algroth

That is something to be said about stat/roll based combat and a turn based system giving player time and space to analyze the situation and choose the best tools for the job.It's like D&D was designed to be turn-based or something! D&D, like any and all other pnp games, was not 'designed' to be turn based but rather *had* to be turn based because that is the only way you can do things with a bunch of people seated around a table. It is a limitation of pnp gaming, and the point of progressing to computer gaming is to overcome the limitations and weaknesses of pnp gaming.Whilst I agree with the other poster that mentions both PnP and videogames having their own strengths and limitations, I also agree with the overall point here. TTRPGs, at least the likes of DnD and its offspring as far as I'm aware, are largely driven by the act of speech and performsnce, and by consequence the information always had to be delivered sequentially, not simultaneously. In terms of combat, it *has* to be developed a move at a time as everyone can't just shout their moves on the spot at the same time and hope the rest to follow what is happening and what everyone is doing and respond adequately. Videogame as a medium removes the need to render actions and situations into words - why not show them instead - and so it allows for several actions to occur or be depicted simultaneously. For TTRPGs the turn-based system is a necessity whereas for videogames it is not, and hence you cannot assume that just because a tabletop source has turn-based combat it is also the ideal or superior form for its videogame adaptation. They're not the same systems working within tge same mediums and boundaries and shouldn't strive to necessarily be alike. Now with regards to RTwP as applied to the IE games I do feel many of its worst aspects are leftovers from the TT experience directly shoehorned into the videogame medium. But already Pillars, and Deadfire since, have been designed not as duplicates or representations of tabletop systems but systems built specifically for a videogame - it's why Josh has largely altered systems, combat and so on for the TT PoE. Already these games flow much smoother and feel more intuitive and rewarding as RTwP experiences over tgeir predecessors. It's a mistake to assume the system in these games was "made to be turn-based", it's certainly a departure from that and I'm sure the TB mode on Deadfire is likely to be wildly different than its RTwP experience. Personally I do far prefer RTwP combat to TB in general - I find it way more immersive and intuitive, whilst the pacing doesn't feel anywhere as clunky. But that's me of course. If you prefer TB instead then you do you - though I don't see why we have to go ahead and behave like utter asshats with all the "sorry fans, what I prefer is superior" remarks. Don't be a ****, seriously. (Written from my phone so apologies for any typos)

Nice Ilya Repin background there, Josh.

Any future Obsidian game will also only have a monetary purpose because they're hoping people will buy the game. Every past Obsidian game as well. Every product you ever bought, in fact. Welcome to capitalism. I agree with this save for one thing - Obsidian's interest are most definitely not *only* monetary, otherwise they wouldn't be appealing to such a strict niche or sticking with a genre that's been showing diminishing returns for a few years now. Money is certain *a* reason, and an important one, but not the sole purpose or motivator to their work. Regardless, even assuming the addition of turn-based is purely related to monetary concerns, I don't see in what world you could possibly accuse Obsidian of "burying a genre" when they've stuck with RTwP for three consecutive games and when in two of these cases they've seen losses. Much as we all hate to hear it, Deadfire did poorly, and much as Obsidian can try and push the genre onwards, they're the ones putting in the work and the larger portion of the cake into making these games happen. If people don't buy them or show interest for them, there's only so much a developer can do short of running their funds to the ground. For them to add a new feature which may make the game at least *marginally* less of a financial failure as it's so far been isn't "selling out" or some evidence of greed, it's necessity. If you want to 'blame' anyone for the death of the genre, it's the audience's apathy towards it that you have to look at, not the devs that have committed as hard to it as Obsidian has.

I found it to be excellent, and not at all a run of the mill film. You can absolutely feel Steve McQueen's signature throughout. The only thing I feel that holds it back from his best films are a couple of far-fetched plot points and the likes later on, but what's interesting is the way in which the backdrop to the main conflict plays out, how it deals with race and class tensions and a very naturalist and warty depiction of American culture and so on. It's somewhat reminiscent to me of Children of Men in that way, as in how despite a seemingly pulpy story driving the whole thing, the film's eye is constantly veering off to the side to paint a rather detailed and poignant portrait of the current sociopolitical landscape and where you quickly realize that's really what the filmmakers are interested in capturing.

