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Yeah, that I rather like. Technically it's probably bad design being able to stumble on a lich so early, but meh. It's interesting, and gives you something to aim for. I love the Piranha Bytes games where you spend 1/3 of the game running away from overgrown domestic fowl. Is it great gameplay? Again, maybe not in the technical sense and it's probably deeply annoying if you're playing because you want to feel awesome from the start. OTOH, once you start dealing to the overlarge turkeys and start beating up the mutant porcupines or velociraptors you actually feel kind of awesome, and like you made an improvement. If you're stuck fighting the 20th perfectly balanced encounter for lvl 10 parties and 'anticipating' moving on to the 20 perfectly balanced encounters for a lvl 11 party on the other hand... I literally can't imagine anything more pointless.

It's from Die Hard3 where Bruce Willis' character was forced to walk with the sign into a black neighbourhood. aka. mouthing CA on this forum is asking for trouble.

Parts of the roof are still standing so we can safely discount anything heavier than an artillery shell. 100kg of TNT from HIMARS would sent the whole thing sky-high. If Russians are really innocent in this they shouldn't mind returning corpses in condition fit for autopsy. I'm not holding my breath.

You are correct, I t looks like I have mistranslated few of the sources I read and watched about that incident. They were indeed speaking about HIMARS and GRADs, but they were more or less trying to rule both of them out... my bad, so sorry for providing incorrect info I have seen some of the pictures yesterday from the site, and the most plausible outcome is, that it was an explosion inside of the building. The remnants of the building are pretty much ruling out any kind of explosion from the "sky". Some of the evidence seemed like, that some of the POWs were dead before the explosion and a some soldiers were definitely burned, which also shows the evidence of the unlikeliness of use of HIMARS or GRAD. Most of the sources are also coming to the same conclusion as you. Cover up of mistreatment of POWs. There is also one theory, that the owner of Wagner did order this, due to the "mismanagement" of funds, paid out by Kremlin to cover the expenses with POWs...

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to appreciate Icewind Dale. The game is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical combat mechanics most of the gameplay will go over a typical player's head. There's also David Ogden Stiers' nihilistic narration, which is deftly woven into the plot progression - his character's philosophy draws heavily from literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of the gameplay, to realize that it's not just combat- it says something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Icewind Dale truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, having giant skeletons that explode into snowballs which is itself a cryptic reference to the snowball fight in Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Black Isle's genius unfolds itself on their monitors. What fools... how I pity them. And yes by the way, I DO have a Yxunomei tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. (Funnily enough on pure gameplay I 100% agree with HoonDing on order, though I'd probably put the self mutilation before BG1 and have an entire lower category for SCS)

Don't sweat it @kanisatha, I also prefer BG1 to most of the other infinity games. It was my original introduction to D&D, it is a simple and fun low level adventure, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. I've played it through to completion more than once, which is rare. PS:T, on the other hand, always loses me halfway through. It's a weird world and I lose interest in it, despite liking a few of the characters. IWD never appealed to me so I never played the sequel. BG2 is second to BG1, but they are both really enjoyable. But it does that thing where the main quest seems super urgent, but then every companion is like, "we need to go take care of my stuff, even though your childhood friend is locked up with a psychopath."

I took my sister out to Ray Nathan's for BBQ: Ray Nathan's has some of the best BBQ I've had outside of Texas, their cole slaw is terrific too. When it comes to BBQ, my sister and I are alike, we're both all about the brisket.

So this is basically you right now: Don't worry about getting flamed.

