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Didn't see one, so I figured I would create one, just to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you lovely saints, sinners, heretics, heathens, faithful, lost and found people out there. I haven't been active online much the last month and a half, because crunch time and projects going live at years end. Comes with the profession Hope you guys are going to enjoy some time off with family, friends, loved ones or favourite spider pet, whatever you fancy

Happy Holidays indeed y'all! FYI https://forums.obsidian.net/announcement/74-happy-holidays/

Merry Christmas everyone and happy NY This is my best holiday of the year

Happy horror days?

Yes, of course. That's why I said "highly evolved AI systems." So, not current AI systems, which I agree are hugely limited (and biased) by their human creators and maintainers. I'm talking future AI systems that can truly think for themselves, and thereby overcome and reject the initial biases and bull**** their human creators input into them. But that's unfortunately a rather long way off, and very likely well after I'm dead and gone. Very sad.

The only people that AI should replace are CEOs and politicians.

and a Festivus for the rest of us!

Happy Holidays!

It's a give and take. Both have attempted to be solved by timed quest and autoleveled enemies. Neither of which is good and makes for games I personally dislike. I will rather take a narrative hit and the chance that I may be overleveled for the main quest that the alternative.

And also on the smaller scale

I appreciate the thoughtful response. However, separating art from the artist works when the artist no longer benefits from the royalties*. Rowling still does and is actively using her fortune to cause harm, regardless of how popular the IP is. When it is 6 feet underground and the fund set up specifically to finance transphobic lawsuits is dismantled, then sure. *excluding the financial aspect/from the cultural point of view, I'd say if you can experience the work in isolation from the author's biography and understand it fully.

Enshrouded: for some reason I thought this was an online/MP-co-op focused survival/exploration/building and questing game, - also, early access - so I've ignored it. Then learned recently it can be Offline/SP. Then I learned you can customize difficulty/combat options a fair bit - including a setting where maybe 90% of enemies would ignore you until you attack first - or the usual reduce enemy damage/health while increasing player health/dmg etc. It was on a bit of a sale, bought it. So far it seems ok - the exploration/world aspect seems fun. Seems to be one of those games where it'd take quite a while to figure out how all the crafting, building works. Might even need a wiki for finer points, game doesn't really explain much re: certain things, learn as you play. Not saying it's complex, just a bit confusing here and there. Combat has dodge/parry but overall also seems to be more akin to general rpg then "souls like". Like, I made a 1st wand that has a ranged attack and so far (on my ez-cozy settings anyway) I've only had to spam its attack like it's Path of Exile. Building in the new-game start is a bit confusing/awkward but also would scratch the obsessive-brain tendencies if that's one's thing. At some point one needs npc villagers and workers to upgrade one's base/s. Or something. Tame pets (?), farm, all of that. Anyway - I made a first small base/did stuff in starter area and it was good enough I'll press forward. My main interest was the exploration/building factors.

It will go completely unnoticed. As that's what TES has been ever since.

Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays!

Merry holidays and happy Christmas, everybody!

Wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

On AI use, sorry but I am hardcore in the opposite direction from most of you. Given my strong negative views of (most) humans (nature, capability, behavior), I can't wait for highly evolved AI systems to replace humans. I especially can't wait for AI systems to replace humans as drivers given the basic inability of most humans to properly operate an automobile.

I'm sorry but everyone is doing it now, even if they say they don't. It's more honest of them mentioning it than just going "nooooo, we would neeever use ai!!1" while the truth is that their devs sure as **** are using ai to some extend.

I think Expeditions: Viking managed to achieve it - the time limit was generous but present and made sense for the story. I suppose, the same could be said about the tutorial in Tyranny, but the scale there was smaller. For Larian's D&D game, if I am not mistaken, the party discovered that the illithid transformation is delayed quite early and from there it was trying to find a cure at a more leisurely pace. Then again, even if it continued to be urgent, every other NPC was promising solutions at the start, so going along with them could be in-character. Well, also looking for a high-level cleric, a pickaxe, and the True Resurrection spell, which would be travelling straight to the nearest large city.

