kanisatha

This is actually worse than Munich. At least then, the French and British leaders didn't include provisions of cash payouts for themselves in the sellout of the Czechs. I expect the Ukrainians will reject, knowing full well it will cost them a lot in Trump's retribution but that will still be better than complete surrender and loss of sovereignty. The real question, though, is how will London, Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw react? Will they also join in Trump's sellout of the Ukrainians?

Well, from an RPG standpoint, isn't this a really good thing, that two different sets of player choices resulted in very strongly different outcome experiences? Isn't this what we want from an RPG?

Have DLCs been confirmed for Avowed? And if so, is there a timeline?

Yeah I watched it live. Very cool. Amazingly large and boistrous crowd at Canaveral for the launch.

Loved this video. As a hardcore fan of the Realms, it was such a treat to see and hear from the great Ed Greenwood.

Thanks for sharing. I like this review very much, because it pushes back at something that's been seriously bothering me about people's views and reviews of games recently, namely this argument that '2' is just a bigger and more polished version of '1' and therefore it's somehow not a good game worth playing. No one seriously made this claim with past '2's, most notably D:OS2 which *was* merely a bigger and more polished version of '1'. But now, those very same people (pro and amateur reviewers alike) who gushed over games like D:OS2 are pushing this silly claim about TOW2. I chalk it up to a very dangerous increase in an entitlement mentality among people in recent years.

Yup, I was thinking the exact same thing watching the video. They should import these changes into PoE2 as well.

No way, because it's their engine that makes their inventory system, hotbar, and party formation and movement such a huge pain. Those are all issues following from the limitations of their engine.

I started playing BG3 about a week ago. I'm using a lot of mods, though all of them from among those available through the built-in mod manager. The most important mod being the one that gets me a 6-character party. As I had expected, the game is okay but not amazing the way everyone likes to gush over it. It's definitely not worthy of all those 98, 99, 100 review scores it was given, calling into question the credibility of those reviewers. Among the things that I dislike are a horrible inventory system and hotbar system, poory designed UIs across the board, moving and organizing the party as a group being a huge pain in the ass, most containers in the environment being empty (and not getting clearly marked as such even after you check them), and all NPCs can be interracted with even though many dont have anything meaningful to say. Your own dialog options during conversations are often many and yet the range of different options is very limited, meaning many of the options are merely minor variations on saying the same thing. Combat is also, as expected, rather tedious, but I can live with it from having a party of six and using low difficulty settings. But it is rather ridiculous the extent to which characters miss their attacks. I've gone through multiple rounds of combat where every single one of my six characters missed on their attack. But I'll grant this is a huge flaw of DnD and not the game per se (and why I love PoE mechanics so very much more). Where the game does shine is in beautiful environments, and very nice character animations and cutscenes. The story is also good so far. More to come.

Yup. I've come to this same conclusion myself. Quality (and meaningfulness) over quantity.

Oh, this is good news. Very useful info for me. This is what I'll do. Thanks!

That depends way too much on your class and your choice of weapons. I played a mage and thought the 2-handed playstyle was slow, unresponsive and not fun to play, so I switched to dagger/orb Spellblade and never looked back, stacking burn, shock and arcane bombs while zipping around the battlefield was very satisfying. Rounded the build out with some burst damage attacks, and it was a hoot and a half to play. At least it was for me, but I like high dps glass cannon characters whose only defense is high mobility and good cooldown management. There's a reason I tend to play sorcerers in Diablo IV and used the Stinger in Everspace 2. But yeah, game is definitely too long. The mage's ranged playstyle with the staff and the entire Control tree is probably also a leftover from the days where you were supposed to have actual players keeping the attention of the enemies, instead of semi-braindead AI companions. Interesting. So is there any melee build available that is high DPS but not a glass cannon?

