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I think the portraits are defined in one of the assetbundles. Possibly character_hd.unity3d or characters.unity3d ? As far as I know these files can be edited but I haven't ever had much luck with getting edits to assetbundles to work for whatever reason. Otherwise it's likely that whatever assigns portraits to characters is defined in the level files themselves. Which I don't think are possible to edit.

I'm bludgeoning my way through Conan Exiles trying to get to the place I can open a bar. I'm up to level 36. I've skirted around the Stygian stronghold a few times and I'm contemplating relocating my base nearby. Currently I'm still set up new the newbie river, so it's time, but I hate packing up all my stuff and moving. It's amazing how much I've played this game, and yet I still stumble on stuff I've never seen while exploring.

Federal Network: The cowardly bugs are threatening to overrun Federatsiyagrad, the Federation Headquarters on Kwalasha. But the brave men and women of the Mobile Infantry are rushing to stop them. Do You Want To Know More?

For a Forbidden Fist I actually prefer to not use fists as standard weapon, because you will have your Forbidden Fist attack anyway (crush damage and scales like your Monk fists) while your weapon can have an alternative type of damage - which makes you more versatile when it comes to PEN vs. AR. And you might profit from some universal enchantment or modal of the weapon - for example I like to use a Dagger + modal with a Forbidden Fist: as long as I mainly use the Forbidden Fist attack there is no drawback (dmg malus only applies to dagger attacks) while the +10 melee deflection still applies. Could also be a spear (+engagement) or a hatchet (+deflection)...

I never had a problem with the concept of Arena back in the day, I had more issues with crossrealm being a thing. I called it back then that it'd kill of communities and I didn't like the arena having a separate system from the honour system. I didn't think Arena was as fun as BG's either so that sucked, but I still did it to a pretty high rank. I always prefered 5v5 which basically noone liked. Almost disliked it as much as mentioned dailies/weeklies -.- Selling cosmetics/expansions is one thing, but blatant pay to win is something people should work themselves up against. Peoples lack of engagement against the practice is why we are were we are afterall.

Hubby test drove a few Lexus'. They weren't any better re: his back being unable to handle even average freeway road jitter w/out pain. I guess $80k cars have no better suspensions (or tires, perhaps). He was a little annoyed with the sales reps because he told them what/why he was looking for and they all gave him blank stares as if they didn't understand what "smooth/soft ride" and a bad back meant. One told him to try the 4x4 versions ... Personally I think what he needs is a custom car cushion type thing, maybe even one with side supports/straps. I find no matter how great car suspensions are, or how fancy the leather covering is, most car *seats* are quite lacking on any actual padding. Although specific tires can make a big difference too sometimes. Maybe those car dealers all have performance tires that aren't very "soft riding."

Close to the end, but I'm actually considering whether downloading a 30GB just for the epilogue is worth it (you need a whopping 150GB or so of free SSD space also). Fun game, but seeing as it's got a reception as if it were a contender for THE greatest game of all time (regardless of platform, era or genre), I also think it's a bit oversold. You know why? Because mainstream audiences haven't actually gotten a taste in some case ever of a truly RPG. If you're coming from semi-interactive Hollywood action movies a la the Witcher with barely any choice (dialogue, character) and super linear quests that literally solve themselves (witcher senses...) -- this is an altogether new world opening up for you. I mean, the big studios in like the past two decades have tried anything to aggressively hide they're actually in the business of making RPGs either way. "Hi we're id Soft and from now on we're not in the business of making these boring shooters anymore. We're attempting something more modern for the modern sophisticated gaming audience, try it!" Absolutely ridiculous. There's an astonishing amount of work put into cinematics not breaking, and also a lot of interactivity -- as an example, I once disguised my char via a spell and got a completely different dialogue and quest progression when doing so... they also naturally needed to cover that players would finish the game entirelly solo and still cinematics still working out. Speaking of which, I actually this is a bit of a dead end, but more on that in the spoiler tag. Still, this doesn't feel like THE BIG RPG TO RULE THEM ALL. It actually feels like a game that picks up from the early 2000s had they never happened. Rather than the the crap that's actually happened (until crowdfunding, digital distrubtion et all) saved the day, that is. At least on the lower budget front. The only excuse I make for bigger studios is that they saw almost the entire RPG industry collapsing before: Origin, SSI, New World Computing, Sir-Tech, Troika, Interplay, Looking Glass, Bethesda pior to Morrowind almost too... Still with Bioware I'm wondering whether they would actually have made anything much RPG by their own choice, considering that it was Interplay to sign them for their engine -- and encouraging them to do a D&D game with it, being the license holder then. Considering that they did a Mech game before, later MDK 2 and by all accounts something more RTS-/MMORPG-like until Interplay came along, I can easily see a parallel universe where they never did anything remotedly resembling Ultima/GoldBox era games etc. at all. In other words: Chasing market trends from day 1, rather than being credited for revitalizing a struggling genre. There's no excuses from now on either way, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I'm kinda grumpy, sorry. Not expecting anybody to do a wave of isometric D&D-likes or anything. But at least something resembling a RPG, rather than aggressively trying to hide it. Also not going into semantics. But there's fully reason contemporary audiences consider games such as Assassin's Creed or Red Dead Redemption as RPGs. At this pace, Doom 2043 is gonna belong to the family just as well. And nobody's gonna object to it, except the chosen few getting tired of big budget games playing increasingly alike. So, about cinematics being a dead end.

This apparently popular video popped up in my feed. I like bass singers, so why not. I was only half-paying attention, glancing at video but mostly just listening, and it went like this: "Oh, there's four of them? ... they sound pretty good ... nice costumes ... are they a family of brothers or cousins or something? ... " Took me half the video to realize it was just one guy doing the video/sound mixing stuff. I lol'd at myself. Guy's got great range tho.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/11/30/henry-kissinger-anthony-bourdain-cambodia/ TL;DR: You can't travel the world like Bourdain did and avoid seeing the work of Henry Kissinger, which has a death toll in the millions.

https://www.ign.com/articles/max-payne-actor-james-mccaffrey-dies-aged-65 Well ****

Finally tried to watch Meg 2. It is not worth watching. The "evil miners" arc shouldn't even have existed and it took up way too much screen time. Felt like they lost most of the self-awareness nods the first movie had - eg, took out all the fun. So what you have left is a boring/dull wanna be more serious, underwater The Abyss and giant sea monsters overly talky action movie. I think the giant sharks where in it, sometimes.

I imagine Sarah's not going to like me much after the ruse is up and it's revealed that I'm actually working for the Crimson Fleet. She's way too prim and proper for my liking anyway. I need a woman that might murder me in my sleep. Hopefully she wouldn't, but the type that the possibility can't ever be completely discounted.