LLMs enable potentially better answers and summaries. There’s also potential for massive failures, like it reporting that your mother attempted suicide when she was really just talking about how something exhausted her.

It wasn’t well balanced but it was a good RPG experience. Oblivion had a bunch of elements stripped out, but it was still an RPG, the wonky alphabetical voice acting aside. Skyrim felt like a cookie-cutter action adventure game, all the roleplay had flown out the window.

First is financially successful, it generated some decent profits for the stockholders.

This is the only sort of success they care about. Anything else is secondary. These companies gladly burn bridges with their communities so long as they believe it’ll benefit their bottom-line.

Ah. I’ve had a lot of fun in Sea of Thieves. It was hella fun on launch, albeit quite unfortunately lacking in content. I’ve heard it’s gotten much better since, basically a different game altogether now.

That’s literally the point, though. There are some easy steps to avoid it too.

• Make sure your product is finished when you charge full price on release
• Don’t remove features that were previously present
• Don’t add invasive software
• Don’t add arbitrary requirements that you’re not upfront with

No thanks. I’ll pass, forever. I never want this. It feels creepy and gross.

Succinct perfection.

Yeah. I also don’t see how one could stay motivated if one knows that they’re like to be let go once the current project is about wrapped up.

Unity’s modus operandi is to develop a feature halfway and then deprecate it and replace it with something that’s not yet released. Such a mess of a product.

Nah I’m thinking of phones in this scenario. That said, both benefit from having user replaceable batteries.

I wouldn’t trade my wireless stuff for wired ones at this point. Wireless earbuds have gotten so good that dealing with a wire would be a downgrade in most cases. When I work with mixing I always use my monitors with a wire, for obvious reasons.

Also as an aside; any company that claims to do anything “green” is profiteering off of greenwashing. Of course making stuff environmentally friendly would become trendy in the cringe corpo world. I think the most egregious example is Apple’s autumn 2023 iPhone event. Just thinking back on it is making me cringe.

The “greenest” product is the one that is never made to begin with.

I think that’s an issue of semantics. If someone needs their device to last all day and it doesn’t anymore, then it is effectively bricked. Could one find a workaround to the issue? Oh probably, something as simple as lugging around a battery bank should do the trick, but ultimately users being able to just swap the battery in their device themselves isn’t a big ask. It gives a modicum of ownership back to the person who actually bought the device.

I don’t think I was clear enough. I think DOSII was better mechanically, not from a story/quest/graphics perspective. I’m not saying BGIII was bad in any way, it’s an amazing game, and it’s very clear that a lot of love was put into it from everyone that contributed, but I overall feel like D:OS II had the better game mechanics. I liked the action point system for moving and attacking, I liked that you could save up action points to unleash more on later turns. I don’t care too much for the behind-the-scenes dice rolls - though the big roll X to pass check is quite fun.

The voice cast also did such an amazing job. I’ve been playing Warframe a lot lately, and it’s really fun to hear Astarion as a fish.

It is primarily the combat system I’m talking about though. I would’ve loved to see BDIII but with DOS general combat and combat movement. I don’t care for the “does 1d4 lightning damage” stuff.

I’m obviously not saying that DOSII had the better dialogue and quest systems. BGIII is obviously rooted in the same engine and tech as DOSII, but it’s been built upon wonderfully. I enjoy BGIII, and Larian has once again done an excellent job. I just think DOSII was the better game on a mechanical level, disregarding the story/graphics/tech, etc.

Well yeah, they didn’t have the same budget.

Mechanically I still think DOS2 is superior to BGIII, mainly due to not being weighed down by the clunky tabletop mechanics. Not saying BGIII is bad, but it would’ve (in my opinion) been better without the DND rubbish.

I won’t fight you over that, I think they were good too. I’d love a modern third-person ARPG in the Divinity universe. The “build your own ghoul” mechanic was really fun, and obviously turning into a fucking dragon was epic too.

