Yeah and my point is that all his worldbuilding was just for his own fun until he actually put in the work of making a story out of it.

But mounted combat in Oblivion wasn’t really a thing, so your horse having armour never ended up mattering.

Unfortunately executive power tends to coalesce in a single person whenever an emergency situation occurs. Rome tried rule by committee like what you’re describing but gradually slid into dictatorship because of various forces that are basically just human nature.

Wizards is a subsidiary of Hasbro. Though it is their most profitable subsidiary by far.

And I don’t think they’ve been shitting on them, after all, it was Larian’s idea to make BG3. I think it’s that they like WOTC’s games but dislike the corporate greed of Hasbro.

I heard recently a Discworld ttrpg is in the works. So you may get your wish, just not as a video game

Most platforms lead people to more of what they already believe. If you watch one video from the wrong YouTuber, your entire feed will be nothing but neoconservatives.

Nothing wrong with being a communist. Being a tankie on the other hand… Fuck them

Open RCT 2

I miss back when the Onion did YouTube stuff like this more often.

What reaction? I literally just asked a question.

Edit: Also I’m not sure what you think “guttural” means, but it doesn’t work the way you tried to use it here.

Aren’t they partially owned by Tencent?

Fucked up that they’re calling it “paid DLC” to buy fast travel tokens. DLC implies content, not simply basic functionality.

“it’s easier for us to force our employees to crunch if they work in our offices”

It also had literally no game impact. It was purely cosmetic. There are far more egregious examples.

Damn… I was really close to pre-ordering this one and I held off basically just because I wanted to wait for information about the Steam Deck compatibility. So glad I didn’t pre-order. I figured all of the glowing reviews that came out earlier this week would have mentioned secret microtransactions, but it seems like this was a very nefarious bait and switch. I like to give the benefit of the doubt and apply Hanlon’s Razor, but it really feels like this was a deliberate and sinister act.

Roguelike games are generally pretty good for this as they will have shorter run durations with some kind of metaprogression. Slay The Spire is the first one that came to my mind.

Also games that have some smaller unit of progression which can be measured independently of the larger game, like Darkest Dungeon, which takes ages to finish, but each individual delve into the dungeon is relatively short and straightforward.

Are games not fiction?

Frankly I think that’s just recency bias. It’s new so it feels better. Before BG3 came out, most people agreed DA:O was the perfect CRPG, or Mass Effect, and just look at the sheer number of video essays on YouTube praising the quality of F:NV.

New games come along and old games look paltry in comparison. It doesn’t mean the older ones are actually worse. But you’ve had decades to enjoy DA:O, while BG3 still feels like it has secrets to uncover. It still is unexplored territory, and that’s exciting.

Personally I think that once the dust settles, it will be clear that, apart from limitations due to when each was made, these games are all equally 10/10 games in their own way. It’s not as though BG3 is without flaws. And it’s still actively being worked on.

Victoria 3 still isn’t a good game, but I agree with it as my answer to OP’s question. It scratches the same itch as Cookie Clicker while being about a million times more convoluted.

Tolkien also had a deep disdain for industrialism and automation, which is what inspired Isengard in the books. When he says Saruman has “a mind of metal and wheels”, it’s implied that the reader understands why this is a way of saying that Saruman is evil. He definitely wouldn’t be a fan of MindOfMetalAndWheelsGPT.