SlickRiptide

So, Here's a challenge - Pitch your idea for Highlander 2, a sequel to Highlander that does NOT invalidate any of the original movie.

Here's an off-the-cuff pitch of my own, just to get things rolling:

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Highlander: Rebirth

The year is 1995. We see an older Connor Mcleod typing on a computer. He finishes whatever he is doing, then pops out a CD, which he places in a plastic case and carries to a nearby bookcase. He presses a catch and the bookcase swings away to reveal a hidden closet. His sword is here, along with mementos and boxes of unknown contents. He places the CD in the closet, caresses the sword, and closes the bookcase/door.

Moments later, outside the house, a shot rings out and a storm of lightning bolts jumps from the house to the cloudless sky.

Skip ahead to 2015. Young Duncan Mcleod sits in a lawyer's office. He is turning twenty and is about to receive his full inheritance, which has been held in a trust fund setup by his father before his suicide. The assets he receives include a cryptic videotape; a recorded message from his father that begins a journey to an education in the ways of the Immortals and the Quickening.

Around the world, strange things are happening. News programs report scientific studies showing that Global Warming processes appear to be accelerating. In Russia, a criminal is shot and killed, only to wake up on a morgue table a few hours later. In Afghanistan, a squad of soldiers is killed by a roadside bomb, yet one of the soldiers unaccountably revives. In France a suicidal woman leaps into the Seine, only to find herself a day later on the shore and unaccountably undrowned.

Through a series of adventures, young Mcleod is brought face to face with a truth that his father realized - The Quickening is not a one-time event. It is a concentration of spiritual energy that is a survival mechanism of the species. The Quickening happens when the species approaches an evolutionary crisis. The winner of the Prize becomes mortal so that the energy is released back into the world upon his death, and the Game begins anew. Sometimes the white hats win. Sometimes the black hats. Genocide is sometimes what the species requires to survive. This is why Cro-Magnon Man displaced Neanderthal Man. This is why **** Sapiens has evolved through one crisis and another. Now, there is an approaching evolutionary crisis - a climate catastrophe that will threaten the very existence of mankind.

Rather than let the cycle once again run its path randomly, Connor makes a decision to control the upcoming new Game and direct it as much as possible. To use a literary example, he uses his knowledge gained by the Prize to become Hari Seldon and to appoint his son Duncan to be the leader of the Second Foundation. Young Mcleod, through his father's financial resources, stockpiled knowledge and recorded guidance, is to create The Watchers; a group whose purpose is to find nascent Immortals of the next Game, teach them the minimum that they need to know about their condition, and manipulate them when possible and necessary to achieve the goals of the Watchers.

This goal is nothing less than the survival of humanity when the global catastrophe arrives. The next Quickening will be the sign of its impending arrival and at that time the Watchers must put Connor's plans into action and support the champion among the Immortals that they have chosen as worthy to lead Humanity through the catastrophe to whatever awaits beyond it.

The first threat to the plan arrives in the form of Rostov, a Russian gangster who uses his newfound power to track down every Immortal he can find and absorb their power. If left to his own devices, the Plan will be derailed before it can even begin. Obi Wan, er, Duncan must find a champion among the newly minted Immortals to bring up to speed quickly to face and defeat Rostov and insure that the Plan is successfully launched. Will Luke defeat Vader permanently? This remains to be seen...

Yeah, it sucks, but I'll put that suck up against any sequel I've heard of so far. heh.

While no link to the actual script is given, here is an article that is a review of what the script for the reboot movie looked like nearly a year ago.

Script review

The blog doesn't say where the writer got the script or what revision it might be. Being several months old, if there IS a current script it's probably changed somewhat in the meantime.

If the review is accurate about the plot of the script, then I'm pretty sure I won't be changing my policy about the original movie.

*EDIT*

A little more research shows that the script is on its third writer so I suppose it's anyone's guess what the final shooting script will be like. By the dates, it looks like the review above was based on a reading of the first draft.

Having just now gone to IMDB and read the plot summary of The Source, I can only feel justified in having stuck to a policy of "Anything after Highlander never actually happened"...

Some stories just don't require sequels.

Just for curiosity's sake - What relation is Duncan (who I presume to be the hero from the TV series) to Connor?

I might be interested in a reboot, but I can take it or leave it. This is primarily because the first movie is the only one I've seen. Having seen it, I saw no need for there to be any sequels, particularly along the lines that I've heard about the plots of the various sequels.

For me, there really IS only one. Therefore, a "reboot" is not necessary but might be interesting if they put a new twist of some kind on the original story.

Reading this convinced me to pony up for the animal pack. It turned out that you can't combine the cigar with the "gunslinger" mustache, so I ended up not using it, but the experiment with it still showed that it was a neat trick.