Made in Abyss, season 1. Well, finished the part that's currently on Netflix here, which is the 13 episodes of the first season. The last episode is twice as long, so technically it has the runtime of a 14 episode show with 25 minute episodes. Not that it changes much. The pacing is all over the place, which is less of an issue than it might seem. Over the course of the first season, Reg's penis is talked about on three separate occasions. Once after Riko examines him, once after a grown up looks at it in curiosity and once more when Riko and Reg go skinny dipping in the Abyss, which has a very obvious consequence that Riko comments on by basically asking him: "What's going on with your willy?" Riko, on the other hand, hangs naked from the ceiling, gets undressed after some distress because Reg wants to 'check' her for any injuries, gets undressed after a serious injury, and of course while bathing (where she can't do it herself due to the aforementioned injury). She also, on three separate occasions, soils herself. While it does make sense that she would do that under extreme duress (once unconscious while poisoned, once while in terrible pain), the reason why it was necessary to comment and in one case show it is not entirely within the grasp of my understanding. The third one was an 'accident' at night because she was afraid to go to the loo. Well, all in all, it could have been worse, I suppose. Riko is, at least according to the subtitles, 12 years old, and the nudity doesn't carry funny undertones or is sexually charged, skinny dipping commentary aside, perhaps. As far as random cruelty against children goes, we have the naked hanging from the ceiling punishment that is not only popular in the orphanage, and the group of people who research and explore the Abyss who randomly scoop up unwanted children from all over the world to use them in disfiguring to lethal experiments. Because why not. That said, back to the pacing. Soft spoilers from here on out - but they should be safe for @Bartimaeus and his patented spoiler reading technique. Now that all reads rather negatively, and the question then becomes, why binge it? Because, surprisingly, while the emotional part of the series did not work for me at all, the mystery part does. Like I alwas maintain, give me a decent mystery to look at, and I'm game. The Abyss serves that function wonderfully, and the exploration part of the series is really nice. It is also, ah, a prelude to a disappointing ending, I suppose, if such an ending comes. Can't recall a decent mystery series where the mystery didn't end up being a letdown, or unexplained. But never mind that, the second season is only ongoing, and who knows if it even finishes the storyline. At the risk of sounding like @Bartimaeus after watching Madoka, if you want me to care about the abject terror that characters experience, make me care about them first. With the characters not really working for my Darth Vader, I suppose, they're not really going to work for @Bartimaeus' Palpatine. I do forgive much more easily, after all.

US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design | Ars Technica

We just got out of Irenicus' dungeon, and...hey, there's an illusory wall in the main room of this inn, wonder what's inside! Oh, instantly blown to smithereens by an epic-levelled lich, what great design. And by "great design", I mean "terrible design", but it was funny and memorable, and it can be easily avoided until later...so maybe not terrible design.

Odesa regional administration: "attack in Sevastopol" is provocation and manipulation by Russia. https://t.me/UkraineNow/15784 Google translation: The "attack" in Sevastopol is an open provocation of Russia A number of Russian media reported on Ukraine's alleged attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. These are lies and manipulations of the enemy. "The liberation of our Crimea from the occupiers will take place differently and much more effectively," - Odesa OVA

Particularily true in IWD where playing on insane difficulty doubles the experience gain. Harder start, much easier rest of the game. Power creep is less problematic than in BG2 because regular mages are useless due to the limited scroll availibility, but if you play the EE and take a sorcerer with you, even that become moot. Mind, the game experience significantly improves when you can just fireball your way through Kresselack's tomb, but it doesn't make the game as such more interesting.

