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Just skipping past the part of character creation that lets you change your pronouns or going into your game settings to disable the game from letting you change them is effectively the exact same thing (and I would find any suggestion of the contrary to be quite hilarious: I'd genuinely love to see someone explain how the game asking you about it on one page is to-o-otally different from being asked about it on another page), but if it makes the mouth-foaming troglodytes mad that they can't do the latter, I'm against including it as an option.

We're now at talking about options to turn off options designed to make people feel included in order to make people feel included that don't feel included because they don't like inclusionary options even though there's the option to just leave them on their default setting. Did you come up with the Starchild in Mass Effect 3? edit: And with that, I think I'm out. Have fun.

Stop over at Shanghai airport. Friend I am traveling with went for a smoke and missed boarding. Tried getting around Tokyo with two huge suitcases and both our carry on. People were quite amused. As one lady said: "You must have a lot of kids" probably thinking I was carrying presents for all of the little rascals. I knew passive smoking was bad.

I am not transgender, and I don't personally know well anyone who is (or if I do, they have not informed me). My interactions with people who have made it immediately known that they are transgender have been consistently unpleasant and unwelcome, but it's not exclusive to them, that's always the case with those who immediately make whatever their identity is known to everyone and anyone right off the bat, no matter what it may be: an identity is never adequate substitute for personality. I don't really even believe in assigning meaning to "he", "she", or "they" beyond it being a useful tool of language to make clear as to whom is being referred to in conversation, and I have said as much to others in real life conversation, to people both ardently pro-transgenderism and vehemently against it, where a not untypical retort from the latter group is to mockingly refer to me as she/her, but again, as I really don't care, it's always quickly dropped because of how little it actually impacts reality in any meaningful way beyond confusing others when someone uses the wrong ones. The former group will usually just be happy if you're willing to try to use the right ones, which I do, because again, it really doesn't matter to me, it's just arbitrary connotations of language, which itself is made-up, so why not try to respect others if you can, especially when it seems to matter a great deal to them even if it doesn't to you? But the option in these games to switch from one to the other is always the absolute barest lip service, with zero content or mechanics designed behind it, it's just a simple flag that is checked to say "the player picked a male/female character, swap any said pronouns to the opposite option that we've already designed to account for (or a neutral/third option that they've defined)". That's it, it probably took all of half an hour to an hour for one person to implement, maybe a little more to integrate it into the character creation UI. Wow, so woke...get a grip.

There is this, re. DA:V sales: https://thatparkplace.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-rumored-to-have-sold-less-than-star-wars-outlaws/

So that was rule number 1. I always mix this one up with your rule number 2: if there are mods that improve your gaming experience, use them.

Well, guess again, its not. But I agree, it looked boring even without politics

I will not touch the "pronoune" conversation, but the backlash between the word "art" and call to appease as many demographics as possible is too much for me to ignore. The word you are looking for is "product".

@Mamoulian War Mamie, Slovakian GTA game " Vivat Slovakia is an open-world game set in the newly independent Slovakia, a country on the dividing line between East and West. As remnants of communism linger, weakened institutions allow corruption to thrive, and power falls into the hands of the highest bidder. Fueled by money and violence, the “wild '90s” era brings a city steeped in intrigue and danger. " Day I purchase for sure???

Blame it on my age... I grew up with games having exactly one release! It either worked or it didn't. If it didn't you would not buy more from that developer 😁 (you probably also developed some thick skin and high tolerance threshold, anything short of a game breaking bug that would corrupt your save was not considered a real bug)

Definitely dont buy it yet, wait 3-4 months until all the official patches are released Gorthfuscious, whats the "BruceVC number one rule about buying a new game " ? Never put yourself through a subpar gaming experience when a game is released too early. Wait for the official patches, thats the best way to ensure less anxiety and frustration and a better overall gaming experience 🥂

I can quote Lexx's post and that doesn't work for me: it just will not let me. I've had it happen on my own posts, the whole box becomes non-responsive no matter how many times I refresh the page or re-open editing the post, it's like it's become one whole element unto itself. The only thing it will let me do is delete the entire thing.