If I ever DO make a cigar-chewing character, I'll be glad to know that he can be a real "smoker". That was the biggest reason for never choosing the cigar in the past - it just sat there, never changing, in a most un-cigar-like fashion.

In the past, I put more thought into these things. Most of the time, nowadays, I don't worry overly much about it and just use whatever on whoever.

Generally speaking, I have no problem with "extra" powers on a themed toon. You can explain anything if you take the time. Dick Tracy had a two-way wrist TV and an anti-gravity tube thing to fly around in when the story required it. If I want my character to fly or to have a magical deck of tarot cards, well, he or she just does. The source of it isn't really germane because they're accessories. They're not the main event, as it were.

That said, I HAVE had characters who stuck strictly to a concept. Lady Spirit is a homage to the comic book character, and therefore she is very much a fists and guns kind of character. Before power customization (thank you once again for that, devs) the only option she had was to be a base martial arts toon and skip nearly all of the MA kick powers in favor of power pool melee powers and recipe-made weapon powers like revolver, baseball bat, and sledgehammer. Even so, I allowed her the use of the Nemesis Staff because it was just that good and if I had to rationalize it, she just got it from a friend who owed her deceased father a favor. Same thing for the Blackwand, when it became possible to have both. I didn't waste energy worrying about the why's of it.

It takes three seconds to come up with a reason "why" if you really need it. We already get enough flashy temp powers as mission rewards that any given power pack power can be rationalized in the same fashion. It doesn't matter that you start the game with it, though if you really WANT to, you can roleplay the acquisition.

In fact, for the hardcore RP'er, I can imagine someone creating an AE mission that DOES roleplay the character being rewarded with, say, the Blackwand or the Nemesis Staff. It might even be a fun sort of initiation into a RP super group. "Rule 1 - You cannot use Nemesis Staff until you play and defeat mission #XXXX in the Architect."

The key word for me, that keeps coming up in this discussion, is the word "force".

A game should offer new experiences, and certainly it can require that new content involve those experiences. Overall, though, there should not be a "forcing" of players into a certain kind of gameplay that they won't enjoy.

City of Heroes manages that balance fairly well. Of those systems you mentioned, Sam, none of them are required for you to play the basic game and enjoy it. If you choose to experience them, and even embrace them, then you are making the decision for yourself that they are actually NOT outside of your comfort zone, at least to the extent that you are willing to participate in them.

Now, a lot rests on what you think "force" means. Issue 1 is, I think, one of the most noteworthy examples of CoH pushing people out of their comfort zone. Old-time vets will remember that CoH was originally designed with the Everquest model in mind - lots of spawns standing around waiting to be killed. The hazard zones are a tribute to the Everquest mentality (and Everquest was the WoW of its day, in terms of subscribers, so there was every reason to believe that it was delivering what players wanted).

When the game originally launched, missions were considered to be "color", not a legitimate way to level up. I know that sounds weird to people nowadays, but that was the thinking back then. For all of the innovative features of CoH, much of its design was still stuck in the EQ mold. Missions had tiny completion bonuses and generally speaking were seen as waste of time because you were deliberately slowing your XP gain per hour by running them, in comparison to street sweeping. (This was also back in the day when herding was the best strategy. In particular, sending a tank to grab a hundred NPC's and lure them all into a dumpster where a blaster would AOE them to death.)

All that changed when the devs decided that dumpster diving wasn't very heroic and that the back story ought to actually be something important to the game as opposed to leveling up to fifty and still having no contacts other than your newbie mission contact. Missions got massively increased completion bonuses, powers were adjusted, street sweeping XP was reduced, and suddenly missions made more sense as the most efficient leveling up activity.

Now, it wasn't just the game design that had large portions of it stuck in the Everquest mold. There were a lot of players around who were also stuck in the Everquest mold. It was what they'd "grown up" with and they assumed that all games should be the same way. Especially if it involved activities like herding that produced massive gains with little or no risk.

The day that change was made, a very large number of people were pushed out of their comfort zones and forced to consider a new way of playing the game.

Here, now, we come down to what "force" means - Nobody actually had to change their gameplay unless they wanted to. Those of us who had been doing missions despite it being a slower path, went right on happily doing them. Those who had been exclusively street-sweeping, could continue doing it if they chose to. They could still level to 50 that way. It just took longer to do it.

Players complained loudly, longly, and eventually when they saw that complaining was ineffectual, they adapted.

In this case, the players' own compulsion to reach the level cap in the shortest amount of time was really what forced them out of their comfort zone. The devs altered the environment, yes, but that is all they did. Topics like herding aside, they did not add any new paths to the game, nor did they remove any. They changed the balance and the players themselves then had to decide where their new comfort zone might be vis-a-vis the new balance.

