Hell yeah, time to get gored by a dear or something

New factorio dlc felt comically long, and yet I’m having to force myself not to make a new save.

All good mate, I like being able to go through this stuff from time to time because it helps me refine my own thoughts about stuff.

I definitely feel the same way about Abby, though I think it does get off to a rocky start by kind of cliffhangering the end of Ellie’s story. Still it did totally work in the long run.

I did have empathy for Ellie going into the game definitely. I think the game using that as a starting point and was incrementally raising her actions so the audience would naturally come to the conclusions she does at the end of the game regarding violence and vengeance. How effective this is might be dependant on the point the audience comes to these conclusions. I think it might just be the exposure to these kinds of stories I’ve seen, but I kind of got what the game was going for pretty early, and it felt like it just kept kind of bludgeoning me with the moral the longer it went on, like it wanted to bathe in the horrible mess Ellie was making. That was partially why I was hoping for it to be a subversion at the end I think? Kind of have it be a tragedy of character, kill Abby, and the forgiveness that she couldn’t give to another also means she deserves no forgiveness herself. As it stands it’s kind of there, but feels like it stumbles at the end, at least for how it hit for me.

I don’t think the narrative made too many mistakes honestly. The world building in general is great, the characters are believable, maybe just didn’t resonate with me personally.

I might actually replay it at some point to see how I digest it. I feel like I might be sort of out of step with this series anyway, I know people love the first game but I can’t get over the idea that the fireflies were just going to crack open Ellie immediately, like characters we know besides, that seems like an extremely bad idea to jump immediately to that conclusion. That’s something crazy mad scientists do, not actual medical experts or researchers. I try to just assume that it’s logical somehow in the logic of the world, I think the rest of that game is actually great, but that one thing keeps nagging at my brain. Anyway, tangent over. Hope you have a good day as well!

I’m messing around with the tripods, so far it seems that cutting off their legs seems the best. Railgun does it in two hits but is hard to aim, anti material does it in 4 but is much easier and more consistent, and it’s better for the dudes with guns.

Yes, but as a theme goes it’s like putting too much salt in some food, at least for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, I do like a good flawed cast of characters, the theme in general is good, but the execution just didn’t land for me.

I think if I could empathize with the characters a bit better it might have landed a bit better? As an interactive medium I think the character you control and yourself needs to have some level of shared goals, or at least the ability to understand their actions. I didn’t feel that for 90% of the game, it was like watching a soap opera where the characters don’t act like people. I can forgive that of the main two in concept, who are powered by bloodlust, but frankly they don’t act enough like maladjusted revenge golems to make it believable to me that they’d continuously make these terrible decisions.

Something else was that the theme got a bit muddled towards the end in terms of revenge. The theme is that revenge bad, violence begets violence, violence corrupts you etc, but after Abby does her thing she gets such a glow up over the course of her campaign, both as a character and in her situation, that the theme feels mixed. Hell, for most of the time you could kind of forget that it’s Ellie doing all of this because there’s the internal politics and fighting completely unrelated to what’s going on. Very little of Abby’s issues actually revolve around the revenge issue. Without the theme being clear on this stuff it becomes muddy exactly what the point is, and it feels like violence for violence sake. Like someone was out to prove that humanity is garbage, instead of being a warning against doing garbage things.

I also can’t help but feel it pulls the assassins Creed 2 problem with forgiveness being learned. I think it’s a good theme in concept, but after spending an entire game mercing a bunch of people both tangentially related or unrelated, it’s a little hollow. Even then though, I could see it working, but the fight at the very end kind of ruins it for me. If she lets Abby get on the boat immediately, that works better because she made the conscious decision to forgive. If she actually kills Abby, funnily enough I think that also works. Seriously, for where the game has been the entire time I think her doing it, but the audience knowing it was wrong would actually go a long way towards making the game as a whole feel more cohesive. Hell you could have done a player choice at that point, and even that could have worked.

It’s something I’m still kind of thinking over to this day because it’s such a unique problem to encounter in a game like this. Again, I do want to like the game, it does a lot right, it’s a good game. But yeah, bit of a yuck thinking about it.

The entire game is largely about deeply flawed people continuously making incredibly bad decisions that are violently consequential. It’s not necessarily bad writing, and I completely get the theme that’s trying to be gone for here, but by god it’s a frustrating mess of a situation that only gets worse. I want to like the game a lot more than I do, because technically and gameplay wise it’s incredible, but I don’t know if I ever want to go through that storyline ever again. It fills me with a deep uneasiness just thinking about it.

I settled on the sythe and the machine guns so far, name of the game seems to be lots of bullets. Knives and railgun are mostly useless, though railgun will make short work of a tripod once the shields are down and you hit it in the eye.

Ah good, a whole new group of people get to experience this good but also wildly uncomfortable game.