I think making something on par with BG3 will be incredibly tough. Wouldn’t mind seeing them branch out and try something new again. Larian has done a bunch of different stuff before. A modern take on Ego Draconis would be really cool.

That’s fair. I’ve a bunch of friends who love the DnD system in it.

Yeah I felt like DOS2 had really improved on the already good formula that was DOS, and BG3 using the DnD system felt like a big step back. It’s still a great game, but I feel like it is in spite of the DND systems (not the setting), not because of it. DND doesn’t feel suited for the computer, it really fits better on the tabletop.

Yes! Fucking finally. Better late than never.

Haha, when I realised I got nuts about it. Tealicious is such a great pun. No one I knew got it, and it was so disappointing.

There are exceptionally few puns that can be translated literally. One that comes to mind is from a Lipton Limone advert, where Miranda Kerr says 「おいチイ」, when I first heard it I thought it was just an accent thing, but the second time I realised it’s a pun; Tealicious.

I’d not even heard of the game until now. Maybe they chose a bad launch window.

It’s also EA so I doubt people that did hear of it were particularly excited, especially given the milquetoast title of the game.

It was so shallow though. Then again I didn’t get very far into the game, it failed to hold my attention.

I absolutely hated the sea stuff. I played black flag for like two or three hours then I never touched it again.

I really enjoyed Sea of Thieves, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the direction they took the game.

I was mostly joking because Ubisoft pretty much only has one game they reskin endlessly, but I’m somehow not surprised.

I bet it’s just assassins creed.

Sail the seas, activate ice bergs to unlock the map, gather five million useless trinkets.

I’ve had so much fun in Wildermyth. Definitely recommended.

Then everyone should unionise and fall under the same protections. It’s how it works here in Sweden.

The way I see it, if they want to train models on someone’s voice they should hire them specifically for that purpose. Ergo, clips that are used in production should not be used for training voice models.

Not if they want a particular name, like Elias Toufexis seems pretty against having his voice cloned.

Existing performances must not be used to train models. If you wish to train a model you should need explicit consent and hire an actor to record such data. The actor should also receive royalties when the resulting model is used for a commercial purpose.

See, minus the royalty part (in most cases) this has been how VOCALOID, SynthV and the like has more or less operated for two decades now.

I’m hoping this also means that voice actors can choose not to enter such a deal?

Yep, that’s why! I’m guessing he was clear because he wanted the newest version of the same game. No idea if the official game is any good or not. Could be it’s a complete disaster.

Did you know that EA lost the FIFA license? FIFA decided that they wanted the whole cake so they’ve taken to developing the future FIFA games themselves.

EA is obviously continuing to develop their golden cow, now called EA Sports FC.

I mean one could argue that you do play a role in them, but I don’t think they fit the general definition of a role playing game.

Think their genre is graphical adventure game (as opposed to a text-based adventure game). Can’t recall if any of the KQ games have mouse support, but in that case they’re point-and-click adventure games.

Roleplaying games I think imply a bit more agency for the player, usually manifested in the ability to tackle problems in multiple ways, like maybe talk your way through something instead of a battle. Etc. I seem to recall the Kings Quest games were fairly linear.

Oh that explains why I couldn’t find the option on my work phone the other week. I thought I was just too stupid to find it, but Pixels just don’t have it?

I chose a Pixel 6 as a work phone thinking it’d be the least BS, least hassle, best Android experience you’d get, and honestly it felt lacking. Definite downgrade compared to my XS, and at best a side-grade to the OnePlus One my XS replaced.

I’m seeing a lot of wonkiness but maybe it’s just compression.

Did something happen to the screenshot? The font rendering looks hella weird.

Assuming it’s like most modern games, nothing is a day 1 buy since nothing is fucking finished on release. Better wait a few years for patches, expansions, ultimate releases and mod support.

The fact that it’s only the same two games is more of an argument against than for, honestly. With all of the awful launches people can think of two games that were redeemed.

That’s bad.