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Unfortunately you're not wrong, The Boys very much stopped being satire and just being depiction (with superheroes) a while ago. Perhaps the most unrealistic thing is that the feds are trying to put a stop to supe nonsense...though that can largely be explained as business interests from the existing military industrial complex (as it was in the comics). But it is a good show and so far is holding up. I think it is how adaptations should be done, in the sense that the material is adapted both for the format and to update references, because hot damn does the Vought Cinematic Universe as the big superhero thing made by Vought hit closer to home than Vought comic books would.

Star Trek: Discovery s1 It doesn't have the episodic highs of individual TOS or TNG and didn't stick with things long enough to compete with DS9, all things considered it's like any number of CW shows with a premium channel level of freedom to curse and show....weird lizard people Klingon nips. Not particularly impressive and feels both too short and too long.

I still can't get it to work because I don't have time to play mod wack-a-mole. But I did watch a 30 minute video that showed off the archetypes, so here are my thots. Kinetic Sharpshooter doesn't seem to have much synergy with base kineticist and has to pay for Archery feats. It doesn't gather power and instead pays burn up front. I'd have to get around to actually checking it out, but right now I'm not optimistic or very interested. Arcane Deceiver isn't actually an Arcanist, it just hangs out there. It loses everything from that class, including spell casting. It's a 6th level spontaneous Charisma caster who draws from a very limited spell list and has a selection of subclasses that I'd say are on the same tier of feature as the sorcerer bloodlines. Notably it doesn't get bonus spells from attribute scores, doesn't get to metamagic their merged spells, and can't merge spellbooks or do the Lore Master import. I think it may be able to attempt a bluff check to not use a spell slot or something depending on subclass, but I'd rather just have more spells. Perhaps the most surprising is that the fused spell interface doesn't appear to be that much of a cluster ****, the only thing is that attack roll spells seem to be an auto-hit instead of using the roll, which means less Arcane Trickster shenanigans until at least level 14 (with respec). Mantis Zealot has some cool powers, but it's very dependent on a specific new weapon type so will be tied to how good those are. Which I have no idea of right now. Bladebound gets a pet....at level 12. Not sure if the pet takes up a slot or works as a summon. Not going to knock off Arcane Rider, Scion, or Sword Saint. Living Grimoire gets locked to their book (mechanically a cold iron light mace with scaling +× bonuses) and uses Intelligence instead of Wisdom. Chelaxian Diva gains some sonic damage abilities and can increase their Bard song DC, but most impressive is a song with a 60 foot aoe that is haste but gives bonuses that are a fifth of bard level. Doesn't lose anything particularly great either. Inciter is an upgrade. You get sneak attack and rogue talents and can share some of that via inspired rage. On top of that you can debuff enemies in the area of inspired rage. Titan Fighter is designed to dual wield 2-handers. You "lose" half the feats to get the Ranger's 2-handed combat style, which means you can do dual wielding without investing in Dex. Maybe it gives Mutation Warrior a run, but it could also be a decent dip to get Sword Saints the ability to use a fauchard in one hand. Drunken Master can't be Chaotic or worship the Chad god but has an ability called "Cayden's Trick". 0/10, buggy as hell. Some abilities seem cool and now you have a way to use all the booze instead of bulk selling. Sable Company Marine is another straight upgrade. It gets a better pet earlier and that alone makes it a good dip. You have to wait 2 levels until you grab favored enemy, at which point it progresses normally. Bloodseeker loses all Slayer Talents to grab special magic powers (most of them copy existing spells). It also gets a bite attack and has a capstone that gives +6 Profane bonuses to Str, Dex, and Int. Not bad, but it's locked to evil and most of the spells are best spent on buffs.

That's a crazy amount of time spent on a game you'll never play. I don't even spend that much time on things I like.

I think that's gonna depend on what mods you use. If you do get it wo work and have the inclination, let us know what you think about the new archetypes.

Well you haven't played BG3 so that's not a surprise.

I've also had similar login issues, both on mobile and PC.

