Shurimal
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You’re not alone. I’m in the same spot. I love the humor of Fallout and I really liked the TV series; I have played Morrowind, Oblivion, more Skyrim playthroughs than I can remember but I bounced off FO3 pretty hard. For me it was the dreary environment and overall decay of the world.
People in FO3 just didn’t seem to care much about their living conditions and this doesn’t seem like what would happen in actual post-collapse society. People in general love surrounding themselves with art and beauty, rusty scrap metal shacks wouldn’t be around two centuries after the bombs drop. Earthship, stucco and clay bricks are low tech but can be made very pretty and livable. Murals and paintings made using various pigments, colorful textiles, basreliefs, carvings and sculptures of ceramic, wood and stone would be everywhere, sprinkled with surviving pre-war artifacts that’s been restored, maintained and cherished with pride.
Plant life would also recover quite fast and be lush in a post-atomic war world—Chornobyl is a prime example how nature claims back human-abandoned land just decades after a nuclear event. Deserts in FO should not be all dreary brown misery; there would be a thriving ecosystem of both flora and fauna. Two centuries is enough time for the most dangerous radioisotopes to decay away and you wouldn’t really find places where radiation would stop wildlife reclaiming the land. More mutations and birth defects, yes, but life will find a way.
And this overall miserable representation of post-apocalyptic world is the reason FO games never really clicked for me even though the satire and tone hit the spot.
PC. Because:
- Better controller support—I’m not limited to what MS or Sony deem as “certified” or “authorized” hardware. Most of the really good hardware (VKB, Virpil, Arduino) will never be available for consoles and what little is available is bad at best.
- Best sims are PC only (DCS, Il-2, E:D, X series, Hunternet etc)
- Sims support 3rd party auxiliary software (TacView, EDDiscovery, OMH, EDMC etc) for better experience and that’s simply not going to be possible on consoles, ever.
- For other games, modding experience on PC is simply better. SKSE and ENB is what keeps Skyrim going and makes it still relevant 13 years later. Can’t have this kind of code injection and wrappers on consoles.
- If I ever get into retrogaming, emulation is the way, especially since actually acquiring retro console games in their original physical format is bound to become a very expensive collector’s hobby if you don’t have your own collection from childhood already or don’t have local second-hand options.
Like Skyrim this one is far more playable in third person, and I really recommend giving that a try.
Haven’t played FO, but hell, no, Skyrim (and Morrowind, and Oblivion) in 3rd person is janky AF. Bethesda games never were meant to be played in 3rd person—I suspect the option is there simply for vanity cam, screenshots and modding.
Saying that AptX is lossless since 2016 is blatantly false. And yes, just like with HDMI and USB, AptX standard naming and Qualcomm feature naming schemes are a misleading mess.
There are 4 flavours of AptX (linked article states this as well), and only the latest supports lossless, but is available only on very few chipsets and devices so I even forget that it exists, because for all practical purposes it doesn’t.
Denon Perl Pro, Bose earbuds and Cambridge Audio M100 are the only non-chinese earphones that I know of that support AptX lossless and the latter are not even listed by my local importer. Plus, you need a very specific (expensive) phone to use them because AptX Lossless is not available for all chipsets. Basically, Asus ROG 8 or Xiaomi Redmi K70 Pro for ones available to buy for me, and then it’s not available at every retailer, either, and the b2b wholesalers I have access to through work only list ROG Phone 8 (~1200€ retail).
In conclusion, to make use of lossless AptX you have to jump through many hoops and spend a lot of money—700+€ phone and the 200+€ earphones. The standard is far from being, well, a standard; common and widespread. 99,9% of devices on sale and in use by people only support older AptX standards, mostly AptX HD (which is not lossless!).
Counterpoints:
- Good IEM-s don’t really need ANC. If the silicone tip doesn’t isolate enough you can use foam tips that basically function like hearing protection earplugs.
- No battery is even better than replaceable battery.
- Wired IEM-s never get obsolete. At worst you’ll need to replace the silicone tips from time to time, or the cable and today even 20€ Chinese IEM-s have replaceable cables. With good care wired IEM-s can last decades.
Nothing to do with ADA conversions (and digital-to-digital, eg SRC or bitdepth conversion, is completely transparent if done even remotely adequately). Small drivers close to eardrum with good seal just seem to be easier to manage when it comes to frequency response and distortion. Most open circumaural headphones, for example, seem to have deficiencies in lower end no matter the price.
In-ear phones have the potential of having the highest fidelity of all headphone types. So, no, being a “codec snob” is completely justified. Though I personally won’t be using BT phones before we get lossless connection as a standard. Wired are cheaper, last longer and have less environmental impact during production and after EOL.
