I think Uematsu is the absolute GOAT, but XV had a great soundtrack. Not on Uematsu level of memorable, but still very good.
The leitmotif work with Valse di Fantastica/Sunset Waltz/Dewdrops at Dawn always was my favourite, but Ardyn has a nice theme too. Loved when the second version of his theme came in towards the end of the game.
Thankfully, it was not the only place in town to get a jigsaw puzzle, but it was the only Minnesota-themed gift shop to buy jigsaw puzzles. (This is not relevant.)
I’ve done loads of Wasgij jigsaw puzzles with family over holidays, they’re great. If anyone here thinks this sounds like a fun idea I encourage you to check them out!
“Reading the reddit threads, I would like to clear up something,” Vincke said. “WOTC is not to blame for us taking a different direction. On the contrary, they really did their best and have been a great licensor for us, letting us do our thing. This is because it’s what’s best for Larian.”
Personally, I think the presentation is what sets BG3 apart. I agree that D:OS2 has a more fun combat system, but that’s not really the key to mainstream appeal.
Stuff like zoomed in dialogues with actual motion capture and visible facial expressions really pulls you in in a way zoomed out isometric dialogue presentations never can.
Not saying BGIII is bad, but it would’ve (in my opinion) been better without the DND rubbish.
Maybe a better game, but definitely not as successful. Between the movie coming out the same year and Stranger Things and Critical Role (and their Amazon show) and what have you, D&D was already in the zeitgeist. It was absolutely an important aspect of BG3 hitting that mainstream success, imo.
I think the safe bet is not that Ferrari suddenly can compete for wins now, but rather that RBR underperformed here due to a combination of factors.
First of all, lacking data from what Max would have done blurs the picture a lot. Second, RBR did a rare strategy blunder with Checo and had him try to protect his front tires too much in his first stint, which did not pay off at all and in fact backfired completely. It also sounds like they didn’t get the setup right, which wouldn’t have helped.
Lastly, Australia is notorious for teams suddenly performing much better or worse there out of nowhere, and for performance at Melbourne not being representative for performance anywhere else on the calendar. It’s very possible Albert Park was a circuit that happened to suit Ferrari and not suit RBR at the same time.
It looks like just the perfect storm really, and I assume it’s business as usual in Suzuka. Please let me be wrong, though!
Mercedes has not “swallowed a dumb pill” since winning its last Formula 1 title, as team boss Toto Wolff says he does not currently feel the need to step aside.
I think it’s more the results of the brain drain I remember talk of during the big poaching campaigns from Red Bull and Aston back in 2021.
The overarching Mercedes design philosophy also doesn’t seem suited for ground effect cars, which was a problem during 2022 especially (though they might have changed philosophy since). They used to want to build a very peaky car, and then use their tools and know-how to get the car into that narrow operating window. That doesn’t seem like a good approach with these regs, however. Partly because the strict suspension rules that hit Merc hard, and partly because these ground effect cars seem to favour a wider operating window.
It also must be said that something is obviously wrong with their wind tunnel/CFD setup. Maybe it’s related to the personnel they’ve lost, maybe it’s something systemic that only made itself known with ground effect cars for one reason or another. But it’s now three straight years running where they’ve had massive correlation issues and had to publicly and repeatedly state “yes well, the car isn’t performing and we don’t understand why”.
It’s possible. 2021 and beyond I certainly started noticing mediocre pitstops and too-safe strategies in a way I hadn’t before. Whether it was all engine or not I’m not sure, but the team certainly had weaknesses masked by their dominance.
For me this penalty was a bit of a grey area rather than slam-dunk, though I’m fine with it in the end (and I’m a huge Alonso fan). I can see how it qualifies as erratic, though we’ve seen similar moves before go unpunished and it also looks like Russel is far enough back to have time to react.
I’m torn on this because while driver safety is important I’d also be loathed to lose even more fighting tools, and some amount of trickery like this is a part of duels in racing that I enjoy. Far more than the usual fare of DRS passes on a straight, at least.
Still, the grey area around it is murky waters and while Fernando is usually a master at threading that needle it’s probably fair to say he overstepped the line this time.
It did look like Max was not as dominant this weekend, he had to work for that pole (at least it looked that way)… Too bad that with the retirement we didn’t get to see more of an actual fight
Very hard to tell, and it is unfortunate to some extent. It’s not a huge surprise for me however as Australia is a peculiar track where there usually are some teams that rather randomly perform much better or worse than expected.
I do think Sainz just proved that getting 20 second advantage when you are first is a bit too easy (DRS for you and blue flag for any lapped cars seems to me like too much. I think just DRS would be fairer and make the races more interesting… Just my opinion)
I completely agree, though I’m of the opposite opinion. Blue flags are necessary imo (there is no reason a lapped car should be allowed to defend against a race leader), but the leader getting DRS off cars he’s lapping is grade-A nonsense.
PS: go Yuki, points again while Ric all the way to the back…
Yuki took that incident in Bahrain personally! I don’t get why people keep underrating him, he beat three teammates last year and is on the path to giving Ricciardo a McLaren-level drubbing.
Evil is hard to pull off well, very few games manage to make evil playthroughs actually interesting. A lot of the time it just means more slaughter, which in turn means less content since you kill off so many potential quest givers and followers. Plus, a lot of “evil answers” in dialogue often just means being an asshole to people, which usually closes potential content avenues. And while that is sort of realistic (people don’t want to work with you if you’re an ass to them) it’s not really that satisfying.
