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xzar_monty

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xzar_monty last won the day on March 5

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  1. I always find this argument slightly peculiar, if indeed the only complaint is size. If someone is a reader of books or a player of games, it doesn't seem relevant to me to worry about length / size, if you're going to spend that time reading / playing anyway. If the books or the games are bad then by all means toss them aside, that's what I also do, but if not, where's the problem? Btw, I'm not sure about this but isn't BG2, for instance, bigger than Deadfire? I bring it up because you mention DD, so you're likely to have played that.
  2. The most pertinent part of Ferrante's analysis was that the US government has, without fail, been greedy and inept precisely the way the mafia wants. Not once has it been different.
  3. Thank you for this clarification, and for your post in general. As far as rackets as a whole are concerned, I was delighted by something I read in a new history of the mafia by Louis Ferrante, an ex-mobster. He pointed out that the mafia is not and has never been interested in overthrowing any governments; indeed, the mob relies on a "capitalist system with a democratically elected and stable but greedy and inept government; and in this the US has never been a disappointment to the mafia". Cruel but apt, I would say.
  4. I don't know Serbian so I can't say anything specific, but extremely bad translations do exist, even for famous books. For example, the first Swedish translation of the Lord of the Rings was so poor that the Tolkien estate expressly forbid the same folks from translating The Silmarillion. A translation can be extremely bad (in faithfulness to the original) even if the result reads well as a book, as such.
  5. I read it recently out of curiosity aroused by the movie, and it was interesting to note, yet again, how marvelously a science fiction book often begins and how unsatisfactory the ending is, by comparison. This is very common in both sci-fi and fantasy, in my view. (Neither the Lord of the Rings nor the Earthsea stories suffer from it, but they're so good(*) that they essentially transcend genre anyway.) Sometimes in "horror" as well, like in Stephen King's Under the Dome, which remains a really good story despite the completely ridiculous ending (but to be fair to King, he put himself in an impossible situation to begin with.) (*) Notwithstanding Tolkien's serious problems in various areas, well established and often talked about.
  6. I believe it was Louis Kuehnle from Atlantic City, New Jersey, who once got more votes than the city had voters. This would have been in the 1910s or 1920s, and the main opponent was one Woodrow Wilson.
  7. I'm not sure who this "we" is, but I don't think I'd call it outrageous, either, although this is obviously not a big deal. The problem with powerful language is that it tends to invalidate itself if used carelessly. Rubbishy newpapers are an excellent example of the phenomenon; I'm pretty sure that you've got your share of them in South Africa. If you look at their headlines, the tone is that something absolutely momentous has happened every day, but then, when something momentous does indeed happen (say, a 9/11), they've got nowhere to go because they've already used up their quota of strong words, every day. They can't go up to eleven[*], so to speak, because eleven is all they've got. [*] I trust that the reference will be recognized.
  8. I do agree that it's not pleasant, but calling it absolutely outrageous does look a bit facetious, given that you seem to be quite OK with both the particularly vicious murder of a certain Khashoggi and the current (not completely proven but essentially indubitable) genocide of Gazans by Israel. Which reminds me of a fairly sad but established fact: while human beings do indeed universally value justice, the majority of them value "their own people" a lot more than they value justice, from which it follows that if "their own people" commit atrocities or other than "their own people" are, for instance, murdered, they just don't care.
  9. I bought it as soon as it came out, just to support the studio. It's just that I haven't played it yet. I understand that it isn't particularly good, but I will give it a whirl eventually. Pentiment, by the way, was one that I had rather high hopes for, but it did turn out to be a disappointment. Not that it was poor, per se, it just wasn't especially good, and some of the hard-coded choices didn't fit my character at all, as far as I'm concerned, so I felt heavily railroaded.
  10. Indeed you are not, and I would not expect you to be. It's just that if I were to make a claim that, "That being said, we aren't lacking in games that fit your criteria", I would expect myself to be able to name a fair number of titles, if someone were to ask me to back up my words. @Mamoulian War: You are indeed correct about Couriers of Darkness. That one would seem to fit the bill, but I haven't actually played it.
  11. I have indeed googled this on occasion, and nothing much seems to come up. The reason I asked you is obvious: you made the following statement, "That being said, we aren't lacking in games that fit your criteria". Therefore the logical thing to do is to ask you to specify which games you mean, if we indeed "aren't lacking" in them. How could this be troublesome to you? As for what the options are, I would amend your "unlimited options" (in your post above) to "essentially no options". As far as expanding my horizons is concerned, I am quite happy not playing computer games at all and having the industry go whichever way it goes. I have been interested in a certain kind of role-playing since the 1980s, and if there's something available in that niche, I'm curious, otherwise I am much happier doing something other than playing computer games.
  12. The most recent one was WotR, which came out in 2022. I suppose that could be described as "recently", but none of the others are recent, at least in my book. So, if we aren't lacking in games in production that fit my criteria, can you name one? I'm asking because I can't.
  13. I don't know if it's luck or what (I mean, it's not as if I've flown dozens of times over there), but it seems to me that flying around those areas is always turbulent.
  14. Why would I be joking? Why wouldn't it be a serious question?
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