Why, exactly, did I pick up Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a week ago? It’s one of those big honkin’ computer roleplaying games with a gazillion quests, made by Bioware, the folks who brought us Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Sure, the Xbox version was very well-reviewed, but we are talking about a Star Wars game here, at a time when George Lucas has been doing everything in his power to self-destruct his franchise and make all fans of his galaxy far, far away embarrassed that they ever liked it in the first place. But I still have a soft spot for the Star Wars universe, in spite of Episodes One and Two. It’s not because of childhood nostalgia, either; rather, it’s a recognition of the Platonic ideal of the world of Star Wars, of the fact that a teeming, space operatic galaxy that features monastic telepaths wielding laser swords is a pretty darn cool idea. And as I’ve noted before, even the recent movies have been visually striking. If you just plug your ears, you want to like it.

So I bought the game hoping it might be closer to the Ideal Form of Star Wars than the recent movies were. An unconscious desire to revel in superfluous free time (while I still have it) was almost certainly a factor as well. And so far, it’s been pretty good. Granted, the story isn’t particularly compelling, but it has all the core strengths of a good Bioware game, and the inherently addictive progression structure that will keep you up just a half hour more so you can finish that one quest and get enough credits to buy your sidekick an upgrade for his blaster rifle. The biggest step up from previous CRPGs I’ve played is that the combat graphics have a lot more variety. For example, when you swing your lightsaber at the attacking Sith Trooper, it won’t be the exact same slashing motion every time. This means that after you’ve given your party commands and the battle is proceeding pretty much on autopilot, it actually has a dynamic, cinematic quality that makes it fun to watch. And of course you can pause the action at any moment to fine-tune your orders.

Just as the story is no great shakes, the quality of the dialogue rarely distinguishes itself, either. This is a problem for a game with a lot of those dialogue trees where you fulfill quests and collect clues by talking to people. Fortunately it’s possible to click through the conversations pretty quickly, so you don’t have to listen to the voice actors speaking every single word. Which brings me to my point: writing dialogue or any other kind of prose that a CRPG player can read in-game is a difficult and self-policing enterprise. If it’s boring, the player is just going to skim it and click on through. Nothing’s keeping them, since all games these days have built-in quest trackers so you don’t have to be constantly scribbling notes on scratch paper like in the old days. If the words are not intrinsically interesting, they won’t get read. While playing Knights of the Old Republic I skim through 90% of the dialogue windows that pop up, but it’s easy to tell when it’s actually good stuff, because then I stop and listen and read.

Morrowind has a similar thing going, both with its dialogue and with all the little history texts and little side stories you could encounter in countless books scattered all over the place. There, too, maybe 10% of them were actually worth reading. I’m not talking about some high literary standard, either, but about competent prose and something in it to hook one’s interest. CRPGs have no trouble holding—even dominating—a player’s attention with the gameplay, but is it really too much to ask that the texts in a game rise to a similar level of quality? Maybe someday.

Knights of the Old Republic does have some potential for replayability, since you can pursue either the Light Side or the Dark Side in the course of the game. This follows the same pattern of earlier Bioware games, where your menu of choices in any given situation basically boils down to “behave” or “don’t behave.” It’s a gimmick that’s getting old. Morrowind has a much better model, with multiple Houses and Guilds you can join, many exclusive of one other, so that playing the game again isn’t a matter of experiencing the same encounters in a different way, but of seeing stuff and fulfilling quests that weren’t even open to you before.

I’m wondering now if Jedi Academy would have been a wiser purchase, since it’s an action game that doesn’t rely as much on story. The decision will soon be moot, unless they’ve invented a way to strafe-and-shoot while simultaneously burping a baby. I don’t think so, though I’d bet real money somebody somewhere is working on it.

It’s been a while since the last milestone, but at long last, Polytropos comes up first when you “Google the word Bruinooge”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=bruinooge. Small pond and all that, but still. It’s nice.

It’s almost turkey time where we are. I’m loafing on the couch while friend Matt hand-sews laser pointers onto each of the fingers of a pair of sturdy work gloves. This is not in itself unusual behavior for Matt, but in this case there _is_ a reason: the gloves are for “his upcoming play”:http://www.pferdzwackur.com/.

May everyone have a thoroughly tasty Thanksgiving.

I’m halfway through Gene Wolfe’s _In the Shadow of the Torturer_; this is the second time I’ve read it, but this time I plan to keep going and finish the whole _Book of the New Sun_. You’ve got to love a book that inspires someone to make a web page “like this one”:http://www.pannis.com/SFDG/specific-Shadow-2.html.

There’s been a new twist in the continuing story of Charles Taylor, the Liberian ex-dictator now in exile in southern Nigeria. I described earlier the surreal controversy around $2 million that was inserted into the $87 billion emergency spending bill to fund “rewards for an indictee of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.” Since then the U.S. has bent even further backwards to clarify that they didn’t mean to encourage any sort of illegal action be taken to extract Taylor from his luxury villa. Now, however, President Obasanjo has said that Nigeria will surrender Taylor if asked by the Liberian government.

