Agreed, especially on the psyops front. It’s no secret that Russia has been manipulating global politics for a long time now, and France is another European country which has seen a rising Russia-friendly neofascist movement in Rassemblement National. They’ve just barely been kept out of power the past few election, but as their numbers keep growing, one must only wonder how much longer that can be the case.

Similar with Germany and AfD. Europe is being worn down from within and no one seems to be inclined to do anything about it.

Night and day difference between game Bill and show Bill, too. Both characters are interesting explorations of attachment vs isolation in their own ways.

Oh, banana!

Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.

The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.

Do you mean 343/Halo Studios or is 545 some sort of reference I’m missing?

You can!

Worth noting for anyone looking to play both N64 games is that OoT Gerudo stay stunned indefinitely (until the area is reloaded) but the Pirates in Majora’s Mask who are borrowed from the Gerudo guards only stay stunned for a short time before getting back up.

This incentizes use of the Stone Mask, which can be obtained from the invisible guard by giving him a red potion. If playing the N64 version, he is located outside of Ikana Graveyard, which is a place that you can get to at that point in the game but many might not have bothered exploring yet. In the 3DS version, they moved him directly into Pirates Fortress so he’s harder to miss, but it does require just a little bit of stealth to get to where he is first.

Am I crazy or are the shades of blue in the key of that graph completely different from the shades of blue in the graph itself?

The people you’re messaging might, though.

I just think it stopped being a good deal the moment they implemented their first price increase. That signalled that they’re willing to do what every other subscription service does and raise prices as arbitrarily high as people are willing to pay, with the enticement being that once you’re in deep enough, you can’t unsub or you’re left with no games.

If you have copious time for gaming and are always on the hunt for sometbing new, is it still a better deal than buying every game at release? Sure, at least for now. But the patient gaming strat at least gives me a backlog of affordable titles too long to finish them all, and I can also return to it at any time without worrying about titles eventually disappearing from a subscription catalog.

I’m honestly surprised people still have it.

May constitute a war crime? Israel is a war crime.

That’s exactly it, they have the ability to go about certain scenes in different ways.

I still only have the Astarion/Cazador example, because that’s the only origin character I played as, but one moment I remember as different between Astarion as party member versus Astarion as player is the conversation with his former lover Sebastian before confronting Cazador.

In my playthrough with Astarion as an NPC, he basically auto-piloted through most of that conversation. He remembered who Sebastian was, it was somewhat touching, and the player was able to ask Astarion questions for context.

In my playthrough as Astarion as the player, you can navigate that conversation in different ways, but there are also certain things that are no longer a given. You actually have to roll to remember who Sebastian is (which I flubbed) and that changes the course of the conversation away from the NPC “default” conversation.

Edit: I found some examples of that specific scene on YouTube, to compare the differences.

Astarion as a Party Member

Astarion as an Origin Character

but if you play as any of the characters you barely hear them, or so I’ve heard.(haven’t done it myself)

This is the case. There are a small set of instances where the character might get a one-off voice line, but in general you’re left mute, even during high impact story moments where the character would usually get a spotlight (e.g. Astarion confronting Cazador).

It’s just a bit of a shame because you’d think people would opt to play characters they like because they want to experience more of them while playing, but ironically you get less that way.

Agreed, I think it’s more that Jennifer English is out there putting in the work to get as many solid gigs as she can, BG3 being just one of several.

TBH still my enemy, I’d say. His methods are still about leveraging his ill-gotten wealth to manipulate American politics in his favor. No matter which end he accomplishes, the means are still a complete breach of the democratic process, in my opinion.

Thought it might have been sarcasm, but honestly wasn’t sure.

Since the headline is missing context and could be interpreted as a newcomer looking to kick Pelosi out of her seat, and knowing how many users on Lemmy just reply to headlines without reading the article itself, the possibility of that happening just seemed stronger I guess.

But maybe not before the metaphorical battle is even won, much less the war. He still needs to win the actual election, and then assuming that happens, it’s going to require constant effort to try to overcome all of the resistance in the way of actually doing the job.

Not saying folks can’t be happy that he’s in the running over known sex pest Cuomo, but I just think it’s premature to celebrate when there is still so much work to be done.

Not sure if I’d be that confident (unless I missed some sarcasm). The article quotes him as staying he’d never want to challenge her for her seat, and he’s just waiting for it to open once she retires so he can run. Also refers to Pelosi as an “icon” that he wants to succeed. That’s not an indicator of someone who wants to go against the establishment.

“We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying”

All these months later and fuckhead still thinks tariffs are a tax on other countries.

Definitely not over. Assuming he wins the election, I would anticipate a lot of sabotage stemming from establishment politicians and public servants. If they can’t win this election, they’ll want to make his term as mayor as discordant and ineffectual as possible, to make it easier for a more conservative/establishment candidate to win the next one.