Are you suggesting to create a safe space for Joe Somebody the Slightly Conservative snowflake so they (*snicker*) don't get triggered by an option in a game? Sorry, but that makes no sense in the context of a silly toggle that lets you set your pronouns in the game. It already is a toggle, and everyone is free to keep the default pronouns for their picked character gender. In all the games I have played so far that have a pronoun option, it was pre-filled with the default for your picked gender, and it is entirely optional to switch between the usual sets, i.e. he/him, she/her, they/them. It changes nothing else about the dialogue because that really just puts your choice into placeholders in the dialogue files that already have to be there to account for your character's gender choice. No dialogue was hurt in making the feature.

Oh my god, guys. I finally did it. My weapon started to break down near the end, so I had to do the last couple attacks with barely dealing any damage. It was really damn close and I expected having to restart any second now. But for some reason Kos (or some say, Kosm...) kept missing me. Maybe my frantically dodging to the left broke the ai before it broke me. PS: Even after all those years, the spoiler function is still dog poop. Why can't I edit text inside a spoiler? Why is there no markup editor here? Terrible forum software.

I don't see problems with pronouns. I just use she/her and romance hottest chick in game.

Yeah, not sure it can easily be fixed, if at all. The review touches on one of the core problems: the game immerses you and then brutally shatters that immersion in quite a lot of ways. I've been going off the beaten path now that I'm out of the starting area, just sightseeing, finding, and revisiting areas from the previous games (mostly SoC, which I have easily the most hours in) and this Reddit thread kinda sums up the experience. Just to add a few stories of my own: Ended up in the Chemical Plant, walked right in without issues, no word from the guards, no hostility either, until I got to the other side, where the gate guard told me Stalkers weren't allowed in. Of course I already was "in" and wanted "out"... The game just didn't anticipate players coming from that direction (and both sides have roads, not like I jumped a wall or did anything else "weird", like jumping over a fence) Another one happened today. I found the Military Warehouses and started exploring. Got ambushed by what I believe is a Pseudodog (the one that create clones) and a few Snorks (at least they fought each-other as well). Deal with them and start exploring the otherwise entirely empty place. After checking for hostiles outside I start going inside buildings to start looting. I come across stuff that's clearly intended for later use (doors requiring keycards), so I loot what I can and go back outside. Only to find three bandits waiting for me that came out of nowhere. So I shoot them, only to get blasted by a bunch of other NPCs from some military faction that also suddenly appeared (presumably alongside the bandits, which they entirely ignored...). So after I deal with those, barely, and I start looting I get a bullet through the head. Turns out snipers had also magically spawned on top of the guard towers... So I re-load, take out the snipers, and get back to looting, only to get jumped by four Snorks... Kite them into an anomaly, and I finally get to loot without interruption, only to discover that one of the towers that had a sniper doesn't have a way to get up at all, just to shatter any illusion of them getting there organically somehow. (also: bye bye to that loot) When I did my 1.000 experiment and installed from DVD I couldn't turn everything all the way up without things stuttering (there's some additional sliders under "Advanced" that aren't maxed out even on the highest quality profile). Curious to know whether you managed to max those out without issues (always possible later patches fixed performance)

I am still pretty certain that I will enjoy this game and the recent previews have been a lot more promising than those from earlier in the year. That being said, it seems that the vocal majority are now hating on this game because of a couple of people's thoughts on pronouns, and now the art director has stoked the fires a little more. Personally, I don't care about any of that, and if the reviews on release are promising then I will be more than likely to grab this soon after. Also, having realised I never finished Deadfire, I'm back into that game to wrap up my campaign before February.

I had actually considered getting STALKER 2, but... my favourite game reviewer gave some damning feedback. Maybe in a year or two, after a dozen patches?

Wishlisted Avowed

Jim Abrahams of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker fame. Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane!, Police Squad.

So I finally completed my run through the old Baldur's Gate games: BG1, SoD, BG2:SoA and ToB. I did a very thorough completionist run through them, doing all side quests and all companion quests, and even all the Unfinished Business mod restored quests. And on account of a mod, I even got to do all of the stronghold questlines, some of which I had never done before. As I'd mentioned previously, although I'd replayed these games many times in the distant past, this was my first playthrough since the EEs were released. As such I'm glad I did this, because I feel very certain this was my final time playing those games, the simple reason being that I just cannot stand playing 2e ADnD rules and mechanics anymore. The story and the characters still stand the test of time, and I don't mind the dated graphics but I cannot abide the gawd-awful 2e system, and so with a certain amount of sadness I've uninstalled all the Infinity Engine games from my Steam library.