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And, while I am sure that isn’t their intention, it felt a lot like posturing, as they limit writing content for minor NPCs after act1. It feels as if the game is puffing its chest early on hoping, few will look further. Not that I have issue with it per se - random NPCs in act3 having unique barks is pretty good anyway, but it doesn’t make up for unfinished story arcs, dodgy world building and messy plot. I am still far more impressed by Arcanum than Bg3. It just felt smarter, production wise, and more effective.

Saints Row (reboot) is free on EGS today. Unfortunately, it also requires 64GB of free space, so not playing it now.

Yesterday, Bobby Kotick stepped down as Activision/Blizzard CEO. Sadly, he almost certainly got a HUGE payout on the way out, but at least he's gone.

vampyr never should have been a combat focused rpg narrative focused game like night road work far better

The loss of knowledge is interesting to me. Sure, the understanding of a one of one device like the Mechanism could be lost to the sands of time, but presumably the recipe for Roman concrete would have been common knowledge to thousands of workers who would just mix and pour it on site over the centuries? Nobody wrote it down anywhere?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Much better than I expected. The somewhat recycled scenes from the first movies and the flashback in the beginning gave me a good impression right away. I expected it would get worse later, but it didn't happen. The story does seem even more far fetched than usual though. I enjoyed it and it's definitely better than Skull Kingdom. I don't remember if @PK htiw klaw eriF has watched it already, so, will the world end now?

That's where they crossed the line. They have insurance fraud, though, right?

They've gone too far, gimp suit ponyplay should be a part of every videogame.

It is a fun game though. So grab it if you use EPIC. The "woke" accusations are *roll eye* It is a game I believe could even be enjoyed by Bruce. The problems: It is a bit too best-friends-squad It is not a grotesque like the old series. They made a few bad decisions (at launch you had only one garage on a huge map) It is aimed at a new, young audience, not as old gits who played the old series.

He seems to be doing better but 40+ years of smoking have ****ed his lungs. Procedure will hopefully happen next week and then we'll see if he has to go to physical rehab or can go home.

Every Larian game is a front-loaded mess. Even Dragon Knight Saga falls apart after acquiring the dragon tower.

Finished Vampyr. It is mostly fine, though, there are issues. In Chapter 5 (out of 6), I found a police officer, but was unable to report the previously-met serial killer, gang leaders, the child abuser, or the poisoner. The only way to anyhow prevent them from causing harm to random people was to lethally bite them, which would result in a worse ending. From what I've read (haven't tried myself), killing or not killing civilians is the only way of interaction with them - quests do give XP, but the NPC's state does not seem to change, while, for example, if the serial killer is killed, his mother adopts the homeless orphan. Additionally, as mentioned, slaughtering the nameless vampire hunters was perfectly fine and did not affect the endings or the MC's appearance (again, haven't tried myself, but the more civilians are eaten, the redder the MC's eyes become). In terms of combat, while most of the regular opponents were possible to interrupt with normal attacks (thus, just hitting them until the stamina ran out was a viable strategy), it only partially worked with the bosses, though the later ones resisted the interruptions with normal attacks (the abilities mostly worked). The targeting was somehow odd - sometimes, the opponents could glide several meters forward while also changing directions mid-swing, sometimes, the attacks worked like they would in Dark Souls. On a positive note, I quite liked the second form of the final boss, easy may it be, - the boss was impossible to bite (so, no healing in combat) or interrupt, but the boss' damage was low and attacks clearly telegraphed, so it was defeated on the first attempt (the first stage took several, because I counted on being able to stagger the boss and did not notice how much damage the stacking poison clouds were doing). The ending was funny, partially, because the information told by the NPCs was presented in a diary found 2 minutes before the dialogue. I also found the best sword (by accidentally seeing it mentioned on the forums and having the collectible required to solve the puzzle leading to it) and water for the plant at the MC's office (that one I almost missed). I did not rest after the Chapter 5 boss battle, because I was worried that the districts' condition might worsen and did not have enough XP to level up. Another thing I noticed is that one of the Irish NPCs was using the American date format for his diary, mm/dd/yy, instead of dd/mm/yy. Overall, while Vampyr was not anyhow close to VtMB, it was playable. Considering that I still have the manual saves created via Windows Explorer, I might try to see what happens if more people are bitten.

Hope the procedure goes well and your dad recovers KP.

I watched Rebel Moon and agree with most of what people are saying here. The beginning was good. I liked the little Space Amish Viking community. It was a nice looking film and the actors were good. But yeah, it felt half baked. I'm sure we'll get a 4-hour Snyder Cut that will be fully cooked but filled with overly long gazes.

No there was definitely something wrong with that trailer. Story-rich does not preclude plot-holes and contradictions. It just means it has a lot of story. Just like calorie-rich food doesn't mean it tastes good or is healthy. Anyways, BG3 is an absolute mess of story, for sure. They tried to give every throwaway NPC a backstory and it's a bit crazy. It's one thing to have a town with named NPC's and quests revolving around them, but then they named every NPC in the enemy bases. Even the forest critters seem to have backstories. I didn't stop many to ask, but I'm sure each of the squirrels running around the forests have some lengthy diatribe on their family history. Is it good story? I've said it before, if you don't like Larian's writing, then you aren't going to like that they put 1000% more in this game.

