LadyCrimson

...this is my Gryffindor (however you spell it) chr. My first was Ravenclaw, 2nd (dude)/Hufflepoof, not sure what I'll do for Slyther, maybe a gal with green hair. Although I don't like the skirt outfits for females (some full dresses are ok but they look a bit silly with robes/coats...). There are pants outfits, but harder to find one you may personally like. Not that any of it matters, but when they give you choices, I like my color-tone coordinated outfit aesthetics. That's my fave scarf, because it compliments a lot of different color schemes in the game vs, say, a bright purple scarf. Er, yeah. I'm like that.

Fair point. Although I think with zero medical insulin access, if I ate almost nothing but rice and beans 2-3 times a day for a year, even if not a coma I would at least be pretty sick. Low carb is the only reason I don't "need" med. insulin. Still, maybe if I just ate once a day. Gotta keep the weight down enough to escape zombies, anyway.

"Stalking" Sebastian. Explanation: I was curious what npc's do so I followed a string of students after one class, who all walked to my next main quest class. I did that class, and then followed Sebastian around like glue. It was actually kind of impressive - the AI would put him in this pattern of walk up and down floors, sit, and either do idle stuff or converse with some NPCs, repeat, all over the castle. When it became night I expected him to walk to his Common Room and disappear into a wall or something (most students/npcs disappear at night so no one for the AI to "talk" to), but instead he wandered in the gardens and castle until morning. Probably didn't feel safe going to sleep when some weirdo was following him. LOL. I now want to follow all the main students, see if they have different walking routines.

Great to hear from you again, @Guard Dog and hope the journey to good health continues positively! @Keyrock Are there any zombie-apoc food storage options that aren't mega carb? I guess I could live on pickled/canned veggies and soups for a few years...

Hogwarts: having started two other House chrs, it does have a slightly different feel for that first hour or so after you get to the castle. The way the game introduces you to different House chrs, some dialogue bits. In one case the oddball entrance to one Common Room is this painting that I stared at/could not interact with while with another House. They are brief/small and not hugely significant but it makes the first section a little replayable. I would guess it feeling "different" would largely end once you start seriously free roaming outside of the castle and get a few hours into the main quest/collect-a-thon of the game.

3rd person open world rpg's usually allow you to turn the camera while they are standing still, or running/turning corners, so you get to see their face all the time in gameplay. Anyway, it's not a big deal, limitations of tech or glitches, most of the time I don't think about it or notice, usually only when stopping to smell the flowers/take in a view, or running thru certain types of lighting areas (dark but candles, sunbeams) etc.

The very last one "very glitchy ragdoll" ... I've seen that so many times, lol.

^ Hm. I started wondering if what we are both referring to should be labeled as tropes, not archetypes. Which led me down a small rabbithole of trying to find what's the bloody difference. Far as I can tell, there would be far less archetypes and they tend to have deeper human nature reveals/purposes, and tropes, while similar, have a broader/shallower focus, thus why there's 7 million of them. I think tropes are close to cliche's then archetypes but I profess I'm still confuddled on what the difference is, at least in terms of TV/film. Rapid fire, over-talkative sidekicks tend to annoy me as well. I think I'm one of the few who does not find Mr. Pesci all that amusing in the Lethal Weapon series, although he does get a few really good one liners. I seem to recall mostly liking the reindeer in Frozen - probably because it was "cute", heh - but the snowman I wanted to melt with a hairdryer. But it's not like I loved Frozen overall to begin with. I still haven't watched Banshees. I still want/meant to. I just haven't.

Blow dryer starts around 1:40

@Bartimaeus I'm curious what those archetypes that you tend to dislike, are. I know a few archetypes that I tend to gravitate to (methodical, intense, and/or logical/rational, Spock, Data, Sherlock, certain villains), but if I almost immediately dislike a character it's usually because of something like "ugh, they remind me of someone I knew irl that I couldn't stand" and I can't disassociate, vs. an actual archetype. Or any character like this one (male, female, child, don't care, can't stand it): Edit: I'm not sure if that's a true archetype or more a director's direction, thing.

So I had no idea The Last of US is finally coming to PC soon. This makes me debate with myself whether I want to buy it, when I already know the story (YT videos and watching someone play it, but a long time ago), plus it's not typically the gameplay style/genre I'd play. ...still, especially after watching the TV series, I sorta wonder what it would be like to play it vs. watch it. ...I'm sure they're counting on the TV series to boost sales. >.>

I still love the first season of BBC's Sherlock. And that's as someone who's a fairly big nerd re: the original written stories. But it did go downhill quickly, even if it still had some good moments here and there and what they did with Moriarty was ... interesting. Elementary on the other hand - wasn't awful as a show itself, but the lead's interpretation didn't feel like the chr. Sherlock Holmes to me at all, not even in vague spirit. I didn't watch more than a few episodes I think. My favorite not-named-Sherlock fictional US TV series "genius/slightly unhinged" detective was probably Vincent D'Onofrio in Law and Order: Criminal Intent. At least the first two or three seasons. I didn't watch much past that and I think Vincent became less prominent with shifting/different detective team leader/multi-actor focus and stuff.

