Diecast #255: New PC, Endgame, Borderlands 3

By Shamus Posted Monday May 6, 2019

Filed under: Diecast 50 comments

Welcome to Diecast #28-1! Just a heads up: This episode is basically me talking frantically for an hour while Paul does his best to squeeze in the occasional sentence fragment. If you’re here for me, then this should be fun. If you’re here for a conversation, then I have failed you.

I wasn’t sure what to do about Avengers: Endgame spoilers. The whole movie is a barrage of surprises and fanservice, so trying to talk about Endgame without spoilers is like trying to talk about Tombstone without mentioning cowboys. You can do it, but in the end it’s a lot of trouble for a very dubious benefit. I did my best to avoid giving away the big surprises, but you should probably just go see the movie if you’re spoiler-shy. You know how the internet is when people get excited. You’re bound to blunder into a spoiler pretty soon.



Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.

Show notes:
00:00 Diecast #255!

Fun fact: If you were to take all the diecasts and arrange them end-to-end, they would go all the way around. The whole way. Maybe even twice.

00:58 New PC! (Actual Literal mail-bag)

Yes, I'm a 47 year old man with the decor sensibilities of a 12 year old.
Yes, I'm a 47 year old man with the decor sensibilities of a 12 year old.

I forgot to mention: This is the first time since 1986 that I’ve owned a computer that didn’t have removable media. This makes me a little twitchy. Sure, I’ll often go for months without using the DVD player, but it still feels strange to not have one.

Like, how do you restore a machine like this when Windows inevitably updates itself to death? I guess you boot from a thumbdrive, which is apparently a thing computers can do now?

I’ve ordered a few thumbdrivesI own a couple, but they’re ancient things that aren’t large enough for any supported version of Windows. and I’ll make a Win 10 installer with all the Corsair drivers. I’m assuming this is how you’re supposed to prepare for total OS failure, but if you’ve got any additional tips please let me know.

20:37 Avengers: Endgame

Watching this movie was like eating pure sugar. It was self-indulgent and probably bad for me, but it was fun while it lasted.

So what’s next for blockbusters? Are we going back to cowboys? Sword & sandle epics? Dragons? Disaster movies? I mean, we’re obviously done with superheroes, right?

Right?

30:00 Borderlands 3 Gameplay Reveal


Link (YouTube)

45:29 Signal to Noise


Link (YouTube)

While I can understand why this didn’t work out, I’m sad all the same. That’s good content.

50:53 Mailbag: Starcraft Lore

Hey Diecasters,

As I’ve been wrapping up my second tabletop campaign set in the Starcraft universe (using the Starfinder system, from the makers of Pathfinder, made from the d20/D&D 3.5 system), I’ve realized how much I appreciate Starcraft lore from a gaming perspective. Have you ever done in-depth dives of Starcraft? I feel like there’s something to be said for the games’ story…not so much that the plot is all that amazing, but the tone is astonishingly pitch-perfect, and puts the player pretty deep in the world despite the generic characters and plot. Your own mileage may vary, do you have games that you’re unimpressed with story-wise but that really do it for you in terms of tone and world-feel?
Thanks,
-Commodore

 

Footnotes:

[1] I own a couple, but they’re ancient things that aren’t large enough for any supported version of Windows.



From The Archives:
 

50 thoughts on “Diecast #255: New PC, Endgame, Borderlands 3

  1. Mephane says:

    Yes, I’m a 47 year old man with the decor sensibilities of a 12 year old.

    Those gaps where you seemingly ran out of LEDs for the rim of the left screen make me really uncomfortable.

    1. Shamus says:

      Me too. I don’t know why, but that strip was designed with those gaps built in. It has these non-lit sections for no reason???

      1. Ander says:

        Webcam maybe?

  2. CoyoteSans says:

    Yeah, thumb drive for OS installs. Over USB 3.0, they’re even faster (and obviously much quieter) than DVD installation. Plus you can just reformat the drive and use it for something else when you’re done. Props to Microsoft, the Windows Media Creation Tool makes this dead simple now.

