xzar_monty

Russia's Sergey Kotov ship damaged / destroyed, perhaps. Let us wait for more information.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why would I be joking? Why wouldn't it be a serious question?

Out of interest, I checked on this a bit, because good SF is really enjoyable and I love to read it. I have to say I was a bit disappointed by how predictable some facets of the whole thing were: three titles, lots of pages, all titles very similar to one another. It's getting very formulaic, I think. (And of course the books really can be superb, but given the above, the odds don't seem great[*].) [*] Case in point: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe doesn't really grip you with the fact that there are four novels in the series and they all have fairly grandiose titles, but dear god the books are good, just about the best kind of literature you can expect to see in SF/fantasy. Actually Wolfe transcends genre completely.

Story-heavy fantasy role-playing game where turn-based combat is not obligatory (i.e. something in the vein of BG(2), PoE, Deadfire, P:K, P:WotR). Anyone developing any anywhere?

I'd also love Germany to send way more weapons and ammunition. After all, it cannot be denied that one fairly big factor behind the war was that Germany and Russia had once again Made Plans for Europe Together (gas, etc.). The fact or "problem" (depending on one's point of view) remains, though, that Germany isn't all that dependable in matters such as this. During the Cold War era, there was a saying that if you wanted the Kremlin to get to know something, all you needed to do was to tell it to West Germany. That's probably a generalization as generalizations go, i.e. it's a bit unfair but also not completely untrue.

Putin's speech today doesn't rank all that high on the Periclean scale, but I suppose it doesn't matter. It also didn't contain any new or otherwise pertinent information, as far as I've gathered from the reports I've seen so far, but I suppose that doesn't matter, either. Transnistria wasn't mentioned at all, I think, but I could be wrong there.

Russian tourists spotted en masse in North Korea. I think there's something both hilarious and hideous in that, and apparently it is yet more evidence of a fairly profound change.

In my view, BG2 still works remarkably well, but I do agree that BG1 is essentially rubbish, pretty much for the reasons you describe.

Given that there aren't that many good titles in the genre[*], you're likely to eventually play both Deadfire and Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 and then see for yourself which one is better, in your view. Since you've just played PoE1, Deadfire seems the obvious choice for your next game. [*] I mean, BG1&2, PoE1&2, Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous just about covers it.

I started working in journalism in the 1980s, and I'd just ike to point out that as far as things like plausible deniability and other legal manouvers are concerned, when you write that something may be happening, you basically have your backside covered. If something has a .000000000000001% probability, technically it means that it may be happening soon.

There is no question that both Pynchon and John Barth can be too clever for their own good. But Pynchon is the more important one, and I think he will be remembered for Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49. At least for a fairly long while. A literary friend of mine once pointed out that Pynchon is equally incapable of writing a poor sentence and a well-structured story. I believe there's plenty of truth in that.

Thanks a lot for that. Disney has a long history of having excellent craftsmen and technicians, but as far as creativity is concerned, it's not a very good company. J. R. R. Tolkien, for example, was quite scathing in his assessment of the Disney style as early as 1937 (so it's doubly sad that Peter Jackson's take on The Hobbit was so poor, as it could have been made into a pretty good film).

Please tell me what this scene is, in spoiler tags if you want. I'm not going to watch the movies anyway. I do know that in one of them, the emperor is brought back, which is a huge shame: it retroactively renders previous key scenes meaningless. What a waste. Also, I believe Boba Fett also escapes his personal vagina dentata in some spinoff story, which, again, is such a shame.

I have actually written a paper on one single poem by e e cummings, so yes, you're totally right. cummings, of course, is mostly complex only in the linguistic sense, whereas Pynchon's complexity is more in the content. Btw, I still haven't read either Mason & Dixon or Against the Day. In case you have, are they worth it? (Both Lot 49 and Gravity's are superb pieces of literature.) As for Star Wars, I believe everything that's come after Empire Strikes Back is rubbish, even in its own genre, and watching it was a waste of time. I stopped watching at the film where Han Solo died.

I fully agree about the first part. I'm not sure how likely that is, though. It's like the situation with the young woman who was apprehended by the police and social services when she was about to jump off a bridge and kill herself. "You think you came here just in time but you're twenty years too late" is a fairly devastating point to make. (And as this is an internet forum, I feel compelled to point out that this is not a general statement: not every dire situation is such that someone else is fully or partly responsible for it and should have acted earlier.)

I think the success of BG3 might be the more important determining factor, in the sense that Deadfire was released in 2018 and would therefore represent an "old world" (in computer-gaming terms) despite its long tail. But BG3 would now suggest that there is still a market for games like this. I am almost in complete agreement with you, the only notable exception being that I think PoE began better, storywise: the sense of foreboding in the early moments of the game was superb and not surpassed by anything that came after in either PoE or Deadfire. I also remember my first serious disappointment in PoE: when you get to the castle of that one guy, Lord Raedric I think he was, and enter the final fight, one of his guards is an "archmage". I remember being at lvl 4/5/6 at that point and thinking, how on earth am I going to survive this. Well, easily, that's how. And so my next thought was: well, "archmage" doesn't mean anything in this game. Boy was I disappointed.

The relevant calculation, though, is to see whether Russia could conquer Ukraine with something resembling this casualty rate through the fact that Ukraine will run out of manpower much earlier than Russia will.

Also, The Summoners Tales, as a production, is unbelievably good. Very rarely do you hear an album that sounds so marvelous. Everything is crystal clear, you can really hear what everyone's doing. The songs are brilliant, too. I think Summoners and Blue Turtles are both exceptional albums, although Sting's solo output does contain some clangers, too. That song Seven Days, by the way, is a nightmare for a drummer. Vinnie makes it sound SO easy, but it's very tricky, with all the polyrhythms going on. I can play the right notes, but it sounds rubbish, so if anyone asks, I definitely won't be playing it in front of people.

He was groundbreakingly good. Here's an interesting thing about Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic: it's not quite in any normal tuning, it's slightly above D major but below D sharp / E flat. Its duration, as a single, is 3:58. My guess is that the recording was sped up ever so slightly so that the single would fit under the magical 4 minute duration. (Kiss might have done the same with Tears Are Falling.)

@Gorth, if this is too inappropriate, just delete this. I think this is brilliant.