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I mean... for me Oblivion was already a bad game. Skyrim was a little more ok, but also still mediocre. Fo3, same story, bad to mediocre (thanks to mods, once again). Fo4 was absolutely terrible. Played 76 on one of those free weekends and thought it was super terrible. So yeah.. by that track record, I'm pretty sure Starfield will be either terrible or mediocre at best. Morrowind is awesome, though.

as a general rule, the guy in the video does a good job o' covering basics. but... couple quibbles... or maybe additions. 1) the kinda notes taken by trump attorney 1 (corcoran) were atypical. 2) christina bob gets only the most brief mention in the video. for decades we took copious notes. is indeed an essential practice to protect client and to protect self. however, memorialize exact comments and gestures o' a client in the manner corcoran did were not an effort to advance trump's case and to make certain corcoran's memory could be suitable refreshed in the future regarding pivotal questions o' law and fact when advancing trump's interests. trump attorney 1 were taking the kinda notes most lawyers need never consider, 'cause were obvious corcoran weren't memorializing just to make sure a proper record o' happenings took place but rather were meant to insulate him from possible future prosecution. corcoran's note taking were so outside the scope o' normal note taking and am thinking such shoulda' been mentioned. also, and perhaps this is the kinda thing you are more likely to recognize only if you has witnessed more than a few trials and are knowing how attorneys ordinary behave, but the admitted brief mention o' trump attorney 3 in the indictment is disproportionate important. the legaleagle guy failed to describe the significance o' trump attorney 1 not signing off on the june 3, 2022 certification that trump were in compliance with the grand jury subpoena to be handing over all documents with classified markings. bobb, trump attorney 3, made the certification 'cause trump attorney 1 refused to do so. after corcoran searched for remaining documents with classified markings and he sealed the documents he found in a redweld folder, he refused to sign the certification. https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/trump-indictment.pdf am highly recommending reading pp 21-26 if nothing else. those pages illustrate the clumsy shell game nauta and trump alleged engaged in to hide documents from trump attorney 1. in spite o' being the attorney who conducted the search for documents, corcoran called bobb to act as custodian o' documents and to sign the certification regarding the search. ... corcoran is gonna eventual be called as a prosecution witness and he is gonna need testify 'bout his unusual note taking as well as his refusal to certify the search he completed. explain why he took unusual notes and refused to sign is gonna be memorable. noteworthy. side note: have seen tv lawyers mention that judge aileen cannon could throw out corcoran's testimony as inadmissible. false. before corcoran testified in front o' the grand jury there were already a hearing insofar as admissibility and aileen cannon is stuck with that ruling. IF trump is found guilty, then am certain his team is gonna appeal the conviction based at least in part o' the decision to pierce attorney-client privilege, so even if there is a conviction o' trump the story won't end immediate; a nightmare for a future date. however, am not seeing any way judge cannon could exclude corcoran testimony, and am thinking corcoran will be extreme compelling for the prosecution. regardless, legaleagle did a better than fair job o' explaining. thanks for the link. HA! Good Fun!

The Announcement is now on every landing page at the top - does this help?

Fae Tactics has one of the cutest protagonists. NPC: "I don't know why you are here, but you better leave." Peony: - long explanation of why you are there - NPC: "Why are you just telling me all this?" Peony: "Well, you said you didn't know why I was here, so I am telling you."

an admitted obscure anniversary: june 14, 1953, President Eisenhower (republican) delivers commencement speech at dartmouth speech begins at 22:25. am highly recommending listening at least for a couple minutes from 28:20. HA! Good Fun!

Certainly a big factor that, yes. The US is also an outlier in the sense that it doesn't have long traditions worth mentioning (except indigenous traditions that have been pretty much destroyed), so it has been "built up from scratch" to a much larger extent than almost any other country in the world (well, Australia obviously comes close, with equally awful results for the indigenous traditions and populations). This is a fascinating subject and could go on for ages, but let's not get there. One thing I'll say, though: the question of the individual vs. collective manifests itself interestingly and on many levels. For example, the Western existential angst of the individual is not a common phenomenon in "the East", mainly because people view themselves in such a different way: the focus is not on the self, it is on the social group they are part of. As for social cohesion, trust etc., these things are also dictated by many factors, one of which is, surprisingly enough, climate: Finland, for example, has a very strong tradition of social trust and helping out, which has (perhaps) only very recently started to erode. Well, if you lived in Finland in the 1700s, say, and you were in a bit of a bother and it was winter, without help you were going to be dead very quickly, and everyone knew this about everyone, and this influenced the culture quite a bit. Contrast this with a climate where you can pick fruit from trees most of the time -- it produces a different outlook. And also, while it cannot be proven, a pretty strong case can be made that the deep Japanese ideas of impermanence stem from the fact that there is so much seismic activity in the area, so you better build your home from bamboo and paper and not be too attached[*] to anything in life. All in all, fascinating stuff, sorry for rambling. (And btw, while there is much about the US to admire, I would never ever want to live there. Even all my visits have been quite sad in many ways, much more so than my visits almost anywhere else in the world. There is so much that is so obviously so amiss, and I cannot even see any attempt to try to fix any of it.) [*] How does the Zen master send email? Without attachments.

Like the Metric System J/K... just an opinion of mine, the US is what you get when you take individual freedom to extremes, leaving individuals to fend for themselves. Less social cohesiveness. Russia is what you get on the opposite end of the scale, complete lack of individual freedom and don't you dare do anything on your own initiative. Many countries fall in between the two extremes and a few gets close to aforementioned outliers (like China being similar to Russia in some ways etc.)

Yeah, it's crazy, I fully agree, but it wouldn't be any better if there was no war in Ukraine. I'm quite certain that absolutely none of those legitimate issues would be addressed even with peace in Ukraine. The Imperial States of America does all sorts of strange things, like jails a larger proportion of its citizens than any other country in the world -- China, Iraq and all those included. But then, it gets some pretty handy slavery work out of the prison system, so I suppose that's a bonus. There are also all sorts of positive things in the world that the vast majority of countries (or, in some cases, just a vast majority of so-called Western countries) are a part of or have, but the US does not. Go figure. A great country with a pretty substantial "but" right after the epithet "great", I'd say.

Sounds more like something you'd get from a vindaloo than a pizza, to be honest. Or a vindaloo pizza, I guess, though I'm fairly sure their creation is mentioned in Revelations.

There is a brief interview with Carrie Patel in XBOX Extended Showcase: Nothing really groundbreaking and most of it was mentioned in written reviews but: 1) there will be returning characters from PoEs (Deadfire especially) - I suppose that would suggest the game takes place after PoE2, though I assumed that to be the case, due to Aedyr invasion of Living Lands being teased in PoE2 DLC3. 2) Narrator from the trailer is Kai one of the first companions you meet 3) You are not a Watcher but have a unique soul connection (?) 4) The game will consist of interconnected open zones - game is similar in size to Kotor2 or OuterWorlds. I wonder if we will have some kind of world map and travel from place to place (ala. PoE1) or will those maps attempt to create more of a feeling of an open world.

Hours of gameplay is an imperfect measure of value. I will gladly take 5 hours of awesome over 50 hours of meh.

Always good for a little entertainment:

It was the first time Takeo and Toshio drive through the fields (if I recall correctly). It was pure magic, and the moment the film really clicked for me. Edit: Of course, the ending manages to be even better.

Yeah, long gone are the days where music like Teremtés could actually fit right into anime. ...Though I actually couldn't tell you precisely when this song was used in Only Yesterday, I have nevertheless heard it on the soundtrack.

I thought it was a great narrative adventure, but it is just a narrative adventure. Not something a dedicated gamer will find particularly exciting to interact with.

Playing Obsidian's Pentiment, which has a forum here that nobody writes on. Well, there are aspects of the game that I really enjoy (like the setting and the premise, for instance), but there's not a whole lot you can do, actually: it looks like a short story with a few places where you can have some influence on what happens. None of the mini-games, like fitting pottery shards together, are interesting. I'm in the third act, which looks like it's going to be the last one, and while the game's ok, it's not that memorable. A bit of a pity, really. I would have liked to like this a lot more.

"Kashmir ? Nigeria? The West only cares about the "relatively civilized" places. " The 22nd century belongs to India and Africa

Feds Say Facial Recognition IDed Bosnian War Criminal Miljkovic (gizmodo.com) This technology should be deployed everywhere except private property. But it will probably have an unintended side effect of increasing the US prison populations.

We cant be a tier 1 country until we forcibly redistribute the fatcats wealth into social programs for everyone. What if Im wrong? Im not. We already have irrefutable proof that those systems work and create a nirvana-like lifestyle for everyone else in the world. Additionally, once we create UFD, our prisons will empty out. So that should drop our prison population below that of China and Iran. Maybe they should just let me run the country? Give me a decade and Ill whip this joint into shape.

Can I import my save from Skyrim, including my adoptive children, the family dog and the family fox into Starfield?

Bezos has possessed a master key for my life for years, that poor bastage. But in the "first world problems" category, we sleep with the tv on just for background noise, and the extra light coming from the huge screen is a little distracting when were trying to fall asleep. And one of my cats is a little spooked by new screen on the wall. She keeps staring at it warily.

During a week when Russia was posting hundreds of pictures of one destroyed Leopard from different angles, Ukraine has managed to liberate 7 settlements on two fronts. The attacks were performed with the old units during the reconnaissance at arms operations. No one still knows, where is the main UA force still hiding, and where the counter-offensive will happen. In the Russian information space, a lot of military bloggers are doomsaying about Kharkiv region again.

There is currently a lot of drama going on in Russia, atm. Looks like the same commander who was in charge of Vuhledar front, is currently in charge of Kreminna front. And it looks like with similar results. I hope he’ll get promoted to general soon. One position has become vacant lately.

bar glitched under the dc subway system long time ago

https://www.gamesradar.com/every-qa-tester-at-microsoft-is-working-on-starfield-according-to-phil-spencer/ https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-exec-says-starfield-has-the-fewest-bugs-any-bethesda-game-ever-shipped-with/ Not exactly a high bar, but okey Microsoft really needs this one to land, doesn't it. Or take off. Pick your pun.

One bad game isn't enough for me to give up on a developer. Fallout 76 was also built on the faulty premise that the wasteland was just missing a bunch of other players and an MMO feel. Starfield is a single player RPG, and it looks like it will be typical of the rest of their stable. Big world, good exploration, questionable storytelling. That's enough for me.

does people not remember the tidal wave of nonsense fallout 76 bring forth that was 5 years ago and what masterpiece had bethesda put out to redeem themself there is simply no evidence that bethesda are still capable of creating good game

Well, let's see how good it is. If it looks like I'll play hundreds of hours then yes, I can pay a high price.

We actually have a ton of Indian pizza places in the Bay Area. Veggie Masala Pizza is fantastic. The one near my house also has a great craft beer list. Samosa bites beat wings every day of the week. https://www.parktownpizza.com/

^We need to be prepared for potential nazi invasion. Theyre literally everywhere. Interesting (to me), we only lost a total of 20 Bradleys (17 to friendly fire!) in the entire Gulf war (Bradley Fighting Vehicle - Wikipedia), and here theve lost 16 in a couple of days. Guess it shows the difference in tactics and training.

Biden just approved another weaponry package for Ukraine. Included are 15 Bradleys - almost exactly the amount Ukraine was supposed to lose during a recent assault. Almost certainly a message meant for Russia.

If the 5 hours of awesome is all at the beginning that's fine since I can just play those 5 hours and be done with it. If the 5 hours of awesome is at the end and I have to get through 45 hours of meh to get to it, I'll pass. If the 5 hours of awesome is sprinkled in throughout the 50 total hours, for example 10 minutes of awesome, then an hour of meh, 15 minutes of awesome, then another hour of meh, and so on; those nuggets of awesome would probably be enough to get me to keep playing the meh parts. I'd still rather have just 5 hours of pure awesome rather than 50 hours that has a little awesome and a whole lot of meh.

where's Chris

I now compare it to the price of pizza and the grief my stomach will give me , now that I am over 40 and a late pizza plays hell on my metabolism.

You know what I always do when I ask " is this game too expensive ", I wonder how many hours I will spend playing it and then I think what the companies I work for charge customers per hour for consultancy work and its always worth it. I will spend at least 200 hours on Starfield so $70 is a small price for mudcrabs and cliff racers in space !!!