    If you truly need a disk drive every once in a blue moon, just buy an external DVD drive that plugs into USB. That was the solution my last job had when we needed to reimage finicky or broken-disk drive machines that couldn’t use USB install for whatever reason.

  3. Joe says:

    Yep, it’s Morederlands. Which is just what I want. Some graphical improvements, some weapon changes (oh my god, new Tediore!) but nothing changing the fundamental shoot things and take their stuff gameplay. By the way, several YTers got to play the game and put up footage. MrMattyPlays has nearly two hours worth.

    However, the start of the game is very BL2. You meet Claptrap, he thinks you’re working for him. Yeah, I’ve heard that joke before. It wasn’t exactly hilarious the first time. Hopefully it doesn’t continue the whole time.

    I kind of think it’s sad you haven’t talked to the old crew. FWIW, I thought you were good friends. I figured that after the split, you still talked in private, played multiplayer games together. They’ve started up the Spodcast again, and Josh mentioned you a couple of times. Nothing salacious, just that you played and talked about several games together.

    There’s a lot of Elder Scrolls lore out there, some of it good. Amazing how much happened between games. Also, I’ve been reading a Dragon Age lore book. Maybe a lot of that was in the games, I haven’t actually played them. But again, some of it is pretty good.

    1. evilmrhenry says:

      Morederlands makes me think of a cross between Borderlands and Shadow of Mordor. I suppose it can’t be less faithful to the source material?

  4. cheekibreeki says:

    Can someone recap and summarize the discussion?

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      We’ve been around for a long time, but can’t decide if we want to grow up or not. Upside, unlimited power. Downside, unlimited responsibility.

      Which discussion?

  5. Calmre says:

    External drives for those rare moments. I bought a usb DVDRW 3 years ago just in case and used it a grand total of 0 times. Also the 9700/9900 are base clock 3.6 cpus,they dont really work at that speed, they boost up to about 5ghz single core, and well above 4 depending on how much thermals allow.

  6. TLN says:

    I haven’t had a DVD player in my main PC for at least 6 years now I think, after experiencing how quick & easy (and silent!) it is to just boot from USB I’m never going back.

    1. John says:

      I’ve got one, but that’s mostly because my PC is in the living room, hooked up to my television, and I thought I would use it to watch DVDs. I don’t, as it turns out, because the rest of my family prefers dedicated devices to an HTPC. My TV tuner-capture card doesn’t get much use either, unfortunately. Still, I have hope. Its day will come. The motor for the tray on our ancient DVD player–nearly 20 years old!–is on the verge of failure. I expect that there’ll be a glorious week or two when it sees a lot of use, right up until the point that the Blue-Ray player that my wife will inevitably order shows up. That said, the DVD drive does see occasional use when I want to install or re-install old software or make audio CDs for the car stereo.

      And, honestly, I had the DVD drive already. What was I going to do? Not put it in my new computer? The only real downside to including it, as far as I can see, was that the selection of approximately cube-shaped micro-ATX cases with space for full-sized optical drives was not as great as I would have liked back when I was case shopping.

    2. Bloodsquirrel says:

      I still need one to burn mp3 CDs because I use them to listen to podcasts/audiobooks in my truck. I do regret not buying a radio with an SD card slot, though, since CDs are more trouble to burn and have other issues.

  7. Torquemurder says:

    I have been using my current method of backing up for over a decade and it works well enough for me (never lost any data).

    Get a copy of Acronis True Image and either a NAS or an external USB drive. Probably 4TB or so in your case. You can set Acronis to work in the background and automatically back up everything (full or differential or a rotating schedule of both, which is the default) on a regular schedule. The initial backup will take a while, but the differentials are very quick afterwards. These are image backups so a restore will get you back your system in a perfect original state. You can also mount the image files as virtual drives, in case you want to restore individual files or folders.

    Acronis also has a utility to make a bootable USB specifically customized to help you restore from your backups in case you suffer a failure that kills your boot drive.

  8. Matthew Downie says:

    When my Windows install broke, I used an old laptop to put a Windows installer on a USB stick. Worked fine.

