The resilience of the Palestinian people is truly inspirational

If ICE/cops are charged with some kind of token offense - it will be for entirely unimportant misdemeanors.

They’ll be charged with property damage because stray bullets broke some windows. Chuds will froth at the mouth and be outraged

Do it coward. Seriously, please do it. This might bomb Ireland’s economy but it’s probably the quickest way to get American corporations out of the country, short of revolution

The financiers have lost interest in this war, so it’s time for it to end

Dungeon Meshi represents orcs very well, they’re a society based on raiding and seen as savages, because they were banned from owning land on the surface and forced into dungeons. They turn out to be very reasonable people and are honestly more civilised than Laios, the main character.

ah lads

I hope it hurts

Deltarune tomorrow! By which I mean June 5th

Replaying Deltarune in preparation for chapters 3 and 4 next month, it’s still so much fun. I’ve forgotten a lot of the jokes so they’re funny to me again. I’ve noticed this time that I really appreciate the visual design of chapter one a lot more. The music is obviously amazing, I don’t get annoyed running into fights accidentally because Rude Buster is like a top 5 Toby Fox song. Field of Hopes and Dreams is also up there.

grok, do you want a body so you can do your own investigations?

This is a big question, and not actually news, but you are all well-read nerds so I figure you can help me out. Why was it that 1700s Europe was able to industrialise and allow capitalism to emerge, but not other societies? What societal structures prevented, say, classical Greece or medieval China or the middle east in the golden age of Islam, from utilising steam power? Why did burghers emerge in Europe as a powerful class? If anyone could point me to some reading about this topic, that would be great.

Also, a fun worldbuilding idea I’ve played with is ancient Rome or Greece undergoing a sort of industrial revolution and utilising steam power. What changes would have to occur for this to happen?

Like the world is getting worse and worse and I’m just supposed to do what? Study for my exams? Clean the dishes? It’s so insane

Is anyone else really really scared by the world at the moment? It feels like everything is spiralling so quickly

Instant hall of fame hexbear comment

Ah ok, my bad. Still fucked up though

So theyre letting people keep donating to the woman who called a child the n slur, but taking this down? Disgusting

so the government know who was running this and didn’t arrest the sick fuck?

so the government know who was running this and didn’t arrest the sick fuck?

yeah movement feeling satisfying is so important. i hadn’t played horizon so i cant say anything about that, but comparing something like skyrim, where movement is just pushing forwards and watching the camera move, to something like the horses in red dead 2, which have a real sense of weight and momentum, shows how important fun movement is. nier automata has really good movement, the characters feel really fast and agile. breath of the wild also has good movement, to the point that i barely ever fast travelled, because paragliding was so damn effective. moving needs to be satisfying

I was hoping no one would ask me that tbh, because I don’t really have one answer. But the first thing that comes to mind is Bethesda games. Their writing sucks, but I honestly think their level design is second to none. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have such fun worlds to explore, and they keep me coming back for like 1000 hours in each, even with the bad writing and combat which is mid at best. There’s always something interesting to look,the promise of good loot, and something cool just around the corner. The compass system showing nearby locations creates such intrigue and gives a direction to go in, and it helps that you can see what kind of location it is, nordic ruin, town, raider outpost etc. Even just walking from place to place is engaging when there’s little things to interact with, plants to harvest, containers or bodies to loot, little unmarked locations to discover.

Kenshi is maybe the truest open world experience where you really do make your own story, because there’s no main quest at all. You might build up a powerful faction of hunters or be enslaved for a long time before breaking out and killing your captors, or become a travelling merchant, or build a city, or just do whatever you want. My main problem with Kenshi is that I don’t know where the fuck to go, so I just pick a direction entirely at random. Its the kind of game that benefits from outside knowledge.

When it comes to really well-rounded open world games, like the quintessential open world game, I have two answers. The first is Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. The only stuff I don’t like is the forced stealth tailing missions and that dumbass ship stealth mission. Ships can’t be stealthy, especially when they’re sailing down a river. Other than that, Black Flag remains great in my opinion. The story is really good, nothing groundbreaking but just really solid with a great bittersweet ending, and Edward is a likeable protagonist. The world is big enough to not feel repetitve, but small enough that it doesn’t take too long to get anywhere. The naval gameplay being so good is what saves this game, if it was boring the game would suck. But the animations, the bobbing of the ship, the crash of waves, sea shantys, Edward’s commands, the feel and weight of the ship, it all adds up to make the standard travel a lot more interesting than just pushing the stick forward. The more involved sailing mechanics are storms and battles. Storms are pretty straightforward, you have to catch a wave head on and brace or your ship will be damaged, but the sound and visual design make it fun, and they never last too long so they don’t get tedious. The ship combat is just great. You can fire broadsides, chaser canons, a mortar, launch barrels out the back, then board ships, swing across, fight the crews, capture ships. The small stuff really adds up for a great experience. There’s generally something interesting nearby, like a hunting spot, treasure, a marooned sailor, a diving bell etc. The small side activities like playing dice feel way better here than in GTA5, because they’re really just a small distraction from a great primary gameplay loop. The economy in this game is honestly one of the best ever, you always feel like there’s an obvious next goal, like hull upgrades, new swords, new guns, new cannons, cool new sails and outfits and so on. You need money, wood and steel for ship upgrades, so its always worth taking on a fat merchant vessel when you see one. Even when the next thing to buy isn’t super wild, its always meaningful. There’s always something new to buy, and its always fun to get the necessary resources.

The other well-rounded game is 2015’s Mad Max, which you might not even know existed, but its really underrated. Its just a really well made game. Its been a long time since I’ve played so I can’t remember it as well as the other games, but it basically has all the qualities that make Black Flag so good. The driving is always engaging because you’re always ramping and drifting off of sand dunes, the economy is really well balanced, the car combat is bombastic and cool as fuck, the locations are pretty unique, there’s sandstorms which are dangerous but offer the reward of valuable scrap, the ingame currency. You can shoot explosive harpoons at other cars and ram things with a massive grille. The hand-to-hand combat feels even meatier than the Arkham games, Max really beats the fuck out of people and gets the fuck beaten out of him, its awesome. Now I think about it, it shares almost all of its good qualities with Black Flag, although the story is not as memorable. Neither of them are 10/10, but they’re both really solid 8/10.

The only other games I want to mention are Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, but Shadow of War is pretty much a straight upgrade from Shadow of Mordor. The Nemesis system was a flash of genius that was really well executed and the writers, animators and voice actors really put the work in to make it great. Its the biggest wasted oppurtunity in gaming recently, and a very obvious case against intellectual property laws. In a game with such a rigid main story, which honestly isn’t that good, its amazing that the Nemesis systems allows for such compelling emergent stories. The world itself is fine, very standard for a AAA game. It falls far short of Bethesda’s finest, but its serviceable.

You could definitely make a case for something like Morrowind being a better game that falls into the open world category, but I think these are the gold standard of how to make an open world game. The world design of Bethesda, the emergent stories of Kenshi and Shadow of War, and the balanced minute-to-minute experience of Mad Max and Black Flag are all great.