It’s a hard truth, but Bethesda has become way too bloated, and they’ve had years to fix their shit.

Their most recent Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are MMOs, it’s almost like they’ve given up on the single player experience.

Starfield came out after both Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online. It released missing features, and had bugs they intentionally ignored. Then they basically abandoned it. A year later, they released a half assed DLC. Then abandoned it again. There were a couple minor updates, and then fairly recently, another half assed DLC. Meanwhile Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online get a couple big expansions a year.

Obviously F76 and TESO print money, but, that’s why I have no sympathy for Bethesda. They’ve gotten so far from what made them great. Their last single player games in those franchises, Skyrim (2011, 16 years ago) and Fallout 4 (2015, 11 years ago) are mere shadows of their predecessors. They had some big ideas, but they also had some big bugs.

You can say “obviously F76 and TESO print money so they must be doing something right,” but then you can’t beg sympathy from the single-player fans.

It’s not gut-wrenching. Xbox overextended itself and it hasn’t paid off for them. Bethesda has been putting out slop for over a decade. While I will agree the wrong ones were let go (Todd Howard should have been cut loose ages ago, like after Skyrim), this was necessary. Xbox taking Fallout 5 from Bethesda (they still have F76) was just the icing on the cake. Obsidian made the most recent good Fallout game… in 2010. Then they made The Outer Worlds, a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas. Even the fan-productions Enderal and The Forgotten City, both based on Skyrim, are better games. Skyrim had dragons, but given the scope of Oblivion before it, they missed the mark, despite it printing money.

In short, Bethesda lost the plot and I have no sympathy for the company, only for the people who were let go. I hope they find work. But I do not have hope that Bethesda will recover. Their best days are two whole decades ago. Oblivion and Fallout 3.

Reminds me of Doctor Who and how this awesome time-traveling, space-hopping demigod mostly only cares about this one random island (Great Britain).

The Doctor did come to America for a season (with the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith) and America has been mentioned a couple times (e.g. “New New York”, though that was an alien city) but for the most part, the series is UK-centric because it’s made in the UK.

Most anime takes place in Japan, if it’s from Japan. The Apothecary Diaries is a recent one that takes place in China. That’s weird. When anime is set in the west — for example, Fullmetal Alchemist and its sequel, Attack on Titan, Saga of Tanya the Evil, and SPYxFAMILY all being set in Germany, and The Promised Neverland taking place in the US (minor spoiler, some of these don’t actually take place there, but you’re led to believe they do) — Japan likes to make a live-action version that IS set in Japan, however ridiculous that ends up being. I guess they’re a bit xenophobic, but so are we, so… not gonna hold it against 'em, but rather, just be thankful for more entertainment options.

So, it happens. Placing the action in another country. It’s not normal, though.

Same word, same pronunciation, different meaning. In other parts of the world, cunt is a derogatory but generally endearing term for a male friend. In the US, it specifically refers to a woman’s genitals — more to the point, saying that’s the only useful thing about her.

Context matters. If you’re copying someone and I say you’re aping them, that’s an acceptable term. However, if they’re Black, you might wanna choose a different word. Associating Black/African-Americans with primates in any way is considered to be extremely racist. Imitating is perfectly acceptable as an alternative.

Back to cunt, it doesn’t even mean the same thing in Europe (English-speaking countries). You want fanny for that, but I’ve never heard of anyone calling someone a fanny to mean that they have one and its use is all they’re good for.

Furthermore, in the US, cunt is a curse. A curse is a kind of insult that goes beyond the surface level. It strikes you in your soul, and if it’s effective, it will stick with you. An insult can be brushed aside, but a curse lingers. The best curse I know isn’t even real, and it’s Hab SoSlI’ Quch, which is Klingon for “your mother has a smooth forehead.” YOUR mother has a smooth forehead (most likely) and so does mine. However, Klingons, from Star Trek, are defined by their bony forehead ridges. But mating across humanoid species is mostly possible in Star Trek, so the claim is that your mother isn’t Klingon. I should also point out that in Klingon society, honor (and dishonor) is hereditary, meaning the virtues and failings of a father are carried by his son. And that Klingon women are stronger than human men, and some Klingon men in fact. Klingon sex is violent, with hitting, kicking, and sometimes cutting. It’s a battle, basically. So for a Klingon man to have a partner with a smooth forehead, it means he’s not man enough for a Klingon woman… and his son probably isn’t, either. Worf, the Klingon on Star Trek: The Next Generation and its movies and spinoffs, portrayed by Michael Dorn, has a son by a human woman… and his honor is rarely questioned. Though I’m sure his son, Alexander, has been teased about it (his forehead ridges are less pronounced than other Klingon children, so it’s kind of obvious). Now that’s a curse that hits low and hard.

