

The STALKER film is absolutely worth a watch, but it has even less in common with the games!
The STALKER film is absolutely worth a watch, but it has even less in common with the games!
I guess they finally decided to go harder on the Earth Defence Force angle.
Various spoilers.
Yeah, it’s pretty silly. His backstory was probably near or at Epic level
if he genuinely thought he could fuck around with Karsus’ Folly - that’s one of the few things that would have your peer superwizards (who mostly dislike each other) joining forces to put a stop to.
I think pretty much all the character’s backgrounds were a poor choice on their part. You don’t need a shred of backstory upfront if the writing is up to snuff, and having theirs be so high-level kinda makes everything happening pretty low stakes - the intro cinematic with the spelljammer vs dragonriders is basically a level 20 action sequence, and then you’re slogging through mud and goblins hearing about how cool everyone else used to be, having just seen how cool the stuff you don’t get to do is.
Plus Elminster could genuinely solve all of it in about three hours, so he shouldn’t have even been there to say:
“So I hear you’re an unstable antimagical nuclear weapon now Gale?”.
Then teleport away without doing anything about it.
But eh, the story and stakes are all over the place.
It isn’t even actually mind flayers! It’s just mid-level clerics of the three gods who job harder than Skeletor, with a plan so intensely stupid - fucking around with Illithid - that it can only function via the power of a saturday morning cartoon villain’s mcguffin.
It’s… like the Battle Angel Alita movie. It likes the source material too much, so it crams in too many elements from much later and weakens itself in the process. Or perhaps the poison of escalation.
It isn’t just hints of the mind flayer space empire, it’s a netherese superweapon, no wait, it’s also the Dead Three! The city you’ll reach in thirty hours will be destroyed - and the entire world hangs in the balance! Only your level 12 characters can save the universe!
Wikipedia, line 1: “Socotra, locally known as Saqatri, is a Yemeni island in…”
Oh please, please, try.
Edit: Slightly further down:
The island is under the control of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a United Arab Emirates-backed, pro-Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), “secessionist” faction in Yemen’s ongoing civil war.[5] The STC seized control of the island following a coup in 2020, ousting the local authorities and establishing its own governance.[6]
…lame, but still try.
The Bullet Curtain system…
Straight outta Touhou it seems.
These days when the King wants to wander down to the corner shop we can’t even fill our potholes with wine and almonds, or line up our bin men in their regalia, because of woke.
It was always really inconsistent. Some authors treated Alignment as “just kinda your vibe”, some as “a combination of cultural factors and divine meddling”, and some as “intrinsic cosmic morals”, some both but for different things (humans vs Outsiders, etc). Negative Energy and undead as being an Eeeeevil Spookyforce or Basically Just Radiation.
That kind of unaddressed inconsistency fuelled, and still fuels, endless repeats of the “Is Necromancy evil? What if my skeletons are used as agricultural robots to allow for a higher standard of living?”, where everyone talks past each other based on what part of the texts they read and settings they play in.