I have finished Atlas Fallen on the highest difficulty in NG+. The interesting part is that the tools available (the weapon upgrades, new armour sets, and the more powerful Essence Stones) effectively offset it - while the bosses could 1-shoot me, I also was almost instantly and constantly at high Momentum (which additionally meant higher damage to me) and able to use the Shatter attacks with a lot of i-frames repeatedly. The longer battles were somewhat challenging, especially as the screen was getting more "noise" (from the weapon particles to the number of opponents), but, overall, it was easier than the first playthrough. The only issue is one of the randomly appearing battles with various modifiers. The foes to be faced vary, but the reward progression is static and carries over between the NG cycles. The thing there is that it is not hard to get hit once and the battle despawns after that. I assume, if I reloaded, the same battle would have been accessible at the same spot, but I have not tried. The regular random battles have an auto-save nearby and the main story ones can be restarted from the start of the encounter which is incredibly convenient. I am satisfied with the experience and might try replaying it in a few years. On a random note, the NG+ armour sets look much better than the NG ones. They are more detailed and more fitting.

ok, finished Silksong. 100% completion, all achievemnents unlocked, but 4 ones speedrun and ironman related. I liked it very much. I have nitpicks, though a lot of it is related to optional content so I don't know how to feel about it. Some 100% requirements I thought were unreasonably tedious or obscure, but then again, it is completely optional to do so . I am sure someone figuring some things out, for me it was googling things out once I run out of ideas and went "how the heck was I supposed to find that?!". Not as good of a metroidvania as Hollow Knight, but much better action-platformer. Loved movement, really liked combat. Most bosses are excellent, few are tedious. Ah, I wasn't too fond of act3. The bosses that become available there are great, but overall I am not sure of the new content available there required an entire new act3. Then again, I thought Castlevania's reverse castle was a bit lame as well.

Well, maybe. If your story is "I have a ticking bomb and need to solve it ASAP", then I would say you either create a linear adventure that will support this story, or create more open adventure that still forces player to hurry and move forward. I just don't think urgency and here is massive world full of optional content mesh together. Neither is a bad choice, and I just don't those two choices go well together. And of course, various games suffer from it in various ways. That a problem is common, doesn't make it non-existent, and if you make narratively centric game, it sticks out if the experience of playing the game doesn't support said narrative - at least it does to me. If game builds up someone to be a powerful being they should be a difficult fight. If the game builds up something as urgent, at least it should provide narrative excuse as to why we might want to get distracted. I am not saying that such flawes make a game automatically terrible, but it might negatively impact the experience for some looking to get immersed in the story.

On the other hand, the existing Forgotten Realms worldbuilding can get in the way of immersion as well. I did not find the existence of the Act 2 area being left cursed for the past 100 years to believable for example, in a similar way perhaps to how Bethesda Fallout games would have you believe people still live in bombed out ruins full of debris 200 years after the war. And that's to say nothing of how the story interacts with access to restorative and resurrection magic in the setting. But yeah, mechanically the D:OS games were weird with the extremely steep level scaling essentially funneling the player into a fixed path through the zones. BG3 didn't have that issue at all, but in some ways had the opposite problem inherent to modern D&D which unbelievably still has things like empty level-ups where you don't do anything but click the confirm button, and the continuing insanity of only every second stat point increase doing anything (seriously, a quarter of a century of this nonsense). Thankfully Cyberpunk did not level/stat/perk-gate silent takedowns so I could still merrily ignore every single mechanic complained about by that YouTuber. Healing? Grenades? Stamina? Never heard of 'em.

Turn-based counts me out - well, 98% chance of that, anyway. The only Divinity I played was Divine Divinity, anyway (GoG version ages ago), and I assume new Divinity wouldn't resemble anything like that, even if it wasn't TB. I don't think I finished DD. I remember really liking the early game/early dungeons, having a grand old time. But I don't remember why I stopped. I vaguely feel like I found the enemy power curve too high or something, like jogging two screens over was occasionally akin to exploring the "wrong" way in FONV and running into deathclaws. So at some point after much optional mucking about, gear etc, I followed MQ where I promptly died in some fantastic unexpected fashion, or ran into my usual "story commits choices, ugh" and I didn't want to bother. But maybe I'm mixing up memories again, heh.

The game tailormade for the memory crisis: Foolish Mortals. 90 rating on Metacritic, 97% user recommendation on Steam, 20 bucks price tag, 2GB RAM required, 8GB disk space and more heart put into it than you could possibly count. Initially, I wanted to relive Christmas 1998. Spent that on solving Grim Fandango three days straight. However, after this introduction, I wasn't able to wait any longer. They said there was a treasure on the island, its location known only to the dead. I could see it in my dreams. How was I supposed to know that in order to find it... I'd have to die too.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/divinity-will-be-turn-based-with-a-new-ruleset/ TB it seems.

