckage of the star destroyer from earlier in the trailer? Sure, why not!
So yeah, JJ Abrams I think is definitely going to wow us with the action scenes. I'm still worried about the plot, as his track record is much less impressive in that regard, and most of what we've seen and heard about the new characters so far worries me.
On other news sites, I've heard that the Empire has renamed itself to
Spoiler:
"The First Order" while the rebels are now "the Resistance."
You've already got a large cast of characters returning from Episode 6, plus they've got to introduce the new generation of characters for Episode 7. That's a lot of characters taking up screen time, so they've got to make sure every new character they introduce offers something unique and important.
Since C3PO and R2D2 are already confirmed to be in the movie, I think the genre of cutesy robots has already been well covered. How many cutesy robots do you need in a movie anyways?
Many of the Neverwinter 1 mods were higher quality than the official campaigns.
A few I played and liked:
Penultima series (humor)
Runes of Blood (large detailed world)
A Dance with Rogues (roleplaying)
Shadowlords series (hack'n'slash)
Lone Wolf series (storytelling)
Elegia Eternum/Excrucio Eternum (storytelling/good custom music)
Island Adventures series (puzzles, detailed world)
Lords of Darkness series (hack'n'slash)
An Ancient Heart series (hack'n'slash)
Bone Kenning (evil)
Arandie (storytelling)
One last suggestion is actually a 2nd edition AD&D boxed set: Night Below. While you would have to convert it to Pathfinder (and there are several people who've done this in the past), the actual storyline links the enemies from the start of the campaign all the way to the Big Boss at the end. Of course, seeing that Mindflayers don't exist in Pathfinder you will likely need to replace several enemies. So a lot of work would be involved in this.
I'll give another thumbs up to Night below. I DM'ed it twice, it was great fun both times. There are three books and they are all well-connected. There is a great attention to detail, both in the setting and NPCs.
The downside, is, as others have mentioned, 2nd edition rules.
I've run a homebrew low magic campaign and it was a lot of fun. It was set in a Bronze Age world but the PCs started off in a Stone Age society.
This was 3.5 edition, not pathfinder and I limited starting classes to:
rogue
barbarian
fighter
monk
CW or OA samurai
knight
scout
marshal
swashbuckler
ranger
paladin
ninja
crusader
swordsage
warblade
adept
So basically almost no magic.
The initial lack of equipment and spells meant that for the first few levels the PCs' tactical options were extremely limited. I compensated for this by designing early encounters that depended on skill checks, roleplaying, puzzles, and most especially by putting PCs in situations that they obviously could not solve through brute force alone - they would have to use their wits to survive in a harsh and primitive world.
It was our first time using E6, and it will be our last. E6 did not really work out for us. E6 does solve the "quadratic caster progression" problem, but it does so by essentially shutting down the level-up system just when quadratic caster progression usually starts to become an issue. Players like to get rewarded and feel like they are making constant progress. Once we hit level 6 that didn't happen anymore, instead everyone felt like we were just treading water.
Now I know some players love E6, so I will just say it's not for everyone. If you do try E6 and decide it's not for you, it won't be too hard to switch the campaign from E6 back to a "normal" experience progression -- that's what we ended up doing.
Other issues that will definitely come up with low magic:
1. Healing. Lack of magical healing will mean you'll want to come up with houserules for making nonmagical healing more effective.
2. The CR experience point award system starts to break down because it assumes the PCs have got spells and gear they can't get in a low magic setting. You'll have to award XP on a case by case basis.
3. With such a radical change in the rules there are going to be minor hiccups that require houserules. Example: Towards the end of my campaign it was pointed out that a single contagion spell could wipe out an entire city due to the lack of commonly available magical healing. So I had to change the contagion spell a bit.
4. Lack of magic means fewer tactical options in combat. To keep combat from getting stale you're really going to have to push dynamic, interesting combat situations. Battles where the terrain is a major factor. Battles that take place with uncommon enemy tactics. Battles that need to be completed within a certain time, or in a certain way (example: escort the ambassador to safety without him knowing that you're escorting him).
There's a lot of reasons why I thought low magic was fun:
1. It's a very different way of playing than most players are used to. Many players use magic as a crutch, an easy way to get out of critical thinking and problem solving. When you take that crutch away the campaign becomes more challenging, and everyone feels a bigger sense of accomplishment when obstacles are overcome. If players are confronted with the challenge of crossing a vast hostile desert, now rather than just teleporting across it, or using magic to create food and water, they actually have to carefully plan their expedition, and getting across that desert becomes an accomplishment rather than just an insignificant footnote in the journey.
