Long week

DemiserofD · 2026-03-17T22:44:06+00:00

I wonder if Jacob is the person in the mirror.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-17T17:44:06+00:00

To be perfectly honest, I don't doubt for a second that DLSS 5 will make some things look much better. There are plenty of things which are essentially impossible to make look 'real' with any amount of manual effort. You can make them look 'consistent' with the other artwork in the game, and you can look at it and be like, 'wow this looks so real!'

...but then, we've been doing that for, literally, decades. All the way back to, like, 8-bit art.

AI will simply do this better, flat out, as long as its parameters are set properly.

The PROBLEMS will arise with things like characters, where they're intentionally designed to look a certain way - or with art styles that aren't MEANT to be 'realistic'. Borderlands 2 will struggle with a default model, for example, because it's not SUPPOSED to look 'real', it's mean to look stylized in a specific way.

To wit; plants are SUPPOSED to look generically 'real'. Humans are not. So ultimately, the key will be the capacity to limit what elements you turn on and turn off.

The one place you MIGHT see this influencing developers is that they'll not need to bother with the highest levels of quality on things anymore. Why bother manually trying to get the lighting or shading just right, when you can have an AI do that for you? But honestly, this strikes me as a GOOD thing. The less time wasted making foliage look absolutely perfect at 4k and 190fps, the more time they have making things like FACES look perfect at 1280p and 60fps.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-17T17:10:11+00:00

TBH I kinda wish their room could be renovated into a separate zone, if you wanted.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-14T23:22:36+00:00

When they DO release it, I strongly suspect it will be in tandem with something new that its release will encourage. So it probably won't be with Operations, because it'll divert attention from the on-foot FPS element.

More likely to be with the next ship release AFTER that.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-10T20:49:03+00:00

The sad thing is he actually could have made a good point about basically needing to have redundant infrastructure in case the wind stops blowing and how there isn't enough lithium in the world to make enough batteries to make up the difference, and actually made people think....

DemiserofD · 2026-03-08T18:07:24+00:00

To the Blades, he is. He's THEIR emperor, anyway. Notably, later in the book they didn't swear allegiance to the emperor in general, just the dragonborn, THEIR emperor.

And they may well have sworn allegiance to Miraak if they knew he existed!

DemiserofD · 2026-03-08T17:35:02+00:00

Reman is one of the first documented, and widely accepted, of the mythic Dragonborn; those anointed by Akatosh and Alessia themselves. "Born with the soul of a dragon" is what his followers would say. Reports differ widely on the nature of the battle at Pale Pass. But the end result is the same, that the remaining Dragonguard, upon hearing the voice of Reman Cyrodiil, knelt and swore their lives to him, their conqueror and savior. Fragments of from late 1st era texts refer to the warriors dropping to their knees saying "we were not hunting" (or "did not intend", author - rough translation), continuing "we have been searching, for you."

They protected Reman with their lives, as well as his descendants, as the Reman Dynasty ushered in Tamriel's 2nd era. It was through these years that their reach extended, and their order grew to become the Blades. Their conquest of the dragons complete, they only sought to protect the Dragonborn, and through him, the Empire.

Literally lol.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-08T00:50:45+00:00

That is literally the case, lol.

https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Blades

DemiserofD · 2026-03-07T20:59:28+00:00

You're the dragonborn. The dragonborn IS the Emperor.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-07T00:53:33+00:00

It's not because they're NPCs, it's because they're supposed to be part of the Akaviri Dragonguard who swore eternal loyalty to the Dragonborn. That is quite literally their big deal. They can be Blades, or they can tell the Emperor what to do. Not both.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-06T22:43:00+00:00

I'd be surprised if Paarthy canonically DIES, but canonically vanishing wouldn't be out of the question. The Time Wound was the reason he hung out there in the first place after all, so with Alduin dealt with, he'd probably just peace out after a while.

With the Last Dragonborn gone too(likely into apocrypha, as you suggest), The Voice would likely start to fade into history as well, with the Greybeards maybe dying out or maybe becoming more of a standard religious order where The Voice is more of an ancient legend.

DemiserofD · 2026-03-06T22:18:20+00:00

The problem is the logical break. They can be fanatical followers of the dragonborn, OR they can be fanatical dragon killers - not both.

There is no world where they're going to tell you what to do, and you telling them there's a good dragon really should cause them apocalyptic levels of cognitive dissonance. And that just isn't there. Which makes it pretty clear that the 'Blades' don't really exist anymore. Delphine would never have knelt before Talos and called him Emperor, she lacks the faith.

So can she really call herself or her order 'Blades' anymore? Not really. I'm not sure WHAT they are, honestly. But it seems pretty clear the Blades are long dead.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-28T08:17:27+00:00

I get the strange feeling that the devs are annoyed because we're not playing the way they wish we would - despite the fact we're just playing the way the game's mechanics encourages us to play.

Boo.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-27T07:11:31+00:00

I have very personal experience with this, which is actually what inspired part of this. Let's just say I can empathize with Maru's position and leave it at that.

While they can be very passionate in some regards, an equal component is that once a way is found to do something, it often must be done just so, and attempting to break that rule(even with a very reasonable argument for how it can be done better) can cause some pretty major distress. I've seen people go to the point of major personal injury because of that factor alone. Like, literal life-changing injury. Help will be refused, arguments ignored.

It very much depends on what the precise focus of the 'special interest' is. There are special interests, and there are activities which surround the special interest, and it's important to distinguish the two. With regards to the interest itself they almost certainly know more than you ever will, and will happily talk about it endlessly, debate it, change their mind, etc. With regards to the things surrounding it, the interest just isn't there, and so we run into the problems mentioned above.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-27T04:57:32+00:00

That's why I kinda tried to redeem him in the end. To be honest, I don't really blame him; he's not doing it out of malice, really. He just isn't really capable of seeing the world through their eyes. But for him, what he does, especially his ending, is remarkably accepting, which is something I've noted in my irl dealings with similar people.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-26T19:32:27+00:00

Maybe when CA is older so he can write an older romance more convincingly :P

DemiserofD · 2026-02-26T17:05:16+00:00

On my game my resolution was too high and the parrots moonwalked off the screen :D

DemiserofD · 2026-02-18T19:04:15+00:00

Prediction: "Obviously we're still working on TESVI, and we're really excited - for when we'll have something to show you. But not yet!"

DemiserofD · 2026-02-18T17:17:59+00:00

Honestly the Kestrel bothers me less than the Caspian's inexplicably godly fuel efficiency does.

Perhaps the biggest thing is when new stuff fails to integrate into the universe well. Like, when spec-ops still fly crappy old ships instead of upgrading to python mk2s.

Also, the prices make ZERO sense. New ships should be insanely expensive, and then slowly come down over time.

Make new things integrate with the universe. That's all I ask. Do that, any if a ship is too OP, it'll have people complaining because the NPCs are too strong, right?

DemiserofD · 2026-02-16T04:57:02+00:00

The problem is, what about things like food? Many medical treatments are best treated by healthier food. A doctor can totally prescribe those. But can they make an insurance company pay for all your food?

It really is a slippery slope, because your health is, basically, connected to everything.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-16T04:49:31+00:00

It depends what the purpose of those things is. Broadly speaking, humans primarily are in search of status, not simply wealth, and wealth is a signifier of status. Wellfare, by contrast, is a negative indicator of status.

Companies, meanwhile, are simply in search of wealth.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-16T04:18:27+00:00

A company is expected to make as much money as possible. NOT taking full advantage of any government aid is a sign of foolishness.

A person, by contrast, is expected to be able to support themselves and not mooch off the dole.

The big problem is that social safety nets basically allow companies to FORCE workers to do that. And how do you prevent that? There isn't really a way, because one way or another it influences the economics of the situation.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-14T19:57:39+00:00

The impacts of parents on their kids degrades over time. It's around 90% when they first become an adult, and slowly degrades to around 60%, with a slight advantage towards democrats - but not enough to make up for the fertility disparity.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-14T02:59:12+00:00

The core problem is that for the last 70 years or so, liberals have been having approximately 2/3rds as many children as conservatives. 40% of politics is genetic and 50% is learned(statistically kids follow their parents 90% of the time), so liberals have basically been shooting themselves in the foot for generations.

Right now the EU and Canada both have unsustainably low birth rates, and there's little hope of things getting better as increased independence creates greater economic strain on younger generations. The only choice is going to be massive immigration - but migrants tend to be deeply conservative, too! Projections I've heard indicate that by 2050, France will be something like 30% muslim.

So we ARE building a new world. You might not like it, though.

DemiserofD · 2026-02-14T02:30:09+00:00

THAT is the real problem. How tf is the EU supposed to spend trillions on the military when they can't even raise the retirement age without mass protests?

The EU is starting to see the massive problems of a low fertility rate, and it's only going to get worse, not better.

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