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It's quite alright. It's been this way my whole life in America. I quite often even receive snail-mail addressed to "Ms.".

Yes. While the controls are rebindable in both, Larian's game tends to reset the custom hot keys, 1-0. Some QoL features might be implemented later (some party management was added recently), I doubt that it will be as good as WotR. The cut-scenes do not work well with the immersive sim elements and the general plot clashes with D&D lore and occasionally BG1/2. Still, the critical path is much shorter than WotR, which encourages replaying it (to test whether the final boss can be defeated while dual-wielding salamis).

Not a single one and it worries me something fierce. But I haven't encountered the space woof yet.

How many wet leopard growls have you seen so far?

I agree. However, I don't think anyone has argued or even suggested that they are the same. But Russia's recruitment policy remains exceedingly cynical, at least in my view.

WotR very rarely tried to mess with the player* and was generally physically (rebindable controls, pause, etc.) comfortable to play, while the story was stylistically consistent for each Mythic Path and the companions, even of the opposing alignments, were cooperative. Though, I was not particularly fond of the length of a single playthrough, continuous updates (still ongoing, I think?), Season Passes, and especially the attempt to install spyware. Fortunately, GOG allowed to ignore the latter. *with that backer's turn-based quest, the puzzles, and the conditions to get an extra companion being the exceptions.

Dear Hello Games: try not to make too many promises this time and try not to release it 5+ years too early, k? Also, what I've read is you "can play alone but they want to encourage multiplayer" - but they haven't made clear if it's the run past other players all the time MMO style, or "multiplayer" like NMS, where you can turn off MP mode/never have to see other players. I hope it's the latter, otherwise I might have zero interest. The early announcement trailer certainly looks nice tho. And it's a single planet/world focus this time, but still very sandbox? Dragonflight instead of ships? Edit: also, bunny people?

Baldur's Gate III performed as expected at The Game Awards and walked away with six awards out of nine nominations including Game of the Year. Everything they won: Players' Voice Best Multiplayer Game Best RPG Best Community Support Best Performance (Neil Newbon) Game of the Year

Ahem, I'm a he But yes, I have not yet played the game. My take on the game is based on having been very active on the Larian forum right from when the game was announced, and reading through all the threads and debating these points there very thoroughly there, and also spending many hours watching streams of the game through its development and since release.

So, with Lies of P done, and my interest in playing games sated for the time being, I went back to my long-ass list of shows and animes that I need to finish. I decided on watching the remaining elven episodes of kemurikusa. (that peroid is part of the name, but it is often omitted), or ケムリクサ - which just really spells out kemurikusa, a combination of smoke and plant. The characters and introduction I already posted two years ago, in case anyone's interested: This was my conclusion from the first episode: After watching the entire series, that changed from "I am happy that this is only twelve episodes" to being somewhat annoyed that it only has twelve episodes. The first episode aside, this is actually a fun, shortish sci-fi show, even if Ritsu's constant nyan-ing is highly annoying. In the second episode, the troupe of girls and Wakaba decide to go on a journey to a different island, to look for water. The world is covered in a strange, red mist, which they call red smoke (akakemuri, 赤煙), prolonged exposure is apparently deadly. There are also mechanical entities they call bugs, that I mentioned before. The red ones were corrupted by the red mist and seemingly attack the girls and Wakaba for no reason. Much of the episodes is spent on them traversing the post-apocalyptic wasteland the world has become, talking about this and that and nothing in particular. Whenever there's action, it usually makes sense, and in the middle there's a teamworking payoff action sequence where they combine their abilities to take down a giant enemy robot that they never managed to fight off before. When they finally find some more water, they end up realizing that things are much, much more dire than they ever imagined... Never thought I would like this, but the characters grew on me, even Ritsu and her stupid nyan-ing. As for the plot: There is not much of it, but that is not a bad thing - it means the anime has much more time to spend on the group just walking about and talking while overcoming hurdles along the way. I'd even give this a tacit recommendation*. Color me surprised. *Keep in mind that I consider myself compromised by prolonged exposure to nuTrek. I am uncertain if I can tell "this is okay to likable" from "well, at least it is not nuTrek level bad" at the moment.