On a more positive note, I'm glad Yorgos Lanthimos, Pawel Pawlikowski and Richard E. Grant got recognized this year. If Alfonso Cuarón wins the Oscar for best director (which is looking quite possible), that'll also make five times so far this decade that the award goes to a Mexican filmmaker, and one of the tres amigos on top of that. Grant's reaction to the nomination is rather endearing too: https://twitter.com/richardegrant/status/1087727401960984576?s=21

I mentioned a few above which I think would have been far better nominations than Black Panther or, heck, Vice, Bohemian Rhapsody or Green Book for that matter, in Widows, Beale Street, Leave No Trace, First Reformed, Cold War and First Man. I think 2018 was a really strong year all things considered, which is then a shame that the Oscars are doing such a bad job at showing it.

The last I've seen of his was The Village, back when it first came out. Can't say I've liked any of his films with the exception of Unbreakable which I recall being quite good. It definitely requires a rewatch but I'd say it's worth giving a watch nonetheless.

Yeah, I agree that it's nothing new, and as far as I'm concerned I'd much rather have Black Panther than Avatar as a populist representative. That said, what disappoints me personally about this year's Oscars relative to the likes of 2009/2010 is that I feel like there were many legitimately great films in contention this year that were left by the wayside in favour of what seems like a largely patchy selection of films all things considered. Widows, Beale Street, Leave No Trace, First Reformed, Cold War, First Man and more could have made it in instead. Shame, because the Oscars have otherwise been looking pretty damn solid so far this decade.

With Vice, Black Panther, Green Book, A Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody comprising five out of the eight BP nominees this year, the Oscars are looking their worst since 2009. Especially considering it's been a rather great year for film otherwise - there's been no shortage of fantastic Oscar hopefuls that could have fit the bill much better. On the upside I'm glad The Favourite, Roma and Cold War got as much attention as they did generally, and having always had a soft spot for Spike Lee I'm glad that he's also back in the spotlight.

My understanding is that that's how you read the numbers in Chinese, Korean and Japanese for example, but not how you write them down. In my experience with Japanese that seems to be the case, but Wikipedia does state as much of Chinese, Korean and other languages/regions with India being the one exception that separates every hundred instead. Though Wikipedia isn't exactly infallible either so who knows.

I was wondering if it was perhaps the case with Chinese and Japanese and so on since they tend to read numbers in sets of myriads instead of thousands, but apparently they too separate every thousand when writing in Arabic numerals. Though actually the video states the boss has "over 50 million HP", so just a typo.

2018 was the worst year for videogames ever... name something aside spiderman, rimwold or smash bros ultimate that was awesome released that year Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Celeste, Deadfire, Into the Breach, Dead Cells, Octopath Traveller, The Red Strings Club, Return of the Obra Dinn... Pathetic list Exactly the sort of thing someone with no counter-argument would write.

I feel like quite a few Pixar films have a neat conceit for a short film that is eventually padded out for a full-length feature with largely perfunctory stuff. Wall-E similarly loses a lot of its charm as soon as they leave Earth, The Incredibles is way more funny and endearing as a "retired family-man superhero trying to live a normal everyday life" scenario than the standard supehero adventure it becomes when Mr. Incredible heads to that island, Toy Story 3 is bookended by some very lovely sequences regarding growing up and being passed to the new generation and whatnot but the whole daycare escape plot is just filler, and so on. But I would agree that arguably this issue is felt at its worst with Up given how disconnected the tone from both the initial sequence and everything after feels.

I thought the trailer was quite intriguing and enjoyed the visuals in it, they do remind me of Interstellar but so do they remind me of Under the Skin. On top of that it's a Claire Denis film and has so far received rather positive reviews. I'm certainly intrigued.

Has this been shared already? Anyhow, looks very interesting.

Deadfire ranked #9 on EDGE's best of 2018. Congrats!

