Snippets #7: on pointless trains of thought...

join me, if you will (and if you won't you're welcome to fuck right off) in a quasi-rhetorical question.

say you're engaged in a Game in which you Play a Role where there are no save points so you can never revert to a previous instance. in this game there are many NPC's (Non-Player Characters). some are important to the plot and some spew irrelevant banter, but you don't know which is which until you talk to them. after talking to one of the Names (irrelevant NPC's don't have names) for a while you come to an optional conversation topic - a Side Quest we'll call it. you don't have to take this Side Quest - the plot will move along quite happily without it. through interraction and intuition (the game designers went for a high level of conversational realism) you know that regardless of how you direct the flow of the conversation it's always going to end in exactly the same way, so do you bother to actually initiate the Side Quest?

ok, now what if you happen to know that the game designers were canny devils who hate to see their hard work ignored like this and they designed the game such that if you DON'T take the Side Quest your character will take a permanent hit to their Constitution stat which will only be recovered once you complete the Quest, but if you DO you'll lose the use of the NPC in future missions? the Achievement awarded is the same either way because you let the Game trap you in this sinister little fork, so you know you're going to end up with the "You Fucking Wombat" Achievement (worth 10 Gamer Points and the derision of your peers) whatever you do.

if you say "Don't" i'm curious as to your reasoning, if you say "Do" then fuck you - what do you know? and if you say "Quit the Game before you get the Achievement so you can at least avoid the black mark on your Gamer Tag" can you please tell me when the fuck is Deux Ex 3 coming out? Invisible War was borderline-craptastic and last year's teaser trailer left me more excited than a 16 year old sneaking into his first strip-show...