I find cartoonish moustache-twirling “evil” boring. Playing as morally grey characters is most compelling. Whether my character is a hero or a villain depends on whom you ask and at which point in history. Damage one faction and help another, when it’s ambiguous who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are. Steal, rob and assassinate for what you believe is a “good cause”. Set up dictators to avert death and destruction, then betray and terminate the them with extreme prejudice when they have served their purpose and become a liability. And so on.
Or just go full mercenary; everyone hates you, believes you have no principles and thinks they have the moral high ground, but at the end of the day everyone needs your specialist expertise. Every client is one missed payment away from becoming a target and every target is one bribe away from becoming a client—unless the target is eg slavers or pirates, because you actually do have principles.
For example, in X3:TC I single-handedly brought peace and prosperity into the universe: fought off Khaak threat; contained Xenons and completely denied their incursions into human and alien space alike; set up industry that boosted the economy at large for everyone; hired a lot of people for very good salaries. But, I had the monopoly in most industries; a fleet of warships capable of steamrolling everyone else if I wished so; literally owned a whole sector; controlled trade routes via the Hub; set up alliances with the pirate factions letting them roam free, trading illegal goods with them, building infrastructure for them. In short, very much a shady dystopian megacorps🙃
But on the contrary some games have adaptive music, and interestingly it’s a bit more like John Williams’ view on movie soundtracks : it’s made to adapt to what’s happening in real time. When it’s done right it’s everything but boring.
Elite: Dangerous does this extremely well (IMO it has some of the best sound designs out there, not only music but everything else, too, including the dynamic range). The music is never this generic bombastic horn sections, and it’s different in different environments and situations, always somberly haunting at the edge of consciousness and enhancing, not overpowering, the gameplay.
I made it to the mezzanine fight an hour or two in and realized that the NPC-s are just dumb high DPS bullet sponges and the PC is a low DPS squishy. The worst way to ramp up difficulty. Trying to fight tactically from the cover didn’t work and I lost interest. Too bad, I liked the atmosphere and even forgave the 3rd person only camera (normally I disqualify a game instantly if it doesn’t allow 1st person view).
In Sekiro you have a choice around two thirds into the game which causes the game to end immediately (with a very bad ending); since the game autosaves all the time, once you make that choice you have to start the entire game over and get to that point again to make a different choice.
Yeah, that’s bad game design IMO unless the game is an hour or two long. The player should be able to roll back when they fuck up that much. In fact, only one save file and no way to roll back if it gets corrupted or you realize how badly you have fucked up is always a bad design.
To be honest, Freelancer was kind of “meh”. Graphics and character animation were very nice, but ship and station design was weird and the combat felt shallow and one-dimensional. In short, too arcade-y. No joystick support was the real downer, space ship combat never feels good with mouse.
For the perspective, though, before Freelancer I played and modded the absolute crap out of Independence War 2 and that is still the pinnacle of space combat that doesn’t feel like WWII dogfight arcade in space while still being rather accessible and intuitive.
I’m an Elder Scrolls veteran (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim), I know quite well what Bethesda games do well and what not. And they have always clicked for me, even though all of them are flawed in different ways.
As for ship combat, as long as it’s comparable to X3, it’s fine. I’m not expecting Children of a Dead Earth or Independence War🙂
tons of titles try to go for realism and showing off the scale correctly, which is neat for space nerd
As one of those space nerds, I’m glad we have games like Elite: Dangerous, Starfield, X series, Independence War etc. Choice is good and I, along with many others, love 1:1 scale sandboxes to fly a virtual spaceship in, fight , trade and explore. There are plenty of fast action games including space shooters like Star Wars Squadrons for those who don’t appreciate the emptiness and loneliness of space and don’t want the travel-and-life-in-space part in a space game.
Starfield is the only new game from past 5 years I’m excited about and going to buy once I upgrade my GPU. It’s a life-in-space sandbox that complements E:D well by doing things the latter does not.
At least Oblivion, unlike Skyrim, had actual classes (let’s not talk about the leveling system, shall we?) and spell making. Plus some really, really good questlines (including the main quest, and the whole Shivering Isles expansion was rad AF). The cities also felt larger than in Skyrim and the Arcane University was an actual university, not a random village school with 3 students. Role-play wise Skyrim was the weakest of the three modern ES games.
