Good morning, World.

If you are reading this, I hope you are also on your way to the LGS Memorial Chat Party, being held today in #Thief (TTLG's official chatroom) all day today (May 25th). (Big thanks to VoodooExtreme and BluesNews for spreading the word yesterday). More info can be found about the chat here in the original news post. Drop by at least once. If you cannot, then please visit the thread in our Community Chat forum dedicated to this event.

My time these days is split in many directions.
• I go to work.
• I am taking a class.
• I am playing Deus Ex,.
• I make sure TTLG is running smoothly.
• I am getting StygianAbyss.com off the ground.
• CoSaS, CoSaS, CoSaS

I am taking a class. It's a purely recreational activity, to be honest. Though I dread getting up in the morning to go, I can never survive a session of the class without leaving in a good mood. I don't even know what the title of the class is. All we do is read essays written by American monitories, and discuss them. It's a fun group of 10 students, all very clever, all very different, and all very opinionated. The sense of humor is always high, and one feels very comfortable about expressing their point of view on a topic. It's a good group - I like it. We even do crazy things like wheel-chair scavenger hunts, or take trips halfway across the state to visit some museum. It's quite cool.

I am playing Deus Ex, like I have been trying to do for the past year. Yes, this is my first time through. It's not so much that I can't get into the game, but that I have a hard time playing any game for more then 2 hours in a sitting and three times a week. I am doing better then I was (I would play maybe once a month) but it's still very slow "work". From what I have played so far, I like it. I like it a whole lot. It easily marks higher on my list then System Shock 2. I truly enjoy many aspects of the game, and have gotten quite enthusiastic many times while playing it. In some ways, it's really not the same genre of fiction/style as Thief or Shock 2. Deus Ex seems to me to be less about atmosphere and immersion then it is about tactics and choices. That is in no way meant as a disparagement. While Deus Ex never created the same type of emotional connection with the setting that System Shock 2 often did, I have found that the scenarios I have faced to be much more enjoyable on a gameplay level then SS2 ever was. To me, every confrontation in System Shock 2 was goal oriented - get it over with. In Deus Ex, every confrontation is game oriented - enjoy it, get the most out of it, and most importantly, do it -my way-. On this level, I can easily draw ties to the old action classic Crusader: No Remorse. Deus Ex reminds me of Crusader in many ways, aside from the fact that the two games could easily exist in the same sci-fi universe. I remember, while playing Crusader, often re-loading my game to try a scenario a different way just to see what would happen, even though I had already won the battle. I have done the exact same thing in Deus Ex.

I am getting StygianAbyss.com off the ground. I have two dedicated chaps on the job already, and one more possible bloke on the way. Work on the site is slow but sure. I hope, fueled by the potential success of Arx Fatalis, that SA.com will someday become as big as The Circle. Dare to dream, eh? As if having one vastly successful fan site under my belt was not enough. The biggest challenge faced by this site will not be competition, but rather the fact that most of the mainstream corporate websites or publications have never even glanced at Arx Fatalis, making it primarily unknown outside the small circle of enthusiasts at TTLG. Hopefully once Arx is released, some of the magazines will take notice and review it, and the fans will start flowing in droves. That would be very nice.

CoSaS, CoSaS, CoSaS. Ah, The Circle of Stone and Shadow. What a horse. All day today I will be working on a big update to our website. Hopefully I can get it all ready before the party in #thief dies down. This update will feature up to 12 new screenshots (and not postage stamp sized crap like we've been doing), a few NPC concept sketches (most of whom will only appear in cinematics), some random promo-art, and a few new desktop backgrounds using actual production material rather then just neat junk we threw together. I need to update the FAQ as well (not sure how much work it needs) and, of course, the status indicator. Don't expect to see a huge difference to be displayed on the status indicator. I am being very conservative and vague with that thing. Suffice it to say that we have made a tremendous amount of progress since December of last year, which because of how the status display is set up, won't be conveyed very boldly. The website is going to stay rather tight-lipped about the plot, but for those of you reading this, I think you deserve to get a little bit of info on what this whole shindig is about.

CoSaS is divided into three parts: A prolog, act 1, and act 2. The story set up is much like Thief 1's. In T1, you spent the first several missions in a prologue, which set the stage with the characters and the universe, drawing you into the world before throwing you into the main plotline. CoSaS does this as well. Act 1 features the player character, in this case, Keith, embarking voluntarily on an adventure not really understanding what is really going on at all, but with his intentions and motivations very clear in his mind. In Act 2, the player has to deal with the dire truths of the situation and find a way to make things whole once more, all while questioning his own motivations and having to deal with situations he would much rather have nothing to do with. The major difference here, is that with the exception of the prologue missions, CoSaS takes place over the course of one night. Some nights can change a person's life forever, and this is one of them.

Let me throw out a few random facts: CoSaS reaches into the past more then the present or future. Expect to spend much more time exploring ancient structures then newly built posh settings (though you do spend time in both). CoSaS barely deals with The Mechanists at all, though an occasional offhand reference will be made. The Hammerites do not have a large role either, but they do make appearances at several points. In spite of this, we do deal with some science fiction elements totally unrelated to the Hammers or Mechanists. A good bit of CoSaS takes place away from The City, but never out in the wilderness and seldom in derelict locations. CoSaS will be much "darker" then Thief 2 was, and hopefully every bit as "dark" as Thief 1 was. One of the images we will be releasing on the website will unveil one of the factions which will have a part to play in the plot of CoSaS (it's a group most of us have heard of), but I are going to leave the nature of this role a nice fuzzy mystery.

And that's all I am going to say about that.

On an amusing note, I saw Dungeons and Dragons the other day on video. I have to say that I was disappointed. Watching an outrageously horrible movie with your friends can be a very enjoyable experience, and D&D didn't even deliver in that regard. It wasn't shockingly God-awful… it was simply mediocre. Bleh! Gems of the "shockingly horrible" movie genre like Wing Commander or Battlefield earth are full torso over this sucker. It's the difference between a 1 star film and a full-fledged turkey. I will say one thing in benefit to this movie, however (and this is a spoiler): The movie got about 30% better when the stereotypical goofball black sidekick was killed. Suddenly it went from a hodgepodge of cutups and lame jokes broken by an occasional CGI flyby sequence which could have been done better by Blizzard, into a movie with an actual story (an awful stupid story, but better then the first half of the movie). Just think of how much better Star Wars Ep1 would have been if they killed Jar Jar on Tatooine. Amazing. It should be a new plot device in putrid movies that make your head hurt: Make one of the main characters unbelievably annoying, and then kill him half way into the movie. People will love you for it!

Digi hangs his head in shame, then breaks into a fit of laugher.

Before I close, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what's happened in the past year since we lost Looking Glass Studios. To be perfectly honest, it all seems like a big blur to me. As much as TTLG has grown, I think that I have grown as a person even more dramatically. So much of my life revolves around TTLG and the community now. Before it was a hobby - a past time for fun, excitement, and money. Now it's easily grown to twice the size it was when LGS was alive, it costs more money to run then it gives back, and it has become far too much a part of my life to be considered a hobby. On the surface, TTLG really has not changed that much. To really see the differences in TTLG, you have to look inside, and when you do, you may see something that has matured from its infancy, into an adult. TTLG has faced the death of its parents. TTLG has faced nearly dieing itself. TTLG has faced becoming far, far more then it was ever intended to be. If that doesn't bring maturity, I am not sure what does. Of course, once you become an adult, the journey is still only just beginning.

I do not say 'Thank you, and Good Night.' Nay. I say to you now: 'Have a wonderful day.'