kanisatha

How in hell do you guys finish playing games so quickly?! Do you just not go to work, don't eat, don't sleep, just play, play ,play?! It takes me many months to get through modest sized game.

Well, seems like the Ukrainians have accepted the US plan, "with only a few small details to be worked out." The meetings today between the US and Russian sides in Abu Dhabi appear to have been very productive. Apparently the Ukrainians were there as well and the US mediated between them and the Russians to hammer out agreement on details. I also saw a report that said Zelenskiy has been in agreement on the need to end the war now because the longer it goes on the worse Ukraine's bargaining position will get. But he was very concerned how nationalist hardliners in Ukraine would react if he gave away "too much." So, he wanted Trump to play "bad cop" and push a deal on him so he could tell the hardliners he had "no choice" but to accept the deal. I can actually see that being true. The battlefield situation for Ukraine is not good at all. As VP Vance recently put it, looking at it as Ukraine is being forced to give up 20% of its territory is not the proper way to look at it. The proper way to look at it is that Ukraine gets to keep 80% of its territory, has its sovereignty recognized and accepted, and can now focus on its economic reconstruction and development. That's a win, not a loss. And frankly, I generally agree with this assesment. Taking a weak 'W' *is* better than taking a bad 'L'.

Yes, exactly. Putin has already rejected the European version of the plan. The US is still pushing its original version, with some small modifications, on the Ukrainians, but they're sure to reject that. The problem now is very obvious. Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield, so Putin has zero incentive to accept something *less* than what he (very realistically) can get from fighting on. And he is not just in it for land anymore. Now, he wants a post-partition Ukraine that is effectively subjugated to Russia, where Russia calls the shots in Kiev. Hence, small Ukrainian army size, no military agreements of any kind with anyone unless approved by Russia, Russian language sanctified in the Ukrainian constitution, and an election that Putin can manipulate and get an at least open to deal-making with Russia figure as the new Ukrainian leader. And why not? Putin does hold (almost) all the cards. But of course the worst actors here are Macron and Merz. They went to Geneva on Sunday and told the Ukrainians to reject everything by selling Zelenskiy false hope. False hope that they will help to save Ukraine from Russia, including even if Trump walks away from the Ukrainians. Macron and Merz are using the Ukrainians as a pawn to be sacrificed to Putin to buy themselves some time to get their heads out of their asses. Mark my words. If the war drags on, expect Ukraine to be fighting to hold on to Kiev by July or August '26.

I haven't seen any comments here on these two new sci-fi RPGs, The Expanse and Exodus, so I figured I'd post. I've never played a sci-fi RPG, but am intrigued by these games. Looking forward to comments from those of you who are big into sci-fi RPGs:

Well, all of this seems moot now, because apparently yesterday in Geneva very good progress was made on amending the document on all points, such that everyone--the US, the Europeans, and most importantly the Ukrainians--are now satisfied and on the same page. It seems that the Ukrainians are willing to accept the painful territorial concessions, just as I expected and predicted, in exchange for very strong security guarantees, protection of their sovereignty, and a good reconstruction plan. But that is all the more reason to expect that Putin will very likely reject it. It will at least serve to put more pressure on the Russians, though, and hopefully also will re-isolate them internationally if we can get other major states around the world to accept the modified plan as a good plan that is reasonable and fair to both sides.

Did you play with the expansion included?

Big drama this morning following from claims that Sec. Rubio personally told several senators the plan came from the Russians and is their wish list. Then, the State Dept issued an unusually strong rebuttal claiming what the senators were saying is "blatantly false." Rubio himself also said in a social media post the senators had "got him wrong," and that the plan is a US-authored plan taking into account input from both the Russians and Ukrainians. Then the Ukrainians said they had never been consulted on the plan and only saw its details when it was presented to them a few days ago as a take-it-or-leave-it plan, with a threat of an end to US support if they refused to accept it. Personally, I think the issue here is that Rubio is increasingly finding himself in a bind. He is the one guy (along with Wittkof, and that's why he has already announced he is quitting in January) in the Administration who is principled, and is unhappy with constantly having to go against his own principles in order to be a loyal team player within the Administration. That's what's playing out here, and I expect Rubio will call it quits pretty soon. The only reason he's stayed this long is because he gave up a very good and secure senate seat to take this job, and will now find himself without an alternative political career path for him. I did also see an Axios report providing more details of the deal. It does include a provision that explicitly says the US and European states will provide a security guarantee to Ukraine "equivalent to NATO's Article 5 guarantee." That, at least, is something. But for me, including in my capacity as an international security academic, the provisions limiting Ukraine's military size and weapons, and barring European states from deploying troops inside Ukraine are the truly bad provisions. The territorial concessions. as despicable as they are, cannot at this stage be avoided, because it is indisputable that Ukraine is losing and the Russians are winning on the battlefield.

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.