Zoraptor

Finished Heart of Stone expansion. Overall... yeah, I liked it a lot. If someone described some of the quests to me I'd probably think it sounded pretty silly, but it's done with charm and panache. Currently in Blood and Wine and it really is quite beautiful.

As above, EA did offer more time. I haven't played MEA so can't judge for myself, but I've got the distinct impression that the game needed more than 6 months worth of reworking anyway. I can't really criticise them for not picking an RGB ending to be canon either, whatever they did there would be a potential disaster with Deus Ex: IW perhaps the case study of complete failure to please anyone. The ultimate problem is that if Bioware Montreal stuffed up around 60 months of development you can't really rely on them fixing that with an extra 6 months. Things like the animations should not have been in the state they were after 5 years so you'd have to either hire a bunch of new animators which costs and is risky, co-opt Dragon Age/ DICE/ other Frostbite animators from other studios which hurts their projects or hope that the ones you already have get competent. In the end EA did the best they could (for themselves at least) from a bad situation. Perhaps they should have outright cancelled it, but the impressions I get is that it isn't technically unplayable nor unplayable due to being awful, it's just kind of... mediocre.

They had plenty of time and enough staff though, neither of which would be provided if EA was trying to tank the IP deliberately. Game was poorly handled, but everything I've seen suggests it was poor oversight and bad immediate management that was the ultimate problem rather than stuff EA could directly influence like budget and time. I'd also have to say that I heard the same thing said about DAI, especially with the Bioware old timers who left at the end of that project, and that IP definitely isn't dead. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's another ME game in maybe five years time, it's more flexible than Star Wars since they don't have to run everything past Disney/ LucasArts plus it can't disappear off in six years time as the SW licence may. Something like alternating titles with Dragon Age seems a likely approach.

ME3 sold very well, and its MP did well too. Some people were very shouty about the ending, but that was only some people- and they played it to the end so can't have hated the game too much. Andromeda is the problem; late and a poorly run project, not well received from the beginning and while initial sales were OK it's already had a permanent 50% price cut for some time (here at least), always a sign that sales fell straight off a cliff. The closest parallel would be to Dragon Age II (albeit that problem involved too little dev time); give it a few years and it will be back as DA now is. EA ain't the SW studio by any reasonable measure if they've only made one (+ one phone game it seems) SW game in 4 years and the license is only for ten years. There are only a few other known titles awaiting release as well- BF2 and EA Motive's Jedi's Creed game may both release in the next year but the second is probably 18 months off and Respawn's title will take even longer. EA is what it has been for the past decade or so: The Sims, EA Sports plus some ancillary stuff of varying success and importance.

You can't sue here for much at all since we have a 'no fault' accident compensation scheme that covers most situations but that just encourages more regulation since the government has to shell out for, eg, car crash injuries caused by people not wearing seat belts. Seat belts are fine though, it's a matter of safety for everyone involved same as someone who is blind not being allowed to drive or not being allowed to drive when drunk. If people want to make stupid decisions that effect themselves only then fine, if they want to make dumb decisions that effect others then there's an argument to limit their freedom to be dumb based on the negative effects on others.

The 'typical' medieval noble family was a bit different from Victoria in the 19th century or Maria Theresa in the 18th though, while not modern they were far more advanced than 12th-15th century Europe where childbirth was frequently deadly to the mother and a majority of children died while young even in noble houses. Then you were very lucky to have three sons live to majority ('heir and a spare' was lucky) and if you did have more than two the tendency was to stick any extras into careers where they wouldn't breed- well, wouldn't legitimately breed at least- like the church. In a world without proper medicine even scratches could lead to death from infection so you could very easily lose the heir or spare, and then you did have a linear line. The history of the english royal family has a deviation from direct line on average about every 4 monarchs, and even if you amalgamate cadets like York/ Lancaster to Plantagenet you still get the longest run only being around 300 years. The GoT/ ASOIAF situation is certainly not realistic though except in not having massive families, only nobility I can think of that can trace its roots directly anywhere near even a thousand years are the Percys at ~950 years. Some of the talk in the books about the animosity between the Boltons and Starks makes it very unlikely that one or the other would not have been wiped out earlier, though presumably you just don't hear about the houses that did get historically roflstomped unless they were important to the narrative like the Raines of Castamere.

There should be more than enough room for Mass Effect and Star Wars though. EA has had the SW license for quite a while now and they've produced Battlefront and... nothing else? A Mass Effect game every 3-4 years ought to be able to slot into any gaps in the schedule for the sort of action/ adventure/ lite rpg and exploration genre, especially since it should only be a competitor to certain SW games rather than all of them. In any case, companies don't release crap products and run studios/ IPs into the ground for the lulz- and EA gave Bioware: Montreal 5 years to get it right and they couldn't. That's plenty of time. They definitely need to put some distance between Andromeda and any further releases though, and Bioware doesn't have any spare teams at the moment anyway. They will come back to Mass Effect at some point though, I'd bet on it.

I bought a 550W PSU because I decided 650 would be overkill and draws were going down... and it ought to be OK for any of the three consumer cards, if only just for the liquid cooled one. Might be moot anyway, the preorder pricing here is $500 more than a 1080Ti which is a joke plain and simple. Hopefully placeholder as otherwise you'd have to be mad to buy one. Quite marked the difference between AMD processor and graphics though, I cannot get my 1700 above 65 degrees (OK, it is winter) even with Prime95 on the default Spire but that temp could well be Vega's idle temp. Some leaked Vega56 leaked benchmarks, which do look very competitive. 2 years ago with FuryX I guess, it's kind of an AMD thing now since the prosumer VegaFEs had an option for it as well.

Everyone is nervous the first time they try brewing. So long as you're reasonably careful it will work absolutely fine, especially so if you're using a kit. Not great for the liver though. I'm sure my alcohol consumption has gone up since I started brewing, though overall cost has gone down a lot.

The gaming Vegas have been officially unveiled. Not as bad as some would have had it but they won't be giving nVidia nightmares, that's for sure, and are well below 1080Ti/ Titan. There's some fairly aggressive bundling on offer as well, which suggests they know that it's underwhelming otherwise. Links more links I'll probably pick one up towards christmas along with a new monitor- I don't want and would never pay for 1080ti/ Titan performance anyway so the very top end is completely irrelevant to me. If 580s remain massively overpriced due to mining and I can get one for effectively a hundred bucks by flicking on the 580 I may even go sooner, a bundle deal with a few hundred off a monitor would be extremely tempting.

I won't use spoiler tags since it seems nobody else has been even going back to the previous thread. Meh, seems a lot of people are playing it now for some reason so yeah, spoiler tags.

So, finished the main game. Around 110 hours, though that includes a couple of HoS quests (and some time I left the game paused). Overall, I'd regard it very positively. Anyway, some vaguely organised thoughts... Gameplay wise, they got far, far closer to what they were aiming for with TW2. The combat was at worst decent, fairly varied and needing somewhat different approaches and there not being any arbitrary difficulty spikes like the cursed battlefield or Kayran, nor dumb QTEs. It was also not really difficult, but you'd die easily if you got lazy or stupid which is the approach I prefer if there's a lot of combat. Character development was poor though, I think I ended up with a dozen or so skill points unused because I plain forgot about them. Itemisation was dumb as rocks and I probably found a couple of dozen unique one of a kind you need a multi part schema from Loc Muinne and Bras of Ban Ard to make Addan Deiths lying around in random chests. I liked the exploration, but generally ignored annoying POI markers. Overall though, I'd be confident that it will be one of my favourite games, probably top ten of all time. I'd definitely be hoping for another Witcher game, whether it involves Geralt or not.

This is how we beat the terrorists. Judging by the watermark and plane's markings it's how the Syrians and French beat the terrorists. Which is an odd combination. Maybe some Syrian media outlet mocking the whole thing? Or enjoying, yeah I bet that was it. I knew it wasn't french because it looks nothing like their planes, check the tail though and there's definitely a tricolour. I wouldn't be that surprised if the Syrians did enjoy it- they're reasonably progressive (very for the ME, especially in the big urban areas) so long as you don't touch on political reform.

This is how we beat the terrorists. Judging by the watermark and plane's markings it's how the Syrians and French beat the terrorists. Which is an odd combination.

As Gfted1 said, shady dealings. That makes him 14 years old when the Vietnam war ends. But we still haven't seen his long form birth certificate so we don't know his real age. And he has never done national service in Kenya either. Very shady (or sick!) guy.

THQNordic is showing a few games at Gamescom, and since they're one of the publishers that best fit my interests... The first could even be the unknown Obisidian project, though we know so little about it it does supposedly fit 'new IP' and 'post apoc'; plus THQNordic would seem to be a good fit with Obsidian and there simply aren't that many RPG studios that could do such a project which aren't already doing stuff. OTOH the Obsidian project is probably too early to be 'fully playable' except maybe as a vertical slice. Their second unannounced title sounds interesting as well.

Fookin' crazy. I have like 7 or 8 unfinished PS4 games, and my most anticipated games for the system: Ni No Kuni II, Yakuza 6 and Dragon Quest XI aren't even released. Then, I might pick up Kingdom Hearts III, and the hack games. I haven't even bought Tales of Vesperia yet. I have Indivisble pre-ordered (backed on IGG). (There are tons of other games that I won't even bother mentioning.) If I ever buy a PS5, it sure as hell won't be before 2020. Don't worry. "Rumours" claim PS5 will be backwards compatible. I won't believe anything until they give us any proof. Until then it's just analysts talking out of their asses. It's a bit more than just rumours, there's good inherent logic behind it- if they go AMD again there would be no technical reason at all not to have backwards compatibility since the chips used would basically be a specialised AMD APU as they are now, it would be like running a 2012 game on Ryzen2/ Navi instead of Bulldozer and a 7950 which is generally fine. My suspicion would be that both MS and Sony are happy with AMD as there have not been the problems either the 360 (heat, mb warping etc) or the PS3 (rather obscure and unique programming architecture) suffered from last gen. It's difficult to see either going ARM/ PowerPC or even Intel/ nVidia at this point. Given that both PS4 and xbone are now basically closed box PCs there's no real reason not to have more frequent hardware upgrades, and indeed both already have upgraded options.

I liked it overall, despite my reservations, and Exodus 1/2 is one of the best two parters in sci fi, the only ones I'd put as better off the top of my head are Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command from STTNG, and the latter is mostly due to David Warner and Patrick Stewart. But too much pointless drama (Apollo/ Starbuck primarily) and too much of their religion appropriately as deus ex machina but also as a crutch for badly planned writing really dragged BSG down for me towards the end. Up to the mid point of S3 I'd rate it as excellent, after that it went downhill markedly.

I know that. I even contributed to their kickstarter. I want a sequel though and every time it comes up I reflexively pretend it's that sequel instead.

Not a job anyone could have done well in the circumstances. Trump cannot keep a position straight from day to day and while Spicer occasionally poured oil on PR fires most of those fires were started by Trump first and foremost and Trump hasn't exactly been reticent about stoking them either. There's not much you can do if your boss keeps insisting that his inauguration crowd was the biggest- almost as big as his hands, and let me tell you they're yuge hands and I know hands- of all time despite all evidence to the contrary. His replacement/ boss looks just terrible though. Stereotypical plastic banker PR person who you'd expect to melt if put near an open flame or turn to dust in sunlight.

There are ups and downs as it is with every long running sci-fi franchise. SG-1 and the first three seasons of Atlantis I would recommend without hesitation. SG-1's initial season or two might seem a bit dated, what with it being a mid 90ies sci-fi TV show in a (then) contemporary setting. I'd agree but I'd also add not to expect science fiction from SG1, SG1 is a fantasy series with a contemporary setting- and is riddled with fantasy tropes. Atlantis is better in that regard, as is Universe; but perhaps as a consequence they're both less consistently 'fun' than SG1. I too liked Universe, but if SG1 was fluffy fantasy with Real American Heroes bringing Truth Justice and The American Way to the cosmos then Universe was too far the other way. The BSG inspiration was clear, but Universe went a bit too far into the pointless CWesque (or was it still WB/ UPN then?) drama that dragged BSG down (though at least they mostly avoided the pointless religio-philosophical guff that really killed BSG). There will be a SGU comic to resolve the cliffhanger, apparently. Official so far as I am aware, but not written by the showrunners.

The first Outcast is one of my very favourite games of all time (of all time!) and has the best soundtrack. Unless it's a complete turkey I'll definitely be getting the sequel.

Capitalism just plain doesn't work well with 'public good' stuff because you either cannot put a dollar value on it or someone else pays when things go bad. Healthcare is just not like going to a shop to buy an apple or something more significant like building a house. When you want healthcare you want to get well. But the vendor only makes money if you're sick, so it's always in their economic interest for you not to die, but only to be sufficiently well that you can keep paying for treatment*. Add in insurance and it's in their best interests for you not to get sick (which fits your best interests as well) but if you do get sick then their best interest is for it to cost the minimum amount. There's also the fact that if you need healthcare you generally need healthcare in a way you don't need to build a house or buy an apple, it's often not an option where you have unlimited time to wait, rent a house or buy a banana instead. Socialising it keeps the minimum cost motivation, but it means that there's also a big motivation to make sure people don't get sick at all, and are fixed quickly and effectively if they do. The bad aspect is that there will be cases where the cost to the whole to fix an individual is too high, but it isn't like that isn't the case in a privatised/ capitalist system anyway. *It also incentivises stuff like the painkiller addiction epidemic in the US. Prescribe painkillers, person gets addicted, continued profit. Prescribe painkillers, person doesn't get addicted, far more limited profit. Social costs of addiction, they're socialised of course, it's in the name!

Are you applying 21st century morals to a War of the Roses era medieval fantasy TV show? What are you, a libtard? It does work a lot better in the books* though (r00fles!) as the Freyicide is well and truly foreshadowed with all the talk about guest right, the king of the twins game and the rat king story. Violating guest right makes you degenerate scum in that world and the books make it explicitly clear that bad stuff happens as a consequence. There's also the small matter of Lady Stoneheart and Lord Manderly both offing Freys regularly in the books as well. Just another example of the TV show lacking nuance, albeit understandably. *well, it hasn't properly happened in the books yet it's obvious that it will.

I have no idea what that means. http://variety.com/2015/film/news/idris-elba-james-bond-too-street-author-anthony-horowitz-1201582692/ I do have to agree with Horowitz as I don't think Elba (fab actor that he is) is a good fit for Bond either based on prior roles, but his way of phrasing it was hilariously tone deaf. I'd pick Salmon because his prior roles fit Bond better, and to be honest I'd pick him over all the white actors I'd seen suggested. Though it does rather seem we're going to get Craig again anyway.