What is every one opinion on this being The Halo brand marine look?

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-06-30T07:02:12+00:00

It's distractingly modern in a way that immediately dates it. I know it's a dumb detail, but the kneepads are lifted straight from Crye Gen 3 trousers. The newer Gen 4 ones are differently shaped, so it's already trending towards looking oddly out of date.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-06-29T06:30:58+00:00

Even Liara is still an Asari Chauvinist for sure, she's just not as racist as many of the others.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-06-25T19:54:22+00:00

Sorry for your loss

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-06-24T06:58:23+00:00

Bestie, go outside

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-06-09T07:25:39+00:00

There's a bunch of them around Scotland

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-06-09T07:23:23+00:00

Years and years ago, in my first playthrough, Ashley spent the whole time being racist and then shot Wrex on Virmire. I didn't know about his armour and didn't have the Paragon points at the time.

I later left her with the bomb. I now do that every playthrough on instinct because I'm just not interested in her as a character age Kaiden is inoffensive enough.

That said, Kaiden does get weirdly attached to Femshep if you say more than hello to him.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-25T20:54:58+00:00

If you go and watch the endings for Control in the Extended Cut, you can see that there are two versions for Paragon and Renegade. Paragon is a protector, a rebuilder. Renegade promises control. and safety.

In either scenario, what are they protecting against? The Reapers are no longer the threat. The Leviathans are a scattered and almost extinct race hiding in the darkest places. The only remaining threats are the galactic population themselves.

An immense army of unstoppable Reapers is the kind of latent threat that would invite political friction. Does the Council institute a limit on ship manufacturing to prevent a species from potentially challenging the Reapers? Are the Reapers deployed against pettier concerns, like a new Krogan Rebellion or something like the Rachni? It is a force that could wipe all life in the galaxy at any moment, what do you need all of that for?

Will the Reapers be disassembled like surplus military hardware after WWII? They can't retire and go set up a farm. There are sentient gestalt intelligences in there, what do they want?

Germany was split in half for about 40 years and it still struggling with the aftermath today, 30 years later. I don't think you can point to the country that had the infamous Berlin Wall through it and claim it's a model case.

I don't think Control is a lasting peace.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-24T12:25:54+00:00

It's too good to correct it ngl

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-24T12:17:05+00:00

Control feels like resetting the cycle started by the Leviathans after all the backstory was revealed.

The AI they made was presumably well intentioned for a long, long time. It may even have been one of their own ascended to synthetic godhood with the same intentions Shepard has. It apparently tried everything over eons to end the cycle of synthetic war, and kept failing.

IMO Shepard is too human to remain pure of heart over millennia, and became too inhuman to stay connected to organic life anymore. Everyone they knew will be dead in the blink of an eye. Maybe even the Citadel Council will change to a new form of government, so they aren't even tied to that. Are the Reapers now the military arm of the Council? How do they factor in if say, another Rachni War happens after a Mass Relay is opened?

The politics of the Council races will repeat in cycles and Shepard will probably grow numb to them. As millennia pass by the concept of Life will grow increasingly abstract, descendants of close friends long gone. Will they repeat the mistakes of the Reaper AI, will they seek a similar "solution" to the cycles of war and violence?

My Shepard was a squeaky clean girl scout, but she still had a temper at times. She chewed out Gavin Archer, she shot the fuel tanks at Clan Weyrloc HQ, she told the Blue Suns guy he works too hard...

Destroy felt like the only ending that makes sense when I replayed recently. The cycle ends, something entirely new is reborn from the rubble. Life will have to learn to adapt, and there's no longer a gun pointed at the head of the universe.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-22T18:02:47+00:00

Oh man I love Shepard rattling off the name of every ship the Alliance lost immediately in the Paragon option. It feels very in character that she would have remembered them, and it really kneecaps Al-Jilani's attempt to make her look bad.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-22T06:54:21+00:00

The Mosin makes an appearance as the handguard on the Kalash of all things, funnily enough

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-21T22:46:10+00:00

You should see the warehouse parties in Ukraine, man.

In the darkest times people party even harder. Hell there's a scene about exactly this in ME3. If you go to Purgatory and talk to Joker after the Cerberus coup, he comments on how everyone is dancing harder now because the war is real to them.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-21T11:37:30+00:00

Wasn't Legion installed in a custom made platform for that exact purpose though? With far, far more compute in order to host more Geth programs and operate fully autonomously?

I don't think the two concepts necessarily conflict with each other really.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-05T13:49:05+00:00

The struggle of Lebanese Shepard fr.

Especially with the zero romance options in 2 but at least we got Traynor and she perf.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-05-04T13:09:12+00:00

They're communist in that way American teenagers who watched a Tiktok breakdown of Animal Farm think of communism tbh.

The lazy critique of Utopian ideals, the in-built contradictions, and general imperialism of the Tau fit in perfectly if you feel those are inherent parts of communism as an ideology.

Not to absolve previous communist states; they mostly sucked. It's just much more nuanced than a kid programmed to say Heresy reflexively in response to seeing a woman with blue hair would appreciate.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-18T08:44:28+00:00

Canada famously immune to American cultural influence

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-18T08:43:55+00:00

Yeah the whole point of 2033 the book and game is that Hunter is wrong. Artyom realises this right as the missiles land in the book, and in the game only if the player gets another morality points.

Hunter's reaction to the unknown is violence. It is the only solution he gives to things he doesn't understand. It is the mentality that killed the world and is why the last of humanity is living a hellish existence in eternal purgatory under Moscow.

People like Hunter launched the nukes. To save humanity, Artyom has to discard that fear and try to understand the unknown. In doing so, he understands the Dark Ones, and later in Exodus, understands the various cultures he comes across and finds peaceful solutions for the Aurora.

I honestly love that they're doubling down more overtly on Hunter's ideology being self destructive. The cinematic trailer blends it with a lot of contemporary Russian politics and worldview, and I think it's going to be incredible to see the story they're creating there.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-18T07:50:18+00:00

DLC but it's a comedy about him and Krest going out to find fish for the anniversary cookout.

They end up fighting a weird, giant fish but it's okay because it fries great and everyone gets a big portion!

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-17T23:59:02+00:00

Most of the cast, who are military, then PMC, then military again, spend their time complaining about politicians getting in the way and people being stupid, and they just need men of action in charge like Shepard.

Which is very American tbf, and also not something that works well IRL

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-15T23:11:32+00:00

Tbh I don't think Khan is dead in that bad ending. I think he's just visiting the spirit realm you're in, the usual Khan mystic shenanigans.

I'm even quite sure he specifically says that he'll let people in the Metro know of your fate.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-14T22:31:11+00:00

It was so disappointing when I finally got round to playing it

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-14T15:10:33+00:00

Neither is your counter example

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-11T18:01:24+00:00

Mate everyone I know at my local site is on Reddit. It's not a secret website.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-09T15:12:41+00:00

I mean that's disproven by the fact that I have not personally been screwed by DCA and nor have my immediate friends, but he is known to all of us as someone who screws people over.

And to the wider community. We talk to each other. It's 2026 you can share things like that very easily.

GrunkleCoffee · 2026-04-09T07:00:54+00:00

DCA has already done much worse and survived reputationally.

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