HolyDuckTurtle

Keeping details minimal because I can't for the life of me get spoiler tags to work on kbin:

In the middle of Heavensward we learn that a very dramatic death sequence that led to some major events was a ruse. The character is alive and things will quickly return to normal.

I get what they wanted, but big fakeouts like that are not my thing. It felt like the consequences were walked back so I could never take the rest of the story seriously. Anything bad that happens could just be reverted.

Endwalker has a point after a lot of stuff goes down where I was thinking "Yeah this is edgy and all, but they really held back from doing anything actually substantial" then we get introduced to a bunch of cuteness and silly things. It took until then to really settle with me that they mostly want to tell fun and uplifting stories, so making stuff look dark and dramatic but keeping the lasting impact down is more of an objective of theirs than a narrative flaw.

I can appreciate that, and a lot of other things about the game and its story, but that in particular is just not for me.

I'd go as far to say Heavensward may be the benchmark for whether people will enjoy the rest of the game. It's where the voice acting and general presentation upgrades to a level that, to me, remained consistent throughout the rest of the MSQ.

Most importantly, at least to me, you get new plot twists to some earlier events which tells you A LOT about the narrative structure going forward. There's a reveal during the middle of Heavensward that basically killed narrative tension for me throughout the rest of the MSQ.

It's not that their direction there is bad, I had just gotten swept up in the "omg it gets so DARK" hype so I was dissapointed when it consistently walked back major events. It took me until the middle of Endwalker to realise "oh, right, that's not the kind of story and experience they want to tell".

I love how parkplace is literally the kind of single-minded insanity this article talks about (which is significantly longer than 2 paragraphs btw)

Like, skimming through their articles and you get stuff like this https://thatparkplace.com/wish-actor-harvey-guillen-says-he-believes-disney-will-make-a-queer-princess-in-his-lifetime/ where they relay the quotes then immediately jump to:

If this does indeed happen it’s likely to lose The Walt Disney Company millions of dollars as seen with Lightyear.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, it is perfectly possible that the studio's writing work might be a bit shit, I dunno. If you find they are consistently involved with writing you don't enjoy, then sure, whatever. The point of this article is the absolute insanity this kind of stuff gets taken to, like it's a massive conspiracy rather than just the work of another studio managing the struggles and interests of our age.

To quote the 2+n paragraph article:

It’s a conspiracy theory that checks all the boxes: It conveniently explains pretty much everything happening right now, ties it back to organizations of which people are understandably suspicious, links it to a much larger ongoing panic (DEI), validates preconceived notions like “go woke, go broke,” sprinkles in a few kernels of truth regarding powerful interests, and – most importantly – provides a clear and identifiable enemy. It’s also almost entirely bullshit.

While diving under the ice in McMurdo Sound, some of the team came across giant Antarctic sea spiders that appeared to be mating. So, they gently collected the animals and transferred them to observation tanks to figure out how the heck these enigmatic creatures procreate.

Rude.

I started with Ubuntu and slowly tried getting used to Gnome over the course of a few months (mainly using windows, every now and then hopping into Ubuntu when not gaming). I learned of KDE, tried it in Kubuntu, and it all instantly clicked for me. I switched over in about a week and haven't had much reason to boot Windows since.

It turned out that front-facing experience was incredibly important to me.

I believe we're specifically talking VRR, which for me in Kubuntu did not work properly without switching to Wayland.

VRR is fantastic for games, I really notice the difference and I use Wayland because of it.

The downside to that is (from my understanding) Wayland forces some form of Vsync on everything, so if you don't have a VRR monitor then games can become very stuttery and have noticeable input lag. There is an option to "force lowest latency" which supposedly allows screen tearing for things like games, though I didn't test how well it worked myself.

If people are interested in experimenting, then VRRTest is a great utility to see what VRR is doing and to test various settings.

I can still feel it when I think the vast majority of these people are vulnerable individuals who have been led to be believe they're being victimized. Things like QAnon provide a the right-wing equivalent of a safe space and community for them.

It's got to be tough seeing it slowly tumble away.

I liked it in general, especially after the first seasn. However, I still get frustrated at how Michael-centric it is (it feels like every time a character has an opportunity to do something cool on their own, they always need help from Michael somehow) and tend to dislike the galaxy being at stake every damn time.

Strange New Worlds delivers on that for me though, so it's good to have different options!

I worked with a startup once where we had individual company emails and had a good giggle at how different the spam is compared to personal stuff! Mostly in our case it was dubious offers of office space, furniture and other such services.

Jedi Survivor's performance issues are annoying but I wouldn't call it "unplayable" by any stretch. It depends on how you define it. My definition of that would be either "literally doesn't launch / hard crashes consistently" or "massively fluctuating frametime on appropriate hardware and settings that makes the intended gameplay too difficult to enjoy".

In my experience, it's mostly traversal stutter and TAA ghosting at low frames in the giant hub level which you don't really get during actual combat. I also partially inflicted that on myself by choosing to play on max settings with RT and no FSR. I use a R5 3600, RX 7900XT and 32GB Ram.

Obviously, your mileage and personal tolerances will vary. Definitely consider the refund window and use the big city vistas of the first area to judge if you'll enjoy it at that performance / quality level you choose. The art direction is really good so I think it will hold up on lower settings.

I think from their perspective Tuvok and Neelix weren't "dead", which was why they were more inclined to "correct" the situation at hand and save their crewmates while they still had the chance to do so.

Regardless, it's a fucked up decision, I don't envy it.