Boy was that GTA VI trailer sh*t! Half the trailer it's women shaking their oversized butts...isn't that something from 10 years ago?! ...and @Lexx is right, the combat is BOUND to be crap. These folks could never get the gunplay/gunsound right in any of the GTA games.

The begining of the misadventures of Rouge Raider the Rogue Trader on her warp voyage aboard the Millenium Phyrr Cat.

Steam blurb says "Carve a life together. Meet players from across the globe, build a life, explore and survive together. Construct persistent buildings and communities, or strike out alone to discover the world for others." Sure sounds like it's the same world for everyone. Do they realize people will comb through it in a week or two?

That may have been one of the Russia's goals in beginning. First market Finland as easy port to EU and offer short term visas to Russia in masses to anyone that ask without any actual processing. Second take immigrants moneys and bring them to Russia. Third guide immigrants to cause political issues in Finland and cause Finland current right wing anti immigration government to do predictable closing of the border that Russia also can use in their propaganda to Russians to tell how Finland is russophobic Fourth force immigrants to join Russian foreign legion by threating to charge them of breaking their visas. And blame Finland for leaving those poor immigrants to starve.

... when it comes to this particular strategy and its application right now. Otherwise, no, unfortunately. Russia has also been recruiting cannon fodder from Nepal: https://www.rferl.org/a/nepal-people-detained-recruitment-ukraine-war-russia/32717122.html

Its the Internet, do we ever know anyones true identity

Finland can breathe a sigh of relief… looks like Putin got tired of the game and probably realised he couldn’t pull off a new invasion of the country… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67647379 edit: also helps alleviating his manpower problem in Ukraine a bit

Sure! Hunting Season Alt.zip Yup I am using a script hook to start the quest: if { IsInScene(Player, AR_1507_Bog) and not HasQuestStarted(15_QST_Hunting_Season) } then { StartQuest(15_QST_Hunting_Season) } The animal attack on Sayuka is the only way to start the quest strangely. Though entering Bentbranch Bog does set the "b_HS_Entered_Bog" to "1". Which actually... Now that I'm typing this out that might actually be the issue! Since this variable triggers an event on the original route through the quest... Pretty much my goal with making this alternate route is that it will fix a minor bug that can come from killing the druids before being tasked to. If I can't get it to work there are other solutions I can take like disabling the ability to travel to Bentbranch Bog without Hunting Season active. But at least in theory an alternative quest route seems to me the least intrusive from a player's perspective. And as a plus allows the quest to be completed without needing to go through the RDC faction quest. Oh yeah that would be great! Could you do this for addendums as well? I actually created an alternate description for the quest, but removed it just in case that was the source of the issue.

South Korea has provided Ukraine in an indirect way more artillery shells than the whole EU combined… Unbelievable… Europe needs to be saved from overseas again, because some people still believe, Putin can be appeased https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/world/2023/12/501_364468.html

More Starship Troopers. More fighting on Kwalasha. Obviously the bugs cannot match the might and courage of the brave men of the mobile infantry. Do You Want To Know More?

It'll be playable in a decade or so.

Sorry Kanisatha!

Kanisatha should probably add that she's never played BG3. The storytelling is silly, much like all of Larian's works. So it's safe to say if you didn't like the Divinity games, you won't like BG3. That being said, it is a big step up from D:OS2. What they do well in that game has been put on steroids in BG3. If you enjoy TB combat that uses a ton of environmental effects and a wide range of possibilities, this game is very impressive. It's not JA3, but it's still pretty good at that.

Thank you, that was thorough and I appreciate it. You do indeed make the game sound uninviting, but then I was never going to try it anyway. By the way, I think it's interesting that the writing in WotR can also be quite poor, ridiculous even, but somehow the game still works. It's actually hard to quantify the reasons why. (I played D:OS2 for a little while, and there was nothing inviting in the storytelling, mechanics or the game world, it was just so poor. So, no faith in Larian in the first place...)

I finally realized that I really can't stand Yahtzee. Few minutes in and I just want to rip my ears off.