  9. Bloodsquirrel says:

    Endgame (Non-spoilers):
    Some random things-

    I don’t think that the movie violated its time travel rules that much, I think it just didn’t explain them well. It seems like they were going for the “parallel universe” method of time travel, which is why things that happened in the past didn’t change things in the future.

    The movie did start off a little weirdly, with some strange pacing issues where it wasn’t clear where they were going, but once the main time-travel part kicked in it was great. As a giant conclusion to a decade of films building up to it, I think the amount of fanservice worked, and it did it while still having a (except for the beginning) well-structured plot and a bit of a running theme to follow up on Infinity War’s.

    The movie did also lack a bit of the focus and voice that Infinity War had. Infinity War felt very much like a Russo brothers’ film. End Game feels more like there was a committee making some demands. It’s a bit looser than the other Russo brothers MCU movies. Captain Marvel, for example, sticks out *really badly*, and feels like she was forced into the script at the last minute. You could remove her entirely from the movie with no real consequence, and she completely lacked that natural chemistry with the other characters that the Russo brothers did such a good job of creating in Infinity War when they were throwing all of these characters together for the first time.

    The interesting thing is that, even as a conclusion to that decade of films, it didn’t have a whole lot of meta-plot to wrap up. It had one thing (fix the snap), but otherwise it was mostly about individual arcs. I think it helped (if you liked the light, fanservice-y nature) or hurt (if you wanted a heavier, more serious conclusion) that Infinity War sort of already brought all of that build up to a single point that End Game could easily handle. A lot of times, the big conclusion to an epic series winds up with so many plot threads that have to be woven together and so many climaxes to deliver at once that they can’t pull it off and disappoint everyone. End Game doesn’t have that problem. It had a lot of stuff to deal with, but Thanos had already laser-focused all of it down to *The Snap* in Infinity War.

    I’m also done with the Marvel movies. I’ve said so before here, and it’s been a long time coming. I wouldn’t mind seeing one more movie, if they made another one with the rest of the old cast as sort of a feature-length denouement, where we see a little more of how things turn out with them, with a much more light-hearted and less serious threat, but I don’t think we’ll be getting that. They’re going into phase 4 or whatever, and… I just don’t care that much. I still like Thor and Doctor Strange, but I’m not terribly interested in any of the others who are sticking around, and I think the setting is played out. Whatever the MCU had to say, it’s been said, and I’ve got nowhere near the excitement left to be pumped for a bunch of new movies that will be setting something up to pay off in another ten years. I’m ready for something new now.

    So, uh, DC… I hear that Shazam is pretty good. Is there any chance of you guys figuring out how to clean up that giant mess you’ve made and give us a proper Justice League film?

    1. Redrock says:

      Huh, that’s interesting, I personally felt that Endgame was much more cohesive than Infinity War, mostly because it didn’t have nearly as many characters to juggle and could actually focus on some meaningful arcs. Captain Marvel, I think, they handled as well as they could, putting her into the “human ballista” role previously reserved for Thor.

      On a related note, can we acknowledge just how much Chris Hemsworth has grown as an actor since his debut in the MCU? In the Endgame he steals almost every scene he’s in.

      1. Bloodsquirrel says:

        Infinity War was far more focused, IMO. Thanos is the clear protagonist of the film, there’s a solid theme of sacrifice running throughout it, and pretty much all of the non-Thanos character interactions are framed through that theme and contribute to Thanos’ plot. There aren’t really any scenes that I would cut from Infinity War, whereas there were several thing sin End Game that could have been trimmed. Infinity War also has a very clear through-line: Thanos getting each stone, one by one while getting more powerful, sacrificing everything he has along the way, and ultimately achieving his goal. Infinity War even manages to be a character study along the way.

        End Game is much more of a grab bag. You’ve got Tony’s arc, Steve’s arc, Nebula’s arc, Thor’s arc, etc, but there isn’t much that ties them together. It’s not a disorganized mess by any means, but it’s much easier to see how you could change out parts and move them around, whereas with Inifinity War every scene ultimately contributed to the same end.

        1. Baron Tanks says:

          Got to say, you summarized most my words to a point.