Well it kind of was what I was getting at in a way, though distribution of fault is pretty debatable. I think the majority of fault lies with the company putting a failable automated system into production for something this, but I can’t help but wonder if there is potential for abuse if this is all it takes for the registrar to delist a legitimate business. I guess I tend to come from the perspective that security is primarily on the service provider, because everyone using the service can and will either abuse or break shit in a spectacular fashion.

Penalities would be a good start I think, like you mentioned. Business sometimes can only understand the language of money after all. It’s possible this is the exception to a system that functions quite well behind the scenes also.

I also appreciate the benefit of the doubt on this, it’s refreshing compared to the usual internet instant rage.

It’s mainly a failure on the part of the register, if it’s automatically banning websites based on number of reports there’s a strong possibility this is going to keep happening, potentially for nefarious reasons.

This actually does happen a bit from time to time, it’s a bit of a weak point in the internet infrastructure.

I know Australia is American lite sometimes, but we also have most of these issues. Shit is going bad in a lot of places is my understanding.

What are you using now? I’ve been thinking of switching to popos but I’m keeping my eyes open for options.

The full list is on steam, the main thing is it’s bundled all hl2 games in one package, integrated workshop for mod installation, and added new developer commentary for hl2. Also a bunch of misc fixes etc.

Considering you’re already into card games, give Balatro a try. It’s got it’s basis in poker, but puts some extra spice on it that might interest you.

Chants of Sennar is also a strong recommend. It’s a puzzle game based around intuitive language translation, but also has a really strong story that keeps it interesting.

Probably the cursed remixes on YouTube, they don’t need to know how much of a banger beatswapped uptown funk is.

This is not speaking for everyone that thinks there’s a bit of a dip in rotj, just myself. It’s a fine movie, but it has a few issues that could be looked at as the small cracks showing in the franchise that would become bigger problems later.

A big one is they reused a few beats from the first movie. Start at Tatooine, deal with the death Star, destroy it. Kind of explored territory, similar setup to the first movie. Honestly not too bad in and of itself, but the franchise really leans in to callbacks and reusing narrative structure, and this is where it starts.

Character motivation and writing is a little shaky in places. It’s enough to hold the movie together, but it was better in the first two movies. Stuff usually just kind of happens to the characters, rather than the characters having active agency in the story. Villains become non-threatening and incompetent, hell even storm troopers start turning into the useless cannon fodder they’re known for now. The characters are overly hammy, and the line readings are wooden at times. This goes a bit back end forth with the franchise, but it is a noticeable downgrade compared to the first two movies. Especially with how good Empire was with this sort of thing, it stings a bit. This goes on to be a huge issue with the prequel trilogy, on and off in the sequels as well.

Luke and Leia being twins is the first example of the plot event that happens because they wanted drama and a big reveal, but didn’t set it up ahead of time. It’s not hugely bad, but it’s a bit why go in that direction? It kills the Luke/Leia thing that the last two movies have been building on, I assume so everything is clean for the ending, but it’s a bit much of a jump when they sort of made out last movie. The lack of planning is something that bites them in the backside pretty hard with the sequels, but it shows up here first.

The last one that’s weirdly specific, but Yoda wasn’t supposed to talk like that. He is putting on an act in Empire, up until he’s found out, instantly drops it, and doesn’t talk like that for the remained of the movie. When he turns up in Jedi again, he starts talking in the fake voice he was using, and now he’s forever stuck in that way of speaking. It’s iconic now, but it’s a little weird continuity wise.

There’s a lot of pretty decent stuff in the movie, but compared to the genre defining first and amazing second, it’s just pretty alright. Which is fine, but it’s hard for me to shake the feeling that it’s the beginning of the series solidifying into a slow decline. Most things go that way, and I don’t have strong feelings about the series these days, I more just find it fascinating how you can see the momentum of a cultural touchstone progress from movie to movie.

I feel the same way. I understand why people do it they do currently, but I would like to at the very least dial it back and see what happens.

Same. I know a lot of things get blamed on the prequels and sequels, but the issues with the series do set in as early as rotj.

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Like obviously we need to make people know things exist, it makes financial and logical sense, etc.

On the other hand, this is bullshit. It’s an ever increasing blight on the senses in both online and offline spaces. It’s at the point where massive companies cannot function without plastering ads over everything. Fuck that. If we can’t function without some garish assault of a cacophony to our psyche every few minutes, maybe we need to rethink what we’re doing with our existence.

I can feel that, some games can really abuse the system. It can be beneficial when we’re talking about large feature sets being released, both for developers as well as people keeping track of what’s currently in the game.

Hades 2 I would argue makes sense as they just added what’s essentially another chapter of the story. Its initial release was also in a really decent state which helps a lot.