kanisatha

@Azdeus, yeah, the prospect of eventually becomming completely deaf is indeed my nightmare. To never again be able to hear all the voices and sounds I've come to love hearing. To lose a major part of my independence. I love my music collection (have about 250+ CDs) and I play my CDs as often as I can because I'm sad of one day not being able to hear them. At least now I can close all the windows in my house and turn up the volume a lot and in that way reasonably appreciate them. I also think my brain doesn't really 'hear' those old songs I love so much as it *remembers* them and that feels like I'm hearing them. @rjshae, you are so right! I have the same problem with people speaking from behind a mask. I think some people who normally don't mumble do so when speaking from behind a mask for some reason. That's why even though my university has allowed us to return to the classroom I have chosen to claim a disability accommodation to remain with remote teaching, because at least on Zoom I can turn on closed captioning and somewhat follow what my students are saying.

Though the causes may be different, it sounds like we actually face the same condition, though clearly a worse case for you. So sorry. For me also it is less an issue of volume and more an issue of discerning one voice from a babble. So if one person is speaking to me, while relatively closeby, and there's no ambient sound, I can here pretty well with my hearing aid. But with even a little ambient sound, or if it is an electronically generated sound, my hearing aid doesn't help much at all. I hear the sounds, but cannot distinguish words. Did you ever consider cochlear implants?

Interesting. My condition (hereditary) is that the small hairs start lying down flat suddenly at some point in time, for me in my early forties. It is much more sever in one ear than the other, so I can use a hearing aid in the "good" ear to hear somewhat. But it took me a while for my brain to adjust to hearing only the good sound signals from one ear and disregarding the bad signals from the other ear. But this also means I now hear only in mono, which has its own issues.

Awesome. Wonder if something similar could be done for those of us with hearing loss.

Hehe. Nice. This is *exactly* how things are here in the US now too, both what you said about the news media and what you said about average people. Completely agree. But imagine my plight in having to try and teach international relations classes to such a population of 18-22 year-olds. And yeah, the French in particular have long operated in exactly this way, so this is a bit of comeuppance for them.

I'd be excited about a B5 reboot. But that it will be on CW concerns me.

Well, WotC just announced the next version of D&D is to be released in 2024 (though still unclear if it will be 6e or 5.5e), so maybe Pathfinder will also move to 3e, in which case it would make sense for Owlcat to skip 2e.

Maybe give it a try if you find it for a couple of bucks? It is pretty short so it won't cost you much playtime. inXile is currently confirmed to be actively working on two AAA RPGs using the UE5 engine. One is confirmed to be a new IP steampunk game, possibly along the lines of Arcanum. About the second nothing is known. So I am hoping the second game is something using the Numenera setting, though probably not a direct sequel to T:ToN. Perhaps something along the same lines as Obsidian's Avowed: a game using the same world as T:ToN but a completely new IP with new gameplay.

I liked the game, and am hoping them will make a second one because I felt everything that was lacking in the first game was clearly due to a budget that was way too small relative to the game's vision and ambition, and also obviously then a development timeline that was also too short. Yeah the combat sucked (TB, so that may be personal), but you could evade the combat through dialog choices in most cases (inlcuding the final endgame encounter). The gameplay was very simplistic, though it had the potential to be something good. It felt like someone took a good idea and then chopped off like 70% of it because of cost. A ton of reading, which I liked but many others did not. The parts I personally liked a lot were the story, characters, and the world. And since those things are what matter most to me, that's why I ended up okay with the game, and even regretted that it was too short.

Sometimes the industry big boys like LM and Northrop do company-funded in-house projects as demonstrators for the military. LM has been working on a project that has often been colloquially referred to as "SR-72" so may be this something like that (given ACC boss's surprise).

So then only the political elites care? That would actually fit my own professional interpretation, which is what I said to a Spanish newspaper that interviewed me about it.

Yes I've played this, and also the new Torment game from inXile which is also minimal combat that mostly can be avoided.

Anyone been following the big blowup between France and Australia/UK/US over the nuclear submarine deal? I'm particularly interested to hear how the story is playing in Europe.

Given the rise of games like Gamedec and Disco Elysium, and even Encased presumably (i.e. true RPGs with no combat, or minimal combat, or combat that can mostly be avoided), can anyone recommend any similar games (Western RPGs only) that are in a medieval setting/world, or at least a pre-industrial/no firearms world? Thanks in advance!

What exactly is covered under that word "gameplay"? I see people using this word in a very wide range of contexts so I am curious about people's thoughts.

I don't think it'll take that long. I think I'll be able to/ready to play it around the four months mark.

I will say, though, that I think the biggest mistake Owlcat made here was relying on closed betas to try and bug-proof the game. They should have, instead, gone the route of a lengthy Early Access period for the game.

Yup. This is my understanding as well from regularly browsing the Owlcat forum. The people who seem to be hyper-bothered by the bugs are actually few, but they're super-vocal and will go out of their way to tell other people how disappointed/angry/offended they are with Owlcat and the game. The vast majority of people playing the game are very much liking and enjoying it (despite annoying minor bugs).

Totally agree! As for this particular game, I followed its development for a while, but eventually dropped it from my Steam wishlist mainly because I just can't get into the game's setting/world. As a passionate fantasy fan, the world of this game seems too "techy" for my tastes. But I would be interested the thoughts of anyone who's played it.

I've been wondering about picking up the first game. What would you say are the things the first game does well, especially compared with what you wrote about the new game? Something brief would be fine.

On TNG and on The Big Bang Theory!!

Seems like when they expanded from the tiny group they started out as at the beginning of the P:Km KS to where they are now as a company, they only loaded up on the technical side and not the creative side (maybe because they felt the sting of the criticism of the buggy release of P:Km). Hope they can change that soon. From what I can gather in some comments in interviews and such, they're beginning to think about their next game. Edit: To add something further, it's also possible that the weak writing is a reflection of Owlcat using established Paizo TT modules for their games, where the story and characters for the game have already been created by someone else. So Owlcat's thinking maybe: "Why bother hiring dedicated creative people when the creative aspects of the game have already been provided to us? Our technical people can handle simply translating what's in the TT module into the video game."

But isn't this *exactly* how most D&D DMs dramaticize events and NPCs in their TT games?

I wish I could give multiple hearts for this post. You capture a lot of my own feelings about the game.

SM-6 kicks ass. And it is going to get souped up even more.