Lexx

Ok, just finished The Forgotten Sanctum. Not that bad either. By now I've disabled the level scaling, because I couldn't bear it anymore. Didn't made the combat ridiculously easy, but it was a lot less tedious for sure. This dlc kinda proves again that Deadfire probably would have benefited of less, but bigger / more condensed islands. Spending more time in a location gives it a lot more character, makes it feel alive, and not like a random recycled mini-dungon.

Need a PoE game where we start killing off all the gods. After finishing Beast of Winter, Rymrgand really pisses me off and I'd love to take his head. Same with all the other gods. I really hate how arrogant they are and how superior they feel. Except Hylea, I guess. Hylea is kinda ok.

But do you deserve it?

"The United States has given us (Europe) three weeks to agree on terms for Ukraine's surrender. If we don't, the United States will withdraw from Europe." https://www.newsweek.com/trump-europe-troops-ukraine-peace-deal-2033823 The next few weeks are going to be interesting. Even more interesting than they currently are.

Finished Deadfire's Beast of Winter dlc. All in all not too bad. The fight with the dragon was a bit of a pain, since those 3 NPCs that I recruited to help me didn't do anything at all. Took me 4 attempts to make it through it, funny enough, on the 4th attempt it suddenly was quite easy and fast. I'll probably continue with Forgotten Sanctum now, but I'm pretty sure that I will not touch Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, since the combat system is slowly beginning to pull me down and I'm not sure if I want even more of that.

Not gonna lie, while playing Deadfire right now, occasionally in dialog I see myself wishing to have character close-ups like in BG3. Or just more dynamic animations. Like, show me what my character is doing and don't just write it in the dialog window (which I find really hard to read, by the way). Generally I dislike this sort of descriptive text. Talking to an NPC and the first two clicks in the dialog window is a lengthy description of what the guy is doing is... bad. I mentally skip that text. Stuff like that also wasn't necessary in games like Fo1 and 2, so I don't see it necessary here at all. Hell, this is what made the new Torment game highly unenjoyable to me, because there was SO MUCH of it, reading became a real drag. Now, many years after the release of Deadfire, I appreciate that the company heads decided to voice all dialog. Sure it was harder and cost more money, but I'm happy about it now. Maybe it's because I'm getting old and I have trouble reading all that ****, no clue.

I believe PoE2 didn't perform so well because PoE1 just had a massive nostalgia hype and that whole kickstarter thing going on. Once the game was out and people played it, they had their fix and that's it. Who knows how many people even finished PoE1. Then the new Torment happened, which was kind of the same / very similar, but also not that great. Now people who played those games, simply didn't return to PoE2. I'd say a BG3 style PoE3 would be really nice, but *please* by the love of god, don't make it that massive. BG3 is way, way, way too big... it took me 130 hours to get through a single playthrough, and I even skipped stuff in the end. It completely burned me out. The engine is nice, though. They should use that.

Tbh even Deadfire suffers from that already. Lots of NPCs feel like information vending machines instead of actual people. I think this is one of the issues I had with the game back in the days as well-- something about it feels so grinded down, systemic, like they are now using the same formula for everything, which ends up with you having a less buggy game, but also a game that lacks actual character. If that makes some sense.

Chances for that aren't too bad, I guess. They pretend to do an awesome peace plan now, Ukraine obviously will decline it, then Trump says they tried, and will lift russian sanctions. Trade between america and russia will pick up again, they make nice money, EU will be left out of the market, since they keep their sanctions up. It's pretty much a double-hurt. For ukraine and for the EU.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/ Babe, wake up, new presidential power grab has dropped. It sounds kinda familiar.

I thought they said Deadfire kept selling and by now has sold a good amount of copies. Personally I like poe2 a lot more than poe1. However, if they ever do a poe3, I really hope it will have some slight pirate or at least spanish colonial feeling again.

Ok, I finally managed to get the hat from Serafen. Went into the Beast of Winter dlc and right in the first dialog is an option to make a joke, which everyone finds really funny. So I reloaded my last save, put him into my team, told the joke and... that was enough to finally trigger the hat-giving dialog. Jeez. Could have done that a long time ago... That said, man, the power creep has increased a lot. Did a bit of the Forgotten Sanctum dlc and then the first fight of Seeker, Slayer, Survivor... those enemies are mad. I can barely penetrate their armor and the fights are taking forever in turn based. Turns out it is not very much fun to do the same attacks for 15 minutes just to wear down 3 or 4 mobs while trying not to die. And then you repeat that 5 more times to clear the map. This is in stark contrast with every other mob encounter which I obliterate and turn everyone into mist and gore explosions. Started upgrading my gear more aggressively now.. legendary weapons and such, but it eats all my money. Started doing bounties again to sell equipment, to make money, so I can keep upgrading. Still didn't buy a different ship, but don't really need to anyways.

Of course he was. Trump never made it a secret that he wanted to go after his enemies. The only ones shocked about this are the "he is just joking!"-crowd.

Wrong board, but yes.

https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02.13_fact_sheet_re_musk_investigations.pdf Everyone who gets fired is an enemy of Trump or Musk. This is such obvious corruption, but nothing happens.

Man, this crap is such a huge step back, I can't even put it in words. Reverting all of this will take a generation, at best.

@BruceVC https://www.project2025.observer/

Almost done with Deadfire. Funny, I already stumbled over 2 bugs in the game... back when I played it the first time (and a second time right after), I didn't notice any bugs at all. Game still looks great. I just love how my people look like. Just damn Serafen won't give me his stupid hat. I didn't had him in my party for a big part of the beginning, because for once I wanted to use different party members, but now I'm unable to improve my standing with him... I really want to replace him with someone else again, BUT I NEED THIS HAT. GIVE IT TO ME SERAFEN, GIVE IT TO ME. REEEEEE. You know, I feel like the biggest issue with the game are all the tiny islands. IMO, less islands, but a more connected feeling would have worked out much better. Really hate it to go down the islands like a checklist and at best they have a 1 screen mini-dungeon with some mobs in them. It feels cheap and lazy even though it isn't... it's just too disconnected from the rest. Oh yeah, another thing... this time I did not upgrade my ship at all and... I'm completely fine. Maybe things got changed with patches later? Could swear that I had A LOT more sea battles back in release days. Now I only have them if I initiate them myself.

Watched that new Dexter show. I've expected nothing and was surprised how it did not suck at all. Would say the casting was pretty good-- some of those people I even had to look up on google because they felt so close to the original, it was scary.

It's so funny how that movie released at the exact perfect time. If it had released earlier, people would have said it's really damn stupid and unrealistic, and crap like that would never happen in real life. Now here we are, following it 1:1.

Funny thing about the hud in very old games is that our screen resolution was very low and we just couldn't display a lot of information due to a lack of available pixels. When playing old games today with super high resolutions, the hud now tends to be very small and minimalist, while back then it was also filling half the screen.

Since I'm currently replaying Deadfire, I'd say the Avowed color palette is pretty much exactly the same. All those outworldish elements are in that game as well- huge mushrooms, bright colors, etc. From what I can tell it's exactly the same, just in first person. The one thing I hate in videos and screenshots is that the hud feels so cluttered. There is so much crap going on, which I really hate and makes me think of MMO stuff.

So Trump signed a new executive order that funding will be cut for all schools that mandate the COVID vaccine. Sounds terrible, right? It's outrageous! Until you find out that no school mandates the COVID vaccine and it's all just hot air. https://www.immunize.org/official-guidance/state-policies/vaccine-requirements/covid-child-school-2024/

I did this today

Seems there's only two kind of reviews for Avowed: "Super awesome!!" and "worst game ever" -- will probably play it via GamePass once it is out.