$4.79 (you’re welcome!) is a heck of a deal for a game you’ll get 100+ hours out of (across all three). And you’ll probably play it more than once. There are choices that carry over from the first two into the third games, and, as such, there are optimal paths in the third one you need to start setting up in the first one. So, play it normally the first time, then look up some guides and then save everyone.

I paid $5.99 for this on Xbox. So for the guy saying you have to run Origin (EA’s launcher) in the background, that’s not necessary there. I have an Origin account but I did not need it.

Oh, and it is a single player game, but keep in mind Mass Effect 3 was designed around lootboxes and gambling. The Legendary version takes all that out and rebalanced the game around not having any of that. I’d say they met us more than halfway. Now granted, if your computer isn’t fast enough to run the game and Origin at the same time without losing frames, yeah, come to Xbox and play it here. Otherwise, it’s not really an issue. How resource hungry can Origin be?

Emily Mortimer, I think she was in The Newsroom and was quite good there.

As far as the show, the first season was entertaining. The second season a little less so, though nice to see New Vegas again. Lots of fan service across both. However, I did not find either very memorable. It’s fun to watch but very forgettable. I suppose it’s like how Bethesda games have the breadth of an ocean (or at least a large lake) but the depth of a puddle… or to put it more accurately to how much love they put in their games, a puddle of dog piss on the asphalt on a hot summer day.

This is a good game, but I don’t think they ever finished it. After playing the four Mass Effect games (which I got at deep discount — I paid $10 for all four), I found this in my Xbox library. It’s a bit dated as far as CRPGs go, but it’s about what you’d expect from the Mass Effect team after Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and before Mass Effect. The whole game is pretty good, but I ran into a loop I couldn’t get out of at the end. I got to a point where it seems like you’re scripted to die. Only, it just sends you back to the beginning of the fight like you’re not. But you go through all your healing stuff, all your party members die, you give it everything you got, and you still lose. Over and over again. After three or four times, I called it a loss and figured, I saw all the game has to offer. And I wasn’t mad. I don’t think I paid for the game. I think I got it with Games With Gold one month. And I got like 20-30 hours out of it that I enjoyed. So maybe on PC, there’s a fix (or a cheat) that lets you see the ending cut scene. Me, I don’t care about that. I went to Wikipedia and read what happened at the end. I could have watched the scene on YouTube. Sounds like sour grapes, but I’m still recommending the game. It’s about the journey, not the destination. And maybe you’ll fare better than me.

But this isn’t the only time BioWare has pulled this exact bullshit. Mass Effect 1, the original (non Legendary) does the same thing, but it’s way more obvious what is happening. If you set it to anything but the hardest difficulty, your experience is managed by set amounts. The experience management gets turned off (i.e. you default to the hardest difficulty) when you take the Mako down to a planet. The same thing happens in Dragon Age: Origin in that final fight. The game stops respecting your difficulty choice, and you’re forced to use tactics you were never forced to learn. They decided that was wrong for the Legendary Editions of the original Mass Effect trilogy, but they never fixed it in the first game, nor in Dragon Age: Origins despite knowing about it. They just don’t care.

So manage your expectations accordingly.

I also had Dragon Age II, but I couldn’t get into that one. It’s just not fun. I do not recommend that one, so I don’t recommend the third one (Inquisition) either, just because I couldn’t get through the second one. Not because it was hard, but because it was boring. Just my opinion. I hope someone with a different one speaks up.

There really is an easy solution to this. Firmware locking, like how phones do. Like how if you steal my iPhone, you can’t use it because it’s tied to my Apple account, and you don’t have the password.

Tie each Steam Controller purchase to a Steam Account. Lock it to that account for one year. After the year, the user can connect the Steam Controller to their computer running Steam, and unlock the firmware.

This would make it so the scalpers wouldn’t be able to resell them. Well, they still would, but once word gets out that it’s locked to their account for a whole year, two things will happen. One, they’re gonna lie and say it’s unlocked and they’ll rip a bunch of people off and no one will trust them. Two, they will offer to be your agent, you will need to give them access to your Steam account so they can buy it for you and then sell it to you.

The problem with the latter, and the Steam controller in general, is the thing is $100, and with everything going up, you can get a better controller for half that or less — you just don’t get the trackpads. But, give it time. Someone else will add them, and then you can get basically the same thing without contributing directly to Gaben’s eighth yacht, or his ego.

This question gets a lot more complicated if you allow custom firmware discussion, e.g. of Android phones.

My Galaxy S3 had a nice one, but it almost certainly was not from the stock firmware. I remember a glowing ring that would fill up.

I use a Mac. It’s like Linux (UNIX actually, OS X is based on NextStep which was based on UNIX) but with corporate backing. It’s as user friendly as Windows. And the AI has an off switch. Siri can be disabled.

