I agree that Bethesda’s RPG writing is amateur at best, and I can’t dispute that there can be some good points in Dishonored. But at least for me, a mark of bad writing is that I find myself unable to care about the outcome for any of the characters in a story, and in Dishonored, I personally didn’t care much about any of the character’s struggles or personalities, as they were all pretty one-note. I can’t recall a single character’s name from Dishonored except for Corvo, since I found it novel to hear Stephen Russell as a main character again (big Thief fan, which incidentally I would point to as a game with excellent writing).

There was one instance in the main base/hub of dishonored 1, where there’s a short excerpt of a story about a whaler in a book, I think in the room where Emily was supposed to chill out in. I thought the writing of that little short story was so compelling, I sat back in my chair after I finished it and thought “Why isn’t this game about that?”, because I felt it highlighted how boilerplate the actual game’s story was in comparison. So in that way you’re right, the micro-writing, the world building, the atmosphere, is all top notch. I just wish the characters and plot were able to match it, as then it would be a masterpiece.

I should mention that I’m pretty difficult to impress with writing in video games, as I don’t think most of them can compare to the quality of writing available in books except for a handful of examples such as Thief, Gemini Rue, Mafia, and the original Deus Ex.

I wouldn’t say the writing for dishonored is terribly strong. The first game has a pretty bog standard plot, and the set up for the second was quite contrived. The gameplay and world are their strengths.

That made me audibly snort 😄

He’s seeing facist rhetoric damage his state first hand, yet still makes sure to clarify he’s a supporter of Trump and his border policies.

These people will follow him right to the edge of the cliff, and only when they’ve begun to tip over and realize their fate, say “how could I have known?”

The second paragraph kinda depends on how much horsepower they need for dev or gaming. If they play mostly indie games and don’t need cuda cores as an example, a steamdeck-like would serve pretty effectively in both roles, especially with the docking station.

Currently the best way is with Lemmyverse

He posted this update a few months ago, it seems to be progressing well!

Woah, that unlocked a memory of how my parents said giving sweets to our dog would give him worms. Wonder how that pervaded so widely.

block women, not black. I misread it as well, especially since it’d be easy to believe he’d target black women specifically.

EDIT: I was wrong! Listened to the audio and he does explicitly say black women!

Approval voting would help, but neither party will ever vote in favor of it.

That description of your process reminds me of this video on consciousness, and how the creator describes how he has no inner monolog, or even conscious thought of some of his actions, and instead it’s like a black box that he can query. Is your experience similar to that?

There’s a number of excellent documentaries over at !documentaries@slrpnk.net and !documentaries@lemmy.world.

I’d recommend Connections by James Burke, which there should be a link to on the .world community.

That sounds similar to this quote:

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” — Edsger Dijkstra, 1975

But there’s been a good deal of programmers who have said that BASIC, and its ease of use and seeing almost instant results is extremely useful to not turn people off learning to code to begin with. Python is functionally the new BASIC in that regard, and while the language itself may not teach you to become an expert programmer, it may have gotten more people in the door than otherwise would have.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

As someone who has attempted to draw a lot of spaceships: that’s a dam good spaceship.

Unfortunately didn’t apply to the creator of Ren & Stimpy.

Ahh, the ol put the rum in the banana shipment from Karamja method. A classic.

I also ______

Title is clickbaity, but its a solid video by More Perfect Union about how a bunch of crypto tech bros are sueing rural land owners in California to force them to sell their land so they can build what amounts to Rapture from bioshock, with the libertarian leaders of the project even using Ayn Rand quotes about it.

Pretty crazy stuff.

Long is an interesting example, since he definitely did strongman Louisiana politics, but he did seem to have the working class interests at heart, where as Trump only pretends to. We didn’t get to see what he would do long term, but its been argued that his presidential run, and more specifically his ‘share our wealth’ program forced Roosevelt even farther left in his policy.

Share the wealth proposed to put into federal law a wealth cap of 5 million for every American, with the excess used to fund what amounts to a universal basic income back in the 1930’s, and didn’t discriminate against minorities. It also advocated for free education, free healthcare, and a 30-hour work week.

From all the information I’ve seen, including the excellent Ken Burns documentary, the poor and working class of Louisiana loved Huey for legitimate reasons, while the rich and politically corrupt, who were targeted by him, absolutely hated his guts.

I grew up in a religious household that eventually became infatuated with what essentially amounts to doomsday cultism after the 2008 financial collapse.

The religion encouraged a lack of critical thinking development, and I easily bought into the scheme. We became fairly extreme preppers, stockpiling food, planning to move somewhere even more remote that wouldn’t be a nukeable target while also not being downwind of fallout from a neighboring target. We purchased plans on how to build various styles of underground bunker on a budget, and guides on how to rear animals and farm for subsistence.

At some point I came across a video of Christopher Hitchens debating a Pastor. I almost didn’t watch it, as I was afraid that to even entertain the ideas of someone trying to tempt you away from the faith would be dangerous, a way for Satan to worm his way into my mind and prevent my soul from being saved during the end times that were right around the corner.

But I was curious too, very curious. So I watched it. And I couldn’t come up with a single logical argument of how he was wrong.

That was the first glorious crack in the mental armor I’d put up against doubt of any kind. I would think about it frequently, which led me to want to find evidence that would prove him wrong, so I watched a different debate with a different pastor, then another, each one widening the gap, until one day I had to admit to myself that it was bullshit, from top to bottom.

That opened the floodgates. What else have I not questioned? All this prepping, for what? All the mistrust in others, the seclusion, the countless hours of research on how to (impractically) survive as independently as possible… it was all pointless, or worse, actively mentally harmful.

Amazingly, when I slowly presented all these findings to my family, they saw reason. I think they were all as worn out from the constant terror we guzzled down from crackpots too, and if anything were relieved that it could come to an end.

From that point on, I made an effort to give myself a proper education, to finally trust in the scientific process, and to not be so intellectually lazy that I could be tricked into something like that ever again.

So the last time I really changed my mind in a major way was about a decade ago.