Deus Ex is screaming for a remake. There is so much excellence there, but imagine it with modern high quality graphics and VAs, modernized implementations of the systems already in place… Maybe even actually implementing the UNATCO route that was scrapped due to time?
I don’t think it’s entirely right to compare it to Bethesda RPGs as those are predominantly about wandering around the handcrafted open world and stumbling onto interesting things, be it enemies or side quests or dungeons. CP2077 delivers a weaker experience in that particular regard, that kind of experience wasn’t really what they wanted to do. The open world is more kind of there as a backdrop.
However, I also the think the character building is better in CP2077 than a Bethesda game in terms of skills and customization (post 2.0 at least), and most of all the actual mechanics of combat is much more fun. The action combat part plays a bigger role in the overall enjoyment, at least for me.
The game really shines in the stories themselves, the interesting characters and especially the character and facial animations, which are incredibly well done and make dialogue feel really engaging.
This though, is definitely the main thrust of the game, and it is indeed excellent.
I guess it’s different for most people. When I’m huddling next to a group of S.T.A.L.K.E.Rs under a bridge in the exclusion zone, listening to their guitar playing as I maintain my crappy rifle and watch the animation of my character slowly eating a can of beans to stave off the hunger I feel like I’m doing way more roleplaying than I ever feel from picking option A, B or C in a multiple-choice dialogue tree.
Agreed completely. 5E is just not good, in my opinion.
The rest system is extremely clunky. With a human DM and a time sensitive story you can kind of get some good out of it. Without that, it’s just extra loading screens of wonky difficulty/balance.
Even then the balance is completely off, with the 5E developers assuming way too many encounters per rest, meaning Long Rest classes are almost strictly better since their drawback of limited resources so rarely becomes a problem. This is of course even more of a problem in BG3, where you’re almost encouraged to take a long rest after every fight, what with all the camp encounters that triggers off taking a long rest. I missed like half of them because I tried to play immersively.
Plus the character options are shallow. Not everything needs to be a crazy Path of Exile level of complexity, but D&D 5e surprisingly few meaningful options.
What, you don’t enjoy getting to choose to put a point into your primary attribute every four levels?
Been noticing a spammer who set up their own instance and can’t see a fast way to just block the whole instance, either from the user menu, or from navigating to the instance. I may just be missing it.
A new spammer today made me think of another feature request: automatically refresh the currently viewed comment section after blocking a user to instantly remove the blocked comments.
Yoko Shimomura For Final Fantasy XV And Nobuo Uematsu Enter Classic FM Hall Of Fame 2024 (noisypixel.net)
Glad to see it. The soundtrack for XV is incredible.
Every single jigsaw puzzle in the store was one of these. (lemmy.world)
Thankfully, it was not the only place in town to get a jigsaw puzzle, but it was the only Minnesota-themed gift shop to buy jigsaw puzzles. (This is not relevant.)
Road to Vostok | Public Demo 2 (www.youtube.com)
The "Hypest Boss Fight of All Time" is now 1 year old (youtu.be)
I Need A Hero!
Wizards of the Coast 'Not to Blame' for Larian Leaving Baldur’s Gate 3 and D&D Behind, Swen Vincke Insists - IGN (www.ign.com)
“Reading the reddit threads, I would like to clear up something,” Vincke said. “WOTC is not to blame for us taking a different direction. On the contrary, they really did their best and have been a great licensor for us, letting us do our thing. This is because it’s what’s best for Larian.”
Centuries-old Aztec texts detail history of their capital, conquests and fall to the Spanish (www.livescience.com)
Sergio Perez admits Ferrari’s ‘very strong’ pace in Australia took him by surprise as he eyes Red Bull fightback at Suzuka (www.formula1.com)
Wolff: Mercedes hasn’t "swallowed a dumb pill" since F1 2021 (www.autosport.com)
Mercedes has not “swallowed a dumb pill” since winning its last Formula 1 title, as team boss Toto Wolff says he does not currently feel the need to step aside.
User asks: What's your favourite wordle-style game? Gets plenty of good recommendations in the comments
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/16395960...
Well-preserved Roman infantry helmet with mouse motifs on the back, 2nd century AD
Fernando Alonso received a drive through penalty which converted to 20 seconds added to the elapsed time in the race and 3 penalty points (sh.itjust.works)
Alonso is demoted to P8. Stroll: P7-> P6 Tsunoda: P8-> P7
2024 Australian Grand Prix - [POST RACE] discussion thread
ROUND 3: 🇦🇺 Australia...
Baldur's Gate 3 Dev Larian Working on Additional Evil Endings, and 'They're Really Evil' (www.ign.com)
Dragon's Dogma 2 launches to "Mostly Negative" review bombing after microtransactions reveal, and man, what a bummer (www.windowscentral.com)
What you need to know...
System Shock Remake dev wants to revive another forgotten FPS classic (www.pcgamesn.com)
Putting the roleplay back in the RPG was a huge reason for Cyberpunk 2077's recent metro and romance updates, says associate game director: 'It's easy to overlook' (www.pcgamer.com)
Larian Started Work on Baldur's Gate 3 DLC, Then Canceled It: 'The Studio Was Elated' (www.ign.com)
Hasbro exec says Baldur's Gate 3 "proved for us that people really wanted great D&D games," supports Larian's plan to "take the time we need" (www.gamesradar.com)
Any fast way to block a user's whole instance?
Been noticing a spammer who set up their own instance and can’t see a fast way to just block the whole instance, either from the user menu, or from navigating to the instance. I may just be missing it.
Upcoming releases
Hey everyone.]...