          I was getting severe Marvel fatigue a year and some ago, then Infinity War was actually a lot better than I expected, which was a huge surprise a the time. I also adored Thor Ragnarok, but I love anything Taika Waititi touches so the only surprise there is how much ofnhis sensibilities made it into the end product.

          But with Endgame, all the fatigue is back, yet I think it makes a great capping stone to the MCU. There were plenty of (character) moments I adored, but so much of the movie felt like retreads (including a beat for beat do over of Infinity War) and other played out, predictable and tired aspects of MCU movies. I’m glad a bunch of these guys got the send-off they deserve, but I’m not terribly excited to retread all of this again and without the out of the park casting of the first run of movies. And that’s OK! Not everything needs to be for me and as long as it has broad appeal and for younger audiences, that’s fine. I’ll catch the odd one here or there, but I’m not going to be a ticket buying customer for the cinematic run.

    2. Chad Miller says:

      I didn’t have any problem with the time travel in Endgame until the very end. This is probably partly because this is a blockbuster and it’s time travel and I just figure that it’s not going to make sense if I look at it to closely. But then we get to the part at the end with Captain America and I think “You…you just spent literally the entire movie giving us exposition explaining why that doesn’t work! In fact, if that works, that invalidates the entire reason this trip back in time happened to begin with!”

      1. TheCheerfulPessimist says:

        I’m right there with you, squinting and trying to figure out if/how it breaks the established rules of time travel, but I believe that Peggy Carter’s interim story (between her show and Winter Soldier) was left deliberately vague to allow for PrimeTimelineCap to go back there WITHOUT violating causality. She could have been married to Steve all this time, who would have been so much older by the time of the MCU as to not affect events.

        Or it might have been alternate universe shenanigans, which instead makes you wonder how he got back to PrimeTimeline to sit on that bench, and from where he got the shield.

        Either way, I’m wiling to forgive them that wobble mainly because they obfuscated it pretty effectively (to me, at least) and because I wanted so very, very badly for Steve and Peggy to have a long happy life together, ever since crying while watching the last scenes of Captain America: The First Avenger back when that one came out.

        1. Chad Miller says:

          > Or it might have been alternate universe shenanigans, which instead makes you wonder how he got back to PrimeTimeline to sit on that bench, and from where he got the shield.

          This is pretty much where I landed. I felt like all the time travel talk stressed that they couldn’t alter their own timeline and that any past alterations would be creating a new timeline. There was even that whole conversation between The Hulk and The Ancient One where Hulk agreed that they’d need to return the Time Stone back to its own timeline to avoid creating a split timeline without the Infinity Stones. This doesn’t quite make sense, but it made “time travel in a comic book movie” levels of sense so I was just going to roll with it. Which is what I meant by invalidating the reason for that last trip:

          If everything were happening in one timeline, then why send Cap back in time at all? The world is now safe and if the Avengers want to give the Time Stone back to Dr. Strange then they can just do that in the present day. Instead they’re bringing them back in time to prevent splitting the timeline, but Cap stays back in time, which should then split the timeline, but he shows up in the present day anyway somehow. If going back in time can somehow affect the present timeline, then all of a sudden we have to contend with paradoxes like how the Thanos Snap still happened even though Thanos traveled forward in time and then died before he could snap in the first place, stuff which I was perfectly happy to handwave away with alternate universes until that very moment.

          1. Rack says:

            Without the Timestone that reality would have been consumed by Dormammu in Dr Strange. I don’t think there’s such a clear reason to remove the others, except that you can’t have the heroes end up with that kind of power and still have stories afterwards.

            1. Ardis Meade says:

              The idea is that the Infinity Stones are major metaphysical components of the universe. If you remove some of them from a universe, it ends up off kilter, mystically speaking. As such they need to be returned to the parallel
              timeline they were taken from or things go bad in a cosmic balance sort of way.

        2. 4th Dimension says:

          There was an FAQ after the movie started showing with the creators and they basically said he lived that life in another timeline/parallel world.

          So this is full on parallel world time travel WITH the fact that the device apparently allows you to select the timeline.

          So yeah, nothing you do in your past is really going to change your present, it can only improve or f-up the future of the alternate reality you have made by time traveling there.