Well, in that case the point is kind of moot. It's not really required anyway, but if you artificially deflate experience values your DC experience will vary greatly. I'll freely admit to not being able to judge BG1 fairly insofar as it has way too many useless side areas that I can't ignore, so I waste significant amounts of time in the wilderness, and since I already finished the game once, I'm usually nope, I'm outta here either before Cloakwood or after entering Baldur's Gate. I also don't really enjoy the hands-off story telling of either IWD or BG1 and prefer the IWD2 and BG2 way of being more directly engaging. It's not as bad in BG1 as it is in IWD. I'd be more inclined to sit through IWD's dungeon slog if everything was a little more engaging, but you're directing a group of nondescript adventurers through a bunch of locations on a relatively small scale group of quests that sometimes tell stories about those locations - like Kresselack's Tomb and Kresselack's problem with the Priestess of Auril - but I always find myself not caring an iota for any of them. The nice visuals, the music, the mood and, indeed, the writing - nothing of it is in service of anything interesting. IWD2 on the other hand improved on these aspects. Yes, the characters are still a bunch of nondescript nobodies I don't care a fig about (in what is one of life's little ironies, building the characters is more fun in IWD2, so that helps too, even if I actually don't like 3E that much), but everything else is better. In IWD, you talk a bunch with the villagers of Easthaven, and are then off, and the game gracefully kills your only point of attachment, then gives you a new one (who is boring as hell) and kills him off quickly too. In IWD2, you spend some significant amount of time in Targos getting to know everybody, shore up defenses, then fight off the incoming attack and go on a counter offensive. It is much more engaging than trying to help Kuldahar with its bunch of numpties (except Oswald, but he's not doing much in IWD). It's combat is - for better or worse - equally sloggy, but it feels more dynamic and interesting due to the encounter design and some fresh ideas (war drums, exploding kegs, fortifications, etc.). Even if it makes no difference in the long run, I want to save that bridge and rush for the enemies wanting to destroy it. In IWD, by the time I reach Kresselack, I'm done with the game. Screw Kuldahar, who cares if they get snowed in. I don't really see where IWD's gameplay would rank significantly above IWD2's. They're both full of endless trash fights (funny how some of us expected something different from Pillars of Eternity, talk about not learning from experience) and IWD2 is just smoother in almost every way and isn't just "go to this dungeon, kill everything in it" all through the game. IWD2's Ice Temple and Dragon's Eye time loop might get old after going through them once, but IWD's Kresselack's Tomb gets old the first time you're there. Never mind Dragon's Eye and its five ginormous levels, and then there's still more and more and more to slog through. Ugh. Yeah, no, let me walk through empty wilderness please. We had that exact argument on this forum like seven years ago, and there were (are still, probably) posters who believe that any and all RtwP game would be significantly improved by simply slapping a turn based mode on the existing encounters. Baffling, really. Can you imagine going to rescue Dynaheir in BG1 with turn based combat before your party has any significant amount of area of effect capabiities? Fighting off 200 gnolls by taking turns where only like two of your party members have any realistic chance of hitting them? That would be awesome indeed!

The amount of combat in the IE games would make turn-based gameplay untenable (unless you want BG1 to last approximately 200 hours in a utterly miserable slow slough where each battle with every random wolf takes a couple of minutes instead of 10 seconds like it does via RTwP), so you can throw out 90% of that as well. I don't really see how the IE games would benefit from being turn-based, particularly because they kind of already are - enemies generally operated in a (albeit somewhat chaotic) turn-based manner, it's the player that can bend and break the rules by operating outside of that structure with micro-managed movement, reactive targeting, intelligent ability sequencing, concerted character tactics, etc., .

Castration has been used in almost all the empires of mankind for thousands of years, particularly amongst Arab slave traders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration But in the year 2022 and playing the " yes but Colonialism did it " card when Russian soldiers are doing it now doesnt change the reality that its just another example of the barbarity of the whole Russian military offensive So we should be shouting about it, sorry to disappoint you again. Most of us arent going to handwave Russian war crimes due to whataboutism

is worth noting 'bout half o' oglala is christian, most o' those is catholic. during and particular after the so-called "indian wars," more than a few o' the christian missionaries, at great personal risk, placed themselves 'tween the US government and native peoples. is also easy to forget just how many US military officers and enlisted men vilified the treatment o' indigenous peoples, and the basis for such vocal rejection o' US policy were typical rooted in the christian beliefs o' those military men. we always hear stories o' massacres and violence, but we rare hear 'bout the ordinary line officers who open criticized President grant and others. the oglala o' the late 1800s were understandably less concerned with the history o' christianity than they were with the actions and behaviour o' those claiming to be christian. elanor is a passionate young woman, and we applaud her efforts, but try and imagine the nineteen year-old criticizing the faith o' black elk and others who converted to catholicism. one o' the great powers o' the young is the ability to see the world in black and white with stark contrasts 'tween right and wrong. the bad guys is often obvious to young people: the government, republicans, the church, boomers. fight with absolute certainty you is right and that the people you are fighting against is bad is a strength and young people has brought 'bout important change in this world 'cause they often/usual fight with absolute certainty they is right... even if they ain't so right as they thought. am not a fan o' organized religion, but am personal reluctant to curse any major faith. most o' us recognize the manifest unfairness o' damning all muslims 'cause o' the actions taken by individuals on 9/11, yes? that would be wrong. am not gonna do same for christians and blame 'em for the many transgressions o' the christian faithful over the centuries. black elk saw wisdom in catholic teachings that he did not believe invalidated his own beliefs. am personal not believing Gromnir is up to the task o' judging black elk or the many other oglala who found value in their earnest held christian faith. *descends from soap box* HA! Good Fun!

