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Whenever people start talking about "biological women" I feel bummed out because I'm expecting to see a non-biological woman, by which I mean a lady robot, and that's never the case. If only the AI people put in work for that instead of an aggregated plagiarism generator that does everything bad and wrong then maybe we could be dealing with robots instead of whatever has the brain wormed mad this week. Would be refreshing.

Just started playing BG 3; I'm up to 5th level and heading into the Underdark. Playstyle-wise it's awfully similar to D:OS 1 & 2, with a D&D ruleset pasted on top. At least the characters have realistic-looking stats, unlike in D:OS. The amount of cut scene cinematics is impressive, and the facial/gesture animation work is top notch. But levelling up is definitely a slog, and too many battles are time-wasting do-overs. I had more fun with the Solasta tactical combat system; at least they felt winnable, up until they weren't. I definitely miss the Dodge action in BG 3.

Seems like the UA numbers about the RU casualties are pretty accurate. Mayor of Moscow admitted to cameras, that there are currently 600k soldiers attending medical rehabilitation 🤷‍♂️. Excerpt of his speech is somewhere after 3 minute mark of the video below. Also Russia shot down another civilian airliner, and and ther “chinese” ship cut another cable.

@Gorth I have this suspicion that BL4 may reduce the otp humor/jokes a bit. The trailer has me thinking they want to be taken a teensy (teensy) bit more seriously in that regard. Not sure why I feel that way but trailer gives me that vibe. I think at this point I wouldn't even mind if they did tone that down, it was getting a little out of hand. And yeah - BL3's plot and npc writing was terrible. Even for "what it is."

Finished Twin Mirror. It is a 3D point-and-click-style adventure. The story follows a freelance journalist whose friend died under mysterious circumstances. The puzzles are on the easier side and the number of retries is mostly unlimited, but the developers managed to implement pixel hunting in 3D - not only do you need to find the interaction point, you also need to position the main character at the right angle for the interaction prompt to appear. Some objects must be interacted with in a specific order, which occasionally leads to rather funny situations - at one point, the MC can run circles around the hostile locals before going to the objective (to look at a locked door from a distance), but once it is done, the locals try to physically assault the MC (not because of the door, because they actually did not see him 1 meter away before that). The main gameplay systems are the dialogues, with the helpful social imaginary friend commenting on the available options, general puzzles (e.g. finding a password to a computer), and the “Mind Palace”, the protagonist’s ability to recreate past events based on the uncovered evidence. They are mandatory to complete, the number of retries is unlimited, and there is only one correct solution. The only drawback is rewatching the cut-scene. Speaking of, the cut-scenes are unskippable, which makes replaying the game significantly less appealing. Other, less used, mechanics include a running and dodging sequence and some sort of quick-time events. There are also optional collectibles hidden around, but I did not look for them - walking around was very slow and quite boring, despite the locations being small. The graphics and sound are serviceable - nothing amazingly beautiful, nothing too horrible, good variety of character models, and a few original areas. The game would have been better in 2D pixel art style, but the developer seems to like 3D and unskippable cut-scenes. I played on Steam Deck, so cannot tell whether the controls are rebindable. The number of save slots is limited to 4 (it is possible to copy the saves between slots in-game) and the game auto-saves the progress, so Windows Explorer is still a better option. I have not encountered any bugs during my 7-hour-long playthrough. The aspects that elevate my opinion of the game are the endings and the not-terrible representation of the mental health issues (the MC mostly copes with it well and effectively shuts down during panic attacks; it is never explicitly stated what these issues are). The story branches close to the end and the choice affects the gameplay system used for the final confrontation and the epilogue. The differences are stark and playing through both endings was incredibly amusing. I also liked that the story was largely self-contained and the main conflicts were resolved satisfactorily. Overall, it was a positive experience and I would recommend to try it at least once, but when the game is heavily discounted (~75%-80%). I thank ShadySands for the key. --- As with D:OS, the player is expected to interact with the systems, i.e. cheese the fights* (stealth, barrels, talking, etc.). I found the animations to range from ridiculous to atrocious (especially the facial animations for the PC), but the immersive sim elements allowed to decrease the exposure to them* (the cut-scenes locking the characters in place were somewhat funny, but usually worked for the foes as well), which I greatly appreciate. Granted, the combat and the cut-scenes became harder to avoid from the end of Act 2 and onwards, excluding the spoiler below, but at least the latter were skippable. *a vague spoiler for Act 3:

Wrong board (ghostheart isn't in PoE1), but generally you'd go for Vicious/Protective/Stalkers Link and Predators Sense with ghost heart, the big advantage of the subclass is you don't have to invest much in the companion and can just 'fire' it at your target. You certainly don't want any of the healing powers since it's cheaper to just re-summon it.