I could see them simplifying the name if they're making turn-based RPGs their signature and just soft-reboot the naming scheme. The name Divinity: Original Sin is a bit of a mouthful otherwise. But it's also fully possible that gameplay might resemble Divinity 2 (third person new Witcher-like), or less likely, Divine Divinity (isometric Diablo-like). I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's got no chance of resembling Dragon Commander.

BG3 doesn't split XP, you're on the same levelling curve whether solo or with a party of six and XP is synced such that any party member with less XP than your main character will be brought up to match them. Note this doesn't work in the reverse, so it's possible to get companions that are higher level than the player character (though this is only really likely to be seen when speedrunning). For the most part, it also attempts to prevent double-dipping on XP, in that if you kill an enemy after talking your way past them, they won't award any kill XP. Yeah, this catches out a few people and is a bit of a silly outcome. I think it's an engine limitation - enemies can't go through zone transitions so the ones outside can never reinforce the ones inside and vice versa. That limitation also means the optimal solution is to fast travel out from the indoor area so you can engage the outdoor ones from a safer distance. (It's also a bit dumb that two of the leaders can be assassinated properly with the camp remaining neutral, but one just sets an unavoidable faction-wide aggro flag) Speaking of engine limitations, the text-only "books" in the game are a pretty glaring one. The system doesn't support graphics so even if you're looking at a map or a drawing, you just get text saying stuff like "this is a map showing an X nearby". The D:OS engine has done good service over the years and has seen some nice upgrades, but it's time for Larian to move on.

Hmm, I might concede on Giths as I don't think you can avoid fighting them if you do all of the content there. Goblins though - is great. In fact the Goblin camp is one bit of BG3 that I love without hesitation and if all of the game was of that quality it would be 10/10 game for me. It's organic, it offers narratively sound objectives that can be completed in a multitude ways utilizing a neat combination of scripted and systemic options. If you decide to obliterate the whole camp, that can be tedious but that's a very specific, systemic outcome - you decided to fight essencially a city of neutral NPCs, so you do just that. There are so many neat things you can do to affect that combat encounter - tip off Minthara about the location of the Grove, but then help defend the Grove, getting a pretty great big battle and massively reducing camp's forces. Poison the drink at the party to make the outside battle easier. Sabotage war drums so enemies you are fighting now can't easily call for help from the rest of the room. Plenty of opportunities to silently dispatch smaller packs of enemies before engaging everyone else. There are so many ways of dealing with the camp, thoughout my hours of Early Access it was one part of the run I was always actively looking forward to. It seems I was always able to find a fresh way to express how my NPC would deal with that situation. Even my palladin coldly fighting through the whole camp out of principle - it's tedious, but fitting the character and an act.

Enshrouded: Ok, I've been cursed with something called Hemotoxin for hours (RT) that never wears off. Drains health and blocks mana regen. There was no apparent way to get rid of it once I realized it wasn't going away. So I just dealt with it, because EZ settings made it a little annoying but not major. Then I got around to getting more NPC's into my base and one could craft a remedy, but it requires a resource found in another slightly higher level biome of which I had zero notion of where to travel to get there. I finally googled it. What poor design for a new player (allowing that curse to take place so early, in "starter biome", before one may have found/gotten that NPC or multiple biomes). Made my way there, just got into it, then died exploring a POI, and game put me half way across my known map because the only "load if you die" becaon I'd seen/encountered was ages ago in a different POI. I have two tower-FT locations found, neither anywhere near where I was. You can use base-altars as FT (place, delete later) but it's a hinky travel workaround with limits. On one hand, rationally it really isn't that bad. On the other hand, between that and all the curse stuff, I semi-rage quit. Also, not liking the storage options or crafting station/options stuff too much (No Man's Sky is better on both fronts imo). And the combat is still terrible. I'd guess once I have everything unlocked I'd enjoy it more in the sandbox fashion but getting there - maybe later. I get why it's popular, mind. Just a little too MMO or whatever for me perhaps. Time to try 7 Days 2.5.