BG2 > IWD2 > BG > PS:T > IWD

Which is what makes him an ok tank, but not so much a damage dealer. And that's why I cut him whenever I play a tank myself. But my typical PC is a fighter/rogue or a fighter/wizard. I've played BG1 in particular sooooo many times but have yet to play it even once with the canonical party. Now you've got me hankering to give it another go with the canonical party.

Generally I am in favour of letting go suboptimal employees rather then killing them. Eh, everytime I play BG1 I end up running the cannonical party, so Khalid was always in my party. I stick tower shield on him, as he is as good at getting swing at, as any other. I just suspect he isn't an optimal choice, though I never personally cared for such thing, with BGs being mostly forgiving.

*Tries not to spam images of Stray .... fails* ==================== Mommeeeee! WTF? ... hmm. A.I. - A.Eye. Ahhh, horror joke. Maybe. That's better.

Yesterday Bethesda revealed a lot of Starfield in their not-E3 conference. You can see it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcs0eyZF6ng What they revealed was: * Ship flying and combat * Leveling system based on Fallout 4 with perks such as "+10% small guns damage" and "+10% medpack healing" * Scanning animals and plants * Resource gathering and crafting * Base building and management * Over 1000 planets that you can land on. This will probably be completely auto generated landscapes similar to No Mans Sky. None of this is why I want to play an RPG. In fact they barely seemed interested in that. All they said was that the story was about gathering some thingies and that there would be factions. So more of Fallout 4 essentially. They do not care about trying to write better stories or characters. instead of inventing cool new alien worlds, which is what made Morrowind so great, they have just made a bunch of human settlements with generic space architecture. I know this is a lot of criticism for a game that isn't out yet, but based on what they wanted to advertise this game with it seems to be Fallout 76 + No Mans Sky. I hope Obsidian does not feel inspired to try and copy that. I still replay Fallout New Vegas a lot more than I replay Fallout 4, even with its technical additions. For TOW 2 I would much rather be engaged in a great story, discover cool alien worlds, or have to make hard choices, than running around gathering iron ore so I can add a new gun to my space ship so I can kill my auto generated enemies.

Serbs will be bombed some other time, it seems.

This was funny as well As I said, Serbia's just waiting until the EU donates all their weaponry to Ukraine....

@majestic I agree with you that the mystery is the biggest pull of the story.

Ok I'm confused by this, or missing something. Did I say something that is equivalent to what this guy is saying?

SPACE ADVENTURE COBRA the 1980s US pilot. An attempt was made to sell the 1979 Cobra series to the US market. Like other anime at the time, significant changes were made to try to make the show saleable to early 80s tv stations as a kids adventure series. Americanizing Cobra, he becomes a key figure of the rebellion against the Darkside Pirate Guild which has taken over the galactic government. Using the idea from the pilot that Cobra has changed his face and become a galactic Salary man named Johnson. Lazy and incompetent, Johnson is sent by his company to look into the theft of a gold shipment. But instead he gets his robotic butler to detour to a casino which happens to be where the gold is being held. His butler is revealed to be hiding Galaxina (Lady) like in the Japanese show and Cobra fights the theif (in a sequence taken from Episide 13: Roulette of Death). Lots of animation is reused, but recontextualized. A lot of death, but everyone is robots (which leads to a horrific lingering shot of a burning robot boy, which is part of new animation made for the pilot). If it'd been a syndicated series when I was a kid, I'd have watched it.

