TSoG has been released!

[CraigStern]

Here's the full announcement. ;D

[Ertxiem]

Congrats!

[Dean_Lukas]

Seconded!

[bugfartboy]

After how many years? My mind is telling me six, but that can't be right. :)

[CraigStern]

Four and a couple of months. :)

[Xemadus Echina]

Saw the post on facebook and I just HAD to stop by and say CONGRATULATIONS! I'm updating as we speak and now I gotta go find my activation code in my e-mail XD pretty sure I starred it.

[dancash]

Congratulations Dowloading it now  :P

[Gath]

And I get a three-day weekend! I know exactly how to spend it...

Congratulations Criag, for four and a half years of work!

[bugfartboy]

Maybe this will start drawing some attention to your company, and finally give you enough income to start making games full time! :)

[ProperNoun]

*Exit Lurk Mode*

Sweet, TRPG3's been released. Time to hand over mah money.

(Or TSoG...it's all the same thing, right?)

[CraigStern]

Enjoy the game! ;)

[Gath]

Finished it! Only one week after release too!

That is to say, I beat it once on normal mode. And the great thing about games like this is that it isn't enough to play them just once-you have to play it over and over again in order to learn all of the secrets, and a challenge. Then you play it again, just cause.

One thing I found interesting about the ending...
[spoiler]So, you can just talk to Cygnus and win? Wow. That's...unexpected, to say the least. I tried to put myself in Duvalier's position, and what I would do is keep on arguing, so one thing led to another and...Victory. What surprised me about it the most was the idea that a someone like Cygnus could have his beliefs shattered. As an atheist who very commonly gets into religious debates, it's very hard to convince the common person to change their beliefs, and someone like a priest is even harder. (nigh impossible) And when you do manage to convince someone, it tends to be from several months of debate, not the shorter time shown in the story. Still, I like the fact that you can convince Cygnus that he might be wrong. It wouldn't really be an RPG if you had to kill him, would it?[/spoiler]

[Chocobo_Fan]

spoilery stuff

[spoiler]
It actually isn't completely unprecedented -- there was a game that did it before TSoG. In Planescape: Torment (a game which I suspect TRPG takes some influences from), you could also talk the final boss to death, so to speak -- in fact, there were multiple ways to do so! I do agree that it is a rather radical notion among modern game design, though, and I applaud Craig for giving us that option. I like it when I'm able to win by brains rather than brawn.

I do agree that convincing him that quickly is pretty unrealistic, though. I, too, am an atheist, and I know what you mean about religious debates. I think you could justify it as him just never thinking that far into things, though -- he took the words of the Iqon at face value, and didn't think to look further than he needed to. You're exposing questions that he never even considered, so he doesn't have a rationalization to counter it. His beliefs aren't completely shattered though -- to me, it sounded more like we exposed a chink in his armor that made him falter for a moment, but the ending montage shows that he goes on to continue preaching. So the debate shook him up a bit, but it didn't seem to change his core beliefs.
[/spoiler]

[Gath]

[spoiler]
It actually isn't completely unprecedented -- there was a game that did it before TSoG. In Planescape: Torment (a game which I suspect TRPG takes some influences from), you could also talk the final boss to death, so to speak -- in fact, there were multiple ways to do so! I do agree that it is a rather radical notion among modern game design, though, and I applaud Craig for giving us that option. I like it when I'm able to win by brains rather than brawn.

I do agree that convincing him that quickly is pretty unrealistic, though. I, too, am an atheist, and I know what you mean about religious debates. I think you could justify it as him just never thinking that far into things, though -- he took the words of the Iqon at face value, and didn't think to look further than he needed to. You're exposing questions that he never even considered, so he doesn't have a rationalization to counter it. His beliefs aren't completely shattered though -- to me, it sounded more like we exposed a chink in his armor that made him falter for a moment, but the ending montage shows that he goes on to continue preaching. So the debate shook him up a bit, but it didn't seem to change his core beliefs.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Yeah, I see what you mean as far as not changing his core beliefs. I think that we should also consider the setting-Ravinale doesn't seem like a place where debates about God abound. So it's definitely possible that he hadn't heard those questions before. I still find it kind of weird that no one thought to talk to him about it-but no one else has a 16 personality.  ;)[/spoiler]

[CraigStern]

I get what you're saying, and I have three responses to it:

[spoiler](1) You're a telepath; you have persuasion powers beyond those of regular people. And even then, you need a really high Personality stat to pull it off. Otherwise, he refuses to keep talking with you.
(2) Consider the context in which the conversation takes place: you've basically just fought your way through a superior army to find Cygnus almost totally defenseless. That's got to be a shock for someone who thinks God wants him to win.
(3) It's a game. One of the nice things about games is that we can engage in a little bit of wish fulfillment. ;)[/spoiler]