          So yeah, Thanos dying in the future isn’t a problem because that’s just the Thanos of the alternate universe that was made when they started messing with that time. I guess in that timeline nobody is there to collect the Infinity stones and there is no Infinity War.

          Now that I think about it, those watches they use seem to allow arbitrary time leaps (since that time leap back into 60s by Cap and Stark was NOT planned) so why did they need that pad in Avengers building?

      2. Paul Spooner says:

        I thought the real time travel paradox problem was that Tony kills past Thanos in the future. If that happens, who goes back in time and kills half of everyone like we saw in IW? The thing with Cap seems like a side issue by comparison.

        1. Rack says:

          That will have been an alternate timeline, the issue with Cap is it suggests Cap somehow went back to the past of his own timeline.

          1. Ardis Meade says:

            Hey Ancient One, here’s your Time Stone back, thanks for letting us borrow it. I was wondering,since I’m done returning all the stuff we time borrowed, could you use it to send me back to my home timeline early so I can live through the decades I was forced to skip the first time through? Thank you Ancient One, you’re the greatest.

  10. Redrock says:

    Sad thing is, I used to love Errant Signal and watched almost every episode, even though I frequently didn’t agree with Campster. But at some point the channel just completely lost me. I think it was the Deus Ex episode. Which is a bummer, because Errant Signal is a genuinely insightful and smart show – it’s just not for me anymore.

    1. Gurgl says:

      I think he committed two major sins. The first was getting into extremely ham-fisted politics, and the second was coveting and tiptoeing into the me-so-phoney YouTuber shtick even though he most definitely has zero skill for it. It’s very telling that according to the description, he thinks the video linked in the article was a failure simply because he tried to be funny and failed.

      He could have just dropped the gimmick altogether and focused on his strengths, i.e. writing and research, it’s not like YouTube needs more forced humor. At one point, Errant Signal and Super Bunnyhop were the two channels you watched if you were specifically trying to steer away from obnoxious watsupguyz parrots, but Errant Signal just dropped the ball at one point, and like you say it was very sudden.

      And it was sudden for a simple reason: the author (Christopher Franklin) isn’t cut to be content creator. He had a few good ideas, and the skills and resources to produce them, but not to keep it going. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Doom video was his pet project that made him think he could keep making videos of this caliber. The Internet is full of such one-shot geniuses, where an author publishes one or two excellent articles or videos on a topic that was either hot or dear to them, and you subscribe hoping for more… except it doesn’t happen. They gather the courage and motivation to get their pet project out, then run out of steam.

      Errant Signal had a slightly longer good run than most, so even though I hate that saying, don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened.

      1. Bloodsquirrel says:

        I think he had a lot more than just the Doom video, but I do think he ran out of things to say, and his channel became a lot less interesting when it stopped being “here’s a general discussion on why there’s so much violence in video games” and became “reviews of indie game which you’ve never heard about”.

        And his Far Cry 5 video was… bad. Really, really, bad.

        EDIT: Also, if it’s true that he tried to move into being more silly/comedic, then it’s kind of weird, since it seems to me that there’s been a shift *away* from that, at least in general media reviews. We’ve gone from guys like the Nostalgia Critic, with a lot of yelling and shtick, to longer and more analytical stuff, like Mauler’s reviews. Or maybe that’s just the material I’ve been watching.

        1. Distec says:

          I think James Rolfe exemplifies this best. AVGN was kinda funny and cute back in the day, but the occasional one released now can be rather cringey when it devolves into yelling “AAASSSSSSSSS!!!” every minute. I’m much more entertained when he drops the persona and gives a sincere and enthusiastic take on which Dracula film best follows the source material, or which Godzilla movies he recommends.

          Even RLM has kinda stopped with their skits as of late – which were always self-aware halfhearted attempts any way. Nowadays they just drop straight into their review with little time-wasting. But I expect they’ll get the hunger for it again after some time on hiatus.

          On a side note, I’ve come to quite like Mauler’s work. But I know he’s the type of guy some people would find utterly repellent.