Russia facing personnel shortage in the east as they desperately try to reinforce the south facing Ukrainian counteroffensive: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-pushes-attack-south-russia-troop-shortage-east/31963314.html

Considering bad rep IWD2 seems to have I was surprised how much I enjoyed it when I was finally able to play it thx to GOG fixes. That said it's is hardly surprising as it feels like Josh designes games just for me. I can't understand how PoE1&2 don't trump every other cRPG on the market. I do like that, the same way I like FromSoftware design. Allowing people to find and run into enemies they are not able to beat early on, helps to highlight their raise to powers, while RPGs that keep experience smooth kinda make progression irrelevant. There is balance to me made - Kingmaker IMO went the other way, making it at times difficult to find content you can complete and with timer threatning to punish you for wasting time I found that game to be just a misarable experience throughout. In BG2 it was just - oh, wow, I am not ready for it. [Reload a save from before entering the room] Will be back later. It also helps that those encouters were memorable, so one would remember where to return, unlike the kingmaker full of samey combat arenas on the minimap.

@Humanoid I guess it depends on whether it's singleplayer or multiplayer. My experiences with multiplayer CRPGs have suggested that probably exactly one is the optimal amount each player controls, with a maximum of two if it's only a two-player game. In singleplayer, I would probably personally prefer 3 if they're characters I control all of the time. But you're right, the game has to be designed as if those limitations are law, because otherwise you can get something like the Baldur's Gate AD&D experience where playing solo means you level up approximately every five minutes and you become a god that destroys practically everything without effort for most of the game...until you come up against the hard level cap and the game starts to catch up with you with nowhere for you to go. See above: I would say playing solo makes all balance and progression moot much more than a quest XP reduction mod intended to make a 5 member party more balanced, but people apparently do that and think it's fine, . There really is a lot of worthless trash in BG1, between near empty wilderness areas and low quality quests being everywhere from beginning to end of the game. You'd think by the time you get to the city of Baldur's Gate, the game would ease up on a lot of that, but it doesn't. I honestly don't remember much about IWD, except that it was atrociously boring with no reason to care about anything even like ten hours into the game, so I just stopped playing and ejected it from my brain.

Yeah, simply modding in a different combat system isn't going to be enough. Besides the raw amount of tedious combat, which would be tedious regardless of combat system, basically these days the biggest number of party members I can stand to control is probably ...two. I don't imagine any old RPG can be realistically adapted like that. But two more for a co-op partner makes four and that's basically the only reason I find games like Larian's or Solasta playable. Am I a Nardgrog or something like that? Probably. The alternative for larger parties would probably be a system designed from the ground up such that not only do you not *have to* control your party members, but you *cannot* do so. It sort of mirrors my position on self-driving cars actually: I don't want a car that *can* drive itself, I want one where it *must* drive itself.

There's no duration. These are the bonuses of the Barbaric Blow itself.

You guys make some good points about Khalid and his STR but things like weapon proficiency and items to boost strength should mitigate that. I dont know if you get Gauntlets of Ogre Strength in BG1 but I have already found Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise which I had given to Kivan which I will transfer to Khalid I also did some research now on Beamdog about Khalid and there are mixed views on him but many people enlist him in there party for various reasons so I will keep him, Im use to him now and once I get use to party members I dont like to change them So you guys dont have to worry, Khalid isnt going to become Wild Dog food

I've deleted this several times as I've tried to articulate my thoughts. For me I think the casts' performances are one of the most important things in a film, but I don't have to like them in order to enjoy it. I mean in Blue Velvet, which I liked enough to do a new name and avi for after rewatching it some months back, the characters are mostly morally repugnant to me. Yet I think Dennis Hopper does an utterly fantastic job as Frank Booth, as does Kale, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, and Harry Dean Stanton as their characters to create a fascinating narrative. Combined with the sound and surreal combined with ordinary setting, it's close to a perfect movie for me. Now that I type this out, I think I honestly couldn't articulate what makes a movie great for me beyond saying what gripped me about an individual film. I guess I could come up with a chart or something, but I don't have the time or inclination for that. I have been considering getting a Letterboxd, maybe that will help me sort my thoughts.

