Shit dawg, say less, that’s what my afternoon plans were anyway.

No, you’re fine, I totally understand the mistake. I AM a pretty big HoMM fan and I was unaware that they had licensed out the IP as well, so I can’t blame you for not knowing.

I agree that there is something bland about the aesthetics of the game. From a distance (or in a thumbnail), it looks very good and faithful to the art style of the original games, just with some extra bells and whistles. However, upon closer examination there is something about the design language which feels like I’m looking at a mobile game ad. It could be that I associate HoMM with a hyper specific micro genre of fantasy art. My views are very HoMM 2 coded, and that game feels its art was ripped from the book jackets of Del Rey and Tor published paperbacks circa 1987. I love the look, especially the hero portraits.

So, this new look doesn’t really do anything for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough to suggest that AI was used to design some of these assets, but that’s the impression the art gives me, which I’m sure was not their intent.

But, it’s not? Unless you’re aware of something I’m not, this game is published by Hooded Horse, and developed by Team Unfrozen.

If you have affinity for survival horror and adventure game (or 90s goth aesthetic)I recommend adding Grim Beard to your rotation.

It’s an Albany expression.

It’s not a dumb idea, it’s almost certainly what’s occurring, with the caveat that I don’t think they actually want to shut the government down. Whenever you hear about an impending government shutdown, it is always a game of political chicken, trying to find out who will cave first, while simultaneously trying to preemptively sell the public that it’s the other party’s fault. Look at the messaging from the white House and congressional majority leadership. It’s all “oooh the Democrats aren’t willing to pass our super clean funding bill to keep the government open, they are unserious and willing to hold the American people hostage in order to continue mutilating babies”. Meanwhile, Democrats state (accurately) that Republicans need Democrat votes to pass anything, therefore it is incumbent upon them to negotiate in good faith.

There’s nothing more antithetical to Trumpism than good faith negotiation and compromise, so he’s doing everything in his power to avoid that, lest it appear like he had to cave to Schumer, to include cancelling the meeting they had scheduled last week in favor of doing the meeting today, at the 11th hour, to further pressure the Dems into capitulating.

Now, it’s important to note that, for all of the political brinkmanship on display, shutting down the government is, historically, far more damaging for the majority party than the minority, though the public tends to take a dim view of everyone involved in this sort of situation. Therefore, Dems have reason to stand fast and Republicans have an incentive to make concessions. This is in addition to the fact that Schumer got a lot of flak for instructing Dems to fund the government back in the spring, so he’s also likely motivated to feign some backbone in this particular tete a tete.

I consider the occupation of certain cities to be mostly unrelated to the funding fight. In fact, it would have behooved Trump to not antagonize Dems leading up to this for the aforementioned reasons. With that being said, Trump doesn’t do things according to what makes political sense, and, to your point, I can see a scenario where Trump is the only person at the negotiation table today who is totally ambivalent about whether a deal is struck or not. A local (Republican) representative was quoted with a statement to the effect of, “I’m not sure if the Dems have considered the fact that the Presidency is granted additional powers in the event of a budget related shutdown, maybe they should think about that”.

So, you’ve got Dems at the table who are motivated to follow through with a shutdown unless they get certain carve outs. You’ve got congressional Reps at the table who are aware that the American public has historically always blamed the party in power when a shutdown occurs, and are thus motivated to make concessions, but quietly. And then you’ve got Trump et al, who gain additional emergency powers in the event of a shutdown, further diminishing the legitimacy of the other branches of government and increasing the consolidation of power within the executive branch. However, if the government doesn’t shut down, Trump will likely spin this as yet another example of his brilliant negotiating ability (see also the Gaza peace plan released this week), even if there’s a snowballs chance in hell that any concession appears in further funding bills the next time this occurs.

Idk if any of that holds any water in the face of evidence, but it’s compelling speculation.

more info than you could ever want about Pitchford’s porn habits

In short, there was a legal dispute between Pitchford and a former counsel for Gearbox. As part of a pattern of suit-countersuit, the former employee alleged that Pitchford had left a USB stick at a local restaurant which contained proprietary company info as well as underage pornography. Pitchford confirmed that all of the above, with the notable exception of the “underage” part. Given nothing came of it, and he was remarkably candid about what type of porn was actually on the USB, I’m inclined to believe him.

It’s always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know “to cleave to” something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to “he was cleaved in twain”.

As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.

Josh Ritter’s Kathleen performance from Live at the Iveagh Gardens has far and away subsumed the studio version for me. The original track is fine, I guess, but there’s some kind of alchemy in that live performance that takes it from a kinda sleepy singer/songwriter ballad to a roots rock revival jam. Or something like that. Idk, I’m certainly no music critic, but I know which version I prefer.