The characterization of villains has been a weakness of theirs to the point it's become a meme, up until a couple of years ago when they've began to revert the trend through the likes of Ego, Vulture, Thanos and, on the Netflix side of things, Kilgrave and Fisk. Glad they've turned back on that at least. But Homecoming also offered one of the few genuinely surprising twists in the franchise thus far, and I wouldn't mind a little more of that myself. The fact that they're so far trying to frame Mysterio as a good guy both in press statements and in the trailer itself makes me wary that they may be trying to do so in the film as well and thus put a few too many eggs on the 'twist villain' basket, only to cause another Talia al'Ghul situation. Anyhow, just some thoughts and concerns I have relative to this trailer.

I have, and I've factored that into my post above. I expect the 'twist' to be it's all elaborate creations of his own and that he's the one behind it all for reasons. I just don't think it's an angle that works as a 'twist' because we already expect a famous supervillain to turn out to be a supervillain, and why I would see something very different that actually defies those expectations being a more interesting potential route instead.

Having played through Neverwinter Nights 2 again this year (GOG's complete edition), I'd say there's many things a remaster could improve on depending on how thorough a work it is: On a very, *very* basic level, the game could be optimized way further: as it is it's a resource sink which causes frequent frame drops, slows and crashes when not even at the highest settings, on computers that should go way and above its recommended specs. Widescreen resolutions and support is also a little weird, with the UI either stretching or downscaling in turn, and whilst it's not that big an issue these resolutions are far and away the modern standard so it'd be nice to see fixed or reworked. A slightly more thorough remaster could also work on the absolutely dog**** combat by making tweaks for pacing, clarity and THE AI OH GOD THE HORRIBLE AI. Improvement to the camera and its controls would be welcome too. Also the editor could be looked into to provide a more user-friendly and intuitive interface. A deeper look at the matter could involve all sorts of other tweaks - revamped lighting and textures, new character animations and emote to also further aid cinematics, new campaign content, new editor features and so on. But that's all up to how far into the "wishful thinking" territory you want to go into. The points before these at least are feasible and relevant enough to warrant a remaster should one ever happen. But then again I wouldn't keep my hopes up. Haven't played Icewind Dale 2 in years - off the top of my head I'd reckon widescreen compatibility would be a welcome feature, and maybe bringing the game up to speed with new tech and so on... But I don't know how it runs right now or if there's anything in the game itself as is that would really require tweaking or the likes.

Worth pointing out, Deadfire was also runner-up in the Best 3D Visuals category at the Unity Awards. Anyhow, congrats Obsidian!

No longer 2018, but all the same... Joseph Jarman of Art Ensemble of Chicago https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/obituaries/joseph-jarman-dead.html

Yeah, I don't hate them, I just like poking the beehive from time to time. I very much agree with what you say. Anyhow, back to the good stuff.

I feel few cinematic crimes are greater than the way Hollywood's slew of self-proclaimed "Christian films" has forever tainted the image of a category as rich in sheer artistry and history as is Christian cinema at large, the like which would include the works of great masters such as Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Terrence Malick and the Mozart of cinema himself, Andrei Tarkovsky. The issue at large that I see with the self-appointed "Christian films" of today is two-fold: firstly it's that they tend to be "Christian" only inasmuch as they are morality tales dressed with scripture and Christian discourse/iconography so as to assume the pretense of a "Christian message", but tend to completely leave the desire to capture and represent the Christian *experience* on the wayside, which is instead an aspect that so many of the aforementioned filmmakers focused on to create films that whilst deeply Christian proved to be very universal by extension; and secondly there's the matter that for the most part in my experience the discourse these films follow aren't even necessarily Christian and more a hodge-podge of Christian morality, general American conservative ideology, and in the worst cases such as the God's Not Dead films quasi-political aspirations and cult-like partisanism, all handled in a manner so blatantly sermonic that it makes the Soviet social realist films look measured in comparison. But, again, you look past this very specific category and into the broader world of Christian cinema and there is a *lot* of great stuff to be found. Here's a few I can recommend (and granted, some of these may be contentious): Dekalog (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1989) - granted, a miniseries, but I think it's too essential not to include here Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966) A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1944) The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964) Illumination (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1973) Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois, 2010) The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini, 1950) Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955) Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951)