Zoraptor

Aegon is likely a back up in case Dany/ Visc didn't pan out. Either that or he's intended solely to sow discord for her eventual return. You could solve most of the mysteries with a few monologues if GRRM wanted to. He only needs to give the characters he says knows too much (like daddy Reed) some booktime and the right person to ask questions/ talk to.

I see John Boehner has compared Cruz to Lucifer. Which seems a bit harsh on Lucifer. At this point I'm more than half way expecting it to actually be Hulk Hogan. Or for Trump to hold a reality TV special to find his VP. It's about the only thing this campaign has missed so far.

You really should change your mind Bruce. The one you've got at the moment is clearly defective so you can probably get a refund or replacement.

Quentin is basically what you'd expect an actual Harry Potter type to be like at school when he was a teenager- a bit of a richard. That works for me as it's a counter to the theoretically Potter-esque/ Narnia-esque setting and I rather like the whole through a glass, darkly, vibe. Having said that, he's solidly anti hero rather than a villain protagonist like a direct antithesis of Harry Potter would be. He's certainly not 'nice' though, even at the end of the season let alone the beginning. He's just matured a bit. Heh, I was spoiled on who The Beast really was because I knew the actor playing him and he was credited for every Beast episode without visually appearing. Kind of ironic, while he has a Brit accent for the show he always plays americans here as that's his natural accent.

I wonder if it will be based on the nutty pilot of a few years ago. Probably not.

Winston Churchill. Pathological colonialist to the extent he'd likely be regarded as an outright white supremacist these days and at very best a White Man's Burden paternalist, advocated gassing Iraqi Marsh Arabs, starved millions of Bengalis, would have fought against India's independence tooth and nail if he hadn't been voted out of power, celebrated the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour and let Coventry be bombed. Overall, a genuinely crappy person leavened by some pithy comments and being the right man for the right job at the right time for his country. Even then (and much like Hitler and Stalin) most of his direct contributions to the conduct of war were disastrous- sending troops to Greece, Dieppe, in WW2; Gallipoli in WW1. The only debatable bit is whether he was 'evil' instead of just not a nice guy.

Something something Bioware theme park something something what no Ride the Bull?

Publius Aelius Hadrianus Augustus?

It's also completely natural. You can't have the plus of name recognition of a beloved franchise without the minuses of the name recognition of a beloved franchise as well. People will have expectations that will push them to buy the game because it's Badlur's Gate; and expectations that will push them to dislike what they actually get because it's not their Baldur's Gate which they've imagined for 15 years- and that's with or without extraneous political guff. Same with anything: Force Awakens wouldn't have got nearly as much publicity if it hadn't been Star Wars, it also wouldn't have been criticised as much for being a rehash of all the successful bits of the other star wars movies mashed together. The criticism they've had will be as nothing if they try doing an actual Baldur's Gate 3 though. I bet they'd still take the name recognition and sales it would bring over the clean critical slate of a wholly new product though.

Can't be worse than their last lot of subs. Collins class were utter trash and made the not great ANZAC frigates look fantastic in comparison. Not that we should criticise, most of our navy has been tied up in harbour since January.

Given it's Chernobyl's 30th anniversary I suppose it was inevitable they'd have a STALKER bundle (+Metros) for both the people who don't have them already. Every time I see footage from the exclusion zone I'm struck by how perfectly the STALKERs captured the atmosphere.

About ten times the average US murder rate. Having said that, she's not the first person connected to the water crisis to have died in mysterious circumstances.

Merkel has to love Turkey, because Erdy has her by the balls over the refugee crisis- indeed, her recent visit was basically continuous low grade ritual humiliation. Any of the EU countries that pays more than lip service to things like open borders and continuous integration has to love Erdy, at present, no option. Obama has to love Turkey because they're in NATO, and in perhaps the single most strategically important position in NATO with its second largest army. Plus, he's been elected so promises to rich Armenian donors don't mean jack any more. Having said that, most people don't hate Turkey, they hate Erdogan and the AKP.

VtM: Bloodlines released, which is not exactly a surprise since the news leaked a while ago. Pretty expensive for a 12 year old game though as Kotick gotta Kotick. Also rotating bundle sales (iD shooters, LA adventure games, BitTrip, Horror now).

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance. I assume '18th' is a typo. The Long Rifle is an 18th century weapon, albeit used in the 19th in this case. That would be a fairly extraordinary coincidence, especially considering how often that phrase is assumed to be apocryphal.

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

If going down that route there's things like the fan made commercial Hearts of Iron/ Europa Universalis mod standalones too. They're all standalone games though, you don't have all the problems that came up with the previous paid mod fiasco like stealing/ 'stealing' (depending on perspective) resources from unpaid mods, compatibility, "you wouldn't pirate a mod" etc etc with them. Prospekt is also made for a Valve game, and the ship of paid mods for Valve games hasn't just sailed it's circumnavigated the globe several times in the interim. You can also, well, just not buy standalones. F4 is a pretty terrible fit because it hasn't been received all that well and because the 'mods will fix it' attitude associated with Bethesda games. $60 for a game then $60 for mods to fix it with bulk of that going to those who have put no labour into those mods is a dream scenario for Bethesda (and Valve), not so much for anyone else who got the game fixed for free beforehand.

Bridge and subway require some reflection and time to organise though, and a lot of people change their mind either before or part way through (which is why women typically have a higher suicide attempt rate, but lower success rate than men) an attempt. You don't have much time to reflect and none to change your mind if you've just grabbed your shotgun and pulled the trigger. Won't stop the committed person who wants to kill themselves- only thing that stops that is proper treatment or locking in a padded cell equivalents- but does stop or reduce the severity of more acute or opportunistic suicide attempts.

Steam paid mods are probably coming back for the launch of Fallout 4's GECK or whatever they're calling its mod tools. Fun times if so.

I quite like the idea of being called on 'racism' in D&D, actually. 90% of pretty much any D&D game is wandering around slaughtering trash mobs of orcs/ gobbos/ gnolls/ hobgobbos/ ogres/ lizardmen/ kobolds because they're %race% and despite them being passably intelligent- kobolds can do things like form proper understandable sentences and that puts them well above the typical Youtube commenter or Bruce. Yet we go around slaughtering them because that's the way it's always been done. It could also have the very beneficial side effect of minimising trash mobs... who am I kidding, they'd just have skellies/ ghouls/ rats/ spiders/ liches as the new trash mob instead of the 'smart' ones.

No need for an essay when a clause will do. Succinct, to the point and gets the important take home message across as quickly and easily as possible.

Eh, I think that hybrid looks more human than normal Cruz. I could easily imagine that being leader of some minor European nation for example. Trying to decipher hybrid Donald/ Ted speech patterns on the other hand would probably drive you insane.

Only gay character I've ever had a problem with is the gay mechanic in ME3, and that was for precisely the same reason as the one in SoD- just about the first thing he says to you is approx. "Hi, I'm Steve, and I'm gay because I have a husband who has died!". I find it rather odd that Shephard can suddenly become a gay male in the last game but I'm happy enough to accept that that is a deficiency with the previous two games rather than shoehorning into the last one. The problem in both cases is primarily the shoehorning (making it an obvious political statement, not something you'd expect someone to actually say) not actually the content itself. Though in the SoD case it's a real world problem that ought not to be a significant problem in context due to magic existing and already established solutions in game.

An expansion to a well known series is not a great place to start with that though. There are certain expectations there that don't include political agenda. People complaining about the political agenda of Gone Home don't have much cause for complaint as it's a new series with no existing baggage, nor do people complaining about Bioshock having (a critique of) Objectivism in it especially if they'd played Thief and SS2 with their criticisms of anarchism and communism beforehand. Ain't nothing wrong with politicised content in games, when appropriate. Problem here is that there's an attempt- minor maybe- to piggyback issues into a popular game series that weren't there beforehand. That's easily seen as shoehorning and trying to have cake and eat it too, and will put people's backs up. If Ken Levine decided SoD was a great place to complete the set with a critique of fascism there'd be complaints as well, probably of him being pretentious but certainly of it not being an appropriate game for the politics.

Retroism owns the publishing rights to Darklands. Since Night Dive mentioned it as one of the titles that could potentially get a remake similar to the System Shock remake currently in progress it's likely that they own the IP outright. Retroism = Tommo + Night Dive, for publishing purposes.