I would look at some of the tech demos for Unreal Engine 5 and its capabilities. We're at the point now where the engine itself, with sufficient art assets, can look photorealistic more or less out of the box.

Where this is still hardest- and likely always will be- is in faces, because our brains are so thoroughly wired to spot micro-expressions and subtle facial and body language as social animals.

That said, for a game like Doom or Path of Exile, sure, I think we're way past the point of diminishing returns. But for games where you're actually experiencing a story and interested in the relationships and characters involved? Things like Death Stranding, RDR, Cyberpunk 2077, or more recently BG3? All of those same nuances of expression can definitely add to the experience- it's the difference between a mediocre actor and a good or great one.

This right here is how you wind up with Tenochitlan in Texas.

Seconding this. Garuda has been great, all of the advantages of aur and bleeding edge with some fool proofing and ease of use features. It's like pop_os for folks who don't want to jump on the Ubuntu train.

This is awesome. It's great to see the modernization of the rule set for the setting, but the potential for cross pollination and romps through genres is amazing, or blends of the two like Shadowrun or 40k... I'm looking forward to it a lot.

Unless they're the oceangoing variety, in which case they just hide it under their sea beds.

All things you mentioned are hardware issues. [...] Because no one will buy an expensive GNU/Linux phone.

There's a difference between budget or low end components and flawed implementation or design. I didn't go in expecting a newer Snapdragon and a 144hz display- but neither did I go in expecting that it couldn't charge when dead. I didn't go to Denny's expecting filet mignon, but neither was I expecting a dirty tennis shoe on a plate. That was the whole point of my comment. The last thing mobile Linux needs is for people's first experience of it to be a semi-functional piece of hacked-together hardware- even if someone's willing to deal with in-dev software, when the thing straight up won't work it's not a good look.

Unrelated, but my druid is enough of a beast to face tank him 100-0 while pushing and I feel like not running from him bugs him out- he jumped me today and about 25% through the fight he just started running from me like a treasure goblin. Got quite the laugh out of it, almost makes up for all the times he's jumped me on alts while I'm chasing goblins and training around half the dungeon behind me....

MTX in a $70 game with paid expansions is 100% BS.

Same here, I'm 76 and running kind of a pulverslide build with zero relevant uniques because neither TR or Crone will drop for me. It's making me seriously consider rolling Necro for S1 just to avoid having so many builds locked behind unique rng.

We already have a moderate centrist party- they're called Democrats. This is explicitly right of them, so even as an unaffiliated voter, the likelihood of NL getting my vote is roughly zero.

That SOB jumped me out of nowhere today while I was already dragging around half a dungeon on my necro chasing a loot goblin. Needless to say, the loot goblin lived, and I did not.

The Legend of Zelda. So many amazing, visceral memories associated with that game- cracking open the package and gawping at the golden cartridge, leafing through the manual, looking at the paper map while running around in game, exploring, sweating through the labyrinthine later dungeons, hacking my way out of a like-a-like, braving the graveyard for the magic sword, the music... It was like 35 years ago and it's still a helluva thing.