Wait, what? You're telling me the non-cartoon shows on TV are actually made with considerations of moral ambiguity and the like in mind? I admit, it's been a long time since I watched TV, but I simply cannot believe that. There are of course deviations here and there, but the overwhelming majority of it is just more of the same.

Well. there's a *little* more depth... Sometimes... Kinda sorta.

I dun watch much TV either, but some examples I can think of mostly involve bad guys with good intentions, or bad guys who convert, etc.

• Whatsherfaces Dad on “Hero’s” (tells ya how much I track that show)
- This guy goes from the bad guy to the good guy, it having been shown that most of his previous badness was out of a desire to protect his daughter from more solidly evil folk. However, like most such villains (spoiler), he dies straight away after redeeming himself - although unlike most such straight cuts, it seems he may yet live again. (Didn't watch enough to find out.)

• (The new) Battlestar Galactica
- Here we have some people (and some robots) shifting around the ladder of morality quite frequently. It also raises some moral conflicts with contemporary highlights, particularly whenever Adama’s moral absolutes get to have a go at it with his son’s or President Roslin’s moral absolutes, such as with the trial of Baltar, or the angel’s rebellion. There are several flawed characters running about. Tis true, a lot of the villains are just irredeemable, but there is at least the constant overhead of realizing the good-guys are the polytheistic pagans, and the bad guys are the monotheistic god worshippers, which I suppose is intended to convey some sense of thought provoking irony in the average viewer in the west, living in Christendom. Granted I kinda gave up on the show after I found out Bob Dylan was a Cylon.

• House
- I dunno if the fact that the biggest asshole on the planet is also our hero counts for anything in regards to the moral depth of the show, but hey, it’s a lil different. People keep comparing me to Gregory, so he must be evil on some level.

I’m sure the vast majority of TV lacks any moral depth, but I couldn’t tell ya for certain, as that, (and Doctor Who and Firefly), pretty much covers all the TV series I’ve followed in the past ten years due to the fact that the previous twenty lacked any at all.

Suffice to say, it’s generally a *little* better among adult shows and movies (although still, quite deficiant), even among those made for teenagers. I mean, even Buffy has redeemable villains galore (even if the majority of them are completely soulless). IIRC it even had the occasional rough moral decision complete with consequences - but I think Joss Whedon’s work, however shallow and cheesy, was actually intended as an antidote for what we are discussing, so may haps it should be discounted as counter-culture.

In kids films, however, it’s absolutely atrocious 100% of the time, unless it’s a foreign import. (Or at least, I can't name any non-import that had any gray area). We really do seem to protect our kids from reality virulently, and it comes back to haunt us all pretty regularly.
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"The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose." -William Shakespeare
Thothie

To sidetrack a little, on the subject of kid's shows... what was Nickelodeon smoking when they decided to pick up Invader Zim? Just... wow.

Ya got me there. Zim is not an import.

I dunno if that's what we call "moral depth" but it certainly runs against the grain of protecting kids from reality, by exaggerating its darker aspects (slightly). Granted - if I'm going to chalk "Buffy" up to counter-culture - I CERTAINLY have to chalk Zim up to the same. Tis rather obviously a reaction to the insane homogenization of nearly everything else.

Nickelodian was host to a rather large counter-cultural movement in children’s programming in its early years. Not so much so now, but it leaked a few shows like Zim, that did their best to fight the status-quo (in some cases, maybe not for the better, see: Ren & Stimpy). It also managed to do so without importing hardly any anime (relying more on British, Canadian, frog, and kiwi imports, when not indirectly producing their own.) The Mysterious Cities of Gold is the only anime I can recall from Nick off hand - but I'm sure there were others, and that wasn't particularly revolutionary, aside from being counter-educational.
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Dib: Horrible nightmare visions!
Ms. Bitters: It's called life, Dib. Sit down.
Thothie

Ahh, I'd forgotten about Ren and Stimpy. I just don't associate that with Nick, for some reason.

