Yeah, I wasn’t really clear in my language. I was saying that STS has steered the last 5 years, and might continue to steer it for another 5. I wouldn’t say we done with STS still influencing pretty much every other indie title released right now.

Trump agrees with whomever he spoke with last because he’s dumb and gullible. Its not shocking in the least.

By tomorrow Miller and Vance will convince him to threaten on his shitty Twitter to bomb New York City and he won’t even notice the disconnect.

1. Bioshock - It’s essentially perfect, the only downside is I can never play it for the first time again.

2. Inscryption - It’s an odd choice, since it’s pretty meta, but it’s a game that I think about too much to live without.

3. Doom - Purely for historical relevance, which cannot be overstated in this case

4. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time going back and forth between this and LTTP, but Ocarina also represents maybe the best year in game development history so it gets the edge.

5. Slay the Spire - Basically the same argument as Doom - this game is a fork point in all development trends for at least 5, maybe 10 years after its release.

I appreciate that you can pick out direct mechanical and design elements you miss. I think a lot of us, myself included, want games to be “like they were before” and fall into the trap of just wishing we had the energy and time to immerse ourselves like we did when we were 9, or 14, or 22. No graphical style or design philosophy can turn back the hands of the clock…

That being said, I wish you all the best in recapturing your passion. Enjoying things is the key to happiness.

If this is rude, I apologize but I like to take any excuse to post LRR. And this feels extremely relevant to your situation: https://youtu.be/F6JgKQFeBxs

Of course I agree with you completely, it just further illustrates ICEs intellectual dishonesty.

Obligatory “Fuck ICE” naturally, but this one is particularly jarring. For 3 reasons-

A) “from a pick-up truck travelling in the opposite direction”. What. Tha. Fuck. They are drive-by pepper spraying brown people without pulling them over?

B) Goes without saying at this point, but everyone in that vehicle was a US citizen.

C) DHS straight up lied, denied that anything happened in that parking lot, at all. When it comes to ICE misconduct, the Federal government’s official stance is “pics or it didn’t happen”. Which is a good reminder for everyone to film these animals constantly.

I want to ask, “When will this insanity end?” But of course I know the answer. When the American people make it end and not before.

Now that he’s won and his victory was a landslide, this will be the most common strategy used by those that still care about appearing biased.

For every ranting lunatic on Fox News or in the White House, (and let’s all let out a deep sigh over THAT Venn diagram), there will be another supposedly more reasonable person trying to blunt Zohran’s momentum with “healthy skepticism”. He can’t do X. Y will be next to impossible. He has to compromise Z.

The thing is, that strategy can work. Public support is Zohrans best weapon, and it can be pulled through wearing people down. Get this young hotshot stuck in the mud and the shine might fall off real quick.

On the other hand, of Zohran pulls off a big win or two quickly, say in his first year or so, then he’ll cement that anything is possible, destroy this line of attack and probably hold that office for 10 terms if he wants.

When they can win without being gross, they do so.

When they have to dogwhistle, they do so.

When they are definitely going to get their ass kicked, This Shit happens.

When they lose, they’ll cheat.

If they get caught, they’ll get violent.

I say that like a grim potential, but honestly I think NYC might be ready for them

Betting on Trump lying feels like a safe bet to be sure, and nothing about it is out of character for American foreign ops. But that’s not confirmation of anything. And the problem is, I have no more confidence in the other side of this equation.

In more grounded terms, If two known liars both give you their side of the story, and both sound plausible there is this overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and melancholy that hits me every time. What’s the point? Even if one of you is telling the truth, it was probably so distorted as to be worthless.

I don’t know if I was just naive or raised by naive people, or if something has genuinely changed in the modern age - but it pains me greatly that we don’t even pretend to value integrity anymore.

That’s a good point - if the mercenaries are identified accurately, that could be a trail someone could follow.

This is one of those frustrating situations where we will simply never know what actually happened.

Could Venezuela’s government have made this up? Possibly. They have motive and they are not the most honest people, to put it mildly.

On the other hand, Trump and his Goons have be been bragging about bombing boats, talking not at all coyly about land invasions, and said openly they had people operating in Venezuela.

So did those agents get caught? Or did Trump give the Venezuelans the idea to perform this hoax by running his fucking mouth?

The CIA’s not going to admit anything. Neither side has any credibility to speak of. I guess maybe a third party investigator with the press or a foreign intelligence agency could try, but that’s going to be one source at best. I’ll have been dead like 20 years before it comes out what actually happened, if anything.

Even if you don’t get it - start at $30 bucks. The current is $16.50. If you get negotiated down to $20/hour you just gave every body on the bottom a more than 20% raise. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect New Yorkers to live on $40k/year but it’s a hell of a lot more reasonable than $33K/year.

I understand why minimum wages need to be monitored closely, and doled out with forethought and compromise. I get that raising up the bottom very suddenly tends to just be accompanied by price increases that ultimately still benefit the wealthy.

But it’s also just true that feeding money into the bottom of the system always pays greater and more impactful dividends than trying to somehow feed even more to the top. It’s been proven time and time again, and yet we’re always told it’s pointless to try it this time, because Rich people will just find a way to get it back. Duh, that’s what Rich people do. They use their advantages to gain more advantage. But the more people’s hands that money flows through on the way back to the wealthy, the better off we all are.

