Preview Fallout: New Vegas – Digging "iteslf" a desert grave

[Malachi]

American schools don't teach grammar anymore under the retarded assumption that you pick it by osmosis.

Honestly, I believe learning Latin does more for your English grammar than anything else. Unfortunately, high school Latin is almost dead at this point.

 

[Gragt]

Latin is Might & Magic, Ancient Greek is Wizardry.

Bitches.

 

[Drakron]

But maybe that's a stretch when my first impression was he was bitter that his demo experience didn't turn into a scene from Swordfish.

Well remember when Bethsoft did a demo of their Retarded AI for TESIV?

It was staged but since you could not play it, you would never know ... It seems what he wanted was to see everything that was in the demo and forgot that its a playable demo of a area of the game that is likely incomplete.

I understand it would make his job so much easier to have a developer be there and showing the area play, like Bethsoft did on that demo but next thing he would want for then to write the article for him.

A journalist should be impartial, what we have is someone that was dropped in a SANDBOX RPG area and complains about it ... serious, I dont review games and if I did you can bet some type of games I would never review because I dont like then.

 

[Antihero]

SMA speaks truth. English departments are run by the trendy ethnic studies programs at this point.

Sounds like I could have done worse than never taking English past high school.

American schools don't teach grammar anymore under the retarded assumption that you pick it by osmosis.

Honestly, I believe learning Latin does more for your English grammar than anything else. Unfortunately, high school Latin is almost dead at this point.

I find learning any foreign language helps, but I still hold a grudge against Latin grammar for giving people retarded rules for making English worse: can't end a sentence with a preposition, no split infinitives, etc. Maybe also double negatives, but I'll let Latin have that one.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

American schools don't teach grammar anymore under the retarded assumption that you pick it by osmosis.

Honestly, I believe learning Latin does more for your English grammar than anything else. Unfortunately, high school Latin is almost dead at this point.

I agree totally. Going through the California public school system, Latin wasn't available to me until I reached college. Had I attended a Cal State school, I never would have had the opportunity to study Latin.

 

[Antihero]

A journalist should be impartial, what we have is someone that was dropped in a SANDBOX RPG area and complains about it ... serious, I dont review games and if I did you can bet some type of games I would never review because I dont like then.

Yeah, I have to do a lot of reading between the lines to give the author the benefit of any doubt, which makes the article pretty useless.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

SMA speaks truth. English departments are run by the trendy ethnic studies programs at this point.

Sounds like I could have done worse than never taking English past high school.

Well I'm a firm believer in the enduring and priceless value of the Humanities. Unfortunately, most departments in the "Humanities" are no longer especially interested in what they profess to teach.

 

[KalosKagathos]

Latin is Might & Magic, Ancient Greek is Wizardry.

Bitches.

:maximumαδελφοςfist:

 

[Darth Roxor]

I like the perspective that my English degree in Poland is more worthwhile than an English degree in the Kwa

 

[Achilles]

Man, I wish people wouldn't derail threads so easily

 

[someone else]

I took English only up to middle school. Thanks to the Codex my English skills has improved.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I DON'T HAVE NO BOOK LEARNIN'

 

[DraQ]

Man, I wish people wouldn't derail threads so easily

[Perception] Retarded reviewer is retarded.

 

[Angthoron]

American schools don't teach grammar anymore under the retarded assumption that you pick it by osmosis. An English degree traditionally meant an intensive study in English literature, from Beowulf to the present, with a heavy emphasis on composition. These days the English literary canon is perceived as being parochial and patriarchal, so the PC thing to do is teach literature by minority authors who toe the political line, and literary theory. Unless this guy went out of his way to specialize in actual literature, he probably spent his time bullshitting about Foucault and Derrida, and reading mediocre novels by Gay Asians and Latinas, and dreadful plays by authors from post-Colonial countries.

If only it was just American schools. Granted, Europe does have grammar/CA offered as well, but as soon as you enter the literary studies, that's precisely what you get, minority ethnic postmodernist writers, Foucault (if you're lucky) and Derrida (if you're not), gender, class, sexuality, gay literature, post-colonial literature, blah blah blah bullshit. Last useful course on literature I had was children's literature analysis.