While there are certainly traces of moral ambiguity in a number of shows, it saddens me that they're always just that; traces. Little things, mostly going on in the background. Relevant, certainly, but not generally central to the plot. I'm glad that it's there at all, really, but I'd like to see it take on a more important role more of the time, in particular with regards to the main characters. I'd like to see more movies along the lines of Payback, for example.

Well.. I already finished the game. I like this game alot, but yet again it's way too short. If you follow the missions and go right thru it, it dosent take that long. I wonder if these games are so short because of the disk space or the cost of making them, or what? I dunno, I just wish these took more time to play. Anywayz.. I like the game, although disappointed on how long it took to finish.

*According to Steam stats, it took me 20.8 hrs to play.

I'm gonna play it again w/o harvesting the lil sisters and I'm going to go checkout everything I can and see how much longer it will play.

I'm not disappointed in buying it as much as I am with The Orange Box. However the Orange Box atleast offers more games.

The Orange Box may offer more games, but the overall playtime is actually right around the same mark, if just a wee bit higher. 20.8 hours is actually really good for a game these days, especially an FPS. I find the majority seem to clock in at 6-12 hours now. As production values soar, the games just get shorter and shorter to compensate, and I honestly wouldn't mind if they scaled the graphics back a good ways so we could have some lengthy games again. Baldur's Gate 2, anyone?

BG2 was a horrible game and I never even finished it.

That's right, I said it.

And I'm even a big fan of most (if not all) of the other RPG's from them.

Yeah it would really piss me off to go out and buy one of those new AlienWare puters for like $5k with $1500 worth of dual nVidia 3800 SLI cards for a $50-60 game that only took me like 5 hours to play.

How are the XBOX and PS3 games? I know I have Halo 1 & 2 and have never finished either of them and have like a billion hours in both of em.. they seem like they'll never end. Ya think it's worth buying a gaming console rather than and expensive as hell Gaming computer?

My computer right now is probably like 4-5 yrs old and it seems to still play fine, for the moment. My video card is probably the newest thing in my box and it's a Radeon x1600 pro 512mb (I fried my old one that was a Radeon 9800xt 256 when I dropped a screw on it while the puter was on.. heh ) it handles direct x10 but I'm not sure about the new 10.1 games coming out.

I am going to have to upgrade in the next year or so, I'm running an Asus KV8SE Deluxe mobo with a AMD 64 3000+ cpu that I can only upgrade to the 3800+ because my mobo takes a wierd 754 pin chip (which I think is a 3gig chip). Right now I'm at 2gig and have 1 gig of ram but have an open slot so I can add another 1gig stick. To do any better I'm gonna have to start all over again from my motherboard up..

When I built this comp I spent like $2200 for just hardware inside my new case. Not including ANYTHING you can see from the outside like DVDrom/CDroms, software, etc.. I built this when The Radeon 9800xt first came out. I paid like almost $600 for my vid card alone.

If the games are going to become shorter in play time do you guys really think it will be worth the expense of buying a bad ass gaming system or just picking up a PS3 or 360 console? I know I can use the comp for much more than gaming but is it really worth the expense? Lets face it, if I build a new system to handle direct x10.1 now that I can upgrade for future direct x beyond 10 - 10.1 it's gonna run about $5k or more. Building it myself will be less but it's still gonna be expensive as hell...

The new systems will run with multiple video cards which you can spend like $700 each for, and if you go with the AMD/ATI spider stuff that you can add 4 vid cards to you can spend like almost $3k just in video cards alone..

$2800 in video cards vs $500 (or less) for a PS3?

**Heh.. see Doc's post in the other forum.... oops

You are the Antichrist.

After playing Bioshock again and trying to find all the hidden stuff (that I can find w/o the help of cheats or walkthru's) it managed to take me 20.5 hrs this time which is a whole .3 hours less than it took me the 1st time to play it.

I guess the "up side" of this is that it did not play the same way as it did the first time as advertised.

And this time I didnt harvest any lil sisters so I got the happy happy joy joy ending.

I think if I play it again I'm going to try and do the whole thing with using mainly plasmids rather than weapons, or atleast the end fight with Fontaine anyway.. We'll see how that works out.

So I've played it twice now for a grand total of 41.3hrs according to Steam stats.