The only game that scratches the space exploration itch Elite doesn’t quite scratch (I mean, Elite is very good, but has it’s shortcomings when it comes to on-foot stuff). Ship interiors, base building and having actual life on planets, not just some fungoida and bacterium patches, alone are a reason to be excited about Starfield. Also, jetpack combat.
Funny how Elder Scrolls veterans are enjoying the game for what it is while bitter Playstation diehards, wishful thinkers with gigabyte-sized dreams.txt and bandwagon-o’-hate jumpers are complaining about things that never were to be so loud you can clearly hear the “Reeeeeeeeeee…” from Alpha Centauri😏
Honestly, the best platform to play Bethesda games is PC anyway. What makes Bethesda special is their embracing of modding, and PC being an open platform allows for much, much more in that respect. IIRC, on Playstation one couldn’t even use custom assets in mods, and console makers will never allow script extenders, .NET frameworks and ENB series that allow for amazing stuff on PC.
Well, one is a linear, turn-based, 3rd person party cRPG.
The other is open world, real-time, 1st person with optional followers, sandbox action-RPG with space shooter elements.
Utterly different animals and any comparison is as invalid as comparing BG3 to Elite, DCS or RaceRoom. I’ve no interest at all in BG3 because turn-based party RPG-s are not really my jam. And I’ve never cared much about story-telling, either. I like good worldbuilding, sandboxing, looting, crafting, trying different builds, doing whatever the hell I like at any moment while completely forgetting that something called “main quest” exists, getting technical and modding the crap out of a game and this is where Bethesda shines.
Starfield is honestly the only new game that mildly interests me (ES6 is years away still), and I’m holding out on that one until 1.) a GPU that can run it smoothly at 2,5k with no DLSS/FSR shenanigans costs 500€ or less so I can actually afford it; 2.) script extender comes out and lays the framework for not just mods, but amazing mods; 3.) the ongoing thargoid war reaches its conclusion and wraps up and doesn’t immediately lead to rogue guardian AI showing up or Empire and Federation throwing themselves into mutual assured destruction or whatever.
On the other hand, if Starfield won’t have HOTAS support, I’ll probably put it on hold indefinitely and try out Star Citizen instead, if I ever get bored of Elite. Maybe pick it up when it’s 10€ on a sale in half a decade. Fallout 3 didn’t turn out to be my cup of tea, after all, and Starfield may fall in the same category. And this is fine.
Excellent hardware
More like excellent industrial design, good chip design and good software support*. The hardware itself is nothing special; having a badly engineered aspect has been the “standard feature” for many Apple devices (butterfly keyboard, soldered SSD-s, phone chassis prone to bending are some examples that come to mind).
For comparison, I had a Huawei P7 phone (back when Huawei was still in good graces everywhere) that was thinner, and had better screen than the contemporary iPhone while also having a strong, beautifully machined aluminium chassis. It proved a very durable and dependable tool, and cost ⅓ of the price of an iPhone. The weak point was update support—it was shipped with Android 4.4.2, updated to 4.4.4, and that was that. Android 5 was supposedly released, but never arrived via OTA and when I updated manually after spending some time searching for the new firmware, it proved to be buggy and half-baked.
*Caveat: when I tried to download KDE Connect for an older iPhone, I couldn’t because the OS is no longer supported and Apple store doesn’t offer older versions of the apps. On Android I can still dig up an old version from Github or some other source and install what I need—I was still able to install Kodi on my old 4.4.4 phone to use as a DLNA music streamer. On an old Apple device, you’re shit outta luck.
Used to play strategy games quite a lot 20 or so years ago. AoE, Homeworld, Red Alert. But I never got very deep into them.
The main reason I don’t like strategy games anymore is that most of them simply boil down to micromanagement and actions-per-minute. That is not how my brain works. I hate micromanaging and multitasking. I love planning tactics, doing recon and analyzing the situation (as long as I don’t have to do statistical analysis with spreadsheets for that), setting goals and executing plans.
Best strategy game I’ve ever played? X3: Terran Conflict. Once you set your plans in motion everything works pretty much automatically—you don’t have to order your traders or military forces around constantly or set up product batches in your factories manually. You set up parameters by which your assets work, and aside from occasional tweaking and optimization you leave them to their own devices. Instead you concentrate on the actual grand strategy or a single battle at hand or putting out some random brushfire that needs your attention without the worry about your “villagers” standing around idle because they can’t figure out there’s a fresh patch of fish 100 meters to the left.
Plus you’re there, in situ, as an actual participant in the world, not an abstract godhand hovering over the map. First-person strategy. Commanding two task groups steamrolling through a sector from the bridge of your cruiser, sipping coffee as turrets put on a massive fireworks around you is epic.