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@fisk0 said:

Indeed. Soldak's excellent Drox Operative looks like it will languish in Greenlight limbo forever now, despite that developer having two well-received games on Steam already (Din's Curse and Depths of Peril). Valve should just go back to proper curation. It's not like they can't afford to hire people to do that.

You're gonna have a great time. I lived in London for 25 years and miss it so much ever since I left.

It sounds like you'll be staying near where I went to uni at SOAS. Do what everyone else recommended as regards to travelling around, but my advice would also be to get to know your local area on foot (or bicycle) as much as possible. From Kings Cross you're only about 10 minutes' walk from Camden to the North and Bloomsbury (with the British Museum) to the SW. From Bloomsbury, you're just a hop away from all the shops around Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, and in turn they're right next to Soho, Chinatown, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. The last two in their turn are just a couple minutes' walk from St. James' Park, Green Park and Buckingham Palace. Bored of the bustle? Head south to Embankment, the Thames, the London Eye and everything on the South Bank. And if your feet ever get tired there's Oyster Cards and Tube stations for that.

Get lost. Find parks, find squares, find pubs. Get to know all the famous spots and then, no matter where you are, you'll never be at a loss for somewhere to shop, or to hang out and chill with friends, to get a pint or a bite to eat by a monument or a fountain or in a park somewhere.

To reiterate: find pubs. They're everywhere, so it's easy as well as being rewarding. There are some awesome old fashioned pubs particularly dotted around near Temple Gardens (which is a nice place in its own right - they back onto the Thames between St. Paul's Cathedral and Embankment). One of my personal favourites was The Lamb, a quiet pub near Russell Square and the Uni of London.

If you really want to dork out on London, try reading up on some of its history. Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography does a fantastic job of linking the city's history to modern day life in its various districts.

@discoviking said:4

Yes, this is worth repeating. BGTutu is a great way to experience BG, although I think it might still not be 100% bug free. Regardless of what you do, a nice widescreen mod is definitely worth using. I've seen people praising the modding guide in this link, as long as you don't have the Enhanced Edition (in which case Tutu and widescreen are a bit redundant).

@jakandratchet said:

The D&D mechanics matter much more in BG 1 & 2. PS:T and BG use the same rules, as far as I know, but in BG, much of the game satisfaction comes from your equipment and preparation. Each piece of kit matters and if, say, you go into combat with the wrong armour, you'll die fast and be sad (cf. the GB Quick Look of Baldur's Gate: EE with front line tanks wearing studded leather...). In comparison, in PS:T you can't even wear armour, while the class you decide to play as matters more for the story than it does for the combat. BG2 is also a lot more like PS:T in terms of engrossing story interactions, but BG1 also has its charms in terms of having a big non-linear map (which BG2 doesn't quite have).

Basically the sticking point of understanding the mechanics is knowing about Armour Class and THAC0. Armour Class is how hard you are to hit, lower being better (and negative numbers also being possible). 'THAC0' means 'To Hit Armour Class 0' - it's a stat each character has which says how good/accurate they are, again with lower being better. THAC0 is the number they have to roll to hit an enemy with an AC of 0, based on a 1 to 20 dice roll. For example if an enemy has AC of -1 and a character has THAC0 of 16, that character has to roll 17 or higher to hit.

Those are the most important things to understand and tbh you don't really need to understand them. I didn't really when I first played BG in my mid teens. Just that low is good for both THAC0 and AC.

You don't need to know much about the rules but the following tidbits are worth remembering:

Dialogue choices matter! Say what you really want to say, not just stuff that looks funny. Even the smallest dialogue choices factor into your alignment and these determine which factions you can join (as well as some items you can use). It's not necessarily a big deal, but it can be frustrating if you feel like you've been playing a 'lawful' character but the game decides that actually you're a 'chaotic' person.

Prioritise Wisdom, then Intelligence, then Charisma in character creation. You'll get more experience and more story/dialogue this way. If you're certain you'll be playing the game more than once, this doesn't matter so much. Roleplay the first time then be a completionist the next. Arguably it's more rewarding to miss a ton of shit first time around and then have your mind blown the second time, but I understand in this day and age not everyone has the time to invest in a double run of PS:T.

