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While I haven't played the game myself, there's an in-game option to turn off QTEs when the player attacks, which solves half the problem. However it doesn't affect the QTEs for when you're defending, which I assume is a game balance thing - if you succeed every single time, you never take damage and thus the game completely breaks. Fortunately there's already a mod to tweak them by increasing the window by 50/100/200%.

am actual not familiar with the mechanics o' what happened... am only able to speak to law/legal issues. as is typical for those in our profession, reality and all its attendant filthy details is often an annoying distraction from the important questions. <-- sarcasm. perhaps ironic, am able to speak to alito's curiously obtuse dissent w/o needing get into the legal weeds-- you not need be a lawyer to see problem with alito's position. presumptively, the reason scotus provided middle of the night and weekend emergency relief is 'cause the aclu, on behalf o' their clients, informed the Court that the government had put venezuelans on buses seeming with the intent o' taking 'em beyond the physical jurisdiction o' current habeas rulings limiting their deportation, so as to send 'em to el salvador w/o additional meaningful due process. ... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/legal-fight-raged-ice-buses-filled-venezuelans-heading-airport-turned-rcna202007 and today we learned o' more government shenanigans albeit in a tangential related case. https://www.justsecurity.org/110842/ice-dod-custody-deportations-cecot/ "The D.V.D. case directly affects the administration’s ability to deport Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador without an opportunity for them to present their claims of potential torture as required by federal statute. As I discuss at greater length in the substack, a key element to focus upon is that ICE retained custody over the detainees following the court’s Mar. 28 order and then appeared to switch them over to the Department of Defense (DoD) for transfer by military plane to El Salvador. The line of defense (some would say the game) being played here by the government is that DHS/ICE is a named defendant in the case but DOD is not." to get around a temporary restraining order which prevented ice/dhs from sending detainees out of the country, the government had ice/dhs transfer custody of detainees to the Department of Defense, who then went ahead and deported individuals protected by the tro. dude. am aware this is the kinda sh!te people believe is what attorneys do for a living, but that kinda rulez lawyering which happens in the worst dnd campaigns most certainly don't fly with federal judges. the tro named ice/dhs and not dod, but there is also standard boilerplate language in those tros which covers pretty much anybody working for/with or in aid o' those named in the tro, and if ice (executive branch o' the fed government) formal transferred custody of the detainees to dod (also part of the executive branch o' the fed government,) then is no court in the land which is gonna three wise monkey their way outta holding dod just as bound by the tro as ice. most courts has gotta be losing the patience and faith typical afforded to the executive. is utter unreasonable to pretend this is all just same ol' same ol'. alito pretending mock indignation when the trump administration is making blatant their efforts to thwart and undermine Court orders is less than compelling. again, the government had detainees on buses headed to an airport. taking those detainees outta the country from the texas district woulda' been illegal, but the shell game o' moving detainees just ahead o' court orders from new jersey or dc were something the feds had already done. even so, it is complete ridiculous to suggest the government would try the same shenanigans in texas, right? "fool me once..." so, for what reason did alito and thomas believe ice were carrying out their little fieldtrip? maybe the venezuelans were being taken for a weekend disneyworld excursion? even if you can imagine an innocuous explanation for the government's actions, what reasonable person would complete dismiss the possibility that the feds were trying to exploit the ordinary slow pace o' a typical judicial response? the fact the government were using "counterterrorism operations" as an excuse for not supplying details to plaintiffs AND the Court is not only beyond the pale, but it should make reasonable persons more suspicious about the government motives, no? nevertheless, alito and thomas can't figure why the aclu and the Court majority is getting their shorts in a twist. ... other than death penalty executions, it is difficult to imagine a more clear example o' the need for emergency intervention by the Court than we see regarding the possible extra judicial deportation of detainees to el salvador... and we remain reluctant to call such activities "deportations" as what is happening is that the US, without due process, is sending residents o' this country to a prison in el salvador for an indeterminate period a time. wtf

