Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. My AIM is on right now, waggling its provocative little ass. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Never have I seen a day so lean on letters -- the Duchess of York could endorse it, it's so lean -- so I'll assume you're all caught up in studying for exams or some equally pointless activity. I'll let it go this time, but come tomorrow you'd damn well better have hauled yourselves back into the saddle.

Also, I'd like to toss out a general request for reader assistence in righting a terrible wrong brought about by the machinations of my own stupidity. March's 5th's Zettai Zetsumei Toshi column is missing, and none of the staff has been able to excavate a copy from their respective caches. So if anyone happened to lay in a crate of March 5th, I'd appreciate your sharing, even if it was an exemplary year and you'd like to keep it for yourself to enjoy by the fireside while mulling gloomily over nude pictures of old girlfriends.

Anyway, let's go.

Find Althena yourself, bitch

Erin - "...even now, Hiro's cries of "Burn! Burn! Burn!" haunt their very dreams...." Dreams? Ha. It's been medically confirmed by three separate MRIs that every time I use the "Flee" ability in FFX, I hear the phrase "We must find Althena as soon as possible." Beat that for mind-altering repetition. - An'Desha - find Althena yourself, bitch.

All right, I will.

To date, every post-Lunar game I've played featuring some type of thunder/lightning spell forces me to cockily insist "Check this out!" when casting it. Worse is the fact that all my attempts at burglarizing my former compatriot's house to recover all my stolen games have resulted in my being found out, because the instant I grab what I'm after and turn to make my escape, conditioning forces me to call out "Ee tataki!" and alert anyone nearby of my presence.

Ode to Molyneux

What do I think of Project Ego? I'd say that its release will go over very well, creating a populous audience of happy gamers. People are ready for a dynamic that's not all about the black & white, ya know? And just because it's on the XBox, that doesn't mean it's evil. It's not like Microsoft is some big dark syndicate trying to control your magic carpet. The game looks like a veritable theme park, and I'm betting it'll be so good it hurts! But not enough for you to need a theme hospital or anything... It's not like we're calling in the dungeon keeper. -Psiga

Thanks for the Molyneux gameography; it's a nice seque into the topic at hand, and better still, it requires hardly any interaction from me.

The do indeed

EM, Huh. They DO have tits. -Red Raven

Bravo, sir, for hunting down the elusive nymph tits that so eluded some other readers I could mention, despite their prominent display amongst the rest of Project Ego's disturbing conceptual art....

He's on roll....