I'm in the position where I wish it was bad, it's so generic that I remember next to nothing about the gameplay a day later. I remember that the player is some kind of ninja doing superhero flick stuff and is being guided by a depressed middle-aged alcoholic dwarf to fight an uncanny looking albino twink elf, but there's just nothing specific that is interesting to recall. Maybe superhero fatigue has spilled over onto videogames that ape that kind of maximalist action spectacle.

It looks like Dragons Dogma.

I guess we'll wait a couple of days to see what gameplay looks like, but it looks like Bioware is doing Bethesda's thing of having one type of game put into different settings across different series. Retrospectively I don't think any Dragon Age is particularly great and that generally Mass Effect has a stronger stable of titles, even so I don't think that porting that kind of gameplay to a more melee centric setting is going to work particularly well. Also, for a developer that pivoted to creating "cinematic experiences", it's kinda funny just how unimpressive Bioware's cinematics are.

As someone who generally found PoE games not being great in practice despite being very good for me on paper (which somewhat disturbs me because I have an issue in articulating just what about Poe and Deadfire I dislike), I have to say that Hawke64 is absolutely right about the endgame of Deadfire. It's refreshingly short (in terms of real time spent, not in terms of content) and is less of a test of just how much players can cheese the game system (Kingmaker/WotR) or an uncharacteristically dense series of combat encounters that just does not work well with established mechanics (BG3) than it is a thematic cap of the game you've sunk at least 50+ hours into for a single playthrough. Which is quite nice, The Guardian would have been a one-off endgame boss like in some many videogames but in Deadfire it is just what you have to get through to get in the gate, the real boss is the decisions you've made along the way both in the form of your conflict with one of the factions (which I believe can be kind of weak, given the way you can theoretically not pay special attention to any given one enough to explain just why the hell they would come to stand off with you in El Dorado Ukaizo) to the last dialogue with Eothas himself. It's a very nice ending to a game I otherwise felt was unfortunately disjointed (the curse of a multi-game protagonist imo) and should be studied and tried to learn from instead of forcing us into yet another series of EPIC battles that have all the heft of a comic book superhero death. This is the one part I disagree with strongly enough to talk about, the romances felt very much slapped on and applied with the cis-hetero eye in mind. It's better than Bioware or Owlcat (other than the throuple in Kingmaker) but that's a very low bar to cross. I may get some guff here, but largely I felt that BG3 did a much better job at romance generally and feeling less relentlessly heteronormative. But that's all minor quibbles and the opinion of a meanie zucchini. Maybe I'll get myself together and crank out some incomprehensible nonsense about gaming and dialectics/trialectics.

I enjoyed it because it was a well executed scene but moreso because it really hammers in the disconnect between the decadent nature of the court and the real effect of its politics. XIII could not give less of a **** over the real people who are going to suffer from the policies he enacts so long as he gets to do his silly king stuff, and his Richelieu also doesn't really care that his king is pretty much the exact kind of guy he should despise so long as he gets to do what he wants. That's pretty analogous to a lot of what we're dealing with right now, with some politicians being a much less fun mirror of Louis XIII and some of their administrators being more overtly fascist versions of Richelieu.

I somehow got roped into watching Discovery with my dad. Maybe I'm just built different, but I don't think it's outright horrible like Top Gun: Maverick or VillenDune. For me it's more like the Marvel movies, exceedingly generic CW-tiwr SciFi that nostalgia bait and uses kewl imagery to sucking you into sitting through hollow technobabble nonsense. It's like if they set the most forgettable episodes of any of the old Trek shows in the middle of the Dominon War. It leaves me feeling nothing at all, neither hatred nor the sense of wonder that I got watching the best of TOS/TNG/DS9. Do not reccomend, will probably continue watching because my Dad has very questionable taste (he loves The Phantom Menace because of the pod racing, I am not joking). Perhaps the one thing I found interesting, Klingon supremacist cult fearing assimilation, gets quickly squandered to make the Klingons classic baddies who don't really believe in anything but power. The redesign also looks awful.

"Don't look at me. I'm beautifuuuul. I'm beautifuuuuuuul." and Louis XIII doing a drag performance has been seared into my mind since I saw the film. I think that what makes it work so well for me is how I went in expecting somethings like the Excorcist but moar lewd and instead got a substantially better version of The Crucible. Frankly what I found disturbing wasn't the nun orgy but just how relevant a 50 year old film about events 4 centuries ago feels. Maybe I'm just too brain damaged by Evangelion. I think it's a really solid horror that manages to straddle the line between being too much of a joke to taking itself so seriously it disappears up it's own ass.