What a great blog! As a gamer with a disability (I have a serious hearing impairment), I am so very glad people in the industry (and within Obsidian) are taking accessibility seriously. I require captioning for everything voice-related. But even with captioning pretty common these days, some games leave out crucial bits of the game from their captioning system, such as backgound chatter/banter. It's so very frustrating to hear the sound of someone saying something, but then not be able to know what they said. Keep up the good work! And thanks!!

Well, it clearly says it's a group of investors, with the Saudi PIF being one of them. Throwing "Saudi" into the title seems to be just clickbait. And personally, I think this may be the best thing to happen to all of EA's IPs, in my case especially the DA IP.

After playing several RPGs in a row, I've decided to change things up and play the 4X game Humankind next. Any Humankind veterans here with beginner's tips for me?

No, not yet. I thought it was supposed to come out late this year, which would be around now, but I haven't seen any announcements.

I concur. On the "story," point, yes initially I wrote it as "story" and then changed it to "storytelling." I should've left it the way I originally had my post. On the companions' stories in 1, I loved that for several of them their stories had hooks in the main story and so choices in one affected outcomes (ending slides) in the other. And I cared about the companions' stories and their outcomes. Even Durance, who I recall utterly disliking the first time I played the game way back when, I ended up liking and feeling sympathy for him this time around due to differences in how I roleplayed things. The one negative in PoE1 for me was that I felt there were way too many consumables (and crafting materials). By this I mean way too many different TYPES of consumables, whereby it became too overwhelming for me to try and keep track of what things did what for me. So I hardly ever used any of my consumables, even including scrolls, and never bothered with crafting anything. A lot of game development resources couldv'e been saved going with fewer different types of scrolls/spells, potions, foods, etc.

I finally finished my playthrough of PoE1 including both DLCs. It was a very fun experience. Because I had not replayed the game in a very long time, I had forgotten much of the story and the lore, and so it was like playing the game for the first time. It was clear to me that although PoE2 is mechanically the better of the two, PoE1 is better by a wide margin than 2 in storytelling, character development (especially the companions), world-building, and side quests. This is surprising and puzzling to me because PoE2 is the sequel, and had a bigger budget. But it comes across to me as if the game development team, including JES, didn't have their hearts in PoE2 as much as they did in PoE1. Just my take.

Don't quote me on this, but I think I read in the news on the Congressional hearings that the incident happened in the Red Sea, off Yemen, where we have had routine drone patrols for quite some time now. Well, actually, this is kinda' where I am too. The Drake Equation shows us that there have to be hundreds of planets out there with intelligent life, and I am quite sure of this myself. But at the same time, the vastness of the universe is such that even with hundreds, even thousands of planets holding intelligent life, the distances between those planets will very likely be so great as to make interstellar travel extremely challenging. But, I also think that even as alien beings may not be visiting us, it is much, much more possible, and likely, that alien robotic craft may be visitng us, i.e., UAPs.

Yeah, putting on my aerospace engineer hat tells me the same thing. But I don't buy us or any other earthly power yet having that kind of tech, the tech to create a pure energy shield of that sort.

Well, the Hellfire is no longer just an ATGM. It is now a much more sophisticated all-purpose weapon, including for use by drones, helos, and even the A-10 as an AAM.

The tech gap between the tech in these UAPs and the tech we publicly know about is simply too great/vast. This being "our" tech is actually the more far-fetched explanation, IMO. This possible explanation is beginning to gain traction in some scientific circles.

This is exactly my professional take as well. Putin knows how the military side of NATO will react. No need for him to test that. It is the political side of NATO that is suspect, and it totally makes sense Putin will want to (and will continue to) test the political will and unity of NATO. And Article 4 provocations are the best way to do so as well, because obviously an Article 5 provocation could very well backfire on him.

Yup. This video was shown at the hearing yesterday of the US House committee investigating UAPs. Several ex-military witnesses testified under oath that the DoD has entire servers full of such videos. Damning evidence against the deniers.

This may be more the vampire game for me. Looks interesting, but I'll wait and see.