Sounds very close to the Kingmaker and WotR experience. Pretty much as expected.

I think I've posted about my reasons in the BG3 thread, so I may not be quite comprehensive here with my issues, but (not in rank-order) ... Too much resources wasted on cinematics and VO that should've been spent on core cRPG elements. Gameplay ddevelopment decisions were clearly made with what was needed for co-op play over single-player. The entire combat system. Avoiding combat results in lesser outcomes than fighting, and also results in less XP and loot. Main story full of plot holes. Too much disregard for decades of established FR lore. The entire "origin" PCs concept. The custom PC being the least attractive way to play the game because the custom PC is the least plugged into the game (your origin companions are more central to the game than your custom PC). Choices throughout the game often not including obvious good-alignment options (or where good-alignment options are silly/unrealistic) and where choices favor playing evil (according to people I would trust on the Larian forum, there is no consistently good path the PC can take through the whole game, though a consistently evil path exists and is easy to accomplish). All companions being some form of primadonna/diva/hipster type character, and not a single sympathetic character among them. Poor writing. Period.

Ah, the dev too has worked in tourism and is working through his trauma with this game. The whole game makes so much more sense now.

Well if it's any help there's a brothel and it gives skill boosts instead of STDs, so that's that. Almost done with Sunless Sea, moping up some quest lines. Funny how this game low-key and without judging lets you be a heartless monstrosity who helps out with mass production of cigars made out of pain and torture or feeds tourists to spiders. Also I'm pretty sure I'm not me anymore after ritual beheading. Started Sunless Skies. Whoever said it's easier is a dirty liar. For starters, no savescumming, which combined with no possibility to sneak past enemies like in Zee is a Very Bad Thing for my preferred playstyle, so I keep getting owned by RNG and random floating monstrosities. Also, starter ship is tiny and steers like a drunken baboon.

Yes, but my first year professor at uni said "always ignore the brief", so I always ignore what people ask.

Well, what spoiler free thing do you want us to tell you? So far the spoiler free verdict is: It can't be all bad, because the only thing melkathi has found to complain about so far, is the mechanic for adepts.

So is the overheat quickhack. Well, actually, all non-physical damage is non-lethal, sense be damned. If you want your gorilla arms to be completely non-lethal just get the electric variety, for instance. Anyway, done with the game now. From what I heard people talked about the new ending being more depressing than the existing ones. Well, perhaps. Especially when you're on the King of Pentacles path like I was. Some things really feel out of character and the final conversations feel cheap - actually most of the new ending sticks out like a sore thumb on an otherwise well written game. It is not bad exactly, just not the same quality of the base game. Instead of flowing organically, the dialogue and what happens feels forced to drive home a point. Sad thing is that ending could have really been made into something utterly devastating that would have resonated much more, or say, be a much more poetic "justice" way to end the game while driving home the same point: Well, missed a good way for a shocker there, CD Projekt Red. Well, no sense crying over spilled milk and all that.

Yeah, that's it. In theory it is three novels and two short stories gathered into one omnibus, without any of them having been published separately before. They are so awesome, Black Library knew people would want and demand an omnibus edition, so they decided to give people what they want directly. Don't buy it. Bland, boring characters even by 40k standards. Zero investment by the reader.

Or I could go with Rouge Raider the Rogue Trader, as that rhymes. And as Pumuckl (and in turn any German child) can tell you: was sich reimt ist gut

Installing the beta and already fighting the urge to name my character Rouge Tarder the Rogue Trader

I heard there was a new Kojima game upcoming. Some kind of horror where “It is a game, don’t get me wrong, but it’s at the same time a movie and at the same time a new form of media.” "..."

You seem to simplify the matter quite dramatically. The choice of someone like me joining a fight somewhere else is quite different from the choice of someone way below the poverty line needing to feed his kids, for instance.

"The perfect Tree Topper doesn't exist...."

I got my key for the game. There was a choice between Steam and Epic, so I grabbed the Steam one (because Epic basically never does sales for DLC, while Steam you can get DLC cheap from other stores). Now I see that tomorrow I could have gotten a GOG key