IWD is brutal. It's like someone saw the horrific grind of Nashkel Mines and decided to make an entire game like that. What a psychopath! Edit: This one goes out to the fellow Sierra On-Line fans we have here: IWD is the Codename: Iceman of Infinity Engine games.

You should wishlist it on Steam, for sure. I backed it on kickstarter, so that got me a key to the alpha. The early access should be coming soon, although soon might mean 6-12 months. The game is very playable at this point and the last update seems to make it feature complete and playable form start to finish. The development of this game requires patience, but given how stable and deep the original Xenonauts was, I think they deserve it. As I said, I've already played the alpha enough to say they've got the tactical combat aspect and maps down pat.

Getting the first seven levels of a fighter-type class (or even a thief) and then dual-classing to either a mage or cleric so that you can get the single-class XP progression of the spellcasting class (as opposed to the much slower multi-class XP progression) while retaining the HP, THAC0, APR, proficiency, and item usabilities of the fighter-type class kind of beats everything else, IMO. Of course, it can be kind of painful for BG1 because you're starting to take on actually hard stuff right as you get to level 7...

Says the most important thing is combat effectiveness. Adds an 8 CON single class cleric to the party, drops the fighter/druid for it. To be fair to Khalid, all of the companions have sub-par stats, some are just less bad than others. One can easily made do with Khalid as tank, but there are better options. Still, I think the game (series) plays best if you play a tank main character. So, basically, something like a fighter/mage dual class. With the EE nedlessly mucking about with the original BG2's nerfed Grand Mastery, it does pay off more than before to not simply use a multi-class. Lord knows what Beamdog thought there, but hey, it wouldn't be Beamdog otherwise. It does give your character a broader range of off-hands to use, which is nice, but it basically kills the multi classes in terms of effectiveness.

Prometheus might be the most frustrating movie of the last decade. On the one hand, the cinematography is splendid, as I expect from Ridley Scott. On the other hand, the narrative is utterly baffling and so full of plot holes that it's more hole than plot. As for Alien movies vs Predator movies: Alien > Predator > Aliens >>> Predator 2 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> bunch of crap.

Xenonauts 2 - The original Xenonauts was a fantastic game. Xenonauts 2 improves on it in almost every way. The maps are amazing, the story is more developed, and it looks great. Unfortunately it is taking forever to release, and the beta I'm playing is still pretty buggy, but someday this will be my jam. Still, I enjoyed playing a few missions recently. One went terribly sideways in the dark and I lost all but 3 of my soldiers before trying to breach a UFO. Then my soldiers ended up relying on handguns in the tight quarters of the ship, and things went even worse. It was a glorious loss. I won another mission in a jungle by just blowing up a lot of bushes and trees. Is there an alien in those bushes? The minigun will find out!

Alright, let's see what screenshots the fans have uploaded in order to sell the series to us. Ah, yes, exquisitely framed zoom-ins of our characters' crotches and butts while they're in their underwear/swimsuits, how delightful and totally unexpected. We also see a bathing scene where our characters are all nude and one of them looks to be sexually assaulted by the others as a result of some kind of humorous "misunderstanding", a truly classic sequence required for any and all anime of a principled nature. Glad to see said characters also look like they're somewhere between 13-16 years old. Generally speaking, I tend to believe the fans on what a show is about based on the screenshots they like to upload for the show in question, and boy, this one sure looks good, . Glad to hear the wedding stuff is finally over, hope you recover soon.

Fish tacos. Very good, though really carried by the homemade salsa and cabbage. I think I should have spiced up the batter a bit more.

The game is artistically very nice, imo. The environment is very atmospheric/dystopian. ...with occasional almost horror atmosphere. Also, more "zurks", because while they're not cute, I do find them sorta funny. Even moreso when animated and making their weird squeaking noises.