With all the news coming out the past couple days about The Veilguard, I’m starting to piece together a suspicion that Bioware is picking things back up where they last had decent ideas: early to mid 2010s.

I think Veilguard will feel like a stuck-in-time successor to Inquisition, stale by that period’s standards and grossly outdated by today’s, especially in the wake of Larian’s enormous success reinvigorating the kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.

the devs given any reason to doubt them

I agree that it’s super early for much speculation, but Dan Houser and a few other key players left Rockstar after RDR2. He and Michael Unsworth (who I think also left the studio with Dan) were two-thirds of the GTA 5 and RDR2 writing team. Without their involvement, I fear a scenario where the core single-player narrative has less gravitas, around which much of the detail and realism of the gameplay and game world has previously resolved, and the company leans more into the success of its GTA Online style gameplay.

I’m sure they can still be wildly successful with that formula, but it will be a huge disappointment for me personally.

I can’t disagree. But as one facet among others, I also think “concern” is reasonably warranted in conducting a comparative assessment.

Edit: also worth highlighting: “there’s nothing wrong with being against gay marriage because it’s a political opinion” is certifiably homophobic. How much responsibility Kagi’s moderators bear for not removing that comment or otherwise explicitly advising that homophobia won’t be tolerated is debatable, but it’s not great.

Seems fair, in reference to Kagi:

Unrelatedly: I’m concerned about the company’s biases, as it seems happy to use Brave’s commercial API (allowing blatant homophobia in the comments) and allow its results to recommend suicide methods without intervention. I reject the idea that avoiding an option that may seem politically biased is the same as being unbiased if such a decision has real political implications.

Shame. Shortly after it’s release Best Buy was selling it for like $10, which is such a potent indicator for the state of its reputation on release. Anyway, I couldn’t pass it up. I encountered tons of bugs, but they were all superficial and didn’t impact the gameplay or my progress.

I loved it. World building and atmosphere were grade A, and I even liked Johnny Silverhand and his relationship with V. Like I said in the post, I’ve been waiting for new game plus to replay, but I guess now I’ll just dive back in without.

Interesting. I heard the main character is insufferable. Would you disagree or is the story good in spite of him?

Watcher Knights I think are near the top of my list. I just rewatched my recording of beating them and I was fumbling so badly lol. It’s obvious I’m running with the “pure desperation” tactic rather a more skillful approach, but it finally managed to work out.

I was addicted to exploring that world but I am satisfied with the one playthrough I think.

I was persuaded to pick Elden Ring back up despite not really feeling a pull for it, but lo and behold once I was back in I fell in deep. I never actually finished the game with my first dex/bleed-based character, so I continued making my way through Crumbling Farum Azula. I’ve given Malekith a couple of attempts but I’m pretty burned out on bosses at the moment. I started up a new sorcery-based character and that’s been the real joy. Magic really does make the game significantly easier, and part of me wishes I’d done my first playthrough this way. But I’d beaten Demon’s Souls remake not too long before starting Elden Ring originally and wanted something different.

To fall back on when I get too frustrated, I’ve been playing 10tons’s Undead Horde. Their game Dysmantle wound up being a major highlight the year that I played it (I really, really liked it), so I finally bought Undead Horde 1 and 2. It’s not nearly as good as Dysmantle, but it’s a really great, lightweight dungeon crawler. I like their vibe very much and am really looking forward to Dysplaced.

I also gave the Saints Row reboot a try since it was free a while back on PS+ and it’s really, really (really) dumb. It’s also kind of fun, a little at a time. Not sure it’ll hold my interest all the way through but it’s nice having an open world game that’s just…easy to play and asks very little of the player.

I’m further behind in Ori but I’m enjoying it greatly. I’m not a big metroidvania aficionado, but I played and loved Hollow Knight despite it’s difficulty (some of the bosses really tested my tolerance for punishment). I appreciate that Ori is (so far) a more accessible game.

They claim that entertainment companies exist “to provide that entertainment.” Sure I think creative leads and the devs (especially in the games industry) are there to provide entertainment that they are passionate about. But idk if I can ever see a period where the publisher was in it for the art, despite what they may say.

I agree with you, except that up until the early-to-mid aughts, before Fortnight, and skinner box mobile games, and the promise of persistent revenue capitalizing on addictive tendencies and FOMO, publishers believed that the best path to profit was good games. Konami, to pick the (previously) worst example, published one of the weirdest, most cinematic, ambitious, influential games of all time with Metal Gear Solid. And then, eventually, they saw a straighter, shorter path to profit.