Now, I don't see this kind of "force" as a bad thing. When a player decides that a reward is worth going through a certain kind of activity and a certain amount of work, then perforce that player is stating that the actions in question ARE within that player's comfort zone. It doesn't matter how boring or annoying or uncomfortable they may feel to the player. If he completes them, then by definition they are within his comfort zone.

Badges in PvP zones are an excellent example of the questions you have to answer about what constitutes a "comfort zone" and what constitutes "force". Nobody is required to collect every badge in the game, yet there are plenty of PvE badgers who feel "forced" to go outside of their comfort zone in order to fulfill their need to have a complete collection. Nobody is coercing them - the "force" comes entirely from inside of themselves.

If I truly feel railroaded into something I don't enjoy, I quit playing the game. A designer who took the attitude that he had to force me to undergo an unpleasant experience for my own good would be a designer who lost me as a customer. It would likely also be a game that was intended for a target audience that did not include me, so I probably shouldn't have played it in the first place.

tldr; Designers should offer choice and they should offer new experiences, but players and their competitive and emotional drives determine what a player is comfortable with and what actions he will take even in the face of unenjoyable gameplay in order to fulfill a drive or a need. Most players who feel "forced" into something really mean that they felt a compulsion to fulfill a drive or need and the only path to that fulfillment was one that involved unpleasant activities. The only coercion comes from inside of themselves. True coercion by designers (such as the unpleasant path being the only path to the finish of the game) generally results in player defection and is basically bad design.

If you're not already familiar with Katrina Hill, aka Action Flick Chick, then now is a great time to discover her. She's got a spoiler-free review of the upcoming film "Super", fresh from it's screening at SXSW.

The film stars Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page and Kevin Bacon, among others. It sounds interesting.

[excerpt from Paragon Times Classified Ads, Personals - 2011-03-10]

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Sidekick wanted! - This internship position is an opportunity for a newly minted hero to learn the ropes of the trade from a seasoned pro. Costume provided. Must be shorter than 5'5", under 140lbs, and not allergic to cats. Ice-based powers preferred but not an absolute requirement. Non-salaried, but possible college credit.

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Thank you , St. Jude, for sending Blaquesaber to my rescue last week.

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REWARD! - Pearl earring lost in scuffle, last seen in the area near the Perez Park boathouse. $1000 reward. Precious family heirloom. Please call 555-327-2341. No questions asked.

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Ralph, I know you must still read the Times, even on St. Martial. Please come home. All is forgiven.

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My designs were accepted by Icon! Thank you , St. Jude.

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FOUND - Small electronic device with five buttons and a protruding electrode. To claim it, contact box 324 at this paper with a description of the device and any distinguishing marks it carries.

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The Red Dog howls wistfully at the Blue Moon

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WANTED - 5 Clockwork Cogs. Willing to buy or trade. Call 555-312-0009, ask for Starshine.

===

Several people have asked questions in this thread that were on my own mind, and I think that EvilGeko's post above is right on the money.

A lot of this comes down to "What is the Well, exactly? What is it's function or purpose? What are its intentions?"

Looking at this whole business through Jack Chalker filtered glasses, I start to come up with some answers that make the Well look less like a god and more like a mechanism to achieve an end.

In any case - One thing we know is that the Well is a source of spiritual energy and that it has meddled/empowered people in the past. The lore is scant on these happenings and we always just accepted the answer as being the sort of "this explains mythic beings as being really super powered beings" explanation and left it at that.

What happens if we examine the cosmology of Primal Earth a little closer?

Many of our most popular cosmologies include a pantheon of super-powered beings who ultimately must face an apocalyptic end to their "heaven" or whatever their world happens to be.

The ways and means of it vary, but the apocalypse itself is a common motif.

If we accept that early "gods" (meaning real people who inspired the myths or even assumed the mantle of deity themselves as both explanation of their power and a tribute to it) were Incarnates, then we are accepting a belief that some of the myths surrounding them are true at some level. Corrupted by centuries and millennia of retelling and retooling, but still true at the core.

The Aesir faced their Ragnarok, the war with the Giants. The Olympians faced their war with the Titans. The world faced fire, flood, famine and all manner of threats to continued human existence, sometimes CAUSED by the gods rather than fended off by them.

Even the events that the gods could not entirely prevent, though, they usually served their purpose by preserving mankind; either by remaking man or by insuring that a man and woman would survive the turmoils to begin the race of men anew.

In Primal Earth, these events that we view through the lens of mythology (meaning that to most of us we believe it to be folklore or religious dogma, though "myth" actually implies that somebody someplace regarded it as true teaching) may actually be distorted reports of REAL events.

Through all of this, Mankind has endured and the thing we now call the Well of the Furies has endured. Time and again, throughout history, the Well has taken action to insure that a group of "gods" came into existence to protect the world from, or alternately instigate, a world-ending conflict.

