Zeusthecat

Absolutely. Which is why I think it's an interesting paradigm to consider and strengthens the comparison to other social issues. Isn't that a big reason why people refuse to challenge their own views on sexism, racism, etc.? Because it is convenient for them not to? I'm not trying to go for some grand statement here, I just think this is a really useful thing to reflect on when trying to navigate all of the other social issues we face.

I agree that that's pretty much the gist of it but are there not some parallels to other social issues that we face? I realize this isn't totally apt but I could see someone make a similar statement along the lines of "women aren't men" or something like that. If you really think about it, how much more acceptable is it for us to have that viewpoint about animals than it is for one segment of humans to have a similar viewpoint towards another segment of humans.

I think with the character scaling there shouldn't be much issue just running at T3/T4.

The rolling ball thing in the lava world was one of the most infuriating goddamn things I've ever experienced. Everything else about that game was pretty great but I would rather pass another kidney stone than do that again. That is of course a lie. Fuck kidney stones.

Yes, I'm pretty sure you can mix local and online. I think last time I played I was on Torment II difficulty so hopefully I'm somewhat on par with where you are at. I hope to catch you on and look forward to playing.

Not to brag or anything, but I had some pretty mad skills when it came to navigating around that underwater conveyor belt area.

Ah cool, and I would agree with Schafer. Even as frustrating as the tank controls could be at times, I think it was the best way to control Manny without having any kind of point and click option. I do hope though that some tweaks were made to the way Manny navigates to make it easier to get into certain areas or rooms. That was really my major gripe. Some spots just had such a super narrow area where you had to walk with just the right trajectory to get to the next scene and if you fucked it up, Manny would just hit an invisible wall and rebound off in a different direction.

I guess I should have clarified. Specifically for PS4/Vita, do we know how they are handling that? Point and click definitely seems like the best way to go but if you are playing with a game pad, I wonder if they came up with any kind of way to make controlling Manny through set transitions less frustrating. I hated it when I would run in a specific direction in one scene, and then as soon as it transitioned, his trajectory would veer in off in a different direction because the camera was situated differently.

Are you guys playing this on PS4? I was regularly playing with a group of co-workers but they all ended up moving on and I just wasn't interested in playing solo by the time I got to paragon 80 or so. I would love to jump back in though so if anyone is on PS4 add me (xXZeusthecatXx)!

I may have missed this but did they ever talk specifics about how they are changing the controls? Are they just simply going with camera relative controls and would that work similarly to the camera relative option in the original PC version? I'm curious to know how exactly they are going to tackle that because I found the camera relative controls super frustrating when transitioning between sets and ended up preferring the character relative tank controls.

Oh my god the amount of time I spent playing that game. I got so into that one that when I was in high school, I would set my alarm at 5am so I could wake up and play a couple hours before school. I have never done anything like that for any other game. The greenhouse was the fucking best.

Absolutely. I have no doubt that I experience much less of this type of abuse because of the fact that I am in a position of privilege (straight white dude). But I still wonder, given any group of people, whether they are a marginalized group of people or not, would the abuse they might experience online be worse on average than the abuse they might experience in real life? In my case (as mentioned before), the answer is absolutely yes. What about for women? Going by the perspective given by Apple Cider above, it sounds like both real life and online have had their share of shitty experiences. But I wonder if the frequency and overtness of that abusive behavior would tend to be a bit worse online than in real life because of some of the factors I have mentioned previously. Then again, even if this were the case, being subject to this type of abuse in real life would probably be much more damaging to a person than what they might experience online because it is naturally much more personal. So I guess I just really don't know. And then there are other marginalized groups like African Americans. The N-word is basically one of the internet's favorite words and I have to imagine that word gets flung at them online far more than in real life. The systemic racism African Americans experience in real life is obviously a huge issue but I think if you are talking strictly person to person interactions, overt racism would probably be experienced at a much higher frequency and be much nastier online than in real life. Unfortunately, the lens through which I see the world makes it impossible for me to speak with any authority on this so I could just be totally wrong.

Damn dude, that's some rough stuff. I see your point.