I am…way more personally upset about the Arkane closure than I usually get about these things. I have so much respect for what that studio created. This article is great though and gives the holistic perspective I’ve been looking for the past few days:

The point here, ultimately, is that this cycle has been repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and it does not show any sign of coming to an end. Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox’s leadership clearly knows it’s a problem…they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.

I think I have it. OP was staying at a hotel when it was evacuated by SWAT. This evacuation event was notable enough that it wound up on the front page of the paper (A1), so OP wound up being a source for a front-page story. As a result of reconnecting with people at the paper, they decided to try emailing the editor about any job opportunities.

Rather for the sake of profit, transparently.

Republican state representative Tiffany Esposito, who sponsored the new workplace heat bill, spent years as an operative in the business lobby before being elected in 2022.

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the company that owns Pornhub to force compliance with the state’s age verification law and threatened millions of dollars in civil penalties.

My brain has actually defaulted to thinking of Ken Paxton as a particularly vile time traveling pilgrim, whose immediate response to arriving in the present day was outrage that the world had changed and a divine conviction that it was his purpose to revert the world to the puritanical Christian dominance that made him feel warm and safe in his own time.

That’s easier for me to comprehend than that an actual 21st century person has this many stupid, hateful ideas he’s willing to happily tie his name to.

I finally tried out Hardspace Shipbreaker. I’ve played a few hours and just finished the reactor tutorial. So far it’s that diamond in the rough I’m always looking for: an engaging but chill gameplay loop and enticing progression. Something I can turn on to relax and zone out with noncommitally, but that isn’t just an objective-less sandbox ala No Man’s Sky.

If anyone has recommendations for other games that fit the bill please let me know!

Now, with Republicans withholding critical lethal assistance, largely at the behest of former President Donald Trump, Ukrainian troops are feeling the pressure.

The amount of damage being done globally at the behest of Donald Trump’s personal ego is unconscionable.

Topic of tonight’s nightmare: “sex party with Matt Gaetz.”

The company claims that fully complying with the state law would put it in breach of its contract to operate the facility, raising the prospect of $160 million in lost revenue. GEO also says that complying with HB 1470 would require building upgrades estimated to cost over $3 million, including a complete redesign of the heating, cooling and ventilation system at the detention center.

Fucking. Yikes.

36 here too, two kids. I have been overwhelmed with fear the past few years that something like this will happen. I can only imagine that if I received the news you did, it would cripple me. Immediate shutdown.

I wish I had more to offer than my sympathy. I wish we could do better with cancer than we can…

I’m a California restaurant operator preparing for the $20-an-hour fast-food wage by trimming hours, eliminating employee vacation, and raising menu prices

No media outfit should be covering these anecdotes unless the business owner is willing to divulge their margins and expected impact to them. Is Mr. Fatburger here protecting a 1% decrease in his 9% margin? Cut a hole in a cantaloupe and fuck it. Uncritical coverage like this also assumes that owners are operating efficiently and that the minimum wage increase isn’t unduly affecting them because they suck at operating a restaurant.

This is frustrating. We know that in the absence of regulation or oversight, workers’ rights at the bottom of our supply chains approach or outright classify as slavery conditions.

Fair trade certification is essentially meant to be a means of opting out of funding those conditions as consumers, by indicating which products hold themselves to a higher labor standard. However, this report claims that the mechanisms used to enforce those standards are exploited by certified organizations by manipulating the auditing process (e.g., compelling workers to respond positively in interviews because corporate representation is present). Thus, this particular brand of private regulation is worse than useless because it tempers labor solidarity in favor of impotent “ethical consumerism.”

If accurate, it’s nothing short of an outrage. But abandoning the idea entirely in favor of global labor solidarity feels naively misguided. The majority of privileged consumers don’t even care enough to choose fair trade options when given the choice, due to ignorance, apathy, and/or a sincere belief that we have a divine right to $1 king sized-snickers, and that the exploitation of invisible people is an unfortunate or righteous inevitability.

The world’s not in a position to effect impactful labor solidarity right now, and I’m not convinced (yet) that there are no benefits (e.g., “Workers are provided the tools and uniforms necessary to perform their jobduties free of charge, and the costs of these cannot be included in wagecalculations or as salary deductions”) to fair trade initiatives.

Per Labor Notes’s own findings, certification audits are carried out by third parties, and their reporting covers only areas in Mexico through the testimony of 200 workers. Without seeing more information, I don’t want to assume this isn’t a localized issue or due to a single negligent auditor. When given the choice between idealistic purity or meaningfully pragmatic gains, I’ll choose the latter. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that’s not enough on its own.

As a side note, I get my coffee from Equal Exchange and I highly recommend it, unless someone tells me they’re bullshit too.