As for the article, nice that it's not just a commercial pitch, too bad it was written by a moron (or someone not exactly familiar with non-popamole RPGs).

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

If only it was just American schools. Granted, Europe does have grammar/CA offered as well, but as soon as you enter the literary studies, that's precisely what you get, minority ethnic postmodernist writers, Foucault (if you're lucky) and Derrida (if you're not), gender, class, sexuality, gay literature, post-colonial literature, blah blah blah bullshit. Last useful course on literature I had was children's literature analysis.

The thing that bothers me most about all the ethnic and postmodern literature courses is that books are chosen for their ideological content and not their literary merit. It's not as if good literature stopped a hundred years ago. Hell, I'm sure there's probably even some post-colonial African lesbian who has written one hell of a book that students of literature ought to read. But that's not why these courses exist, and that's not what they aim to teach. A love of literature is the last thing motivating English departments, and their course offerings, these days.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah, that's right, you all faggots go read African lesbians, while I delight myself with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

 

[DraQ]

Whispering? I don't think a great big neon sign and a character screaming at the top of their lungs "YO BRO, DON'T SHOOT PEOPLE IT MAKES THEM TOTALLY UNCOOL TOWARDS YOU" would've helped your retardation in this instance.

You had a chance to talk about how the game responded to your choices and how FUCKING KILLING SOMEONE affected how you were treated, instead you showed the kind of retardation that sees so many FPS' with health-regen and universal ammo getting dumped on the market these days.

As for "breaking the demo a few more times", what did you do? Pick the "Quit Game" option and wonder why no-one whispered in your ear "quitting takes you out of the game, honey".

I contributed.

Done and done.

 

[someone else]

Sodomites! Paid to spread their ideology to our children!!!

 

[Angthoron]

The thing that bothers me most about all the ethnic and postmodern literature courses is that books are chosen for their ideological content and not their literary merit. It's not as if good literature stopped a hundred years ago. Hell, I'm sure there's probably even some post-colonial African lesbian who has written one hell of a book that students of literature ought to read. But that's not why these courses exist, and that's not what they aim to teach. A love of literature is the last thing motivating English departments, and their course offerings, these days.

I would argue that they're actually trying to kill the love for literature with their approach. Originally I wanted to do a literature degree but ended up switching to CA as it doesn't have idiotic analyses of, say, Turn of the Screw that go spamming chainquotes until a brilliant conclusion like "Miles is seducing the governess" are born. Miles hasn't even hit pre-puberty yet, he's trying to seduce? Expelled from school for homosexual escapades? I pretty much raged when I heard that load of crap.

There's tons of good books, problem is, the new school of researchers likes to ask all the wrong questions - shitty questions - that only shitty books can answer for them.

 

[Chris Carter]

I'm the Editor-In-Chief of Gamer Limit, and I just wanted to pop in and say "this thread is freaking awesome".

I apologize that Curtis may not have had the ideal write up in the eyes of this community - not everyone on my team has full experience with every genre. Curtis simply wanted to preview New Vegas because it looked neat to him. Thankfully, we have a whole heap of other E3 Previews for you to check out!

Anyways, awesome discussion. I'll keep checking back from time to time in regards to the current state of the validity of West Coast English Degrees.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm the Editor-In-Chief of Gamer Limit, and I just wanted to pop in and say "this thread is freaking awesome".

I apologize that Curtis may not have had the ideal write up in the eyes of this community - not everyone on my team has full experience with every genre. Curtis simply wanted to preview New Vegas because it looked neat to him. Thankfully, we have a whole heap of other E3 Previews for you to check out!

Hopefully our responses haven't discouraged him from checking out more of the RPG titles (perhaps more "classical" ones at that rather than the current-gen RPGs that really do break if you're off the rails).

As I said, it's good that the article was not just hype - but the lack of experience in the writer was unfortunately showing itself.

 

[Chris Carter]

Hopefully our responses haven't discouraged him from checking out more of the RPG titles (perhaps more "classical" ones at that rather than the current-gen RPGs that really do break if you're off the rails).

