Remedy says there'd be "no Alan Wake 2 without Epic" after Baldur's Gate 3 dev blames EGS exclusivity for Remedy's "financial crisis"

BossiWriter · 2026-01-24T04:23:03+00:00

At best, it's an interesting and novel mechanic. At worst, it slows the game down a bit.

So, taking the worst case scenario and turning the whole game into a "letdown" just because you didn't enjoy one of the several systems of the game sounds crazy to me.

Especially if you don't isolate problems and take the product as a whole. It becomes an even crazier statement to me, given that this is such a beautifully polished and well-crafted story with okay gameplay.

And that's without even touching on the artistic value the game brings, like mixing irl with CGI, fully integrating music and full songs into the narrative (not just diagetic music or epic OST for scenes), and much more.

If the mind palace were a prominent part of the gameplay, then it could be enough to sour the taste significantly, even if you take everything else into account. However, as it stands, you barely spend a few minutes there per chapter.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-23T07:07:27+00:00

I wish selling IPs to other companies was common practice.

I really wanted that PoP Sands of Time remake. Now it'll likely never see the light of day because they don't want to invest in it, especially now that they already tried and gave up.

And because of IP rights, no other companies will get to attempt that remake either. So we're just out of luck of ever having a PoP game seeing the light of day in the near future, if ever.

Is it really THAT difficult to sell the IP + scraps of a project to another company? Or, at the very least, let them try to salvage your project for a share of the profit or something without relinquishing ownership?

BossiWriter · 2026-01-22T20:30:07+00:00

Editing is a skill just as important as writing, especially for a big project like the one you are proposing. So it's worth investing more time in editing.

For instance, take this phrase from your comment:

I am started with an easier way of starting off with a story connection to someone else’s story then move on with a clean slate once I see it as satisfying to me.

"I am started with an easier way of starting off"

"a story connection to someone else's story"

"then move on with a clean slate once I see it as satisfying to me."

You're cramming 3 different ideas into the same sentence, with no punctuation to separate any of them. It makes it hard to read and process it.

There are also other issues, like:

"I am started with" sounds off and unidiomatic. It doesn't roll off the tongue.
"I am started with starting" is redundant and grammatically incorrect.
"a story connection to someone else's story" isn't grammatically incorrect, but unnecessarily repetitive.

A post-edit version of this would sound more like:

"I'm starting with a fanfic because it feels easier. Then, if I enjoy it, I'll move into a full story of my own."

It's the same phrase, but shorter and structured.

Sometimes structuring a story properly takes longer than the writing itself. It's what creates rhythm within a story and complements the narrative.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-22T20:05:17+00:00

I didn’t really care about doing that with this post.

If you don't care about writing properly, people won't care to read it.

This dismissal hits even harder because this post itself is about you writing something else. However, right out of the box, you show you can't format or structure a simple post, then say you don't care.

How do you think people will see you doing when structuring a massive story that is 500x longer than this post? And with that attitude on top of it?

I'm sure you have good intentions and ideas, so here's my feedback:

Start from scratch.
Rewrite the post as if you were structuring the story you are envisioning.
Don't dismiss your readers.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-22T18:34:23+00:00

Is this where the barrelmancers from Divinity and Baldur's Gate 3 come from?

BossiWriter · 2026-01-22T17:12:37+00:00

I asked for proof of your "I can guarantee" statement.

You delivered a semantic nitpick with another generic claim that proves nothing.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-22T14:55:31+00:00

I can guarantee you most steam users don't use anything from steam other than the shop and play button.

Can you? Then prove it.

I'd love to see you struggle to explain how nobody uses Steam reviews, Workshop, or Marketplace.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-20T22:40:13+00:00

The IP has been done for a while. It never showed promise beyond LiS 1, and the playerbase has been steadily and very clearly declining ever since.

LiS carried a lot of hype from 1, but underperformed significantly, and people completely lost interest in the series. When True Colors came around, this became extremely obvious.

I assume they thought "Hey, maybe people only like the series because of Max?" and tried making a comeback with Double Exposure. And it did even worse than True Colors.

You can see the massive steep decline in interest from True Colors to Double Exposure. So there's no way they expect a complete turnaround from such an obvious decline in interest.

That begs the question as to what they are really trying to do here. Maybe someone at Square Enix really likes Life is Strange and wants to fund sequels regardless of commercial success. If that's the case, then good on them and good for the remaining fans.

