Hyundai is doing some relevant things.

I don’t know how long ago that was, but the hustle has long ago counter measured pirating or second handing the books by bundling the new books with a 1 time use code to make a profile into the online part of the course where you have to take tests. You could just buy the code on its own when I was going through this, but the code was like 80% the cost of a code and book.

They also do the thing where questions in the book will be scrambled from edition to edition, so using an older copy of a math book for example won’t track because they’ve arbitrarily changed it just enough.

Fallout 1, which I’ve probably replayed about ten times more than the second game. It’s concise, with this depressing and dark world that gives a feeling never fully replicated in sequels.

Lords Of The Realm 2, a great little strategy game with an effortlessly charming aesthetic.

Civil War Generals 2, when I feel like really grinding out a strategy game. It has the bright colors and charming graphics which create a clear and readable battlefield that can be brutally difficult as units get ground down into ragged bands.

Really it just means the sorts of bugs you find with minimal QA testing combined with stilted voice acting, potentially untranslated audio or text, cultural beats that don’t quite cross over, and some game design choices that are different than how a game developed alongside western games might do things.

If you can stand this lack of polish, these sorts of games can at least give amusement for their price point.

I have combined the DNA of the world’s most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all!

It doesn’t have to not be.

Oh those. I meant the Gillette Fusion razor heads. They are supposed to be disposable, and I do eventually get rid of them, but I extend the lifespan by a lot with a squeeze bottle of alcohol on them to clean them. A head that should last weeks will end up lasting me months with just a little care.

disposable shavers

I have them, but clean them with a squirt of alcohol and they last ages. I think the last time I bought a pack was 2020.

When somebody won’t just take the compliment. It’s like come on, just take the W.

But also I feel strange getting praise in a real time conversation.

I’ve gotten in a habit of concluding business calls with “It shall be.” I think an ominous aura is an important part of business.

I’m commenting late, but there is The Precursors which does require Slavjank tolerance, but if you have it, it provides an interesting flavor on a space opera adventure.

I also haven’t tried The Tomorrow War which seemingly requires even higher Slavjank tolerance, and probably isn’t a top of all time game, but seems interesting if you like peering into strange forgotten games. Warlockracy did a video of this one.

That came out four years later.

That’s one possible direction, and I think because you favor it you are considering it the “true” and lost ending.

There was a lot of concept art, such as a volcano throne room that ended up being completely changed.

I think in the conversation between Lucas and Kasdin the fact that the idea seemed thrown out on the spot and novel means it wasn’t meticulously prepared for previously. Star Wars has never been as planned out as people think, it is full of soft retcons and handwaves. There’s a lot of concepts that get lost. Saying any given tossed off concept is what is “supposed” to have happened is just leaning into a personal preference.

I don’t know if I’d frame that was what the ending was “supposed” to be. Sounds like a spitballing session where Lucas both came up with, and then rejected the idea.

Kasdan immediately responded, “That’s what I think should happen” — but Lucas didn’t actually want to go that dark because “this is for kids.”

Sounds like nobody was stopping Lucas if that was what he’d wanted.

George Lucas was quoted as saying Luke was supposed to pick up Vader’s helmet at the end of Return of the Jedi and become the Sith Lord.

When did he say this?

TLDR Bloated staff sizes and poor workflow management means salary costs skyrocket while a lot of people on staff are left waiting for things to do. The article keeps saying the costs aren’t just about better graphical fidelity, but I think this issue is somewhat related because a big chunk of staff are going to be artists of some variety, and the reason there are so many is to pump up the fidelity.

Not that it much matters to me personally. I’ve said before that games have long ago hit diminishing returns when it comes to technical presentation and fidelity. I’d rather have a solid game with a vision, and preferably a good visual style rather than overproduced megastudio visuals. Those kinds of games are still coming out from solo developers and small studios, so it doesn’t affect me one bit if big studios want to pour half a billion into every new assemblyline FPS they make.

Serious hat for a moment, but the idea that Canadians burnt the White House is a misconception. It was British soldiers from units raised outside of Canada, which had been sent over for the war which did that.

In the stealth section there are static guards and patrolling guards. At the bottom of every turn the players pull from a deck of cards which says which of the patrolling guards will move and also a special event- this can be the meter towards the alarm ticking down, some of the guards reversing direction of their patrol, or reinforcements prestaging just off board.

During stealth if a dead guard or a player character is spotted by a specific guard, it will shout alerting other guards inside a certain radius and act according to the combat logic. At this point the stealth section will likely shortly end because of all the negative stealth modifiers.

In the combat section, enemies will move towards and fire at whatever spotted player character is nearest. The combat is very simple, which is balanced by it being very difficult for the players to survive, which means you want to delay combat as long as possible.