As I said, it's good that the article was not just hype - but the lack of experience in the writer was unfortunately showing itself.

Truth be told I would have loved to have checked out New Vegas, as a fan of Daggerfall, Morrowind (heavily), Oblivion, and Fallout 3, among other classic 80s/90s RPGs - but I had my own titles to cover.

I think while Curtis was doing Fallout: New Vegas, I was checking out FFXIV and The Old Republic.

Other than the occasional MMO, there was a disturbing lack of RPG presence at this year's E3. 2009 had the first ever playable version of Dragon Age, and a developer gameplay video for Mass Effect 2 for the first time, among other titles.

I did have a blast checking out the Lord of the Rings: War in the North demonstration this year though! Think Mass Effect multiplayer in Tolkien's expanded universe.

 

[Jason]

Yeah, that sounds terrible. Your taste has certainly gone downhill since Cinéma Vérité.

 

[Azrael the cat]

The thing that bothers me most about all the ethnic and postmodern literature courses is that books are chosen for their ideological content and not their literary merit. It's not as if good literature stopped a hundred years ago. Hell, I'm sure there's probably even some post-colonial African lesbian who has written one hell of a book that students of literature ought to read. But that's not why these courses exist, and that's not what they aim to teach. A love of literature is the last thing motivating English departments, and their course offerings, these days.

I would argue that they're actually trying to kill the love for literature with their approach. Originally I wanted to do a literature degree but ended up switching to CA as it doesn't have idiotic analyses of, say, Turn of the Screw that go spamming chainquotes until a brilliant conclusion like "Miles is seducing the governess" are born. Miles hasn't even hit pre-puberty yet, he's trying to seduce? Expelled from school for homosexual escapades? I pretty much raged when I heard that load of crap.

There's tons of good books, problem is, the new school of researchers likes to ask all the wrong questions - shitty questions - that only shitty books can answer for them.

I'm not denying that there's a lot of crap in modern literature courses. I'm hesistant to go on the insulting side, as philosophy and literature departments have always hated each other as long as universities have existed. Philosophers have traditionally seen much literature analysis, especially of the 'commentary on society' type, as trying to do philosophy without the need for logical argument. I.e. if what you're really trying to do is say that colonialism is bad, or that particular systems are unjustly racist/sexist, surely you should just make an argument to that effect, with your premises and reasoning explicit so others can analyse and respond.

BUT in their defence, if you want to be a writer, it really doesn't hurt to be thoroughly familiar with literary critiques, both in terms of doing them and knowing how literature professors will approach them. Most ARE motivated by love of literature, although whether they're someone who lacks the talent to write a good book themself depends entirely on the quality of the university. You'll find that the more acclaimed professors at top universities are almost always established authors in their own right - academics are judged almost entirely on the basis of their publication record, and original work is held in greater esteem than secondary commentaries.

What tends to happen, though, is that each author has their own ideas of how they want people to interpret their OWN writings, and (like most people) they impose those onto whichever other books they are teaching about. If they were teaching courses on their own work, their approach would probably make a lot more sense - othewise what you get are authors whose work is highly sexualised reading sexual/gender themes into a low-sexuality work, or authors whose work is all about social criticism reading social metaphors into other works.

They're still good skills to have - there are plenty of great authors who DO write in a deliberately metaphorical way - Joseph Conrad comes to mind as someone who tended to blend a straight-forward narrative with metaphorical comment on civilisation and/or morality. Scouring work for meanings put 'under the surface' of the narrative is a great skill to have both when you encounter works that use it, but also when writing yourself. You don't have to agree with the interpretations that particular academics give to a novel (it isn't as though they agree with each other - though it might seem like that if you're doing a course at the one university, with a handful of academics who are only picking commentaries from the small group of other academics that share their views) in order for their methods to be useful.

