Dominated.

A/S/L???

Outer Worlds is way closer to a Fallout spiritual sequel (or beat Starfield to the punch) than an Elder Scrolls game.

Did they ever fix the reputation system? I managed to instantly piss off an entire city while I was in the middle of it because I accumulated one too many “We don’t like you” points in the middle of a quest. Completely ruined my immersion and was a hard stop for me.

To clarify, the FTC is being urged to craft this regulation. They have not recently urged for this regulation. Gotta love the English language.

I also don’t buy his take that the game started development in 2016, this is what was big culturally in 2016, and the team just retreated into a bunker until launch and didn’t have any way to course correct.

That’s not how game development works. I guarantee the headcount for this project didn’t peak in 2016 and stay steady. This was a low-priority item on a few people’s kanban boards for a couple years, probably had multiple starts, dead-ends, and reinventions.

I have to think Sony saw the writing on the wall, pushed the project out the door because they didn’t think it would get any better barring significant reinvestment, and braced for the impact. I credit them just a tiny bit for not writing it off on their taxes and canning the project like Hollywood has been doing lately.

That’s not at all surprising. PvE game design is almost always about making the computer less competent in fun and/or believable ways. If you’ve got a computer that can simulate every item and skill in an enemy team’s arsenal and game out the best combination in milliseconds, the player is going to be dead by Turn 1 or stun-locked and dead by Turn 2.

Yeah, it sucks. I still think we have a better shot at pressuring her to take a harder stance on Israel while in office than Trump, so I’m still gonna vote for her.

Yeah, my introduction to her music was riding in the car with my late fifty-something year old coworker and he had her album playing.

Imagine 12 2-liters of soda. It’s a lot.

I don’t have downvote arrows in either my browser or Jerboa on Android.

I disagree. There is no ignoring Trump between now and the election. If the Dems stop now, then the only messaging out there will be GOP messaging which can put a spin on his hissy fits and work to salve his ego.

He’s a weirdo and we shouldn’t let anyone forget it (until it’s time to forget him).

Fair points, but I can’t participate in this thread because I’m on an instance that doesn’t allow down votes. The up vote solution is at least a bit more inclusive

You, like the author, are just falling for console war nonsense

You are sprinting to the defense of a multi-billion dollar company to call me a console war partisan. That is some American-politics level projection right there. I was a Sega kid. We lost the console war at the turn of the century. Now I go where the games are.

If the Xbox is a console for people to play games, it’s not the only console on the market, so it needs to compete. If it gains feature parity with its direct competition…except that said competition has a quality stable of exclusive titles, then the console is going to struggle. Like say, moving 20% of the volume that their competitor does. Microsoft’s answer to this seems to be to forego adding the value of console exclusives to their own platform and instead releasing more of their first-party titles on Playstation and PC.

That’s good for gamers, yes. It also flies in the face of any attempt to develop the Xbox as a platform choice. If I can afford one console per generation, why would I choose the Xbox over a Playstation? If I can afford multiple consoles, what does the Xbox offer that I don’t get already with the Playstation?

You’re calling Jason Schrier, a dumb author. He is one of, if not the most respected games journalists in the industry. You might want to take a moment and consider his words.

For my part, I do well enough that I could easily afford a good PC and 2-3 consoles per generation, and I’ve bought an Xbox and PlayStation since the start of both product lines. My Xbox One S was by far my least utilized console, to the point where I just couldn’t justify buying one in the current generation.

I just don’t know who the Xbox is even FOR anymore. If they put out a good exclusive, I’ll think about getting it… on PC, but even then, that’s probably money going to Steam or even EGS, because fuck the Windows Store, and most of the time I don’t even bother buying it there because something else on PC or PS5/PS Plus has caught my eye and I don’t feel enough FOMO to go back looking for it.

I should be one of Xbox’s core customers. But they stopped giving me the time of day when they spent an entire E3 blathering on about being a media console back in 2013. They’ve done precious little to try to win me back in the decade since.

Really cements my understanding of the topic.

Yeah, the policy was not only that you had to use the stipend on the gym membership, you had to actually GO at least a couples times per month and show proof of attendance “if asked”.

Not technically AT the work place, but a couple employees decided it would be a good idea to sneak off to a side room during the company Christmas party to fool around. They got caught and nothing happened for a couple weeks. Then, for the first and last time in the company history to my knowledge, both employees were asked to provide proof of gym attendance to justify the stipend they were collecting, then fired when they failed to do so.

What’s fun is the couple were married (to each other) and it didn’t happen on company property or during business hours, so this was totally just a “We’re icked out by this” move by HR. Gotta love working in the South.

Harris Teeter where I live. We do have Publix locations around now though. I still need to check them out and see if they live up to the hype.

The best sandwich shop in my town is the deli at the grocery store. They are less concerned about skimping on ingredients because it’s more important to entice you in and get you spending money in the aisles.

For $8 or $9 they will stuff a footlong sub so full they can barely fold it over. And it’s generally fresher ingredients than you’d find in a Subway

As someone who actually played these games on the Genesis and Sega CD, I’m guessing someone said, “We need to compete with the Mortal Kombat movies. Find me another fighting game franchise that’s got the same level of violence. Bonus points if there hasn’t been a new game in 30 years so we won’t piss off as many nerds when we butcher the lore.”

And it might work. As much as I enjoyed the games back in the day, it really doesn’t take up much space in my brain. I really wouldn’t lose any sleep if it bombed.