I mean, people still hunt with bolt-actions, so it’s plausible he could catch either lol

We must ruin the West

It’s sad. For almost ten years people have argued about what went wrong with Star Wars.

Too many genres? The EU was scattershot and unfocused at times, but never hurt the brand in a significant way. In fact, it led to some great books and games

Too much politics? The villain of TPM is named after Newt Gingrich, and nobody really cared. ANH was inspired by Vietnam, and was still a box office hit.

The fanbase hates (insert minority)? While the internet has magnified the extreme weirdos, all six films have some mix of assertive female leads and non-white characters. Lando blew up the Death Star, Mace Windu was considered second only to Yoda. Every clone, etc. Still had a successful brand. Clone Wars focused hard on the clones and is put above the prequels by many of the hardcore fans. This isn’t to say there aren’t awful people who acted unhinged, but that goes for basically every large group of people in human history, let alone fandoms on the internet.

The answer is quality of writing. The originals were written well, and had coherent world building. The prequels struggled with character writing and general complexity, which is why they are more divisive. Good writing is the difference between the comedy of C-3PO and Jar Jar. It’s the difference between Luke and Rey. And it’s the difference between soul and slop.

The people at Disney either don’t understand this, or don’t care. It is an organization of Nico Harrisons who don’t understand the fundamentals of their industry. This pattern has been repeating across pop culture since the 2010’s, and was blamed on culture war instead of the real issue. It’s a miracle that something like Rogue One or Andor was ever greenlit.

Also, did you know the box office drop-off between 4 and 5 is the same, down to the percentage point, as the drop-off between 7 and 8? And yet, 5 is the most beloved, while 8 had so much backlash that Disney panicked and turned 9 into damage control, instead of working off of 8.

The difference? ESB is well written. TLJ broke space combat entirely for a cool visual. I don’t want to absolve TFA, which gets off way too easy because of what followed, but this comment is already too long…

I’m over here with the 1,400-page book… shoutout to Tolkien making me emotional in the appendices:

And

Easy Red 2, Ravenfield, OG Battlefront 2… plenty of games out there!

Exactly. It’s the difference between “the ring is a great power that corrupts” that the reader can draw parallels to their own experiences with, and “ring = nuclear bomb, Isengard = No Man’s Land” like it’s a slide puzzle with only one right answer.

A work can be deeply personal and reflect your beliefs without having to be strictly allegorical.

I’ve noticed stuttering issues in modded Empire War, but I also run heavily modded Stalker just fine with 60-70 FPS. Wine is a fickle beast.

Ah, I’ve fallen for the classic blunder :)

It puts all the weight of the game being fun on the gameplay mechanics/loop. For number-crunching genres like roguelikes it works. If a Zelda game did it, it would suck. I put a couple hundred hours in Deep Rock Galactic, so I believe it can work under the right circumstances.

Binty Blease, y u ride babby traen?

The most recent versions of UBR had no portraits, so that file just adds them back from an older version. Cyberfaces are for if you notice any missing player models. Have fun!

I did some digging and still had them saved. I updated the archive here: https://archive.org/details/nba-2k14-mod

As a Christian, I really wish more people would read history and realize they’re wielding a double-edged sword… I wonder how many conservatives have The Hiding Place on their shelf?

Checks link preview

Gee, I must not’ve played that game.

Opens article

Oh.

Oh yeah, graphics are great. If it had the level design quality and tone of the rest of the series I’d be a big fan

I appreciate 343 including 4 a lot honestly. From the COD quicktime events and the stereotypical Marvel villain intro, to every other fight being a DMR shootout with the shield bots, it’s the Force Awakens of Halo: all the iconography, none of the substance. If it wasn’t included I would have wondered about 343 Halo and why it has a controversial rep. Being able to jump straight in after playing the rest of Halo blind was a great way to see it for myself lol.

I couldn’t get into it, but I do have several dozen hours on X4 :)

Legendary game, only thing that comes close to M&B Warband as a sandbox IMO (shoutouts to Daggerfall)

Welcome! I came in with the blackout a year or so ago, it’s been fun to see more people show up over the months!

I respect that. After all, different denominations are still relevant for a reason :). And there is Biblical precedent for a fancy building (Solomon’s Temple).