Well, Enshrouded for me seems to be one of those games where you're never quite sure how much you truly like the game, but every day you sit down and keep playing it. It's neither rpg systems enough, nor free-sandboxy enough to fully enjoy it in either fashion. Pros: ---Exploration really is the best aspect far as I'm concerned. Although like any larger open world type map, there are empty areas, mostly around map edges. Still, points of interest at least aren't super spread out, so density is decent. And one time I dropped down a barren ledge (ledge hopping to get down a cliff), saw a gravestone in the middle of nowhere. Wondered if I could break it with my pickaxe. I could - and there was a loot chest revealed. ---in the first area/biome, dungeons have been small but kinda fun. Nothing difficult but the climbing, jumping, traps occasionally make it feel like brief, simplified tombraider-ing. Kinda. The design/similarities might get repetitive tho. ---loot/chests enemies, areas etc seem to respawn, but takes an hour or two of real time spent in game (exiting game doesn't work with chests tho/patched out, I hear). So far areas don't seem level-scaled. eg, respawns feels like a cross between MMO and ARPG's but a slower pace perhaps. ---Since it's voxel, if I can't jump high enough, I can just pickaxe myself a few dips into a rockface and go up, if I want. Stuff like that. ---the Glider feature is nice. I keep forgetting I can use it to, say, shortcut-leap down a chasm, but it's a great traversal feature. Cons: ---Why do I have to literally kiss a tree or flower to chop it down/pick it up? Or nearly stand on top of dropped loot to pick it up? Does my character have three inch long arms? ---a strange sense of minor latency (even Offline) between actions and it actually applying or game doing its notification things, or sometimes re: comabt actions, like switching weapons. ---am still not fond of the progression systems (crafting, upgrading), which I've mentioned already. It's nice in theory/I'm sure it clicks with many, but I constantly feel like I'm going to waste my time doing anything until I have everything discovered/unlocked that might make early thoughts/work obsolete. ---combat is terrible. I don't mean difficulty, I mean auto-targeting is terrible, especially with the wands/staves. No way to turn it off completely that I can find and it means if I want to target something behind an enemy, I can't. Apparently this seems to be a common complaint. I tried melee and my chr. scoots forward 2 feet with every swing animation, which I hate. Luckily with the easy settings you can mostly just ignore how bad it is. Still, it's terrible.

I spent $60 on a pair (smaller, larger) of "titanium" food cutting boards, because they were on "sale" (Amazon). And popular. They're metal on one side, some solid "wheat grass" material on the other. Probably a fool parting with their money, but I've been meaning to get something besides the plastics I've always bought/used for years - because these days every time I use a plastic one, I'm thinking about how I'm probably scraping plastic bits into my food. Probably too late for me in that regard, my generation tended to love plastic/non-stick everything haha, but eh. Maybe at least non-plastic ones will make the daily thought go away. Or I'll start wondering if I'm scraping metal into my food. And no, I don't like wood cutting boards.

Given the current Epstein news perhaps the weird parallels to the Pinochet regime and Colonia Dignidad are a sign from up high:

the leaked email which were the impetus for the current 60 minutes bruhaha specifically references your déjà vu. "CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones." ... just as an aside, 'cause the point keeps being ignored/overlooked, but the people sent to cecot by the US were not deported. w/o due process we transported residents o' the US to a dystopian hell hole where they were to serve sentences for an indeterminate duration. we paid a central american dictator millions o' dollars to incarcerate and torture people-- not deportations. trump correct recognized that americans wouldn't care if he made theatre outta cruelty as long as those suffering were part o' a disreputable them. a few hundred venezuelans? so what? they were possibly gang members and they weren't american citizens regardless. virtual nobody were gonna rush to the defense of them. additional aside bob dole literal fought nazis in europe. this generation is increasingly nazi curious? HA! Good Fun!

WATCH: The 60 Minutes CECOT Segment - by Allison Gill

Trump signs executive order reclassifying cannabis, opening door to broader weed access An actual, sensible executive order? Wait, I need to mark this on my calendar. Previously, I thought Biden should have taken care of that before he left office, but having this POTUS do it instead probably makes it longer lasting as a Dem President is unlikely to revert the order. Not that I'm actually in favor of marijuana use, but having it classed as Schedule I drug made no sense. Now law enforcement can focus on more dangerous drugs. Hopefully this act makes it okay for insurance companies to cover pot shops.