It's quick time events in combat. To increase your damage, you have to hit the attack button at the right time (not that hard to do). On enemy attack, you either dodge, parry, or jump to avoid, mitigate damage, or counter attack. This is the part that feels kinda Dark Souls-ish, but so far it's not *that* hard. Also you can change the difficulty settings at any time to "story mode", which makes it a lot easier as well. Personally I'm playing on default. Some fights have been harder and I had to repeat them a couple times, but it feels quite rewarding once you memorize attack pattern and get through it on your own. I am in act 2 now with approx 16 hours played. Needed a break right now, but will continue later today. The characters are very likeable and it's generally a quite addictive game. The only thing that kinda bothers me is the lack of a map and directional guidance at times. You need to watch your surroundings closely, or you can end up running in circles a lot.

Why would people play Avowed on Steam when they can play it for cheap on Xbox Gamepass? Anyways, Avowed did quite well. Not sure why they'd be lumped in with Veilguard. edit: Sounds like Avowed reached about 6 million, and Veilguard reached about 1.5 million, so not really close to comparable.

Batman update: Second half of the season has generally been much stronger and more consistent than the first half. Less episodes that feel like they were written by idiotic ten year old boys that think Batman is just the coolest and is never weak or makes mistakes certainly helps a lot. I've noticed that most of the best episodes, including most of the Joker and/or Harley Quinn episodes, are written by one Paul Dini, and there have been some pretty great episodes among those. I read this excerpt from the infamous episode "Harley and Ivy", the first time Harley and Poison Ivy teamed up together, which would be a reoccurring partnership in the decades to come: Quote: According to Paul Dini, this was meant to be the first prime time episode. "Fox was going to run it. Then a Fox executive saw it and said 'What the hell is this? Batman's not in this episode. He's only in it at the end? The whole episode is two girls running around in their underwear. There's no boy appeal here.' I said, 'Well maybe not any boys you know.' They refused to run it in prime time. Their idea of a perfect [episode] is 'I Am the Night.' That meets their criteria. It's dark and grim, with more of an adult feel and Robin was in it." Interesting thought process by that Fox executive there. I would say that "Harley and Ivy" was among the best episodes of Batman: TAS (and it was the first time you ever see Harley without her makeup or costume, with her normal hair and in normal clothing), with a lot of very interesting subtext about Harley's abusive relationship with the Joker that would come to fruition later in the Joker's murderous betrayal of Harley...also written by Paul Dini, in the final episode of the whole series. It's almost kind of like some writers were actually trying to tell evolving long-form stories about their characters, while some other writers were just smashing their action figures together.

Ok, I've played it for about an hour. It's basically the same jank as back in the days, just with some more pretty graphics now. Thing is, it really replaces everything with new, more pretty graphics, but it's just not enough. Now with the huge view distance, the world feels tiny and fake, even more than in the original experience. To me it honestly looks worse than Morrowind with e.g. OpenMW engine and some graphic mods. That game, even with huge view distance enabled, did not feel tiny. Additionally, thanks to stupid Unreal Engine shenanigans, my GPU fans are running crazy and I have no idea why. Temperatures are fine... got the same issue in some other UE games (but not all of them). No clue what's causing this, but I don't want to play next to a hair dryer that won't ever stop. Game still has the same issues ofc. Terrible story, terrible dialog, terrible NPCs, there are enemy mobs in stupid places every few meters, because by god you can't enjoy a walk without having to fight something for once. I killed a wolf, kept following the road and in like 20 meters distance already saw the next wolf waiting for me. No thanks. The ai detection range seems to be the same or similar as back in the days, which means it won't move until I'm close enough to activate its behavior. Very cool when you're standing in some wide, open field. I really hate that game with a passion. Exactly the same issues as in Fo3, Skyrim, etc... at least Skyrim has a pretty game world, that looks even better with some mods. There are rumors that a Fo3 remake will be next. I kinda hope they will do it.. not because I want to play it, god no, it's a terrible turd as well, but because then there is a chance for a FNV remake after all.