I like it. I feel like Apple is the last real computer company left that makes their own software. I don’t know how “real” the company is, though. The iPhone is straight up jank. Always hallucinating text on the keyboard after you type it. Changing what you say to appease some unseen overlord. But I don’t want to use a phone made by an advertising company either. That’s dystopian AF, topped only by the legions who will defend it. But I’m not sure it’s entirely worse.

Here’s the thing though: they’re gonna run ads, and GamePass Ultimate isn’t going back to $15 and the Series X isn’t going back to $500.

Sony can say “no ads on PlayStation”, but they will just jack prices up again. They aren’t the good guys here.

I liked Dragon Age Origins but I couldn’t figure out the ending. Difficulty ramps way up, it feels like you’re meant to lose the fight, but when you do it just starts the mission over. If the game has an ending I never found it, so I just quit and read Wikipedia.

Couldn’t get into the second one.

You can’t really talk about BioWare games without talking about Mass Effect though. The first one is kinda trash, but it sets up the story. The first one is also badly broken and it never got fixed. The Legendary Edition is the first three combined and it fixes most of the bullshit the first one was on. The fourth one was good too, but don’t pay for any online stuff. They still sell it despite the server shutdown years ago. Just buy the base game. First half is great, second half is nothing but fetch quests. I think it was also going to have romances and maybe a sex scene, but all I got was friend zoned by everyone. So I guess they ran out of budget there, too. Honestly the first half is great and it’s worth finishing, but it’s exactly like that meme with the horse drawing that goes from good to terrible. The ending was such a let down and they teased DLC that never came.

Loved this game. The Skyrim Grandma infamously rage quit this game. But it’s really no harder than Skyrim if you’re reasonably good at that. It just has a few tricks The Elder Scrolls never attempted, like areas that don’t level with you and are really hard until you’re ready for them… and radiation from Fallout except it’s magic residue.

Enderal is also much darker than Skyrim. I caught myself saying, “Holy shit they really did that” a couple times.

The Witcher 3 includes all the DLC now, and it’s like $10 on Xbox. Or at least that’s what I paid last week. Just started for the first time.

There’s a comm with PC gaming hardware deals. Mac user here, but I’ve seen some pretty good deals. Haven’t built in 10 years but the itch never fully goes away. I think I saw an i7 for like $300, couldn’t tell what generation though. That’s not bad. I think my 4th gen Xeon was like $275? I prefer Xeon to i7 but my preferences are years out of date.

Shigaraki Tomura, Boku no Hero Academia.

For starters, he’s this regular emo kid (about 19-20), except he’s got like a dozen disembodied hands grasping him from his torso and arms to his head and face.

The reason for the hands is pretty bizarre. Spoilers for the second half of season 5:

Oh, his super power? “Decay.” Anything he lays all five fingers on turns to ash. It’s as awesome and terrible as it sounds. What’s worse? Final season spoilers:

The author, Horikoshi Kohei, is a huge Star Wars nerd. If Shigaraki Tomura sounds like “anime Darth Vader,” that’s intentional. Except when “anime Luke Skywalker” tried to turn him back to good, final season spoilers:

And the kicker? Minor season 5 spoiler:

Note that all names use the Japanese naming convention of giving the family name before the given name (e.g. “Lincoln Abraham”), and the show is known outside of Japan as My Hero Academia.

Edit: I also like GLaDOS. YSK she’s also in Cyberpunk 2077, if only in spirit. Ellen McLain reprises her role and reuses some lines while voicing a psychotic robotaxi. I assume, with permission from Valve (who probably loved the cameo).

If you don’t do it every day or on a regular basis, you lose the drive.

Also, between AI, fan fiction, and social media, no one from the newer generations is reading original hand written fiction anymore. Some are, I’m sure, but most of, say, Stephen King’s Constant Readers are Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. Looking at Gen Z and later, they know who Stephen King is, but most of them don’t care. They’ll watch a Stephen King movie, but never care about the book. And that’s Stephen King. One is the world’s biggest and most prolific writers (and my favorite) isn’t getting new readers. So how do you think the little guys are faring?

If you wanna write to write and not get paid and have a few people read it, write fan fiction and publish it on Ao3. If you wanna write original stuff, write fan fiction and convert, like what happened with Fifty Shades (it was originally Twilight fan fiction). Even still, it’s rare that that’s profitable.

Mass Effect.

I’m Gen X, I don’t.

I might say “that’s pretty fucking funny” though

Yeah, and Meta isn’t Facebook and Alphabet isn’t Google.

It’s the same company. Might not be all the same people, might not be Todd Howard’s team, but same company

As opposed to going to regular population and being a target? Yeah, I think they’re good with being alive.

Also, I’m not sure they have solitary confinement like in the movies. Then again, what do I know? Not more than the average wage slave, that’s for sure