Well that's what I get for making a joke without knowing Florida law.

I guess felons are gonna get the right to vote in Florida.

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The ICC clearly only has legitimate jurisdiction over Africa and Russia.

I Saw The TV Glow (2024) The film legit made me depressed. A neon draped nightmare of nostalgia that detonates a tactical nuke to the feels. It's perhaps one of the scariest horror films in terms of actually being frightening for the viewer. Could not reccomend more. Showgirls (1995) Kyle MacLaughlin's unsettling chin strikes again. It's obsessively horny, glamorous in a gaudy way, and more than a little excessive, just like the myth Vegas has built for itself. Perhaps it's because I'm viewing it almost 30 years later, but the film really feels like it was ahead of it's time in some ways.

We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021) A brilliant exposition of isolation and loneliness in the always online world. It's very disturbing and low-key, and doesn't commit the cardinal KP movie sin of explaining itself in a way that feels unnatural/solely for the benefit of the audience. You pick up enough from each character to know who they are while still not really knowing who they are, which is very fitting given that it is a film about online engagement. Highly reccomend, can't wait to see the director's next film tonight. There's just a hollowness to his films that all the spectacle in the world can't compensate for. I don't think he can understand the human element(s) of storytelling to make a film that is compelling

In this case it's definitely my fault for going against my instincts and watching it. Dissecting the movie more in my head, the thing that really stands out to me is Florence Pugh's horrible last line in the film, which sounds like she was rushing through a line read at 2am instead of being on a set with a dozen incredible actors. When I say this I'm not just angry about how that French-Canadian fool squandered the Midsommar star's talent to have her stand around in weird costumes delivering plot exposition, I mean that with the cast of actors that are all capable of incredible performances he managed to get for the movie he wanted to make since he was a child....he didn't get a memorable performance out of any of them. Not a one. How do you get Christopher Walken out of retirement and sequester him to making grumpy faces while wearing a dress? Villeneuve with his hatred of dialogue and inability to understand humanity should just make videogame cutscenes or something.

Dune: Part Two (2024) I was told to give it a chance so I did. As many of you know, @Bartimaeus and I have hated on Villeneuve a lot, frankly this film confirms it. Dune: Part Two has a stellar cast and it absolutely disrespects them. Florence Pugh is one of the greatest actresses of her generation and she is absolutely squandered here, relegated to wearing weird aesthetic outfits and delivering one of the most wooden lines I have ever heard. And it is constantly like this, all of that talent is wasted on horse**** lines or set pieces against barren fake scifi sets. Perhaps the closest the film gets to real acting is through Dave Bautista, whose background in wrestling primes him to be able to act without using the dialogue Villeneuve so despises, in the scenes where he is afraid or humiliated. Everything else is just ****ing bland as hell, if it wasn't for the lack of melted faces or unnatural numbers of fingers I could believe this film was completely AI generated. The cinematography feels like it just shot concept art. None of this **** feels like anyone actually lives here, none of it. Villeneuve's precision and set building captured nothing, even the closest "real world" shots of the desert feel much more like they dumped 9000 tons of sand into a studio lot, it doesn't feel like a desert with actual creatures that live in it. And to get a bit....woke, as some would say, Villeneuve ripped out the Arabic influences and attempted to sew it back together without filling in the gaping holes. This film actively attempts to de-Arabize the Fremen into generic sci-fi future humanity, grinding off the serial numbers so to speak. Perhaps it's political, given that a film about obivously arab stand-in desert people fighting comically cruel invaders occupying their home would not be a politically popular among the ruling class for entirety the 21st century, but substantially less so in 2024. Whatever the case may be, it is a cowardly move that makes me feel like I'm being insulted. This movie is a soulless piece of **** and I feel like I need to cleanse by watching a good film. So I'm going to buy tickets for I Saw The TV Glow (2024) and see it tonight or tomorrow, hell I'll probably watch the director's previous feature We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021) to boot, because that movie is ****ing great.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders