kanisatha

Here's what's happening at the UNHRC today. As @Gorthsaid, no Russians are ever likely to face a court on their crimes, but at least this inquiry may establish facts that could sway public and government opinion in those countries currently on the fence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/12/ukraine-united-nations-human-rights-council-war-crimes/

Yeah this is what I did in almost every such instance. And so I guess that explains it.

The thing that puzzles me is that Brian Fargo himself has confirmed that inXile is already working on two AAA RPGs using the UE5 engine, the more far along of these being Project Cobalt (open world steampunk FPS RPG). And they are much smaller than Obsidian. So how would it be possible for them to pick up a potential F:NV2?

For those of you who, like me, are interested in the nitty-gritty details of the tactical and operational battlefield in Ukraine: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-9

Article on the long-term strategic ramifications in Europe from the war: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/05/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-is-transforming-europe/ Article on the failure of Russian airpower in the war: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/russian-military-air-force-failure-ukraine/629803/ Some more interesting tidbits on Finland, Sweden, and NATO membership [incl. some good observations on the tremendous value Finland brings to NATO, a big part of why I like Finland in NATO ]: https://www.rferl.org/a/finland-sweden-nato-membership-explainer-russia-ukraine/31841209.html

Yeah, on the one hand, that Obsidian has so much on its plate right now with the games it's currently working on bodes well for Obsidian and for us Obsidian fans. But on the other hand, if it means a prospective F:NV2 gets farmed out to another Xbox studio, I don't know if I like the sound of that. It especially bothers me that this may effectively kill the idea of a PoE3, at least for many years to come.

Yes this may need to happen. The first step I will need to take is creating an account at Nexus Mods. After that, yeah, I'm gonna' need a tutorial on mod managers.

https://www.aroged.com/2022/03/06/fallout-new-vegas-2-development-entrusted-to-obsidian-or-inxile-the-latest-from-jeff-grubb/ What do you guys think? Assuming there's some truth to the rumors, will those of you diehard fans of F:NV who've been hoping for a sequel be okay with that sequel coming from inXile rather than Obsidian?

Yes I was aware of this, but by the end of the W3 main game, having tried very hard to be meticulous about doing everything in the game, I still had some critical potions locked going into the DLCs. Don't know why/what content I missed.

But no clothes coming off scene. Lame. What a let-down!

The problem I had in W3 with potions was that some of the ingredients for the potions were very hard/frustrating to obtain, and of course the more high-demand and/or beneficial the potion the exponentially greater the difficulty of obtaining the ingredients. All in all it's just too much of a pain/too frustrating and aggravating. Because I absolutely love the Witcher stories, what I need is a cheat mod that let's me auto-kill any target I want, just click on target and poof! Dead!

This is the big lie that Putin seems to now have fixated on for his domestic audience, that Russia faces today, from a "neo-Nazi" "gangster" West, an existential threat just like it did in 1940. However, only a tiny fraction of Russia's population today was even born pre-1945. And yes I'm sure everyone got plenty of "Great Patriotic War" indoctrination in school, but still, I have to wonder how effective all this propaganda actually is, even with a very propaganda-and-conspiracy-theory-favoring Russian public.

Both Benatar and Blondie are among my CDs that I play (loudly) very regularly.

Hell yeah! I LOVE her. Always used to marvel at how so much sound and energy could come from such a small body!!

I recall reading that the actor who played MacGyver was a complete ass on and off the set and everyone working on the show hated working with him.

I couldn't defeat any of the major bosses in either DLC, even on the lowest difficulty setting, and so had to give up on playing them. Just not good with Witcher-style combat using keyboard and mouse (as someone who's never played console games of any kind).

Battle for Kharkiv seems to be over: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/05/putins-problem-russia-is-blowing-up-bridges-to-stop-ukraines-counterattack/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/07/world/europe/russia-ukraine-kharkiv-victory-day.html

100% correct.

I would be surprised if he goes ahead with two of the most widely talked-about predictions: officially declaring war on Ukraine, and ordering a general mobilization involving drafting all military-age males. These actions would make it very hard for him to continue to deny that he started this unprovoked war and that the war is not going well for Russia. My expectations are that Putin will call for a societal mobilization ... for Russia's civilian society to rise up in support of the country, which is to say him and his regime, in the face of those horrible and evil nazi states in the West, led by the imperialist Americans, trying to destroy Russia. And then he may also declare the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk, and then claim that Russia is merely fighting to eject Ukrainian nazis from Russian soil.

Yes this is something I too have wondered about. Zelenskiy even kept rejecting US and Western intel about Russia's invasion plans almost to the very end. And so I wondered if this was also affecting Ukraine's military preparations, because to me it was crazy that Ukraine did not mobilize its reserves until two days after the war began. And then, when it became clear mobilizing reserves as cohesive combat units was no longer realistic, Zelenskiy issues his order for all fighting age males to sign up for military duty.

Oh man, I really like that site and browse it often. Well that sucks.

Today seems to be a really good day for some very insightful and informational articles on Ukraine. Here are three that are especially great reads: https://cepa.org/us-lend-lease-russia-gets-nervous/ https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/ukraine-putins-war-change-world (on Putin's state of mind) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/05/a-heart-to-heart-with-russias-elites-a77587

Yeah as I said in a post a long while back, Putin, Lavrov and co. have literally taken themselves back mentally and emotionally to 1940, and seem to now actually believe they're living in that timeframe. I'm sure there is some psychological term for this sort of detachment from reality.

Details of the current versions are of course classified but the US feels comfortable it remains superior to Russia's S-400 and even S-500 systems. The main issues in the context of this war are that (a) it has long range, enough to target Russian aircraft well within Russian airspace, and (b) is reasonably resistent to Russian jamming.

Yeah this is the true goal of Russia's strategy and policy in Europe: to try and push the US out of Europe. Everything else is merely an extension of this, including this war. Putin's powerplays in the months before his invasion were all about trying to drive a wedge between Europe and the US, and only when all of that failed did he feel forced to carry out his invasion because the only other alternative was to look foolish and weak and to lose face. What Putin truly hoped for with his invasion threat was to have Europe break from the US and cut some sort of separate deal with him that left out the US and aligned Europe with Russia, even if only symbolically at first. And given the extensive pro-Russia ties that already existed between Germany and Russia (and ditto for Italy), Macron's ego-fueled desire to be viewed as some great European statesman, and Britain--the only major European power refusing to play footsie with Russia--now out of the EU and politically isolated in Europe, Putin can't be blamed for believing the time was finally right to make his powerplay to push the US out of Europe. The US presence in Europe is the only real obstacle to Russia (in its perception) dominating Europe. And so, if not for the US presence in Europe, even Ukraine wouldn't matter to Russia (other than in the whole cultural and sociological sphere of "the Ukrainians are not their own separate people from Russians" nonsense).