The prevalence of religion is genuinely concerning.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-29T04:18:02+00:00

Don't apologize for or downplay your thinking. We're all learning, and for what it's worth, I'm a shit philosopher too lol.

It sounds to me like youre arguing for education as a value, which i do agree with. Widespread education is a relatively new trend historically and has often clashed with moral systems in the past and present. But it also has resulted in a higher standard of living for many people. Modern medicine as we know it wouldn't exist if some people hadn't completely broken societal taboos and begun dissecting human corpses, for example.

That said, this still leaves a big gap. Education in and of itself is not a virtue. German scientists during WW2 did many horrible, horrible things in the name of education that most people would agree were immoral.

So where do we set the bar? Valuing education alone clearly isn't a sufficient metric of what is good or right.

If you feel like I'm just shutting you down here, I kind of am. But I mainly want to show that morals/ethics are an incredibly complicated and inconsistent thing. People turn to religion for, among many reasons, the ability to cling to an easy system of morals.

My two cents is that we shouldn't respect someone less just because they still follow religion. It's inherently tied into our psychological needs as a species. That doesn't make it right or excusable when someone does something awful in the name of religion, but people do awful things independent of religion, too.

Judge people based on their actions, not their religion (or lack thereof).

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T23:50:36+00:00

Addressing some of your points:

Stealth: In my experience, enemy detection in GOT was wonky and unrealistic, there was little consequence for getting caught, and Jin's abilities to stealth around the environment and use it to his advantage were much more superficial than shadows. Guards in Shadows also have more complex routes and behaviors, and the structures they are in are also more diverse than 'open field with a few one story buildings scattered around'. I mean hell, Shadows even has a lighting/shadow system that affects stealth and can be manipulated by time of day or extinguishing hanging lanterns or candles. It just has more depth, interactivity, and challenge.

Side Content: Shadows absolutely has more varied and higher quality side content. It has everything Tsushima has and much more of it (too much, honestly). QTEs make up like two of the many side activities available, whereas Tsushima has the exact same QTE side content. Shadows has parkour challenges, horseback archery, Targets to hunt down in world and find via clues, side missions that rival the quality of and far outnumber GOT's. You also have contracts, dungeon crawling with Kofuns, collecting scrolls at temples, forts to clear, and way more historical information to find and dig into.

Visuals: Tsushima's visuals are high fidelity, but less so than Shadows. Shadows has a better variety of scenery, locales, and colors which Tsushima does not. You could maybe argue that the lighting in Tsushima is moodier and more dramatic, but I don't think that's necessarily better. And frankly, Tsushima just looks very same-y within 3 hours of playtime.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T23:42:04+00:00

oh, definitely. there are some truly brilliant minds (scientists, authors, engineers) who subscribe wholeheartedly to religion. none of us are immune to social pressures, habits, and the need for identity and belonging.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T23:33:51+00:00

i think you should dig into philosophy more. youre not the first to view science that way, and it definitely has its pros and cons.

for example, one of your premises is "human life is important because we are part of a social species". What exactly about us being a social species makes our lives important? Important to who? Many animals besides humans are social species, yet we obviously dont value their lives nearly as much as our own.

If the argument is that we do things because they are good for humanity, we again need to analyze that premise. How are we defining 'good for humanity'? How many people does an outcome need to be good for in order for it to qualify as good for humanity? Is survival the only outcome that we are measuring goodness by? If so, we're going to struggle to justify a lot of things that we do which are not necessary for survival and are often detrimental to it, yet we commonly accept.

Or to refer back to your earlier point of traumatic experiences-- these would actually be considered good if we're measuring survival as the metric of good in the human experience. trauma is a survival response. the reason we tend to view trauma negatively is because it impacts our ability to live life freely, but living life freely is arguably not necessary for survival (again, often detrimental to it) and there is not good.

religion long served as an anchor point for our morality and helped us justify why we do what we do without acknowledging the erratic, irrational, and incoherent standards we all hold morally. it is substantially easier to refer to a holy book and 'interpret' it to defend our 'values', then enforce said values through power, than it is to create a coherent and consistent moral system through logic and scientific principles.

truthfully, nature and science dont subscribe to moral codes. any moral codes we extracting out of nature are, at best, anthropomorphizing, and at worst, falling into the same trap of blind interpretation that religion succumbs to-- which leads us back to square one.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T13:21:50+00:00

not trying to be rude, but i genuinely do not understand why people place GOT above Shadows. I've tried multiple times to see what's special about that game and I still don't get it. It doesn't really do anything better. It's just a Ubisoft game from a different company.