You'll have the option to switch your class from Fighter to Mage or Thief throughout the game. Do this, especially switching to Mage, even if you don't necessarily want to play for long as that class. Being a different class (again, mage especially) at certain stages unlocks quite a significant amount more dialogue and character moments. It's very easy to switch between classes once you've trained as them - all you have to do is talk to a party member to switch to their class.

Talk to your party members.

Fell's tattoo shop is useful for attribute buffs. He will create more tattoos for sale as the game goes on. Get your party members to translate for Fell even if you already understand him.

@donutfever said:

I've been in situations myself and read about many more situations in the news where a self-styled tough guy will initially run from a fight, or an incriminating scene, then later double back and seek revenge as validation for their wounded ego. People often drive off intruders or assailants, only to chase them and have it end in tragedy when the fleeing person rediscovers their courage.

Zimmerman's MMA trainer rated Zimmerman at "0.5 out of 10" in fighting prowess and considered him so bad that he did not risk Zimmerman's safety in live sparring. Zimmerman failed entry to the police force after a background check - I've read that actually it was a credit check, although lost the source - so it's practically inconceivable that he thought he could become a cop by 'catching a bad guy' as you argue.

It's arbitrary that you judge Martin to be angry enough to continue to beat Zimmerman on the floor, but not angry enough to start the altercation of his own accord. Martin's texts and social media reveal that he was frequently in fights. 5 days before his death, his brother tweeted him "yu ain't tell me yu swung on a bus driver".

Regardless, this is deep in the realm of fantasy speculation now, all for the purpose of casting doubt over a completely logical not guilty verdict. It's a bit tasteless because in order to rebut this speculation it becomes necessary to drag a dead person's reputation further through the muck.

@donutfever said:

While I don't deny that this is all possible, it's unsubstantiated speculation. It has no more basis than the speculation that Trayvon was annoyed at being chased by the 'creepy ass cracker', as he called him, and so doubled back to teach Zimmerman a lesson. The difference is that only one account needs to be supported by a reasonable balance of evidence and that's the account which incriminates Zimmerman, otherwise you end up convicting people based on possibility alone. Also, once we get down to the level of the personalities and psychologies of the two men involved, as we are now when we speculate about how their encounter started, Zimmerman is further supported by evidence which wasn't even admitted in court.

The fact that Martin ended up on top of Zimmerman, punching him in the head and hitting it on the concrete, is undisputed by any account. FWIW I don't like guns or concealed carry laws, since I think they inevitably lead to situations like this. However, having arrived at the situation where concealed carry is protected by law, it naturally follows that you have to factor it into self-defence situations. For the jury to determine that Zimmerman should have allowed the beating to continue would have set an unreasonably high threshold for retaliation.

@donutfever said:

There may be inconsistencies in his testimony, but not incriminating ones. The recorded account of his pursuit of Martin reveals the key point that he pursued Martin then either broke off pursuit on request or lost track of him. That coincides with him seemingly regaining his breath while giving the police directions, which would be strange behaviour for someone planning to murder in cold blood. At that stage, how could a fight even occur if Martin had not returned to confront Zimmerman? Zimmerman knew the neighbourhood, but not the address of the house he had arrived at. On trial, the dispatcher acknowledged that his questions to Zimmerman could have been misconstrued as requests to leave his car and follow Martin.

My understanding is that Zimmerman became NW captain after Wendy Dorival, a community coordinator who works with the police, helped set up a NW organisation in his area. She testified as a witness, saying that Martin's described behaviour was 'suspicious'.

@donutfever said:

Have you listened to the call? It's quite easy to find. Zimmerman is out of breath and there are sounds of movement, as he confirms that he's following Martin. Once he's told 'we don't need [you to follow him]', he acknowledges this and the sounds soon stop. He recovers his breath and starts to give the police directions to where his truck is parked. How does this contradict his story or suggest that he instigated the fight?

Zimmerman didn't know of the photo or the bookbag, but he knew that his area was suffering a spate of burglaries and that Martin was moving suspiciously across people's front lawns, close to houses. He was the appointed - not self-appointed, appointed - NW chief, regardless of how NW is perceived as busybodies. WE now know that Martin may have been involved in burglaries, which affects our perception of Zimmerman's justification in following him.

@donutfever: Sorry, but the sentence was confusing. You could have been referring to either man. It still doesn't explain how you think Martin was in any way 'justified' if Zimmerman didn't attack first, for which there's no evidence that he did.