          1. Bloodsquirrel says:

            But I know he’s the type of guy some people would find utterly repellent.

            I’ve found that to mean less and less, these days.

    2. DeadlyDark says:

      Its either Deus Ex or Civilization video for me

  11. Geebs says:

    It’s actually a pretty bad time to be looking for a new VR headset, IMO. The original Rift has been discontinued, and the Rift S is by all accounts a bit of a sidegrade. The Vive Pro is ludicrously expensive, and the original Vive really wouldn’t take full advantage of a 2080 Ti. WMR headsets exist, but they have narrow FOV and the controller tracking is supposed to be universally pretty bad. The PiMax is apparently for – well, I was going to say crazy people, but you have to be pretty rich to buy one, so I’ll say “eccentrics”.

    Meanwhile, the Valve Index looks very much like VR 1.5. I’d love one, but I’m not going to pre-order something that expensive without knowing how much it improves the experience, and without any idea of how much software will actually use the fancy new finger tracking.

    Still, looking forward to a detailed plot analysis of Beat Saber in the not-so-distant future!

  12. Richie Meneses says:

    Agreed with your thoughts with Avengers Endgame. I’m done with the MCU. Yes, they just released the new Far From Home trailer and it’s a direct continuation of Endgame, but I’m not emotionally invested enough with this version of Spidey. There’s not much room for me to enjoy the rest of the MCU, outside of GoTG Vol. 3, Antman and the Wasp 3, and Doctor Strange 2. I feel complete, and I’m ready to move on to other stuff.

  13. OldOak says:

    Of course nobody’s putting DVD players in PC lately, those that still like to have a coffee holder switched to BR/DVD reader/writer (how else would you rip your PS3 games and play them in the rpcs3 emulator?).

    On the StarCraft lore, here’s a nice one: I (re-)played the whole original and BroodWar campaigns to have them fresh before getting my 2 and a half year old son to bed, and serving them as stories about the adventures of the brave Jim Raynor, infested Kerrigan, and vile Arcturus Mengsk.
    Later I enjoyed all the written stories (a.k.a. official StarCraft books).

  14. Grimwear says:

    I really really liked Endgame. I’m probably biased since I’ve been around for the start but this is a movie I genuinely came out liking which made me happy because while I did enjoy Ant-Man and Spider-Man (and actively disliked Black Panther and Captain Marvel) they didn’t have me coming out of the theatre gushing emotions. I worry that while I’ll continue watching the Marvel movies as they come out I’ll no longer have that emotional investment that I did for the beginning.

    I still dislike Captain Marvel as a character she’s arrogant and annoying and couple that with her Superman level of powers just tedious having her on screen. Luckily she wasn’t super prevalent screen time wise but when she did appear it’s just her being able to do anything. They even recreated the glove grab scene from Infinity War except instead of Captain America struggling she’s crushing Thanos’ hand. Must be easy when you have literally unbounded power. Blegh.

  15. Steve C says:

    I have a desktop with a DVD drive. The primary reason was to make reinstalling Windows easier. Except it won’t accept installs by disc!

    So Shamus, even if you had an optical media drive you probably couldn’t install from it anyway. It wasn’t a thing modern computers could do as of a few years ago. I doubt that has changed. It’s usb or… nothing? network cables? magic? idk.

    Point is that it isn’t something about your purchase you should regret.

  16. Grimwear says:

    When it comes to Randy Pitchford I feel people would be more forgiving of him if he wasn’t a smug dingus who purposefully goes out of his way to make people’s issues seem unimportant. Recently when he went on twitter and said that he couldn’t understand why people disliked the timed exclusive of being on Epic Game Store. And people replied to him with all their reasons and he responded with “well I don’t get that”. It’s like he was expecting a bunch of yes men to come to his defense on twitter and shout down all the people who didn’t like it. It’s just awkward, like when he spent a minute on an interview trying to get his interviewer to say the name Jim Sterling. Doesn’t help now that Epic Games has cut support to linux for the commonly used anti-cheat software and the Rocket League fiasco. Really Randy? You don’t get why people dislike Epic Games?