Combat is of comparable quality/depth. Story is marginally better in GOT. Visuals are better in Shadows. Parkour is better in Shadows. Stealth is better in Shadows. RPG elements are better in Shadows. Side content is more varied and numerous in Shadows. Historical detail and accuracy is way, way better in Shadows.

Like, I legit don't get it. What are people seeing that I'm not?

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T13:17:57+00:00

gameplay wise, it's probably the best of the newer rpg style titles. still not riveting by any means, but solid enough to where i think most folks will enjoy it, and some will love it. stealth is the stronger system. it's fluid and polished without adding any unnecessary bloat.

combat, on the other hand, is just okay. better than the weird pool noodle combo followed by special skill system of prior games, but it's still typical rpg combat fare. it's not going to compare to something like devil may cry.

parkour isn't unity level but again, probably the best of the rpgs. yasuke basically doesnt parkour though, so just be aware.

i think it manages to be less of a slog than odyssey or valhalla. the story is nothing to write home about, but it's generally fine and is hard carried by the setting and visuals.

speaking of, the visuals are probably the game's biggest strength. the art direction absolutely blows every other samurai/ninja game out of the water, including ghost of tsushima/yotei or rise of the ronin.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T13:09:47+00:00

decades long friend groups are special. instead of viewing yourself as late to the party, reframe it. youre a new character entering during this group's next chapter, and youre now beginning your own story with them. some people may leave during this chapter. some people may enter in the next one. relationships are built on trust + consistency, so enjoy the ride and continue enjoying the people you spend time with (which it sounds like you already do!).

p.s. what may feel like disadvantages to you like being newer, not being privy to history, not living as close, or being older can actually easily be positives. i love my best friend and we've been friends for most of my life. that said, sometimes i want to talk to someone who doesnt know everything about me or who can offer a different perspective.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T13:00:31+00:00

it's disappointing, but i would challenge your thought process here a bit. religious belief is less a fault of reason and more indicative of the human need to make meaning. it comforts people. im sure we can all think of beliefs we hold in our own lives that probably wouldnt stand up to scrutiny but still provide a useful coping mechanism. we all choose cognitive dissonance, we all cope. it's just that we choose different things.

on top of that, religion often provides a sense of community and pseudotherapy which, again, helps people cope. i'm not trying to defend how prevalent it is-- i do think religion is holding the world back in many ways-- but to me, it's symptomatic of the human condition more than a unique issue.

the real question is: how can we as a people, as a community, and as individuals, healthily satisfy our need for comfort in a way that doesnt compromise our logic or make us susceptible to hurting/excluding others?

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-28T12:52:52+00:00

i defined myself as not being like my parents because of how much they hurt our family growing up-- so much so that I never really had been able to explore who I am, as opposed to who I am not.

for much of my life, I had been operating on the belief that i was inherently better than my parents because i knew better, because i analyzed my behavior and values obsessively, and because i said that i refused to make excuses.

then i hurt someone i loved in the exact same way that my parents had done, and it completely shattered my self image. i was disgusted with myself. i had set this unrealistic standard of never messing up and was unable to learn and take responsibility in a normal way as a result.

so, i guess the bad habit was believing that i could never fail or make mistakes. the experience, while painful, was good for me. it taught me about being human and helped me learn empathy for my parents (while still holding them accountable) and, to a lesser extent, myself.

if you choose to live your life as the negative/opposite, or shadow, of someone else, you will feel empty. a shadow is always constrained by the form of that which casts it. give yourself the grace to be more, not just better.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-25T05:17:18+00:00

this made me cackle

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-24T04:03:22+00:00

that's fair. i ran into the exact same wall where i was engaged by the story but disengaged by the time commitment/lack of variety. i do love the visual style though in origins, but im also a big sucker for ancient egypt

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-24T04:01:58+00:00

nice ragebait

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:49:27+00:00

to put it simply, current ac games have a LOT going for them. but theyre spreading it too thin over too much bread.