I'm a very manly man, does that count for anything? 🤔 It has led to some funny situations and friendly jibes in my closest friend circle (which are mostly people in LGBT circles). From transgender over bisexual to my militant lesbian dentist friend (who already had a stockpile of face masks in 2020, because she had planned to fight the police in the streets, joining the fight against the then Morrison government). Said friends have regularly dragged me to places and events most people miss out on (their loss). Like queer gamer groups (the place where I truly learned to appreciate Cards against Humanity type games), theater plays where Juliette drops Romeo and runs away with her girlfriend, you name it. At some point, they wanted me to try a phone app that morphs you into either more feminine or more masculine features. The feminine appearance was sort of Okish (i'll never feature as a centerfold, that's for sure), but when trying the masculine morphs, they thought the app had broken 😂 (apparently my appearance could not be changed into something more masculine by the app, so it simply did nothing) Needless to say, I wouldn't swap those friends for anything in the world really. As for the subject of transgender sports and the fairness/unfairness of it?.... I've often thought about it and probably still am, without getting any closer to making my mind up what I could see as the best approach 🤷‍♂️ edit: they once teased me in the theatre, asking me if I didn't feel like the odd one out? Me, looking at the three girls just stated the obvious, because I'm the only guy here? To which the reply from the girls was I was the only straight person in the theatre 😝

Glad you enjoyed reading this @Chaospread ! Had fun writing and play testing. Anyway, yes Sharpshooter has a little recovery penalty but it is barely noticeable with the Scordeo Set passives, you attack at monk-level speeds 😄 And I like the bonus 15% Hit to Crit at >4m range from sharpshooter, though you are totally right, Stalker subclass would work as well (as would Ghost Heart if having animal companion annoys you). I have not tried Scordeo's with a monk, but I have played a variant of sin tee's Speed Demon build for Mirke using Streetfighter/Helwalker and Blunderbuss to activate Streetfighter passive, then switch to dual wield daggers. The speed of attack is incredible - I can imagine it would pair well with Scordeo's as well. Start battle with Swift Strikes (-> Lightning Strikes) to increase action speed, then blast with Scordeo's pistol. When you have enough stacks of Opening Shot, close in for melee. Here the monk has two abilities which are especially good: Heartbeat Drumming, which instantly causes another melee attack if your CRIT, and Stunning Surge which can refund wound cost if it CRITs.

That is kind of what happened historically here on earth though. Lots of voyages planned in completely misplaced confidence on the assumption nothing (substantive) would go wrong and in the expectation that everything will just work itself out once you were going. Let's not forget the greatest voyage of discovery here was Kupe Leif Erikson Chris Columbus confidently looking for a new route to India. Anything other than wide eyed optimism tends to mean you don't go at all.

Well, ok, some analysis. I like the basic setup of the story, and how it's different from the main series. But I have lots of problems with the story, mainly that the PC is given a hugely important title with almost religious reverence, out of pure nepotism from no actual results. And there's no reason the title or role should even exist, or given to just one person. And next to no one even comments on the ridiculousness of it. The other maim bugbear I have is that they took a 600 year trip to another galaxy, and no one apparently considered anything might go wrong, and apparently everyone expected it to be paradise on arrival. This kind of plot might suit a wackier setting with inefficient government like Outer Worlds, but doesn't really fit ME. There's a lack of suspense because the enemies apparently have a big space fleet, but prefer to have small squad shootouts on planets. None of the characters seem that interesting. Dunno how the plot develops, maybe it'll get better. As for gameplay, it's a weird mixup of ME1 and ME2/3, with wide open areas but still cover-based shooting. It kinda works ok, and is not that bad really. But most of the gameplay time is taken by planetary or area exploration, which just mounts to go to place X, press button, listen to narrative. Which would be kinda ok if all the places weren't so huge or if the narrative was interesting, so it ends up just being boring. Also, the game feels a bit unpolished. Lots of weird stuff, like stuff floating in the air, monsters spawning at your feet, the save corruptions I mentioned, which all just smells like unpolished content. I didn't follow ME:A when it was released, but I assume it was the lack of polish and uninteresting characters that killed the interest in it.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141417

But how this will anyway make things worse or increase hostilities? That weren't caused by killing 63 civilians fleeing war on railway station or killing over 20 people by blowing a shopping mall or blowing up a children hospital? Generals are legitimate targets in a war so they will be targets of strikes

I dunno man. I would probably differentiate between a rape case and sort of systemic rape (and murder). Obviously there will be a soldier who will rape (and murder) someone at some point. But if most of them do it, and it's kind of even expected, or at least not prohibited by their superiors, then... you know... it's not really the same in my opinion.

You mean that raping and murdering civilians like happened in start of didn't make it already much worse?

This act of terror (I am not sure if it fits in definition, although it somewhat fits in FBI's state sponsored terrorism if we accept Russia saying that Ukraine is terrorist nation ) seem to be odd bit to get much of focus considering that countries involved are in all out war, where they shoot hundreds of cruise missiles to each other civilian and military infrastructure. And hundreds some times thousand people die on fighting somewhere where they probably don't want to be. But then people get their sock twisted when one general and his assistant commanding those troops and ordering those missile strikes get killed in strike that didn't even kill any civilians