If Liberia’s new interim government decides it wants him to face charges [in Sierre Leone], “then I believe he will understand sufficiently the need to go home,” Obasanjo told foreign reporters, speaking in an interview at his farm north of Lagos.

Asked what he would do if Taylor resisted, Obasanjo responded, “I would persuade him.”

I’m not sure just what could persuade Taylor to leave his hideaway. Maybe it’s a safe promise to make because Liberia’s not likely to ask. Maybe Obasanjo’s cutting him loose. Time will tell.

Ed Hand deserves credit for speculating (in the comments of my earlier entry) that the $2 million probably came from overzealous legislators who weren’t consulting with State. He said:

I’m sure there are some in foreign countries looking at how our government works and shaking their heads, as a group of congressmen can pass resolutions and appropriate money in ways not coordinated with our State Department’s articulated positions.

And now Obasanjo:

There were “elements in the United States who were well-meaning but misguided, misdirected and misinformed,” Obasanjo said Tuesday, referring to the U.S. push to capture Taylor.

“There was not enough communication even between the executive government and the Legislature,” Obasanjo said of the United States. “But I believe the information gap has been filled.”

So, probably no bounty hunters in Nigeria’s future. Northbridge will be disappointed.

The entity heretofore known as Sambuca, The Heater, Eldwin/Eldwina, Whiskahs, and other less-used _in utero_ appellations, has now reached the point where he/she may decide to join the world at any moment. At some point in the next week, expect a temporary gap in Polytropos content, followed by an indeterminate period dominated by insufferably maudlin baby coverage. After that, things should return to normal, albeit with slightly reduced posting frequency.

I finally got to see the extended edition of The Two Towers a couple nights ago. Who knew 43 minutes of new footage could make such a difference? Well, anyone who saw the deluxe DVD of Fellowship, for starters. But for the sequel the burden of those extra minutes was all the greater, because Two Towers had more to make up for. It was an excellent movie with some glaring weaknesses, but not only does the extended cut address many of these, it introduces other unlooked-for delights. Watching it doesn’t feel like seeing the same movie with some added bits. It’s like watching the real movie for the first time.

Many of the additions are small: a scene extended by a line or two, or even just a reaction shot. Then you have short but lovely moments like our new first scene with Frodo and Sam, bringing in the powers of the elven rope. There’s a new scene between Frodo and Gollum cementing the fact that Frodo must hope that Gollum can be redeemed because he himself is going down that same path. When you see it, you can hardly believe that such a crucial moment wasn’t in the movie before. The same goes for another scene later on, full of great lines from the book, where Gandalf explains to Aragorn the fear that Sauron has for Isildur’s heir.

I’m happiest about all the new Merry and Pippin material. Once they get into Fangorn, the short shrift they get in the theatrical release is a travesty; now they finally get the screen time they deserve. And it comes in delightful ways: we get to see them drinking the ent-draughts, followed up by a lovely transplantation of Old Man Willow from the Old Forest to Fangorn. Treebeard even gets some of Tom Bombadil’s lines. Later on he recites poetry, and pines for the Entwives. All of that would have been more than enough to quell my criticisms, but then, toward the movie’s end, we even get to see the hobbits discover the pipeweed trove in the ruins of Isengard. Now my hopes are renewed that somewhere in the beginning of Return of the King we’ll get to see one of my favorite moments from the trilogy: Merry and Pippin smoking their pipes atop the rubble as Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas ride up.

The other big addition comes in the form of new Faramir material, especially an extended flashback to the retaking of Osgiliath. Faramir’s changed role in the film was something that many hated but that I never minded, and even liked. The new stuff confirms my reasons for liking it and gives those who thought he came off as too dark some glimpses at his motivations and his more redeeming qualities. Denethor looks good, too, though he’s much more of a bad egg than he is in the books. This is in keeping with a trend in all of the characters in the film: the screenwriters take Tolkien’s key theme of corruption and push it, across the board. All-too-human weakness comes to fore in figures like Aragorn, Faramir, Treebeard, and Elrond—characters who are all relatively unblemished in the book—and those who were already weak are made more so. They’re changes that are, in a sense, more Tolkienian than Tolkien himself.

Frodo and Sam’s climactic scene in Osgiliath also gets fleshed out, especially its aftermath. Between that and some of the beats added to their scenes earlier on, Frodo’s arc of conflict in this film makes much more sense. I always appreciated the strucutural reasons for diverting from Tolkien and having the scene in Osgiliath, but now it’s is not only necessary, but it actually works, too.

