kanisatha

Very interesting. This is exactly the conclusion I myself had recently come to about the reason for BG3's popularity. And it also perfectly captures why I am soooooooo NOT a fan, because it is *exactly* these things in/about a videogame that would aggravate me and/or be something I would consider a complete waste of my time.

It is indeed prestige, plus "influence." It is about Russia reestablishing itself as one of the great powers of the world, given that many (especially politicians here in the US) have questioned or challenged Russia's great power status.

Yup. One of the many forgotten conflicts around the world (because only the Palestinians matter).

Zelenskyy's call with Trump: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/19/trump-zelenskyy-ukraine-call-00169905

Moody Blues is one of my favs too, and I especially have a soft spot for them because it was to 'In Your Wildest Dreams' that I got to dance with an American girl for the first time, at a college party a couple of weeks after I arrived in the US.

Fascinating! The Famous Five books were the first books I started reading for myself, as opposed to having my father or grandfather read them to me. Prolly when I was four or five years old.

Yup, exactly the same for me. I was high school class of '86 and college class of '89, so the '80s was the decade when I was young and into music. Got exposed to a lot of '70s and '60s music as well because I always had the radio on while doing my homework or building my model airplanes which was my afternoons after school. I literally don't know any music after about 2000. Edit: Gotta' love that '80s hairdo on Stevie.

Also because the Soviet Union actually had something to lose. Furthermore, believe it or not, the resentment that some out there in the world feel towards the West is FAR more intense than any silly ideology. It is personal. The Russians feel this the strongest, and are building an axis with those others who also feel it very strongly, specifically Iran and North Korea (the Chinese also feel it, but not as strongly, hence their reluctance to go all in with the Russians and to only use the Russians for their own ends). The only goal in life for these 'resenters' is to bring the hated West's standard of living down to their level. And increasingly, they are even open to the idea that using nukes to achieve this goal is "reasonable," especially because they are becomming convinved the West (both Western leaders and publics) don't have the guts to pull the trigger on nuclear retaliation.

Oh, hey, I'm totally with you on this. I was making my point based on my prefessional judgment as an international security scholar. But at a personal level, I'm completely with you (though destruction by alien species invasion would be more fun, and I'd get to witness first contact in my lifetime which would be very cool). I too am extremely disillusioned by the human species. It's why my retirement dream is to buy a large horse ranch in northern Wyoming so I can sit on my porch with a cooler of beer and a faithful dog, and have a front row seat to twilight's last gleaming. Should be a great show.

I think people far too often forget or overlook the nuclear dimension in these discussions, simply closing their minds to the possibility of nuclear weapons use because it is just too terrifying for their minds to contemplate and thereby assuming that surely no one would actually use them. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news to those people, but I very strongly believe the actual use of nukes will be part of a global war in the coming years.

But this has been known for a long while, that sleeping is how we get rid of the gunk that builds-up in our brain/neurons while awake.

But do you have to login to the Origin app/have an account? Or is it just something that automatically pops up and runs in the background?

Yup. I'm gonna' (re)buy them all so I can have then in my Steam library and not have to care about the Origin app anymore.

I'm a huge, huge, huge Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks fan. Was a fan of their music even when I was a kid back in Asia in the '70s. I think I even posted something here when Christine McVie died. Sometimes, with songs like Go Your Own Way, Say You Love Me, Second Hand News, Seven Wonders, etc., I put them on repeat on my old CD player and just listen again and again. Takes me back to when my life was simple and carefree.

Fair enough. As far as combat goes, though, per what's in that Gameinformer article, seems like they have done a good job of evolving real-time action combat into something that's fun. If you don't like RT action combat, then sure, you're not going to be a fan. It's no different than for me with my utter dislike of TB combat. As far as I am concerned, the worst RT action combat system is way better than the best TB combat system.

All true enough, but from a policy stand-point you can't do much about the past, especially the distant past. So my point is about the future, and re-establishing the original principle underlying the concept of sovereignty, which was reciprocity: your sovereignty is recognized and accepted by others only if you recognize and accept others' sovereignty.

We'll see about DA4 (the trailer being a trailer and not necessarily representative of how the game will be), but I disagree about BG3 and DA4 being the same in cinematics. There is no RPG out there, including upcoming games, that even comes close to BG3's extent of cinematics. Larian themselve have boasted about the extent of cinematics in their game, claiming a whopping 175+ hours of cinematics that they recorded for their game (and that was before all the post-release updates and patches). And therein lies the real issue, because I'm not opposed to some cinematics in a AAA RPG. It's that BG3 has gone so far into cinematics that for me effectively the game is far too much like watching a movie than playing a game.

I would really love to see the US government publicly take the position that henceforth the United States' policy on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries will be exactly the same as their policy towards Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Putin couldn't get the Ukrainians to surrender on the battlefield so he's demanding they surrender at the negotiations table? What an ass. LOL

Never said I'll never play it. BG3 is a very unique game for me in that it is a game I soooooooo very much *wanted* to love, because of how much I love the first two games. So that's why I spent so much time on the Larian forum talking about the game, and the things I was unhappy with, in a desperate hope someone at Larian would give my feedback some consideration and the final game at release would be at least okay. As such, launch day for BG3 was a bitterly disappointing day for me. But I feel that in time my strong negative feelings toward the game will soften and I'll be open to playing it. I also feel, very strongly, that given the many, many core elements of the game (TB combat, all the cinematics and voice acting, the whole tadpole system, origin companions, to name the main ones), that I detest, it is reasonable for me to not pay anywhere near full price for the game. So I'll wait and get the game when it is around 50% off, give or take.

But as I've said often, I was one of the first to join the Larian BG3 foum after the game was announced, and have been very diligent in readings posts there and very active in discussing the game. And I have also watched a lot of hours of BG3 streaming. But whatever.

I can very easily say exactly this sort of thing about BG3 and its cast of characters. <shrug> For me, Varric is a character I absolutely love and consider one of the best-written characters in all of fantasy gaming. There are also several other characters from across the three DA games I love. But there are no characters, not a single one, from BG3 that I would consider well-written or worth remembering/caring about.

^This. Seems like Obsidian is doing what WotC has done with D&D's FR setting. Lore is consistent only within a specific game series, and not the entire franchise. So, if there is ever a PoE3, we can expect it will honor lore/events from the first two games. But any other series of games, games that are set in Eora but NOT PoE games, won't necessarily honor what happened in the PoE games.

With Carrie Patel now confirming that Avowed can be played switching between first and third person at will, and how the art-style and world look in the latest trailer, I am loving Avowed. And this extended gameplay trailer for Dragon Age 4 looks fantastic as well to me. It looks very much closer to Origin than Inquisition, and I like both the way the gameplay is working and the art-style. I'm so happy to have big, amazing RPGs back again without stupid turn-based combat. BG3 can kiss my brown ass. Avowed and DA4 both look awesome. And now with my new computer up and running, I can play them! Oh happy day!!

I too am in the camp of very much liking that this game leaves out romances. They don't add anything useful or interesting to the roleplaying experience while sucking up a lot of valuable development resources. I also much prefer that the game gives us very strong roleplay options and paths for building non-sexual relationships with our companions. That's exactly the way to go.