Wrong! Or, at least, in Lincoln’s case, you’re both kind of correct. Lincoln had, at the insistence of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, at least one company of Union cavalry assigned to his protection. This was in addition to Ward Lamon, a personal friend of Lincoln’s from his lawyer days who took it upon himself to act as his bodyguard. Indeed, Lamon and Pinkerton clashed over the President’s security even before the war broke out. Pinkerton claimed an assassination plot was afoot in the lead up to Lincoln’s inauguration in early 1861. There is some debate over the validity of these claims, as Pinkerton’s intelligence gathering capabilities seem to have been greatly exaggerated. Regardless, the cabinet took these claims seriously enough to change Lincoln’s travel plans at the last minute, and he arrived in DC under the cover of night and with only Lamon present with him during the legs of the journey where Pinkerton claimed the most danger lie. Once inaugurated, and in the midst of the war, his protection became a military matter, which is when the cavalry companies stepped in. However, he routinely delighted in giving them the slip. In 1864, someone took a pot shot at him whilst riding through DC, and he was forced to take his protection more seriously. It was at this point that the DC police assembled a 4 man permanent bodyguard detail.

So, depending on when exactly you’re looking, Lincoln’s protection detail could have consisted of 2 companies of Union Army troops, Pinkertons, a self-appointed bodyguard cum lawyer pal, 4 police officers, a Freedman valet/bodyguard (William Henry Johnson), and a partridge in a pear tree.

I’m reminded of the narrator’s distillation of his career from Fight Club. Paraphrasing, but the gist is “I’m here to apply the formula. A is the number of cars on the road. B is probably rate of failure. C is the cost of an out of court settlement. A times B times C equals X. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we issue one and no one gets hurt. If X is less, we don’t recall.”

In this case, whoever counts Paradox’s beans determined the cost of issuing refunds was going to be less than the cost of staying the course (from a PR perspective, if nothing else).

I mean, tbh, I would consider VIP protection to be far less military-adjacent than police adjacent.

There’s the kernel of a pretty good 3 minute YouTube skit in here.

I mean, I guess I just don’t view entertainment options as a finite resource. Amusements abound. Games, movies, shows, books, lectures, theater, articles, podcasts, music, sports, etc. The means to dispense with my free time far far far exceed the amount of free time I have to fritter away. So, while you may view backlog management as unhealthy min/maxing, I would counter that your preoccupation with “running out” of entertainment is, at least, equally as unhealthy a min/max mindset.

Also, I can’t speak for others, but your clothing analogy made me think of this: when I talk about not wanting to purchase a game because of my backlog, usually I don’t mean “aw man, I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I haven’t finished my Madden dynasty yet”. Rather, it would be closer to, “I’d really like to get Baldur’s Gate 3, but I bought both of the Owlcat Pathfinder RPGs last sale and I haven’t even booted those up yet”. So, it’s less about deciding whether or not to buy a shirt based on how many pairs of jeans you own, and more about deciding whether you need the latest, most fashionable cut of Levis when you’ve got 3 pairs of Costco jeans at home still.

Ultimately, it’s neither right nor wrong of you to hoard digital games. It’s your money, you do with it what you will. It just seems like a wildly hot take to come into that conversation swinging around accusatory statements like “that’s an unhealthy min-max mindset”.

That’s not really what’s implied in that statement. A better comparison, using your streaming service analogy, would be that you subscribed to Apple TV because you heard Severance was really good. However, one thing led to another, and now it’s months later, and you still haven’t watched Severance. So, instead of starting a new series (say, Ted Lasso) you queue up Severance instead.

It’s still not a great analogy, because the streaming service implies a real, ongoing cost to maintaining access to the service, which is not the case with most people’s game libraries. That being said, with Gamepass and GeForce Now etc, it’s not necessarily out of the question.

The purpose isn’t to “deplete entertainment options”, it’s to utilize the options you already have financial investment in before sinking more money into more options simply for their novelty.

The “point of the product” isn’t to provide theoretical novel entertainment value by sitting, unplayed, on my digital shelves. Bold take here, but I’d suggest the point of a video game is to be played.

Idk, I suppose you can argue that the binary morality system of the first BioShock was integral to the franchise identity, considering the time it came out and all, but I don’t hate that Infinite has one definitive ending to the story it wanted to tell. In fact, given the game’s emphasis on tropes and meta commentary, I’d imagine that setting a story in a universe with infinite possibilities and then removing the “choice” from the player to influence the ending was done deliberately. However, it’s been a decade since I played it, so I could certainly be misremembering some details.

They have made one Warhammer game, Rogue Trader. It is a party based, turn based, RPG based upon a tabletop ruleset. It’s quite good, though I admit that I play it on story mode difficulty cause I can’t be bothered to learn another RPG system right now, and idgaf about build crafting. With that being said, it’s a positively ENORMOUS game, with extraordinary amounts of optional content to interact with. If you go on expecting Space Marine 2, or Dawn of War, you’re likely going to be very upset. However, if you are prepared for something which apes the old Infinity Engine games of the 90s, or games inspired by the same, such as Pillars of Eternity, you’ll likely enjoy yourself.

In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move.