The subtlest and most important improvements wrought by the added footage come in the form of pacing. It’s not that the original movie is badly paced, though it feels choppy at moments. I was constantly amazed at how many things could be fixed simply by improving the rhythm that flows from scene to scene. Best example: In the theatrical release, Sam has two monologues very close together toward the end. One is a voiceover while we see the victories at Helm’s Deep and Isengard, the other comes as he, Frodo and Gollum make their way from Osgiliath and he wonders whether their story will ever be told. Neither is bad in its own right, but both push the envelope of the melodramatic, and having the two of them so close together is too much. But in the extended cut, there is considerable space between them, and once they’re uncrowded, each monologue works much, much better.

I’m skipping past any number of other key additions, like the introduction of the trees to their rightful place at the battle of Helm’s Deep. The upshot, when all is said and done, is that I am both delighted and angry. Delighted for obvious reasons, but angry because it is one hundred percent clear that this is the movie that Peter Jackson made: the complete aesthetic product as it was intended. When you see how much more smoothly the movie flows, and how many key explanations and character details are in it, there can be no doubt. The theatrical release was a compromised version, a lesser affair, and it’s a travesty that Jackson was made to do damage to his creation before they’d put it in theatres.

Sadly, there is every indication that Return of the King will follow a similar pattern. Part of me wants to skip the premiere and just wait and get the whole package in November 2004—though I know I’ll never manage it.

Suanna and I have only started delving into the documentaries and the commentary tracks, and all the other extras, but so far it looks to match the quality of the Fellowship DVD. After watching the segment about the art department, all we could do was stare at the screen with our jaws wide open, in awe of all the work and loving detail that went into the film. Still a bargain at three times the price.

The House Republicans have played fast and loose with the floor rules in order to get their “Medicare bill passed”:http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/22/elec04.medicare/index.html. They kept the voting open for three hours, applied pressure to some of the GOP members who were voting against it, and then slammed the gavel down before enough Democrats could switch their votes to “no” and keep it down.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, bellowed from the floor that Republicans had abused the system.

“Just like on Election Day you can’t keep the ballot open forever,” he said. The Republican side of the chamber responded with boos and hisses and applause for their victory.

The only thing sadder than Democrats whining about this loss is Senate Republicans whining about the filibusters that are holding their conservative judicial nominees at bay. In both cases, the side at a disadvantage is doing whatever they can to stay in the game. And the rules of Congress _are_ a game: a labrynthine network of protocols and guidelines, open for all manner of clever manipulation. It is within the power of the Congress to change those rules if they like, but until they do, any complaining about either side taking advantage of those rules as being somehow unfair or against the spirit of democracy is highly disingenuous. The complaining happens all the time, of course, but it never stops being tiresome.

If the members who didn’t get a chance to switch their votes had just voted against the bill in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this position. Last night, in the game of Congress, the Democrats got played.

Turns out that the infamous Jai will be “DJing at the VIP Club”:http://www.vipclubdc.com/ tonight. This is a perfect opportunity for the anti-Jai masses to speak out against the tiresome mediocrity that is his _Queer Eye_ performance. Unfortunately, I have plans tonight. Plus, it would take a small fortune in wardrobe and body work expenses to get me to the point where the bouncers would even let me in. So I’m putting the call out: if you’re in D.C. and ain’t got nuthin’ to do tonight, stalk Jai for me! At _least_ get some entertaining anecdotes about his pathetic DJing skills and I’ll put them up on the blog.

Lore Sjoberg (I’m too lazy to hunt for the umlaut code) is at his best with the most recent installment to the Book of Ratings: “State Quarters, Part 5”:http://www.bookofratings.com/. Go read ’em all, but here’s Arkansas:

Rice. A diamond. A duck. A lake. I feel like the Arkansas quarter shows the possible answers to some demented multiple choice question the Devil keeps in his ass. If you put photographs of those things in front of me and asked what they had in common, I would boggle at them until my angry brain cut me off from reality and informed me I was now Duke of Teacup Land. I would be a wise but firm ruler to the small, breakable people of Teacup Land, living a long life and siring many strong sons who would fight over the throne even as they stood over my deathbed. Eventually I would drift off into smug death, never knowing that the answer was “Arkansas.” D+

“Here’s a trailer”:http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/hellboy/ for the upcoming “Hellboy”:http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/ movie. (Based on the “comic”:http://www.hellboy.com/, for those who don’t know.) Abe Sapien looks great, Ron Perlman looks perfect for Hellboy himself. And — checking IMDB — that’s John Hurt as Prof. Bruttenholm! Thought he sounded familiar. Only complaint: why oh why do they have to insert the strapping young new guy, through-whose-eyes-we-can-be-introduced-to-everything? It’s a tired device. Movie looks very groovy, though.

Hat tip to loyal reader Michael Thomas, whose links I am happy to channel until he gets off his butt and starts his own blog.

UPDATE: I changed the link to the official movie site, where you can view it in Quicktime. Much nicer. Thanks to “Evil Genius Chronicles”:http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi.