Raithe

There was a whole slew of things that felt missing. On other matters, I caught No One Lives. An interesting twist on the slasher genre. A moderately wealthy couple traveling cross country get grabbed by a ruthless gang. Only for the reveal that the couple are in fact a psychopathic killer/kidnapper (played by Luke Evans) and one of his brainwashed kidnap victims. The rest of the film is him killing the gang in classic slasher style as they freak out and meltdown.

Have to admit, I had Argenta doing mega damage by the end of the game. Nearly always starting combat with full momentum, being able to do the Heroic bit that then allows one extra attack every turn until the end of combat, throw in the use of the Wild Shot ability, and she was doing about 5 auto-burst attacks in a round and getting criticals on most of them. Ended up having to use Toybox to kick start Ulfar's quest properly and ran through that. Then finished off the game. The ending slides were a bit weird, some of them didn't seem to connect to others, and some referred to same characters with different things going on. Plus you had lots of the WH40k grimness in a "yes, you did a happy thing, that of course results in horrible death in 5 years" type of results.

Not exactly. I saw a report that he got the agreement to do both versions from the get-go, so he apparently set out from the beginning to film two versions of the story. So you aren't going to get fans starting a movement, but the wait for that. Still, I'm wary, since usually R-rated means the gratuitous sex, or extreme violence. And I can't really see them adding the meaningful dialogue if it's just during sexy time between characters. Yes, the significant Kurosowa sprinkling is the Seven Samurai's aspect, the gathering of random heroes to defend a village.

Rebel Moon, Pt 1. It's.. odd. It feels like someones pulled chunks of Warhammer 40k fanfiction, slapped a bit of knock-off Star Wars, rolled it around in some Kurosawa, splattered it out there and lost parts of the story. I'd heard that Snyder released this as a pg-13 version, but also shot an R-rated Director's version that will see the light of day at some point. I'm wondering if that's why the story feels so choppy. Things happen and you feel as if there should be 10-15 minutes of dialogue and scenes setting up the transition from where you last saw characters talking. Good actors, some great visuals, some interesting ideas, and lots of hollowness.

And as we must all remember...

Most things up until mid act 4 tend to work as intended. It's just Act 4 onwards it gets messy.

The journal is glitched for her companion quest, but it kept going along for me through Act 4.

I'm going to take a pause from it to wait on some updates I think. Managed to get pretty far into Chapter 5, think I'm near the conclusion, but I've got a stack of glitches with the journal on companion quests, and Ulfar saying if we don't do x before we carry on he'll be leaving to handle the matter on his own. And no options or locations to go to for carrying out what he needs to do. I think one of the minor background disappointments is that my origin isn't reflected in any way during the entire thing. I've got a Crime Lord who controlled an entire star system, but all references are high society rogue trader having no connection or clue or attitudes to all the smugglers and organised crime groups you deal with.

Have to say, I've really only encountered any glitches from Act 4 onwards. Which makes sense, since the Beta didn't go there. While I've been mostly enjoying it, there are some truly awful moments in the latter half of the game. The annoying freaking maze planet map for one, because there's no real guidance and it fails to highlight that the path back doesn't always go to the map you left. And then there's a "quick save, reload" constantly for a stealth required companion mission. Yes, we don't have a stealth mechanic, and we don't have anything to let you know when you're in line of sight or line of awareness of moving people that you have to sneak between their patrol movements or bad things will happen...

https://www.tor.com/2023/12/11/military-science-fiction-author-david-drake-passes-away-at-age-78/