(to) Er(r is hum)in, First of all, I'd like to say that I looked and looked, but to my dismay, I found no tits. Such false advertisement should be condemned, and if the GIA continues continues such non-pornographic content like this, I will be forced to find anoth--oooh, Xenosaga desktop! Okay, so. The Xbox. Project Ego. Will this be the game that RPG'ers used to the controversially "sacrilicious" content of Xenogears, the overwhelmingly strategic battles of Final Fantasy Tactics, lovable character development of FFX, look up and notice the big box? Are you kidding me? Project Ego is easily one of the worst misuses of the acronym "RPG" in recent times. This game has more in common with those educational simulators we were talking about yesterday than it does any modern-day RPG. It actually resembles more closely the ancient, free-roaming, PC text games that always seemed to tell you, "you are standing in an open field..." and leaving you to type in the corresponding letter in the direction you wanted to go. Obviously, this is about six gazillion times more advanced, but the game still lacks basic components that make it worthy of the "RPG" label (which is annoyingly applied to nearly everything nowadays). For one, MMORPG's have seen deeper stories than this one is thought to provide. You're a hero, and there are other heroes, and you gotta be the better hero, so people respect you. Secondly, from what I've gathered about the game from various interviews and sources, this game won't exactly present involved, strategic battling. You're one guy, you've got a sword (or whatever else you decide to wield), and you engage in combat akin to the hack-and-slash lameness of Nightmare Creatures. I'm willing to forgive that actual battle details have been revealed, but I doubt that Molyneux, a man coming from a PC background, where these things tend to be forgivable, as their RPG's are... "different" than ours, would be able to implement anything mind-blowingly complex. And lastly, since the character will be created to completely resemble yourself, as you acquire scars, muscles, and skin cancer as consequences from your preferred gaming habits, I expect to see better dramatic character development from Crono and Serge. (And by "development," I don't mean the ability to affect the protagonist of PE's penis size from "gaining experience" with the maidens--or those water nymphs that I still can't seem to locate on the site. I could also insert some dumb "ego" joke in here to go along with that, but I'll spare you.) So, no, Project Ego probably isn't going to make people in the RPG community raise their heads. In fact, it'll do little else than give them more firepower that Xbox is only a big PC-style game barn. That said, however, the title remains very intriguing from people that will, you know, try anything. Über-detailed, anything-will-leave-a-mark games have been promised on consoles since the days of Mother 3 and the 64DD, but none have successfully implemented an idea. I just worry that this sort of detail will be the focus of Project Ego, and that it will be TOO open-ended, not providing a clear goal. I mean, if I want to cut down a tree and watch it stay down, there's quite a few outside my house. I'm not going to pay $50 just to go see it done on an Xbox. I tend to get kind of bored quickly in many of Moleneux's games, just because there's TOO much for you to do, and there really isn't a reason for doing it. ... In a belated note of defense, I can't see how E.V.O. and GameCube's Animal Leader could be called animal sims, and Space Station: Silicon Valley couldn't. I mean, foxes herd sheep into pens, and mice scare elephants. The fact that you're herding sheep with rocket-powered foxes and scaring elephants with rocket-powered mice does NOT give you the right to make my ears bleed with the mention of the words, "Bubsy 3D." -- Steve S. Freitas, who found out how to get copies of Working Designs games that were ordered through the company's store autographed by Victor Ireland, from reading the WD Message Boards. (Unfortunately, I already paid up front through one of those non-cancellable types of retailers, but the bright side is that I can order another copy, get it signed, never open it, and one day sell it for cash so that I can take lessons on how not to make signatures nearly as damned long as the letter itself.)

In staying, for the most part, away from PC gaming, I've missed a lot of Molyneux's work and consequently I don't feel in a position to praise or condemn Project Ego up front based solely on it being his baby. That said, I have played my share of console Populous and Theme Park ports, and while Theme Park in particular was a little buggy, no one plays God quite like Molyneux. Black & White was one of those occasional PC titles that make me look on my less-than-capable machine with its 8MBs of video RAM with a look halfway between contempt and regret clamboring across my face. Whenever it gets around to drizzling its unholy way onto a console or two, I'll be sure to buy it, unless, of course, that console is the Xbox, and Project Ego hasn't already macheted a path clear to my heart for Microsoft's monster.....

Thank you, Molyneux, but your game is on another console

Funny you should ask the question about Project Ego selling the X-Box, as it's something I'm currently wrestling with in my own mind. This game seems like something that's *just* up my alley. I love RPGs, and I love sims where you have all sorts of control over how your character/critter/whatever develops. (Yes, I'm the one that keeps waiting and waiting for more news of Animal Forest Plus, which we find out finally IS coming over here after all! Whee! But I digress.) But I will be DAMNED if I shell out 300 bucks for a console, for just ONE game. And that would probably be it for me, at least at this point, since I've seen no other games that pique my interest for the X-Box that I don't already have on other systems, anyhow. Add to that the fact that I've heard bad things from others about how reliable the X-Box is (I have no clue just how reliable these reports are, mind, but hearing enough of them makes me even more wary about shelling out the bucks), and the fact that as a Windows user I get reminded day in day out that "Microsoft Works" is a glaring oxymoron, and I'm even less eager to queue up to pony up my cash. So, I basically have a couple other options on my mind. A) Manage to win an X-Box in some contest/raffle or other. Those seem to pop up an awful lot, anyone notice? B) Go without the game. C) Hope that Microsoft continues to define "X-Box exclusive" as "well, it won't come out on any other CONSOLES, but you can probably pick it up on PC sooner or later." Or D) Wait for the X-Box fairy to slip a free X-Box under my pillow, and go with the lack of good sleep for that night due to trying to snooze with my head on a huge mass of metal and plastic. -Laura M. Parkinson, just adding my own couple cents.