I agree entirely with regard to works being chosen for their ideological content rather than literary merit. To be honest though, I found that worse at highschool with teachers trying to be literary professors, but who didn't have the breadth of knowledge and hence were even more stuck within a fixed wrote-learning spiel. It tends to undermine female writers in particular. A woman can write 10 great books, but academic departments will focus on her one mediocre one simply because it deals most explicitly with feminism - which ironically just serves to marginalise female authors by ensuring that they can only get recognition by writing on one topic, almost making feminism a token 'women's' topic while excluding them from being taken seriously on any other topic.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm not denying that there's a lot of crap in modern literature courses. I'm hesistant to go on the insulting side, as philosophy and literature departments have always hated each other as long as universities have existed. Philosophers have traditionally seen much literature analysis, especially of the 'commentary on society' type, as trying to do philosophy without the need for logical argument. I.e. if what you're really trying to do is say that colonialism is bad, or that particular systems are unjustly racist/sexist, surely you should just make an argument to that effect, with your premises and reasoning explicit so others can analyse and respond.

BUT in their defence, if you want to be a writer, it really doesn't hurt to be thoroughly familiar with literary critiques, both in terms of doing them and knowing how literature professors will approach them. Most ARE motivated by love of literature, although whether they're someone who lacks the talent to write a good book themself depends entirely on the quality of the university. You'll find that the more acclaimed professors at top universities are almost always established authors in their own right - academics are judged almost entirely on the basis of their publication record, and original work is held in greater esteem than secondary commentaries.

What tends to happen, though, is that each author has their own ideas of how they want people to interpret their OWN writings, and (like most people) they impose those onto whichever other books they are teaching about. If they were teaching courses on their own work, their approach would probably make a lot more sense - othewise what you get are authors whose work is highly sexualised reading sexual/gender themes into a low-sexuality work, or authors whose work is all about social criticism reading social metaphors into other works.

You make very good points - I wasn't quite aware of the degree to which the philosophy departments are involved with literature, but it makes lots of sense. Looking at the matter from such a perspective definitely gives the literary studies representatives a lot more room to escape the "responsibility" of actually backing up their claims with logic - a feature that is unfortunately all too common at the moment.

Our "older" lecturers were all very multi-faceted folk that could go ranging from common sense analysis to ultra-rad-post-feminism without skipping a beat, but unfortunately we've had all three replaced by "the new thing", young lecturers that are very excited about Derrida and the likes and go chanting about gender/class/sexuality's holy trinity through all their courses, whether postmodernism or gothic horror. I ended up doing an Ocham's Razor analysis of Turn of the Screw's analyses just out of spite. I don't deny the g/c/s approach, but it's just incredibly over-used to the point of ridiculous.

I guess they're the fruits of the study approach that was fresh and new when they were still students themselves and it'll air out of them after a while - hopefully anyway. A return to a more practical or more varied range of analytical approaches would definitely be welcome.

They're still good skills to have - there are plenty of great authors who DO write in a deliberately metaphorical way - Joseph Conrad comes to mind as someone who tended to blend a straight-forward narrative with metaphorical comment on civilisation and/or morality. Scouring work for meanings put 'under the surface' of the narrative is a great skill to have both when you encounter works that use it, but also when writing yourself.

Curiously, I was just re-reading Joseph Conrad about a week ago, Heart of Darkness mainly, and he certainly is all that. It's very interesting to read the novel from all the different perspectives, and surprisingly it's one of the novels where post-colonial approaches shine with the "silenced voices" approach and the likes - not in an obtrusive way, either, more of a compliment approach.

You don't have to agree with the interpretations that particular academics give to a novel (it isn't as though they agree with each other - though it might seem like that if you're doing a course at the one university, with a handful of academics who are only picking commentaries from the small group of other academics that share their views) in order for their methods to be useful.

This is actually what I find irritating though. On one hand, there is the "you should not slant the evidence in your favour if there is contrary evidence" mantra of the academia that one will be reminded of over and over; on the other, there is the utter and complete disregard for it coming from the lecturers themselves more often than just once. Certainly, they may be driving home the point that this particular work can be analyzed from a feminist perspective, but by doing so, they completely silence all the other approaches - and if it isn't a course on feminism, I expect the presentation to deliver on as many angles as possible.