Comrade_Cat

I kinda like it. Stalin looks kinda sad and disappointed, as if he’s looking into post-war Europe and seeing that all hope of revolution is being extinguished.

It’s probably the exact face he would make if he got to listen in on the French Communist Party meetings at the time.

There have been some newer CRPGs that do this. Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera were part of a revival of the genre that used pre-rendered backgrounds to great effect. There is also a mod for Pillars of Eternity 1 that enhances the pre-rendered backgrounds too as the originals are starting to show their age a bit because of the compression they used.

Disco Elysium also takes a lot of inspiration from the genre, including the gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds.

I can’t recommend all 4 games highly enough. Disco Elysium may be the clear winner, but Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera are very good games too. Pillars in particular has some very wonderful characters in both games that have since gone on to live rent free in my head alongside greats like Garrus and Kreia. Which if you’re familiar with Obsidian and Chris Avellone’s work he wrote two characters in Pillars 1 specifically, Durance and Grieving Mother that are absolutely amazing and deeply compelling characters.

Bit of a rant, but I love these games and would highly recommend them to anyone who likes narrative heavy RPGs. Although Pillars 1 & 2 have some really crunchy combat they also have story modes that make it easy if you’re more into the narrative than combat.

Just pump out children and send them into the fields. You can send them to school if they manage to survive past 16!

We’re all Tower 7. 🫡

That isn’t to say that the show has any kind of extra-personal analysis, it doesn’t. The show is rooted in and based on liberal vibes based non-analysis. It understands that there is something wrong in the American culture that produces people like Walter White, filled with cowardice, impotent rage, greed, and pride, but never thinks about analyzing how, why, or what is wrong with American culture. So the show falls back on intra and inter-personal analysis. How Americans abuse each other because they can’t address their actual issues because of pride and cowardice.

The Wire does a much better job of analyzing the larger picture, even if it is also a fundamentally liberal analysis. But as much as I love The Wire it doesn’t foment the white-knuckle tension and rage as well as Breaking Bad does. But that mostly comes down to storytelling style I think. The Wire plays out very realistic while Breaking Bad uses Tarantino-esque hyper-reality as dramatic flair to heighten the narrative.

Anyways this is just rambling now. I like the show a lot, for a lot of reasons but mostly for the drama and cinematic flair of it all, not because of its biting criticism.

That all said I did have issues watching it the first time. I had to stop in the middle of season two because I hated Walter White so much. But when I went back into it with the understanding that Walter was the antagonist and Jessie was the protagonist I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I’d have to disagree. The whole show is about how Walter allows his pride devour his life. He’s too prideful to accept the handout from his former business partners. He gets a taste of being powerful and good at something, something he felt was stolen from him by said former business partners, and his pride feeds on it.

The show only wants you to root for him in the first season. By the second season Walter is the antagonist and Jessie is the protagonist.

As Walter’s ambitions become more grand and his pride grows and grows he eventually gets got, all his mistakes and failures finally ruin him.

Walter White is a man only to be pitied and reviled. Chuds look up to him because of course they do, they can’t understand that the show is mocking them and showing them that their own arrogance and pride destroys everything around them. Almost every time Walter is “badass” is when he’s abusing others or he’s lying. He’s the definition of a coward and paper tiger.

You’re supposed to hate him, not love him.

There is no angle, no logic, just excuses to express their rabid misogyny and racism. They’ll use anything as an excuse to spew hate as long as it gets them more eyeballs and clicks than the last thing they tried.

Just working. All of my family is quite a ways away from me so I’ll get a nice paycheck out of the deal. Thankfully I work from home and have a job where unless something explodes I can screw off all day, so I got to call my family and play video games all day.

I think part of it is that for a westerner to confront the fact that overpopulation isn't an inherent issue, we have abundant resources to handle a huge population, then they’re forced to confront that it’s an issue of resource allocation. And when that happens westerners are programmed to start screaming about commies the same way that they imagine dirty peasants used to scream about witches. So for the last god knows how many years anytime western media has a narrative that needs to confront the issue of resource allocation they skirt the problem by saying there are too many people and that’s the real issue. That and the implied racism of saying the problem is overpopulation is killing two birds with one stone, so it’s a narrative that stuck around in western media and became a convenient misdirection.

Somehow it’s still not the scummiest thing that PayPal does. Close though.

Depends on the game and how familiar I am with its mechanics. When I start a new game I have to feel it out first before I can autopilot while listening to something.

I can mindlessly level characters in WoW Classic (my favorite thing to do, the endgame can be fun but us usually really toxic) because I’ve played WoW off and on for 20 years so I don’t have to give it much thought. Honestly can’t do it without a podcast or audiobook anymore. Also Elden Ring, I “clear the map” of all the smaller dungeons while listening to stuff, but like WoW I love starting fresh characters with a new build and honestly doing it without listening to something is boring.

I also like ARPGs like Diablo 3. Diablo 4 Is more miss than hit these days, but can be fun. Path of Exile never really grabbed me, but I’ll probably give PoE2 a shot soonish. A recent one if found is Wayfinder. Is a wonderful little action RPG that I’ve really enjoyed playing recently. It started development as a live service title but because of some nonsense they retooled it and released it as a fully offline action RPG with tons of collectibles and up to three player coop.

I also like 4x games once I get used to the mechanics. Stuff like Civilization, Age of Wonders, Stellaris, Endless Space & Endless Legend. Usually I’m just doing runs to get specific achievements or try out a silly build idea. I pause whatever I’m listening to sometimes if things get tense and need some micromanagement.

I play Warframe too sometimes, but that’s a bit more dependent on what I’m doing in game. It’s really the only looter shooter that’s ever stuck with me so there aren’t really any other games similar to it I play. Most others are unforgiving but Warframe you can make really tanky builds so if you space out listening to something for a minute it’s not the end of the world.

That all being said I’m lucky, I have a bullshit job where I can play games a lot during the workday so I play a ton of stuff while listening to podcasts and audiobooks.

I’d say that he replaced himself with a Zuckerbot but stapled his face on it to try and seem less like an alien than Zuck but the creep is so obviously on industrial quantities of amphetamines these days. Every interview he’s given that I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing he’s gnashing his teeth and jittering constantly. Dude probably hasn’t blinked in 5 years.