The Coming Storm is not some vague future a million years hence and the Well is not making arbitrary or insane "decisions" despite our inability to understand all of its actions. It is carrying out the function it was designed for - to create a hierarchy of tools with which to save humankind from coming destruction and/or to set it on the road to a fresh start.

Just as the geological record shows that there have been anywhere from 10 - 30 major extinction events in history (where the number depends on what you define "major" to mean) and countless smaller events, the mythological record shows that there have been a number of major and minor cosmological extinction events. The Well has been humanities last line of defense or maybe its first line. In any case, the Coming Storm is not the first such event. It may be the most severe event yet, but then perhaps it is not. One wonders what Ragnarok looked like to the people who were involved in it.

Please note the distinction between "saving civilization" and "saving mankind". Please note that the mythological record shows that "saving mankind" only means saving enough breeding stock to insure the continued existence of the species.

If the Well believes that empowering God Emperor Cole and setting him on a path of genocide and destruction across the multiverse will ultimately save the multiverse from the Coming Storm and preserve enough of mankind to insure that men are left to try again after the Storm passes, then the Well doesn't give a tinker's damn about the casualty count.

It's an inhuman entity operating without any human compassion or emotion, to achieve a goal that it was programmed for or trained for or created for aeons ago. It might be a computer on the order of The Well World, or it might be a REAL god with unfathomable goals and thoughts, or it might be force of nature that represents the heart or mind of the cosmos and to whom individual people are just so many red blood cells.

Emperor Cole may or may not exist any more, from the standpoint of having his own identity and choice to be. Opposing him may be the most abject folly if the Well is truly acting to insure that humanity survives the Coming Storm.

There's no way to know, presently. What we do know, is this - The Well does not act to prevent the apocalypse. It acts to survive it. Whatever the cost.

Taking Silos' route of trying to prevent it entirely may or may not be folly. Who can know if Silos himself doesn't know?

One thing is certain - The only way to truly stop Cole is to offer the Well a course of action that is more effective than what it currently has instituted using him as its tool.

The closest I've come to this sort of thing was the second character I ever made, a technology character powered by a fabulous experimental space suit with a lot of hand-waving quantum physics based abilities.

Her level thirty costume (this was before the halloween costume slot) was street clothes with only the goggles/glasses of the main suit as evidence of the space suit. Being a rad defender, this allowed her to use X-Ray beam and not much else (though I might have rationalized one or two radiation emission powers as well via gloves or something) thanks to the Cyclops-style beams from the eyes.

It was amusing for a short period but I never really did much with the idea after the novelty wore off.

I agree with other posters that this is primarily a role play gimmick that can be almost completely managed with macros and binds. Not something that I'd want to see dev time spent on, though I wouldn't begrudge a simple mechanic like the "lockout" switch. I just don't see anyone actually using it. It makes more sense to remove a power entirely from your power bar than it does to "gray it out" and leave it taking up valuable power bar real estate.

That's great work, GG. A little hard to focus on Golden Girl's words at times, for the distraction of the huge tracts of land, but a very good introduction comic.

Well, then, I'm also glad you have it.

None of those games you mention are OpenGL games. That's why they work, or don't, with iZ3D or with Nvidia 3D Discover. Direct3D games work. OpenGL games don't.

CoH is OpenGL.

There are things that could be done, but CoH defeats them. As I mentioned above - The external wrapper that might affect a bridge between CoH and iZ3D, for instance, won't work because CoH contains software in its own drivers that attempt to determine what video card the player is using. If it's "unsupported", the game won't start at all.

Installing any kind of OpenGL -> Direct3D wrapper results in an "unsupported" video card, despite the fact that the video card is unchanged.

When something in the game decides pre-emptively to cancel the game launch, I can't really see how I can put that onto the provider of the 3D driver software.

I want an anaglyph option in the graphic settings.

So far, 3D is been a great enhancement to the games I've tried it on. Unfortunately, CoH is OpenGL and won't work with any existing third party Direct3D-based solutions. We can't even try a OpenGL -> Direct3D wrapper because the game engine rejects it as an "unsupported video card".

Everything I read about it says that it should be relatively painless to implement. On the other hand, it seems that for an OpenGL game, it might need to be "baked in" to the game itself rather than an external extension.

So - What would it take to get a dev to spend a day exploring the possibility of adding an anaglyph setting to the graphics options?

Wait, what's this about Matt not being in charge any more? I've been away from the game for awhile.

I had been plotting and planning for an upgrade to Windows 7, but the upgrade from XP is basically a wipe and re-install of all of your software. The one saving grace was that I'd finally be able to play City of Heroes in 3D using Nvidia's 3D Vision.

Further research, though, seems to indicate that OpenGL is OpenGL everywhere and Nvidia doesn't support it any better on Win 7 than it did on XP.

Is there ANY current solution to playing CoH in 3D? It rejects even the notion of working with any of the OpenGL to Direct3D wrappers I've been able to find.