Project Ego doesn't really change the odds of my getting an Xbox in the immediate future, either, but it is another leaden drop in the bucket, tipping the scales ever more subtly in favor of my breaking down and taking that job at the adult bookstore and smoke shop (tabacco only; no other uses intended or implied) on the corner. The gaming scene is a lot like a China Buffet for me now; it's diversified to the point where I'll never get to sample anything before my bloated body finally pops like a gluttonous woodtick.

The game's a bitch and then you die

Erin, Project Ego huh? This is the one game that has the dubious distinction of being one of the few highly touted Xbox games around I've heard a lot of, but know next to nothing about. All I know about it is; that it's considered an RPG. Is completly open ended (a la vitually every PC RPG out there) and in what form I don't know. So far as I know there's no real objective to the game, at least not that I can discern. And most importantly of all I keep hearing this one thing repeated over and over again being touted as the game's shining pinnacle of attraction by many a news site: You get to watch your character age in real-time. oooooooooo......ahhhhhhhh. It's gonna take a LOT more to convince me to consider even *renting* this game if that's the only feature it has going for it. Because from what little there is to know about Project Ego, and believe me I've looked high and low for anything about it and have come up with next to nothing, there's nothing really revolutionary about it as it's creator thinks there is. Which leads me to believe the real reason behind Project Ego is so Peter [insert impossibly hard to spell sur name here] can stroke his own ego over that character aging thing that seems to impress all the news reporter types, but fails to impress me. -Lezard

Wow, I guess I must've misread, because the concept of an aging character was not what struck me about the possibilities of Project Ego. Rather, I think its another step towards more realistic freedoms in console gaming.

But of course there's a goodly chance they'll screw it up, in which case, yeah, we're pretty much left with a game about a Seinfeldian nothing, featuring a -- whoohoo! -- aging character.

Don't look at my daughter that way

I find the idea of Project Ego to be really, really nifty. Certainly, it'll be the first console role-playing game that is literally that that I can remember. My only hope is that it gets ported to the PC at some point, since I really don't want to get an Xbox. (No deep philosophical stance - I just have my heart set on a PS2, and I can't afford BOTH!) If nothing else, a game where the risque element is breastical- boobical (thanks MST3K!) water nymphs is easier to explain to others than Princess Maker. I've not yet worked through 3, but with PM2 you tend to get strange looks when discussing an imaginary daughter with the looks of a porn star and the ability to punch through an inch of steel plate with her bare hands who nevertheless decides to settle down to the life of a babysitter because you had her take the job one too many times during the game. I just hope Peter M. doesn't get carried away with new, daring, and completely unusable interfaces like he did in Black and White... a game that would be more fun if you didn't have to be in five places at once AND watch a giant furball of a "godly pet"... Hoping he's in time to make the cut-off, Damien Wellman

Here's hoping that Project Ego's grow-your-own-hero style of gameplay goes a little way toward embiggening North American minds.

Lethal boredom

Happy Thursday Erin, If Project Ego is anything like Princess Maker or Black and White, I'm betting people will be very impressed and play for many many hours for the first week or so they have it. Then a strange sort of drop dead boredom. Or maybe that's just me with games like that. It just starts to feel terribly pointless after awhile. Sort of like playing a game with all the cheats on. It also doesn't sound like it's going to have much of a plot, so comparing it to FF-style RPGs isn't really fair. But maybe not, there are plenty of people who have played online games that are character-grooming centric for years and years. I am not one of those people. If I wanted to play a PC game I'd buy a...uh...computer... ~Ian P., knows he'll regret it if he doesn't mention that he wrote this at 4AM. P.S. I think it's possible to make a fun, educational game. I think, however, that after a certain point the two become mutually exclusive. I think, also, that the problem so far with educational software is that it basically just badly emulates textbooks. Good for saving paper, but hardly a breakthrough in education. Now, if someone can figure out the proper design formula for a game for people who don't learn well from textbooks...Just watch those ritalin sales plummit.

What can I say. We were due for some Ian P.

Closing Comments:

We're also due for a free topic day, so here's me offering a penny for your thoughts, although, with the current response, that could mean I'd have to shell out around 8 cents come tomorrow night -- 8 cents I do not have.

- Erin Mehlos