I mean good for Gretchen. She’s right, and I’m glad she’s standing by her convictions. But there were other people working on that title. DC fucked a lot of people here, and really, so did Gretchen.

Its tough. On the one hand, facing the consequences of doing the right thing is inherently noble. On the other hand, making that decision for a bunch of other people is not.

I’m late to this party but I always like to chip in on Luigi threads:

1. That other people were inspired to kill CEOs by this killing is irrelevant. I mean, it’s debatable that it’s true at all. But even if it were, that feels relevant only insofar as this is a jury trial - and thats not a bug of a jury trial, it’s a feature. Public sentiment doesn’t really get a say outside the 12 folks in the box.

2. There is a serious chain of evidence issue with the supposed murder weapon. Body cams are turned off, (improper) when Luigis bag is taken from him, and according to filings, that bag wasn’t searched until back at a local station over 30 minutes later. That strikes people as suspect as it’s outside normal procedure for cops, who would normally search a bag right away during the arrest. The cops were alone with that bag for 30 minutes prior to “finding” the gun. Most unbelievable, they expect us to believe that someone capable of this killing, and producing an inherently disposable 3D printed “ghost gun”, then failed to ditch it and carried it across state lines? He couldn’t find a garbage can to pitch it in over 24 hours later?

3. People say Luigi couldn’t be the adjuster because of the height/build difference between him and the security footage of Brian Thompsons shooting. I find this less convincing as the footage is extremely unclear. But I will say at the very least, nothing in that footage has been brought to my attention that supports Luigi being the shooter. No shill pundit or sweaty former prosecutor desperate for their 15 minutes has got on TV and said “See, here’s what the prosecution is going to point to to build their case.”

It would seem to me, that Luigi is a troubled young rich kid who wrote some critical, if meandering, things about his frustrations with US Healthcare, got accused by a McDonalds employee who was financially incentivized to see a suspect, had evidence planted by some cops hoping to catch this rising folk hero before anyone else got any ideas, and then got railroaded by the most corrupt DOJ since the Gilded Age.

First, I’m going to heavily qualify this statement. Like, a lot. I have never served in any military capacity and I’m repeating something a member of the Canadian military told me, which could easily be wrong for 20 reasons.

National Guardsman are similar to our “reservists” and are not paid when inactive. If additional troops who were already trained but not active, we’re then activated, that would account for additional costs.

So yeah, massive grain of salt but you asked and someone gave me a reasonable answer that seemed to fit. I have done no fact checking, though.

I forget the title but there was a Superman game on original Xbox that gave Metropolis a health bar, Not Superman.

Beating up bad guys, stopping disasters and completing missions helped the city survive. Getting hit meant a few seconds where you were inactive and the city might take more damage.

It was a pretty inspired idea honestly. I don’t think the game was excellent but good design choice.

I mean you’re right, but it makes sense in context in both cases because the plot, or maybe better to say the driving motivation for action by the characters, isn’t the real story.

TLOU isn’t the story of two survivors trying to reach a goal- thats set dressing. It’s the story of a man who lost his daughter being given a chance to confront his grief and grow close with another young woman who would be the same age. The relationship growing, their mutual guilt and relief and joy in finding that familial connection in a dying world IS the story. And the climax isn’t Joel shooting 50 more people, it’s when he chooses her over the whole world. Even when thats obviously the wrong choice.

From a plot view, nothing has changed. What actually “happened” was entirely between Ellie and Joel. But lots of stories are like that. If you released a movie where a grieving man connected with his adopted, formerly abused or neglected, daughter- that could be a good movie and you wouldn’t say “nothing happened” because it would be honest and upfront with its stakes. But fewer people would play that as a game so they have to obfuscate their actual story with apocalypse and zombie trappings.

One thing I’ve learned in the past ten years is that assigning intent or motivation to the ghouls is wasted energy. They play constant games, are serially dishonest, and fear and reject introspection of any kind. You might as well ask a scared rabbit how it decides what direction to bolt in.

You can try to diagnose their conditions. You can predict their next moves fairly accurately by assuming racism, bad faith and evaluating external stimuli. But ultimately that is an academic pursuit of limited practicality. And asking “what they think” is kind of a nonstarter. If they were thinking, they’d adopt different positions.

As for the future - bold of you to assume America even gets that far. I can only speak from the outside looking in- a distorted view to be sure- but you guys have been sitting on a little powder keg so long I think you’re actually blind to how far over the tipping point you actually are. Secret police. Arresting dissenting politicians. Silencing academics. Attacking scapegoat minorities. 24 hour state-authorized propaganda. Complete failure of the rule of law. Major corporations and institutions folding to authoritarian pressure every day.

There is no “Post-Trump” era to hunker down and prep for. At this point he might outlast the country he’s destroying.

He self-identifies as Conservative, when talking to me, which is 99% of the time he spends discussing politics.

I dunno. Feels like we lost the thread here. If it makes you guys happy, sure. By “leans Conservative” I actually meant “center-right Liberal”. Everyone cool with that?