2. No more "Christmas Tree effect" and no more "quadratic caster progression" effect.
3. What little magic there is in the campaign feels magical again. Like in Tolkein's low magic Lord of the Rings when the heroes get a magic item it's a major event and the item is treated with reverence. But in a standard magic campaign if the players got "Sting" they'd just toss it on the treasure pile as "oh, just another +2 sword."
The plot of my low magic campaign revolved around various tribes trying to gain possession of a magic dagger, and the PCs end up getting caught in the struggle. Wars end up being fought over that dagger. It was quite a switch from our usual high magic forgotten realms campaign, where magic daggers were a dime a dozen!
So far I got these games that I really wanted on sale:
Deus Ex Collection
Orcs Must Die! Franchise Pack
Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas with all DLC
Torchlight 2
And I got these games because they looked vaguely interesting and they were dirt cheap.
Half Life 1 Anthology
Star Wolves
Two Worlds Epic Edition
Hard Reset Extended Edition
Patricians and Merchants/The Great Art Race/DarkStar One Combo
Clive Barker's Jericho
So far I've spent $45.
This Steam sale is actually the most lackluster one I've seen. This new trading card gimmick they've got going is mildly interesting but not really a money saver. One of my capitalist wheeler-dealer friends was able to make 10 bucks selling the new trading cards, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to try it myself...
By comparison, the last Steam sale had some really killer deals with the developer franchise packs. When THQ went out of business and sold all their AAA titles for pennies on the dollar -- that was pretty much the pinnacle of awesomeness for me (probably not so awesome for THQ).
I hope this lackluster sale is not a sign of things to come, sort of like how Amazon.com used to always have good deals, but then after they solidified their consumer base the deals gradually went away and now you've got to look pretty hard for deals there -- could Steam be going through a similar transformation? They've got about a 70% share of the market for digital games downloads and they've been able to keep it for a few years now...
Finished the game and enjoyed it quite a bit, but felt that some subjects and arcs were cut far too short.
** spoiler omitted **
I also enjoyed the game, and like all good things it made me sad when it ended, though the promise of future DLC is encouraging.
As for the aforementioned plot aspects...
Spoiler:
I thought Fink and the Vox were good villains, and I loved the way the buildup of their inevitable confrontation played out.
I must admit though, that when you started traveling through the tears to other worlds my initial thought was that the plot had 'jumped the shark' in a big way! I mean, you don't even actually defeat Fink, you just travel to another, similar world in which Fink is less competent, and when that doesn't work you travel through yet another tear to yet another world with an even more incompetent Fink who is eventually defeated.
With that kind of power at your disposal it's no wonder Booker was victorious, and I felt it rather cheapened his victories, and by association MY accomplishments as the player. On the other hand, this set the stage for the Vox Revolution which was probably the most fun part of the game for me.
So yes, I'm conflicted about the plot. Though for every plot point I hated there were ten other plot points I loved so I still give the game two thumbs up!
Bioware made Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect, so you might consider checking out their other RPGs: Jade Empire, Star Wars:Kotor, and Neverwinter Nights 1.
Neverwinter Nights actually had a rather lackluster main campaign compared to Bioware's other games, but there are numerous high quality add-ons that make it worthwhile.
You might also want to check out the Borderlands series by 2K, which is sort of a cross between an RPG and a first person shooter. The Deus Ex series is also a high quality cross between an RPG and a FPS.
You might also consider the Suikoden series. It is a Japanese style RPG with strategy elements.
Bastion -- neat story, great music, a very fun indie arcade-style game
Crusader Kings 2 -- if you like complex strategy games
Dungeons of Dredmor -- probably the best indie roguelike out there right now. Random dungeons, monsters, loot, quests, (optional) permadeath, humor!
Left 4 Dead 1 and 2-- A first person shooter in a zombie apocalypse. This game is built for co-op multiplayer!
Grand Theft Auto Series
King's Bounty Series
Half Life 2
Portal, Portal 2
Serios Sam 3
Duke Nukem Forever
Splinter Cell: Conviction
Two Worlds 2
Plants vs Zombies
R.U.S.E
Borderlands 1 and 2
I highly recommend Civilization 5, Left 4 Dead 2, and Borderlands 2. These games are awesome for multiplayer. Left 4 Dead 2 has no problems with Mac/PC compatibility. For the other two games I have to boot into Windows using Boot Camp so that I can play with my Windows friends.
The Mac store on the Apple website has tons of games, but probably the best place to get Mac games cheap is to download them off Valve's Steam service. Every winter Steam has a big sale, so in about one week is the time to buy.
