Gormongous

Probably https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8117-the-business-side-of-video-space-games/ would be appropriate, although I don't think it's been brought up there yet.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Regarding the singleplayer game, would it have killed the developers to put in a "you're almost out of food" popup when you arrive at a settlement and a "you're leaving camp with no food" popup when you leave? There's a certain protracted sequence at one location that lasted long enough that I forgot I was low on supplies when arriving and only remembered after I was abruptly kicked out. The game helpfully saved right after. Honestly, I hate to say it, but the numbers-based parts of the trekking, while reminiscent of King of Dragon Pass, are the weakest part of the design. I'd rather just each section be a series of scripted events that affect morale and caravan size, than that and a bunch of fiddly little numbers. Not to mention that using renown to buy supplies is unthematic and uninteresting in terms of decision-making. Like Clyde said, leveling up isn't that important, so it's no hardship to pass it up, but transmuting all your renown into food is just boring. I'd rather there just the the tension between leveling up one high-level character, leveling up several low-level characters, or holding out for items at the next town.

I just remembered a conversation with a friend over a year ago where she said that she hated seeing her therapist because it was so exhausting coming up with things to say to her in order to appear normal and sane. Nothing I could say made her see anything wrong with this attitude. People are weird.

If he wants to take a bunch of pictures of Nick and then pin them all over a random wall, I'll pitch in for the yarn to tie between the pins.

Yeah, that's somewhat similar to what I said in my edit. The aliens are learning about these things for the benefit of the audience, so lasting change is rarely ever achieved. It's a flaw of most "modern-day issue as defining characteristic of alien race" episodes in Star Trek. Like, there's an episode in the next season where Nog ruins a date for Jake because he's an appalling sexist like the rest of his race, they have a fight over it, and then they make up, without even mentioning the cause of the fight. I don't know, it sucks to have something pull its punches.

I can't speak to the multiplayer game, but having one overleveled character is nice in singleplayer because the AI usually focuses on neutralizing it before you one-shot all their weaker units, so you can build a strategy around cutting up all the guys they send to do so.

I happened to be over at my friend's apartment when she watched it about a week ago (damn, SAM, you watch fast). I actually think it's pretty good, the episode, for being as explicit a takedown of institutional sexism as the nineties could manage. Having a woman ask why over and over, and having excellent actors playing intelligent and articulate men who just say, "Because I said so," was gratifying. But yeah, there are people out there who actually buy into Ferengi philosophies as anything less than absurd to the point of parody. The world's a weird place. EDIT: The only problem I really have with such takedowns, of which DS9 has more than a few, is that they always have to happen to goofy alien cultures because HUMANITY SOLVED ALL THEIR PROBLEMS TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO GUYS GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER

Twig... Facts are what I believe, opinions are what others believe. Opinions can be wrong, why would I believe something that's wrong? That makes no sense. Come on, this isn't hard.

Yeah, I leave that one out because it never does anything for anyone who hasn't watched TNG. I do want to hear BigJKO's reaction now.

Be good to yourself, Tegan. I don't know how, but you still should.

That's really well put, Miffy. I don't have nearly your history here, but I did start listening to the podcast in 2009, when I went to grad school in a new city and knew no one for a hundred miles in any direction. The Thumbs were my friends in a pod, which did more for me than I feel comfortable admitting. When they went away, I was crushed, and when they came back, I donated as much as I could afford to thank them. Their return also got me to join the forums, which I hadn't wanted to do because I hate internet communities and my inevitable place in them, and that's found me a good number of friends, to whom I'm not necessarily close, but on whom I know I could count if I needed it. Yeah, so... happy decade of existence, Idle Thumbs!

I'm beginning to get the feeling that it'll be really different rewatching KILL la KILL a year or so later, considering how much every episode since maybe the fifth or sixth has raised my opinion of the show. This latest one was great, even (especially) the (slightly uncomfortable) caricatures of each Kansai city. I never know what any episode's going to bring, you know? I've certainly left several (very) incorrect predictions in this thread alone. That's special, I think. Also, I like the show's "theme" song more than is reasonable, particularly 1:02-1:36: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmgA3moScyA Yeah, those are basically my thoughts as well. You can feel the absence of Kenji Kamiyama and it hurts. I like the idea of a younger Mokoto, who actually gets overconfident and makes mistakes sometimes, but so far it's done nothing to distinguish or elevate the OVAs.

I took a while to think about it. For me, "Faces", "Tuvix", "Warlord", "Drone", and "Workforce" aren't very good. "Future's End" just doesn't do it for me, but I know it's in a grand tradition of time-travel episodes, of which VOY has more than its fair share. The rest of your list is excellent, especially the Seven of Nine love.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the Kapala, at least for the way I play the game. My best, most recent game, I had almost thirty health from the Kapala and Kali, but that did me jack shit when I brushed up against some lava, so yeah... I don't know.

I'm not sure about the particulars, but I think Nintendo is probably strongest in the portable market, however much the last generation might lead everyone to believe otherwise. I mean, isn't the entire design of the Wii U a concession to that reality, since it's basically a (not terribly) portable system that has a traditional console "home base"?

Yeah, the subtitles thing is odd, so is the save system (it seems to save pretty religiously after every action, but only archives the saves that follow major plot beats, meaning if a choice or a battle doesn't sit well with you, you should figure that out now rather than later). I'm still over the moon about this game and really don't understand all the complaints about it being inaccessible or confusing. That said, I did just have a "boss fight" against an invincible boss, which I'm not crazy about. Didn't developers figure out a while ago that players are never happy about losing and that they should just have a cutscene if their story hinges on a dramatic loss by the protagonists?

Being a professional historian, I feel the same way about historical/educational conspiracies. Our understanding of history changes so drastically every decade that it's laughable when someone tries to tell me that either A) something that happened in the past has been covered up, or a cabal of historians and politicians has manufactured a single "official" interpretation of events. For the first, there's a ton we don't know, but we're more likely to know it the more important it was. There's no way to hide a war or a coup or whatever. For the second, historical consensus is broken all the time. In fact, it's the best way to make a name as a historian. The best is when someone reads something, like Frankopan's new book on the First Crusade, and thinks that they've found some secret thing hidden from the public on purpose, when really it's been accepted in academic circles for half a century but no one could sell a book on it. Actually, global publishing/media conspiracies are the most believable to me. You know, robber barons and the telegraph, all that.

Not yet, maybe? I'm still getting a little pleasure out of Chris' sheepishness, for some reason.

I've finally gotten a couple guys high enough that I have dedicated armor-breakers and a clean-up crew. I really enjoy the combat now, although the promised King of Dragon Pass-style overworld was somewhat oversold. Still, this game is making the slow trek from "good" to "great" in my mind.

I may be wrong, but I think 99.99999% of people who say some form of "Is this a joke" really really really hope it isn't a joke.

If they die, they must have not really believed in God, in which case no one should mourn their death.

The occasional missing space or letter really adds to the spambot feel, which I think is an objectively important part of the Objective Games twitter.

Despite Troy's excellent arguments to the contrary, I think I agree with Rob in terms of Creative Assembly's crush on Roman legionnaires. Sure, Roman legions reliably excelled when under competent generalship, but with the way the Total War games are increasingly designed, it's virtually impossible for the player to be an incompetent general. If a unit gets put in an untenable position, it'll fight hard all the same (and often the opposing forces will not take advantage of its exposure or exhaustion, but meet it on favorable terms). Since the player is not really given the option to mismanage a battle to the point that the legions' abilities are wasted, the legions always excel, which in practice begins to resemble board and video games' crush on the Tiger II.