Postscript: The thing about modern 3D games recently that I've disliked is all the massive directional lighting/shadow tricks. Environmentally it can look great, don't get me wrong, but on characters...where even when it's night-time (vs. bright sunlight say), from one angle, your chr's is lit up nicely/naturally, but then you turn them 70 degrees and their face becomes this murky hole of terrible shadowing, or their dark hair turns white/red/green/purple, stuff like that. Anyway, maybe I can continue trying the early game with other Houses now that the game doesn't crash every 15 minutes.

I think my main thing re: faces in Hogwart's was that during dialogues, so often they seemed at least somewhat animated (even if mouth movement was iffy at times), eg, it was all right, but then they'd finish speaking and their face would often fall into this neutral, robotic expression.

^ I think I lost most of my ability to find what many TV/films billed as comedies think is humorous, back in the early 90's.

There. I still have a few missing (non-revello) pages and conjurations, but not many. After 8 tries finally got that last broom side quest, and you know what that means - I finally have this complete outfit!

Eh, all games have a small portion of people with big issues ... maybe Hogwart's is 7% instead of 3% (the usual figures pulled from my arse) so you see more 'net complaints. Don't think it's all that bad overall vs. how many bought the game. Most of the time I get lucky and am on the doesn't-have-issues side of games - this time I wasn't. I remember initial release of FO:NV was really bad for me w/crashes too, lol. But I played for a couple hours, no CTD, felt smooth, no .ini tweaks etc. so maybe this time w/patch+the last driver reinstall etc it's finally good? Got a couple more Steam Achievements and have only 1 more side quest to get 100% in the 4 challenge categories and I assume hit max level. Of course, it's the only side-quest left and it's the final broom upgrade one. Failed it three times. Bah. I wish they had left a little more leeway re: max level/challenge completion, so there could be a few quests you could skip if you didn't like them, and still reach it. Forcing a player to do every single itty bitty thing isn't my fave method. Although ofc one doesn't have to do all that just to complete the main story. There *is* however a chr. lvl requirement to see the final short cutscene before credit rolling, which some could reach without being that level.

Yeah, that's sometimes a stopper for me too...even if it's only 8 seasons. I also don't have the patience anymore for things like "but it gets really good after 2 seasons!" I'm not watching multiple seasons just so I can understand/get what's happening in the supposedly "good" later seasons. Kinda like when people say a MMO game gets good after 100 hours. Nope.

I tried to watch Psych once. Felt too sitcom-y for me maybe or I wasn't in the mood. I might try again someday. There's also the comedic series Chuck, which someone I know loved but I never got around to trying, tho I do know who Z. Levi is because of clips and his VA role in Tangled was great/fun. Nearing the end of season1 The Mentalist. Still liking the rewatch, both with full attention/TV and as something to have on while cooking etc.

Well, it's nice to use Ansel in combat. Combat animations are still not very still-screen photogenic, however. unrelated ... wish they would allow you to look up and down while flying. Not sure why they limited that one.

--Had terrible texture issues. --DDU'd and reinstalled nvidia drivers, again. Deleted shader caches, again. --was able to restart and not crash in the first 10-20 minutes a couple times, giving me hope. Maybe I can at least play 2-3 hour sessions again. We'll see. --I no longer seem to need the Engine.ini gpu/performance tweak. It runs fine without it/gpu utilization remains high, vram use seems a bit lower, have most settings back to native High/Ultra, mostly 50-70fps, no severe frame pacing stutter even during brief dips into low 40's, etc. ...cautiously optimistic.

--got it to start again --I'd say overall fps/general performance is about the same for me, at my settings etc. --Ansel does work during combat actions now --Biscuit quest indeed fixed, the lock appeared, could rescue. --but CTD'd in about 20 minutes after casting a spell at an enemy. It's just totally random for me in the sense there is no predicting/avoiding a cause/moment. I do not CTD while fast traveling. When the CTD happens the GPU usage in task manager seems to do a sudden moderate drop then a spike to 100/max a micro-second before the crash, vs. the more typical steady-line 85-90%.

...nope, CTD'd after 10-12 minutes of randomly flying around on the broom. ...last night I turned DLSS back on and managed about 30 minutes. I had it off again after patch. ...you can use Ansel while sitting on the broom now. ...I'll restart and see if that Biscuit lock bug is fixed. Edit: oops now it won't even start. Hit Play button and the button turns blue for about 3 seconds then goes back to green/Play state again.

I saw some others on LInux posting about some crash fix, maybe it's the same one you're using. I guess it's all an argument to get rid of Winblows. I'm certainly not eager to go to Win11, but then I wasn't eager to move to any new version of Windows.

Well, that is not a promising start. Edit: ok it supposedly installed. Going to verify integrity before starting. I removed the Engine.ini config tweaks temporarily. Let's see if it starts...