![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geebsWith GTA IV coming out tomorrow night, the video game sites are chock full of articles on it. One thing I did not realize about this game was how much more detailed they got with the strip club lap dances and hookers in the car. After watching this featurette. Heh, now you can have twofers at the club! And when you take a lady of the night off in you car, instead of just doing the car rocking thing, you can actually see them "hop on pop". Particularly if you're driving a convertible. Needless to say, I'm shocked and surprised the parental groups aren't more up in arms about this. Never you mind its rated M and their kids shouldn't be playing it anyways, but of course they'd rather slough blame instead of watching what the hell their kids are playing. But I digress. Overall, it looks like its gonna be an awesome game. And the new online multiplayer option sounds nifty.
Saw Deja Vu with the roomie last night. Ehh, to me the movie couldn't settle on the physics and thus the end doesn't make sense at all. Throughout the movie, Denzel Washington's character sees things that we later find out result from him going back in time. But if that was the case, he shouldn't have been able to prevent the outcome, because things should have played out the same way. To me, it seems like that's the way the movie was supposed to originally play out, that everything is static, and the timeline takes into affect things that future people do to affect the past. But then someone said that would be too depressing and decided to give a "Hollywood ending"- yeah, Denzel's character dies saving everyone, but that's a future self that no longer exists anyways. So the chick is all sad, but then present Denzel shows up and there's a chance for them again..
Exalted blather: One thing that annoys me about the Abyssals book, as I've mentioned before, is having to go back to the Exalted main book for explanations of how certain charms work. Granted, Abyssals is a supplement, so that's excusable. But I find the whole necromancy thing annoying- so under the occult charms, they list what charm you need to cast whatever circle spell, but there are no spells in the book! Well, there are two, but that basically concerns the monstrances- one is the void circle spell that one uses to convert a Solar exalt into an Abyssal, the other is for cases when an Abyssal exaltation's monstrance is destroyed. Obviously, Abyssal exalts are too valuable to the Deathlords and Neverborn for their exaltations to be left wandering around like the Solar exaltations when a particular exalt is destroyed, so this spell lets one grab back that Abyssal exaltation and bind it to a new monstrance. But I digress. Under those occult charms its all, "this lets you cast Shadowlands/Labyrinth/Void circle spells. For a list of these and how they function, you need this other book." ARGH!! Not that I ever play spellcasters anyways, but it seems like people who do get kinda ripped off.
In any case, the thing I like about Exalted is the customizablity. Castes are sort of like classes, but for the most part, you have greater control over your character's design. I mean, there's the caste abilities, but then you get to choose five more favored abilities during character creation. So being a spellcaster doesn't mean you suck at fighting or sneaking around and vice versa. I mean, its a huge improvement over D&D's limited class system. Even WoD forces you to pick either physical, mental, or social to be good at at the beginning, to the detriment of the others. In Exalted, you get to cherry pick a little better. I mean, depending on your caste, there's still a primary, be it thieving skills or martial skills or social skills or what have you, but unlike WoD's 11/7/4, you're not forced to pick another grouping, with the remaining groupings being shafted. You can take what you want from those other groups.
And with charms being based of skills rather than being under a strict set of powers like vampire's disciplines or mage's arcana in WoD, there's more variety in what powers you can have. Granted, in Mage, the purview of an arcana is huge, but there are times you only care about a specific fraction of a certain arcana and wish to be able to do some of the stuff of other arcana. But the xp cost to try and crosstrain like that is frickin' huge. Yeah, some charms have prerequisites, but again, its much easier to cherry pick in this system. Like you can be a spellcasting type, but have physical defenses and health/stamina rivaling that of a buffed up tank type. And I like that, because it changes things up.
All in all, it just seems like you're not forced down a set path, there's more branches compared to other systems.
For some reason, Exalted had me thinking of Claymore (heh, doing a google search, I'm not the only one making the comparison), and the two different attack styles. Granted, I'm usually the best defense is a good offense, but in the Claymore setting, it seems the opposite- yeah, favoring the offensive style gives you more powerful attacks, but given defensive stylists can quickly regenerate even the most grievous wounds, I think being able to take a pretty nasty hit trumps being able to cause one. Yeah, the offensive stylist is doing more damage per hit, but the defensive stylist can just weather those blows and doesn't need to do as much damage comparably to take their opponent out. Plus, both can regenerate lost limbs, but the offensive stylist's regenerated limb is only of human level. Defensive stylists can regenerate their lost limbs with no reduction in strength or prowess. It seems like defense gets the better end of the deal.