  17. Dreadjaws says:

    I found Endgame to be disappointing. I liked some of the fanservice (even though some of it was terribly forced), but I think the decisions taken with some characters completely ruin their previously establised arcs.

    I actually did suffer from the storyteller trust issue in the middle of it. It bothered me throughout the whole thing, and it didn’t even involve time travel (well, it wasn’t the thing that took me out of the movie at least).

    I do think your sugar comparison is right, but probably not for the same reason. Eating straight sugar would become unbearable for me a couple of spoons in.

    I didn’t think it was a bad movie by any means, but I didn’t feel satisfied by it.

    Speaking of Red Letter Media, the reason they have a “Best of the Worst” and a “Wheel of the Worst” is that they’re two different offerings. The first one is about specifically selected movies, while the other one is about other random works released on VHS, such as workout videos, PSAs, instructional videos, etc.

    1. Ninety-Three says:

      but I think the decisions taken with some characters completely ruin their previously establised arcs.

      Every Marvel sequel ever. It baffles me that for movies so driven by the characters, they care so little about keeping the characters consistent. Sure personalities stay intact (unless you’re Loki), but motivations and narrative arcs are discarded as if the writer got bored and could be bothered neither to continue nor to explain the sudden shift.

  18. Rick C says:

    “Like, how do you restore a machine like this when Windows inevitably updates itself to death?”

    You buy a $30 external USB DVD drive. (I know that probably sounds sarcastic but it’s not. I have a couple of ’em.)

  19. Ninety-Three says:

    For good lore, I’m calling out Age of Decadence. It’s a narrative-focused RPG (combat path optional, if you play a skill-monkey it’s practically a visual novel with skill checks) from some tiny indie. There’s a semi-open plot where you can try to become king or head of the merchant’s guild or a really good assassin or whatever in this pseudo-medieval fantasy world with weird stuff on the fringes. By far the most interesting thing to do is be an archaeologist and dive headfirst into the elaborate and not-at-all-generic-fantasy backstory of the world.

    It’s hard to describe too much without spoilers, because you’re supposed to start out in total ignorance, but it managed to throw me for a loop several times where I thought I had it figured out, only to learn something new that changed everything. The endings are very abrupt and anticlimactic, and it does hurt the story which felt like it was investing in building towards something, but overall I still recommend exploring it for the lore.

  20. Lino says:

    Congratulations on your new job, Paul! Hope it works out while still allowing you some free time!
    In regards to Endgame, I really liked it, not least because Iron Man was my favourite character… But when it comes to the upcoming Marvel movies, the only one I’m tentatively excited about is the new Guardians. Everything else just seems kinda meh.

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      Thanks! It’s keeping me REALLY busy, so I don’t have as much time for projects as I would like. That and the family, and I’m going non-stop. Works fine until something breaks I guess.

  21. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    I’m firmly on Game Informer’s side on this one. Here’s their tweet that made Pitchford go batshit :
    “Despite Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford’s comment about “no microtransactions” in Borderlands 3 during today’s livestream, we’ve been told cosmetic items are still purchasable”

    Everything about this is true, and is them doing their job. You might have your own definition of microtransaction but for a lot of not most people little things you buy like cosmetics are still microtransactions. Not abusive in Borderlands2’s case, but microtransactions. And Steam agrees because Borderlands 2 is listed as having them.

    Randy misspoke, that can happen, and Game Informer clarified, as they’re supposed to. Nobody got mad at him except a few dingus on twitter until he started his tantrum.

    1. Geebs says:

      I believe the technical term is a “Randy Bitch-fit”

  22. Tobias says:

    I liked factorio’s backstory much more when it still was possible that the PC was a robot. But they ruined that with their chase of HD mass market appeal.

  23. Wiseman says:

    I wasn’t around for the break-up of the old diecast crew. I assumed that one of them might pop back in for an appearance at some point.I hoped it’d be Campster because I also watch his stuff. I still haven’t watched his pilot and I’m already lamenting it isn’t a series. And then one day this will all finally come full circle as Shamus becomes an anime blogger again.

  24. Pinkhair says:

    The original (90s) Tomb Raider did a good job of presenting the surface of a very interesting setting.

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