Seppli

http://www.businessinsider.com/cycorp-ai-2014-7

AI, as we know it in games for example, are nothing more than more or less sophisticated algorythms. It's all hand-written code. Well - Cycorp has spent the last 30 years developing another kind of AI. All pretty hush hush. The company has now come forward with an AI that's not entirely man-made anymore. It has been taught, raised like a child, and has for the lack of a better term, *developed itself*.

It's apparently intelligent enough to teach 6th graders math, because it's supposedly capable of empathy, and is as much aware of the implications of something, as it is of the plainly presented facts thereof. So yeah, queue Cyberdyne and Terminator jokes now. I say it's both fascinating and very scary. Humanity is but the egg out of which the Machine Man, nay dare I say it, Machine God will emerge.

Basic Instinct killed many a VHS player with quickfire rewinds and constant freeze frames and slo-mo overuse. In an age before the omnipresent internet and celebrity sex tapes, Sharon Stone's split-second spread eagle was a global treasure, at least for the pubescent youth of the early 90s.

I wonder, has the vagina lost all its mysterious allure of times past? In our time, what could enthrall the world in the same way as her fuzzy peach did? I mean, with easy and pretty much unrestricted access to the internet, every pre-schooler has seen his share of sexually explicit vagina.

Starlets on death row for doing snuff for fame? I don't even want to know. Seriously though, I can't imagine what today's equivalent of Sharon Stone's Big Deal Vagina will be. It was sex tapes before, but what will it be now? There will be something. I hate that I can't predict what it'll be.

Can you see the future more clearly than me? Where and how far will the next successful fameseeker go, to find the world's undivided attention? It baffles the mind. Dystopian future scary. Running Man?

So I was just unfortunate enough to get killed by a trap just after looting a chest. Quick load, looted the same chest again... and instead of the common loot I got before, there were two legendaries instead (sadly of no use to my party). I was aware before that the seed for item generation isn't set, but this specific chain of events just sent me into a slots-machine-like gambling spree, eager to see what the chest would all spit-out.

After like an hour of being a worthless gambler, with tons of saves of various worthwhile loot outcomes, I settled on a legendary bow. First I ever saw in the game. I feel filthy and low for what a gambling deviant I have been, but hot damn if that legendary wasn't a sweet payoff for my bad behavior.

That said, let's not do this again.

Seriously man. You and those 20,000 other backers deserve a pat on the back. Well picked. Hope all those other Kickstarter-funded cRPGs will turn out just as great.

I pretty much got into the genre with Baldur's Gate 2, right around the time when it went out of style again. This current renaissance is a really welcome surprise.

Crowdfunding is the savior of mid-tier productions and niche genres. Pure passion projects done well are a damned delight.

Once I found a couple of lvl appropriate areas to quest in, and I got over the leveling hump (just hit lvl 7), the game opens up a lot. And... I've pullend an all-nighter. I guess that's how great things tend to go. Out-of-control!

*Niche Gold* is what it is.

Did the trap stuff at the beach, found a handy solution...

The geomancy spider pet summon has high enough perception to uncover the mines.

Indeed, the beach is lvl appropriate for a lvl 5. Fighting lvl 6 enemies feels like a breeze, after all the lvl 8s.

Guess I'll have to somehow brave those traps then.

I've actually explored all the way into the next region as well. I've not yet done the whole murder stuff in the town. Did that up to the mortician. Don't have pet pal yet.

Is there really no dedicated area for lvls 6 and 7? At level 5, most lvl 8 stuff two shots my dudes. There's limits to how many enemies I can possibly crowd control and focus fire. Most smaller packs of lvl 8 enemies, I've already defeated.

All the sidequests other than the lighthouse seem to be lvl 8 or higher. Didn't progress far into the beach yet though, since there's tons of traps there, and I ain't got the perception to get through there without healing up or straight-up dying every two steps.

I'm lvl 5, and no matter where I go, dudes are level 8 or above, which is quite baffling. Where-o-where do they want me to gain all these levels? I feel like I've been everywhere, and killed everything lvl-appropriate. It's more than 20k XP from level 5 to level 6. I find it rather irritating now. I must be missing some dungeon or something.