Saw Deja Vu with the roomie last night. Ehh, to me the movie couldn't settle on the physics and thus the end doesn't make sense at all. Throughout the movie, Denzel Washington's character sees things that we later find out result from him going back in time. But if that was the case, he shouldn't have been able to prevent the outcome, because things should have played out the same way. To me, it seems like that's the way the movie was supposed to originally play out, that everything is static, and the timeline takes into affect things that future people do to affect the past. But then someone said that would be too depressing and decided to give a "Hollywood ending"- yeah, Denzel's character dies saving everyone, but that's a future self that no longer exists anyways. So the chick is all sad, but then present Denzel shows up and there's a chance for them again..
Exalted blather: One thing that annoys me about the Abyssals book, as I've mentioned before, is having to go back to the Exalted main book for explanations of how certain charms work. Granted, Abyssals is a supplement, so that's excusable. But I find the whole necromancy thing annoying- so under the occult charms, they list what charm you need to cast whatever circle spell, but there are no spells in the book! Well, there are two, but that basically concerns the monstrances- one is the void circle spell that one uses to convert a Solar exalt into an Abyssal, the other is for cases when an Abyssal exaltation's monstrance is destroyed. Obviously, Abyssal exalts are too valuable to the Deathlords and Neverborn for their exaltations to be left wandering around like the Solar exaltations when a particular exalt is destroyed, so this spell lets one grab back that Abyssal exaltation and bind it to a new monstrance. But I digress. Under those occult charms its all, "this lets you cast Shadowlands/Labyrinth/Void circle spells. For a list of these and how they function, you need this other book." ARGH!! Not that I ever play spellcasters anyways, but it seems like people who do get kinda ripped off.
In any case, the thing I like about Exalted is the customizablity. Castes are sort of like classes, but for the most part, you have greater control over your character's design. I mean, there's the caste abilities, but then you get to choose five more favored abilities during character creation. So being a spellcaster doesn't mean you suck at fighting or sneaking around and vice versa. I mean, its a huge improvement over D&D's limited class system. Even WoD forces you to pick either physical, mental, or social to be good at at the beginning, to the detriment of the others. In Exalted, you get to cherry pick a little better. I mean, depending on your caste, there's still a primary, be it thieving skills or martial skills or social skills or what have you, but unlike WoD's 11/7/4, you're not forced to pick another grouping, with the remaining groupings being shafted. You can take what you want from those other groups.
And with charms being based of skills rather than being under a strict set of powers like vampire's disciplines or mage's arcana in WoD, there's more variety in what powers you can have. Granted, in Mage, the purview of an arcana is huge, but there are times you only care about a specific fraction of a certain arcana and wish to be able to do some of the stuff of other arcana. But the xp cost to try and crosstrain like that is frickin' huge. Yeah, some charms have prerequisites, but again, its much easier to cherry pick in this system. Like you can be a spellcasting type, but have physical defenses and health/stamina rivaling that of a buffed up tank type. And I like that, because it changes things up.
All in all, it just seems like you're not forced down a set path, there's more branches compared to other systems.
For some reason, Exalted had me thinking of Claymore (heh, doing a google search, I'm not the only one making the comparison), and the two different attack styles. Granted, I'm usually the best defense is a good offense, but in the Claymore setting, it seems the opposite- yeah, favoring the offensive style gives you more powerful attacks, but given defensive stylists can quickly regenerate even the most grievous wounds, I think being able to take a pretty nasty hit trumps being able to cause one. Yeah, the offensive stylist is doing more damage per hit, but the defensive stylist can just weather those blows and doesn't need to do as much damage comparably to take their opponent out. Plus, both can regenerate lost limbs, but the offensive stylist's regenerated limb is only of human level. Defensive stylists can regenerate their lost limbs with no reduction in strength or prowess. It seems like defense gets the better end of the deal.