If your Windows flash drive is not bootable, reformat it with Rufus or a similar program via a Windows installer .iso so that it is bootable (there's really no reason not to have a Windows installer flash drive not be bootable!): https://rufus.ie/en/

Race: I went with Pale Elf for extra defensive capabilities, but Hearth Orlan would also be a good choice. Stats: 15 might, 10 con, 15 dex, 20 + 1(white that wends), 14 intellect, 3 resolve Class: Stalker and Skald (I went with wolf pet for dps/style. If you want less fussiness with the pet, pick bear) Skills: Whatever you want really, but I'd recommend putting at least some points into athletics for an emergency heal as you can be a little squishy at times. I did basically an even split of alchemy/athletics, but arcane and/or explosives would also be pretty nice on this build. Build Marked Prey, Thrice Was She Wronged, And Thrice Justly Avenged, Come Come Soft Winds of Death Resilient Companion Vicious Companion Two Weapon Fighting, At The Sound Of His Voice, The Killers Froze Stiff Protective Companion Takedown Revive Companion, Her Revenge Swept Across The Land Ancient Memory Marked For The Hunt Stalker's Link, The Long Night's Drink Hunter's Claw Takedown Combo Faithful Companion, Seven Nights She Waited While The White Winds Wept Reny Garet's Ghost Ben Fidel's Neck Was Exposed They Shielded Their Gaze (optional if you dont mind swapping to Modwyr for fights with intellect afflictions), Hunter's Fang Tough Improved Critical Her Tears, Potent Empower Accurate Empower Weapon proficiencies: sabre, large shield Important Items: Obsidian Wurm (pet), Sasha's Singing Scimitar (with refreshing finale), Grave Calling (or Sun & Moon). Magnera's Chain. Backup slot = tower shield + Modwyr. Party support: You'll want a tank and healer support as this character is more of a striker/dps. How this build plays I like Chanters in Deadfire. They've got fun and powerful abilities, and with Sasha's Singing Scimitar they can hit pretty hard with invocations. So this character is essentially built to hit as hard and accurately as possible with invocations. Thrice Was She Wronged will be your bread and butter for much of the early game and it hits extremely hard (especially when empowered). You'll also find that many enemies aren't very resistant to lightning damage. It's an awesome damage type. For CC, you have The Killers Froze Stiff. This is a great invocation that paralyzes enemies and (importantly imo) targets a different defense from your other invocations. While her revenge and seven nights target reflex, this one targets will. It's handy for enemies that may have high reflex defenses or just enemies you need to CC. So what this character does is once it gets Sasha's Scimitar it opens a fight with an empowered invocation (one of the DPS ones if you don't need CC, otherwise you can use Killers Froze Stiff to buy your party time to position/get buffs up) and then it contributes melee dps until it has enough phrases to cast again. It's a fairly straightforward playing style. Use your pet plus hunter's mark and hunter's claw to get massive accuracy bonuses for your spells and melee attacks. You will crit quite often. Takedown combo plus an empowered Her Tears can do disgusting damage. I mainhanded Grave Calling which I think is a fine weapon for a crit based character. You could also choose to use Sun and Moon. I didn't use that one because I wanted to have another party member use it. (in my game, I had a Stalker/Fury Merc using Thelee's "Big Game Hunter" build, and so I let that build use Helm of White Void + Sun & Moon). There are other nice crit based mainhand weapons as well. The important thing is off handing Sasha's Singing Scimitar. Modwyr is a nice backup weapon to have for fights where enemies like to use intellect afflictions. Because this build dumps resolve those can be annoying to deal with. The dumped resolve doesn't matter that much in terms of your deflection because Stalker gives an inherent +5 deflection bonus as well as an AR bonus. Those make up somewhat for dumping resolve. I also took the chant "They Shielded" in case I wanted to approach those fights without weapon swapping. A tower shield is also recommended to have on hand as a backup slot for ship boarding fights or any fights where lots of range might hit you at once. You will need that survivability to not instantly go down from gunfire. Once they fire their volley you can swap back to main slot weapons. I didn't pump my int super high as I felt dex/per/might were a little more important. A Skald imo doesn't need super high int if you're using the invocations I did as most of these are just dps invocations. Higher int would help a bit for Killers Froze Stiff but what I had I felt like was enough. Overall, I enjoyed this build. There's nothing special about it in terms of new synergies or item discoveries. But I think it's a solid, effective, build that uses offensive invocations as well as melee attacks to dish out lots of damage. The fact that it can cc well and also lower enemy defenses (I rarely used Ben Fidels but in tough fights it can be handy if you need an accuracy boost) is just a bonus. For Chants I typically ran with The Long Nights Drink plus Ancient Memory. Long Nights Drink doesn't actually help land any of our spells, but it does help our party land attacks that debuff fort, and debuffing enemy might helps our survivability somewhat. I found that passively debuffing enemy fort defenses all the time was fantastic for my other party members who wanted to use abilities that target fort. Debuffing fort does also help us land takedown combo more reliably, so there is that too.

The reason why I thought about Conjurer etc. was to get to +6 PL, Tactical Barrage: +1 Stone of Power: +1 Conjurer: +1 Wellspring of Life: +1 Lord of the Forest: +2 But I tested the Lance and as I feared the Lord of the Forest effect (+2 PL) disappears as soon as you switch to another weapon set. So I personally would just use Tactical Barrage, Wellspring of Life and 2 Stones of Power to conveniently get to +3 in every fight. But the Lance gave me an idea for a Druid/Forbidden Fist.

Tom Wilkinson.

I was the Latina in Saints Row 2, does that make me woke? I just liked her voice and spicy attitude.

Guess it has to be woke because it has female and black characters... just like the original.

Forgot I need to work in office 2 days a week this year. I get to collaborate with people on Teams there, brilliant.