: TFL is just as valid as Myth II--one might consider it
: more so, because the Mythworld was smaller then and
: hence most likely more consistent. We sometimes
: believe Myth II over TFL where they conflict, but only
: because Myth II has more detailed textual info on some
: matters. By your argument, we might as well go
: entirely by what GURPS says now, because it's newer.
Good point.
: Pre-release info is useful because it affects the
: probabilities. The fact that The Faceless Man, say,
: was left out of the Myth games doesn't mean that he's
: not part of the final Mythworld as envisioned by
: Bungie. It just means they didn't find a good place to
: put him in the game. For all we know, he's still alive
: and well in the design docs. Or maybe he's not. But
: the chance is certainly better than it would be if he
: was *never* mentioned by Bungie, and that provides
: useful info on the world of Myth.
I wish I could get my hands on those Design Docs. *Salivates*. That was the point I attempted to get across in my infamous post (which thankfully, has been resolved). Leaving something out doesn't make it useless, maybe gameplay clashed etc. We all remember the Pfhor Hounds. :)
: Sure. But 3rd-party stuff is off the graph. :-)
Agreed. It may be interesting or even insightful, but it aint canon.
: If there's anything you should learn in this world of
: popular entertainment, it's never trust the movie
: version. :-) The nature of the medium makes it more
: persuasive, but generally less accurate, than simple
: text. "Pearl Harbor's" proving this right
: now, I imagine. I'm dead sure quite a few viewers are
: leaving convinced that FDR once stood up publicly to
: demonstrate the power of determination.
Seen that yet?
: Video games have the same problem but more so. The
: in-game level designers have to make every depicted
: challenge solvable by telling your units to kill the
: right people or keep from getting killed. They have to
: make them hard enough to be interesting but not so
: hard that only a genius could master them. They have
: to make crude approximations of the objects they
: envision, so that the Great Devoid's 10 yards deep and
: Balor's fortress is a wall in front of a cloudy region
: of blackness. They have to make the units' behavior
: and properties far more simplistic than in real
: life--people don't eat or sleep, or figure out where
: you are if you shoot at them from 30 feet away.
Agreed
: So is Balor really such a drooling moron that you can
: surround him with your units at the beginning of
: "The Last Battle" and hack him to death
: while he just stands there, no Eblis Stone needed? Is
: Alric, the Light's greatest archmage, really
: defenseless against a single Mahir? Does he really
: have a grand total of two combat spells--the Dispersal
: Dream and a blow-up-Soulblighter's-rock spell? I don't
: think so.
Agreed again
: The in-game stuff is convincing because we see it
: happening and help it happen, but for those same
: reasons it has to twist the story. Text, on the other
: hand, is there for no other reason than to explicate
: the story. You can copy the manuals and Tales down
: directly from the world in your head, no scripting,
: unit-making or playtesting needed.
: But in-game stuff is just as flawed. 100 Berserks in the
: narrator's manual become 30 Berserks in the game. Sure
: there's a reason for it, but it's still a departure
: from the story.
Oh god yes, no sarcasm intended
: That ending to Casablanca didn't happen because we saw
: what *did* happen instead. That's very different from
: this case--absence of proof is not proof of absence.
: No one in Myth ever says that the last Fallen Lord
: *isn't* Darth Vader--does that mean we're supposed to
: think that he *is*?
lol
: We don't know whether pre-release stuff was scrapped
: because it wasn't part of the story, or whether it
: just didn't fit in the *game*. The only thing which
: would show that the Avatara don't have some of the
: names found in the prerelease file is if the TFL
: narrator actually listed all their names and they were
: different.
: Real debates don't work like that, if the participants
: are actually aiming to get to the truth. Every
: statement is judged on its own merits.
I debate, quite well IMNSHO, and I know both can be true. Although your argument doesn't fail if you have one bad point, your opposition will use it to undermine your intelligence.
: And the origins of the Ravanna bit are obvious. In-game,
: Myth II Shiver is named "Ravanna." When
: Myrdred calls her by that name--emphasizing it--she
: gets pissed and talks about his big mouth. Seabolt
: worked off this and what Bungie told him and wrote
: down what he did. Whatever it "sounds like,"
: we have no reason to think that he made it up.
I thought the whole Shiver/Ravanna thing was quite good.
: GURPS had better than the original documents. It had the
: Bungie employees who edited it, did the art,
: playtested it, and publicized it. Seabolt had access
: to the group that wrote the documents in the first
: place. Sure they made some mistakes when they looked
: over his stuff and gave him advice, but they made
: mistakes when they wrote the games in the first place.
: GURPS has flaws, but they ain't utter ones.
And we all dance around the burning effigy of MicroSoft. Can you have an effigy of a company? Doubtful.
LR