I can definitely see how this is a lot more common before adulthood with shithead, socially inept kids but I have never experienced anything like this as an adult. Any abuse that has been directed at me has been far worse on the internet than it ever has been face to face. And I worked as a server at Applebee's for 4 years. I'm not trying to say that your perspective is necessarily wrong, just that it is vastly different from what I have personally experienced and observed in my own life.

I hope someone comes up with an accessory for the Oculus Rift that is a bathtub shaped pod that you can lay down in and be submersed in liquefied dead people which are also being fed to you intravenously. If movies have taught me anything, it is that that makes for a much more immersive virtual reality experience.

Yeah, now that you mention it I do vaguely recall that as well. So then does that mean that this game is made by the same people that made the original games or is this a new team?

Don't do it CollegeBaby! I will be the sole voice of dissent here and say that I think it's an awesome thread title. It has generated discussions about free speech, frozen yogurt, princess peach, and probably other things that we haven't even thought of yet. Some threads aren't so lucky.

I also have a number of years of experience working in the restaurant industry and I disagree with this assessment. Although I do think it is a good situation to look at when comparing how people treat total strangers face to face versus how they might treat a stranger online. In my experience, even with the worst assholes that come in and try to make your life miserable, there is almost always a way to get through to them. Being able to see their body language, hear the tone in their voice, make eye contact, and observe the body language of those around them I think makes a person more equipped to respond to the situation and reach some kind of resolution or appeal to their sense of empathy to cool the situation down. With interactions online, I think this is the case far less often. It actually takes some mental effort to recognize that what you are interacting with is an actual person and not just a wall of text.

Thanks for providing your thoughts. I am a bit ignorant on that topic. I think it is interesting to consider various cultures throughout human history and analyze how some of them got certain aspects of society "more right" than we do today. I think you bring up an excellent point that we tend to think that we have moved/are moving away from worse times. It seems like sometimes (most of the time?) we have a really bad tendency to not learn from the mistakes and successes of the past and just keep stumbling because we are too fucking proud and ignorant to admit we are wrong.

I'm genuinely curious to know exactly when and how that came to be the case. Has there ever been a time in human history that "women's labor" was held in equal regard to "men's labor"? I have to imagine there were some bright spots in human history where this was the case but I can't think of anything offhand.

Yes. The war on drugs is probably one of the single biggest fuckups of the last 50 years.

And I just want to point out that in my opinion, that is one of the hardest and most thankless jobs that exists on the planet. My wife opted to stay at home for the first couple years of both of our child's lives and holy shit she had to deal with so much more stress and hardship than I did going to work every day. It is pretty frustrating then to see that the culture we live in puts almost no value on the life experience that a person gains being a stay at home parent. In my opinion, for a wide variety of fields that should be the type of thing you should be able to put on a resume and should be valued as highly as any other work experience. So I guess to your greater point, I think it should be feasible to have kids and a career AND if a parent does decide to stay at home with their children, that decision should be recognized as an equally valuable contribution to society.

Some idling here and there was definitely part of it but for me the biggest culprit was how difficult the combat was. I must have specced out my party in a way that put me at a huge disadvantage because I had countless fights that I had to do over and over and was constantly dealing with having almost no potions, not doing enough damage, and not having a tank resilient enough to last during some of the longer battles. Honestly, I expect that I probably spent somewhere around 20 hours just redoing fights that I kept getting wiped out on. Also, that time includes all of the DLC that is integrated into the main campaign so there was a small chunk of hours dedicated to that as well.

No. It won't. I'm also currently playing this and finished the main campaign with about 105 hours logged. Deep Roads was quite a lengthy segment too so have fun with that. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the experience overall but goddamn it just goes on and on and on... Currently working on DLC since I got the Ultimate Edition and I hear Awakening itself takes around 20-30 hours. Then there are like 5 other smaller DLCs. So yeah, I might be playing this game for awhile still. On the brightside, once I am finished with this, I can easily knock off another 5-10 games from my backlog in the same amount of time it took me to finish just this one and then I will be so close to freedom.

Yeah, tell me about it.