I'm happy to pay $70 for Starfield as I know I will thoroughly enjoy that game and be playing it possibly through the end of my life. Totally worth it. OTOH, it is BG3 that I'll be waiting for 40+% off sale price to buy it. And Avowed (and TOW2) I won't buy at any price unless it comes with a third-person option.

What do you mean, this is radiant ai, it's the future of gaming!

I started playing Mask of the Rose (courtesy of @majestic), it's a visual novel set in the Fallen London universe. Early going but so far I'm really enjoying the writing, which doesn't come as a surprise, given that writing is Failbetter Games' strong point. This makes them well suited to making a VN since writing is of utmost importance to that type of game... Well, and the quality of the art depicting individual distinctly lacking clothing in certain types of visual novels, or so I've been told.

Will the world ever see such deep and profound dialogue again? On a serious note, it's like something created by ChatGTP years before that was invented...

While regional pricing is an issue, especially with the last year Steam guidelines adjustments, waiting for a more bug-free and less expensive versions of the AAA games* seems to be the most reasonable course nowadays (the last 15 or so years). Starfield is also a Bethesda game, which are well-known for their issues on release. *Not applicable to independent developers, they do need support and less likely to attach invasive DRM or exploitative monetisation to their games. --- On another note, I am curious if the Prince of Persia reboot requires the Ubisoft DRM. As is, the game does look interesting, but not outstanding. I guess, I would prefer it to be a separate IP. Also, I think, it would look better with cell-shading, considering the visual style. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown-is-so-much-better-than-it-looks-in-the-reveal-trailer

Jagged Alliance 3 is like $35, so go get two copies of that instead of Starfield.

Starfield gameplay:

There are also some extremely interesting separatist movements either budding or gaining more foothold inside Russia. Of course it is impossible to tell whether these will ever amount to anything, but I find these processes very heartening: ethnic Russians appear to exist, politically speaking, at a level of inactivity somewhere between Stoicism and catatonia, but non-ethnic Russians seem to be recognizing in ever-increasing numbers that they are used as cannon fodder and that Russia really has and never had any respect for them whatsoever, as human beings. (There is a saying in Finland that the imperialist Russia is nothing but a huge "prison of the peoples", but that may be an international saying and everyone else may well know it, too; I just haven't heard it in international contexts.) Potentially, areas like the rich Sakha, maybe, and definitely whole hosts of various peoples are looking at themselves and Russia(ns) and thinking that we want to get out of here ASAP. This is part of the same process that you describe in relation to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Of course it poses huge geopolitical problems, too (nukes), but it is also one of the best things ever to happen inside Russia... should it ever amount to anything serious. We shall see. As for your question related to "what did they do with the country after Saddam was toppled?", that's the classic problem that all revolutionaries also have to face. It's much, much easier to bring the reigning regime down than to create something stable afterwards. Interestingly, by the way, from a psychological point of view it does appear that the people who are particularly good at bringing about revolutionary measures and processes are most definitely not the people you should trust with the construction of a stable new nation. Which makes sense, when you think about the characteristics required. Of course it's different with multinational entities like Nato or the coalition that invaded Iraq, but the problem still remains -- as was amply demonstrated.

Fallout had no classes. It worked for me

I dont want to hijack this thread with an Iraq debate as @Gorth mentioned but I do think its related to Ukraine because its about the integrity of Russia and then its about the justification of an invasion, is it ever justified for example? And this is a debatable topic so I appreciate peoples opinions even if I already know what most peoples views on this are So going back to Iraq, I dont think anyone would argue the reasons for the invasion was valid, they werent and they were a combination of misinformation and lies. I did believe them at the time but from about 2004 onwards it was clear they werent true But I was talking more about the nature of the invasion and how the US conducted themselves within Iraq compared to the Russia invasion of Ukraine, they not the the same at all if you think of the military strategy and decisions the Ruskies have made and things they doing like the illegal annexations of parts of the Donbas My point being not all invasions are the same because a big part of how we reflect on invasions is how the invading army conducts themselves and what they do within the country they invaded Im sure we would all agree on that?

The closest you could get is making ability with one statuseffect for each possible Attribute value (up to 35?) to make it "scale", then append it to all character/class progression tables.