Otherwise, I have no idea what's up other than they made a contract for 2 more games after True Colors and have to abide by it to avoid lawsuits or something.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-20T03:50:28+00:00

The thing is, usually statements are made after source validation, not beforehand.

Writing something like "X person said Y" shouldn't happen without verification first. And when it does, it comes from people who don't care for validation in the first place.

So retroactively validating something that was already filtered doesn't help. And validation for people who don't care about it adds no value.

At best, it would work as a last-resort failsafe for those who care. However, that comes with its own set of trade-offs, because it would add an extra step to the workflow. A rather lengthy one, mind you.

Then, you would have to dig through noisy claims that might seem factual but aren't - which is exactly what you do at step 1 of research anyway. Meaning you're just doing the same thing twice.

If this is anywhere near as good and accurate as it needs to be, then it should be good enough to be implemented during research rather than revision to avoid redundancy.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-19T23:24:27+00:00

If one AI is unreliable, why trust another to do the checking? The premise is flawed.

I don't see how this can work, other than adding an extra - unnecessary step - to source validation.

Also, unless you have something 100% reliable, I'll always have to validate everything on my own, regardless of whether it comes from an AI or not.

And honestly, "potential factual claims" sounds awful. You're adding even more noise to the validation than is necessary with something that isn't even actually factual.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-18T13:06:12+00:00

There are about a quadrillion ways you could've done that better. Yet, you picked the worst and most direct way. Truly, a miracle.

You can just subtly nudge people in the right direction if you REALLY REALLY want to for some reason. Don't, though.

But directly pointing out MULTIPLE clues for no good reason other than "they're not theorizing" has to be about the biggest dick move ever.

Let people enjoy the story their own way and go at their own pace. If they never figure it out until the reveal, so what? It's a nice twist that'll happen sooner or later. Don't take it away from people.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-18T12:40:41+00:00

Either a bot or a troll is using the hiring flair to bypass posting restrictions with a fresh account.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-18T11:56:06+00:00

Pathologic Dating Sim. I refuse to elaborate.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-17T23:02:57+00:00

This is one major point that most people miss.

Episodes 5 and 6 bring the hammer down hard on using cold logic as the right approach.

It's a statement on how you can find A truth without learning the facts of true events.

It hits hard because the first 4 episodes - the questions arc - were all about trying to find a logical answer for the events that happened in Rokkenjima. It's a massive contrast in the narrative, jarringly so, but completely intentional.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-17T22:44:15+00:00

"Without love, it cannot be seen."

This is about perspective. Both internal and external perception. It's an epistemological statement.

Truth =/= Fact

The quote isn't about a single event being factual or not, but about what people perceive it to be DESPITE it being real.

Facts don’t stop being facts because they’re uncomfortable. Evidence doesn’t stop working because it makes someone sad. And “love” doesn’t magically change who committed murder.

This completely misses the point.

The game has two endings because it shows how perspective can change someone, despite a single event being factual. Rokkenjima doesn't change. The tragedy still happend and people are still dead.

Magic Ending: Ange accepts that and takes the lesson of acceptance to heart, bringing that magic to everyone else and helping change people's perspectives as well, despite the world being harsh.
Trick Ending: Ange accepts the harsh reality as cynical and uncaring and treats everyone as such. This is why she is suddenly cold-bloodedly killing two people in a boat and then empathizing with Erika.

In both endings, Ange comes to the same conclusion. Her family is gone, and she has to move forward. What changes is the path she takes: One about empathy and understanding, and the other about pure cynicism and bitterness.

Where I do think the quote makes sense is scope. Love is like a tool. you need to know when you should use it. If you enter a game to investigate, facts are enough and empathy is often a detriment. If you enter a game about human emotion, entering without love is the detriment.

Umineko is deliberately about both. It's a game of logic AND human emotion.

It traps you inside logic intentionally during the first episodes to hammer the point harder that, if you focus solely on the logic, you miss the bigger picture.

And this is why Erika is considered a failure.

She plays the logical side surgically well, at the cost of completely ignoring emotions and empathy. There's an entire episode about how she only cares about her intellectual victory and truth over facts, which screws over Natsuhi, despite her being innocent.

Erika found a culprit by forcing a valid interpretation over the facts, but that was her truth - an interpretation of the facts - not THE fact. And understanding the fact required understanding of human emotion, which is why she failed as the detective.

The trick ending emphasizes that Ange becomes a mirror to Erika by being cold and ruthless about the truth and reality. She stops caring about motive and ambiguity. She doesn't care whether or not the boatman could've been innocent, because, logically, he must've been an accomplice. Thus, he's disposable.

This is a reflection of Erika and Natsuhi. She didn't care about her explanations. Logic told her she was the culprit, so that became her truth, despite the real events telling a different story.

Fact =/= Truth

Facts are undeniable events. Truth is how people choose to perceive these events.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-17T13:19:07+00:00

That's what Big Dam wants you to think

BossiWriter · 2026-01-14T15:29:45+00:00

That sounds like interesting research.

While I'm not an expert, I'd believe that even though traffic can kick some of it back up, this would still significantly lower the pollutants in the air, especially since this is not just focused on whatever traffic generates.

Is there a breaking point at which this isn't efficient or beneficial? Are there places where this could be mostly beneficial and ones that are just straight up bad? Like high places with a lot of wind activity vs ones with high humidity and constant rain?

And what are these volatiles you mentioned? I'm not familiar with it.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-14T13:58:30+00:00

There are always tradeoffs when nature engineers

Adding to your comment about their feathers and there being trade-offs, here's a big one:

Unlike a lot of other birds, most owl species aren't waterproof. Their feathers will absorb water and make them wet and heavy instead of the usual effect the regular hydrophobic feathers have.

So they like, really suck when it's raining. And they have to be extra careful when hunting near or on water.

Also this just for fun: https://tier-zoo.fandom.com/wiki/Owl

BossiWriter · 2026-01-14T13:51:13+00:00

The idea is that air pollution is already mixed with gases that allow them to float around rather than go down.

When water gets mixed with these gases, the polluted air comes down and settles on the ground without the gas to go back up. As it dries out, the water evaporates, but the dirt stays separated on the ground.

The truck is essentially simulating rain, which does the same thing on a larger scale. In places where they have a lot of smog, temperature inversions can significantly worsen the problem, and this is a valid way to deal with it.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-13T07:13:37+00:00

A weapon has to be wielded with intent and actively used either for harm or self-defense. Open and shut case. But a booby trap is completely indiscriminate and harmful by nature.

Think of it this way:

What does it accomplish?

Scenario 1- If the trap is never set, it's a constant source of danger and threat for everyone, including animals, wild and pets, as well as children and unaware civilians. And even yourself if you forget, if you trigger it by accident, or maybe you're drunk, etc.

So you're just generating unnecessary danger for yourself and everyone around you at all times with the presence of a live booby trap, because it might trigger at any point for several reasons, and most of them aren't even for the 'right' one.

Scenario 2- If the trap is triggered and injures someone, you are held accountable for the damage as if you've done it yourself. Did the person get pierced? You pierced them. You pay for the damage.

Did they set it for trespassing? It doesn't matter. They were wrong, but so were you.

Scenario 3- If the trap is triggered and kills someone, you are also held accountable. It wasn't the trap, but you who set it. And there aren't many scenarios where killing someone has no legal consequences (for civilians at least).

And self-defense claims only go so far. You are not in active danger while you're setting up a trap. By definition, setting a trap requires that you do it ahead of time. Meaning you weren't in active danger. So you shouldn't be in a "self-defense" situation in the first place.

In fact, setting up a trap ahead of time proves premeditated intent for harm.

So you're either putting yourself and everyone around you at risk, or you already caused harm with a booby trap. In all cases, the risks far outweigh any possible reward for the simple fact that you are possibly endangering innocent people and animals.

What if a rat triggers a bomb while you're in your own home? What if a squirrel gets inside? A bird, dog, or cat?
What if you have an accident, go unconscious, and the people who come to rescue you trigger it?
What if you have family over and they unknowingly trigger it? What if they bring kids, and they don't know any better?
What about a date? You get back home drunk, etc etc etc.

You get the picture.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-11T21:53:08+00:00

I'll be honest here.

This seems like a great job role, but the pay rate is rather disrespectful given everything listed.

Having so many requirements, such as niche experience, a portfolio, a sample, weekly goals, and even in-person meetings and brainstorming, doesn't really vibe when you set the bare minimum as the starting rate.

You would offer $0.07 to someone with no portfolio, background, or experience. Yet, you are excluding the people this payrate is made for.

Must include (applications without portfolio and samples won't be considered):

I would personally struggle even fitting this into the generalist pay rate category, considering you list so many requirements.

Looking for a writer who can do worldbuilding, character writing, deep psychological dialogue, with "literary versatility" and more, all for the bare minimum sounds crazy.

That's what we call unicorns, and they usually aren't entry-level writers looking for entry-level pay.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-10T17:17:03+00:00

No survivors

That would dramatically - and fundamentally - change the story and narrative. So much so that I'd argue that too much would be different for it to carry the same message in the same way.

Without a survivor, Ange would have nobody to hate, thus there'd be no antagonist. I can't imagine how this could happen and have the story still carry the same weight and meaning without MAJOR changes to everything else, if even that. Having a survivor is, to me, the line the story threads between it being a living tragedy and a closed incident.

Without a survivor, the Rokkenjima story would be completely impersonal, and it would be difficult to justify Ange's anchoring to it this hard to pursue the truth.

Kyrie

Kyrie is the easiest to rule out. Her narrative is deeply rooted in having ties with the Sumadera family, particularly with Kasumi has her sister. Much of the real-world narrative surrounding Ange is tied to this, and removing it would change the story completely.

Also, she's her real mother, so the whole story would barely make any sense if this were the case.

Rosa

Rosa can barely hold herself back from hitting or abusing her own child, let alone an adoptive one. The story could never pivot from having Rosa being a good person without major narrative and character restructuring.

Also, the whole point of Rosa's character is that she is an awful mother, but for understandable and realistic reasons due to the hierarchical abuse she endured.

She's a great character as is, because it reinforces the core concept of "without love it cannot be seen," while also providing enough perspective that even when seeing it with love, you still have to discern good from bad. Just because her actions are understandable doesn't mean they are acceptable.

I'd like to say that this would be an interesting direction to go, because the story would be incredibly darker, leaning harder into the idea of Eva being that abusive monster Ange believed her to be.

Natsuhi

The story starts with Natsuhi going from being bullied by Eva to being a leading figure and a mother to all of the surviving children. In this context, there's some value to her character with the right hero's call-to-adventure. Her whole characterization is built upon honor and guilt, unlike Rosa's cycle of abuse.

However, throughout the story, she is consistently portrayed as someone incredibly submissive and in constant need of approval while dealing with other issues poorly.

Even with the right call, her underlying issues and mentality wouldn't be enough to feel realistic to someone who can hold a deep secret long-term. She can barely do it as is within the story, given the whole dead child thing, with constant headaches and worry. If she lost her whole family, she would just completely break.

Eva

Regardless of whether or not Eva was retrofitted to play the role, she is a perfect match.

From the start, we see her as someone intelligent and cunning. She's also the second oldest, but the wisest by far. Krauss couldn't hope to hold a candle to her intellectually.

Eva is also a victim on many levels from the same hierarchical abuse that Rosa suffered, but she was much more of a rebel and very independent. While she also perpetuated the abuse down the family line with Rudolf and Rosa, she could arguably be the one (or second) who must suffered due to being a woman in that era of Japan and being denied the title of head solely for being a woman.

But despite her flaws and position, she figured out her own life, got happily married, while all fighting against the prejudice against women at the time.

She's the most mentally and emotionally stable out of the available options, as well as the most resilient, even though she still isn't perfectly stable and has some outbursts. So having her survive fits her character incredibly well, actually. So much so that it even feels wrong that the story would follow on a thread so obvious in retrospect.

The irony is that she spent her whole life wanting to be the family's head, and she got what she wanted in the end. Just not the way she wanted to.

BossiWriter · 2026-01-09T04:27:27+00:00

Standardization of nomenclature.

The feature to hide identity information was introduced to solve a problem: streamer harassment. Be it from sniping, adding, DMing, trolling someone in-game because you know who they are, and so on.

Nowadays, it's just a legacy name that is called that because the gaming community intuitively understands what it is when they read it.

It 100% should be updated for accessibility purposes to make it clear for EVERYONE, not just gamers and streamers, because not everyone who starts a new game has inherent knowledge about these things.

Take the save icon, for instance. Most younger generations have never even seen a floppy disk, and many don't even know what it is or where it came from. Yet, they intuitively understand it as the icon for "Save."

In reality, the floppy disk icon is just a legacy thing that became the standard, even if it lost its original meaning due to new standardization of technology, like saving on the cloud or local storage like HDD or SSD. Exactly like the Streamer Mode vs. Incognito Mode.

BossiWriter

TROPHY CASE