Just finished Dispatch. All things considered, it was pretty good. First time in god knows how many years that I've seen D's flopping around the screen. Not just once but multiple times even. Last one ... and I guess first one(?) was in GTA4, I think. You know, it's kinda sexist to show boobs and all in so many games, but the D is off-limits. Now I feel more represented. Some of the choices felt a bit weird, but oh well. For example forgiving a villain in the end, when that character torched a lot of stuff. This is just not right, you can't just be like water under the bridge, imo. But still. Probably the best Telltale-style game I've played in a long time.

Well, BG3 spend 5ish? years in EA, so it checks out. Good luck with Act2. My 1st playthrough stopped there, I slogged through it in 2nd playthrough, and two consequent attempts stopped in act2 as well. I don't think you need to do all of its content to progress, and I wonder if my completionist mindset works against me in that act. It is soooo big, and narratively rather static.

The new Divinity game announcement got me to give Divinity 2 another spin. I haven't played it in 8 years, which seemed crazy, because I don't remember it being that old. Of course, I am old now and I forget a lot. Originally I played through Act 1 a few times but stalled out in Act 2. I am going to try to push through this time, and I kept the combat easy to help that. I am playing for story. As I said, I had forgotten a lot of the stuff, so it feels fresh. I like the characters. I am playing as Ifen, and I've got Fane, Lohse, and the stabby lady as my crew. Talking to animals is fun. Anyways, I am in Act 2 now, so hopefully I can finish it up this time.

There's a question mark behind Arkane's future anyhow... at least for a long-term fan. Not quite sure what Blade is gonna be. As to increasing the system requirements, that's how it's always worked, naturally. The entire AAA industry is basically pushing the latest tech -- you may naturally ask at this point whether anybody would even buy Assassin's Creed like 15 for 80 bucks if not even the gfx would be improving anymore. However, upgrade cycles have gotten slower, as games are being developed with 5 years old tech (consoles) as the base. Gotta be honest, though: I'd rather buy 3-4 15-20 bucks indie games than a blockbuster one these days. Those also tend to be more focused, rather than trying to offer a little bit of everything for no one. Exceptions are projects I want to support or games that I REALLY consider premium. Thing is, outside of production values, the big boys aren't even the "premium" in this industry anymore. All they have is the cash to spend. However, as they are rarely allowed to invest it into anything interesting... I mean, it's worse than Hollywood. Hollywood still finds a slot for at least a del Toro, Burton, Nolan movie. In gaming, it's mostly an endless wave of remakes, remasters, sports games and recycled trends now. Lately even at industry award shows, it was studios that kept some independence / control over their projects that came out superior. Bit of rambling, sorry. But consider this: Even the last "fresh" Rockstar IP was tackled and shaped like two decades ago: L.A. Noire. Development started at Team Bondi in 2004/2005. That's just crazy. Speaking of which, these guys seemed to have one helluva time making their gaming dreams come true. It shows in the game for sure.

YouTube recently recommended me and apparently about a million other people this 18 year old Christmas x Lovecraft song. Okay. Nice. Yeah, it's a lot better than random AI slop, I guess. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Just in case, JK Rowling's favourite hobby is harassing children and donating to hate groups, thus avoiding supporting the Harry Potter franchise would be appreciated. https://www.them.us/story/jk-rowling-girlguiding-girl-guides-girl-scouts-trans-ban-consent Granted, the books were not the best examples of literature to begin with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs

How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Trump will just declare that the lightbulb has been replaced, and everyone's applauding in utter darkness.

My favorite dog breed.

Considering that they followed EU rules still 5 years ago in this matter, I would say no. Issue with importing food from America is in USA's poor documentation of origin of many of their foods. Like for example there is no need for cattle famers to document where their cows have been born. So they have lots of cows imported from Mexico and Canada and there is currently no way to trace origin of most of the beef they sell. In order to allow American foods in EU, EU would need to remove many restrictions from its own members, because otherwise they would give US companies exorbitant advantage on the market. And if politician give market advantage for US food companies, they need to be prepared on fact that EU farmers will bury their homes in literal **** even more than they currently do https://www.instagram.com/reels/DSNrgY-gCTP/

The NG+ mode is quite fun, though much easier, as the stats are higher and everything dies quicker even on the highest difficulty setting (but also kills you in 1-2 hits). I used the whip sword as well due to its range.