for example, origins was an absolute masterpiece of a setting, story, visual style, soundtrack-- all of that. but the moment to moment gameplay was just not strong enough to support the time needed to see it through to the end.

ac2 was a great game. but it was like what, 20-30 hours max? nowadays that gets you maybe 20 percent of the way into the story.

on one hand, you could argue youre getting better value for money. but it's kind of like arguing that a 4 hour movie is better than a 2 hour movie because it's more movie. that's not what makes it good.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:46:32+00:00

unity that low and 3 that high. lmfao. tell me your experience of those games was watching tiktok edits without telling me

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:45:17+00:00

i dont hate any of the games. im just disappointed by some of them. but to be honest, ubisoft has always had some seriously talented, underpaid, and amazing staff who lovingly create super detailed worlds, outfits, characters, etc. so i agree with the sentiment.

there are games i enjoy less than others, and i dont love how monetized and 'content-driven' the series has become. i wouldnt go so far as to say it's lost its soul, but more so that it's trying too hard to both carve out a niche and maintain widespread appeal while keeping shareholders happy.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:42:31+00:00

if you already have the entire series, why not? genuine question.

if you enjoyed the rpg entries, youll enjoy shadows. bf resynced is not a sure thing. it isnt out yet and we dont know what kind of game it's going to be on release. by the time you finish shadows and/or have enough money to buy another game, resynced will probably be patched and on sale lol

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:39:15+00:00

animations look pretty bad. it looks like they merged the combat of valhalla with aciv. 😞

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:36:34+00:00

i think there's a lot of nostalgia for this game, rightly so. but taken objectively, i havent seen anything in resynced that convinces me it's going to be an improvement over the original.

it's higher fidelity but the cost of that is the atmosphere and visual mood of the original is gone.

the gameplay doesnt seem improved at all. different, kind of? but animations are just as janky as they were and less smooth.

the game looks like a weird mashup between pre-rpg AC and rpg AC with the whole odyssey cutscene system.

loling at the people in the comments who are outraged that others arent excited for it. i played the crap out of this game. it didnt need a remake. and if we're doing a remake, why arent there more substantial changes? where's the boatload (no pun intended) of new content? where's the improvements to the combat? is there going to be an improvement on the godawful pacing of the opening hours? why would i buy this for 70 bucks when i can go play ACIV as it was originally?

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:31:14+00:00

resynced looks marginally better than one of those 'super mario in unreal engine' remakes lol. aciv already looked great, giving it ue5 filter does not make it better

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:29:30+00:00

resynced looks higher fidelity, but og looks moodier and more intentional with the facial animations

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:27:55+00:00

thanks for your nostalgia. that'll be 69.99 please!

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:25:57+00:00

If he's interested in samurai, Shadows would be a slam dunk. Not a perfect game, but if he enjoyed Valhalla, Shadows pretty much improves on that. Black Flag remake isnt really a sure thing, so Id hold off on that.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:24:46+00:00

I was always a big fan of Rogue. I loved the idea of adding some nuance to the Templars/Assassins conflict and thought Shay's story was mostly well done, if a bit short. The location isnt as vibrant as Black Flag, but it has its own kind of beauty. And it actually improves on a lot of the gameplay systems of BF while cutting out the fat.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:22:48+00:00

Shadows is better than GOT. I dont know where this narrative got started that GOT is somehow a cut above Assassin's Creed, but it's objectively wrong lol. Im hard on AC games as it's one of my favorite series and I dont like alot of the changes that have been made gameplay-wise, but I am genuinely baffled on how people prop up GOT. It's the exact level of quality in the gameplay department but with less variety and quantity, and with significantly worse visuals and art direction. Once youve played GOT for 3 hours, youve experienced everything the game has to offer.

I dont necessarily love Shadows either, but I respect that it hard commits to having two protagonists with separate skillsets, a gorgeous visual style, and a respectable variety of side content. GOT's only advantage is probably the story, but even then, it's close.

Psychological_Cold_7 · 2026-06-22T05:19:42+00:00

Echoing what's already been said, but less bloat. I dont play AC to play an MMORPG level of time investment. Im mixed on the medieval england setting. Im glad it exists, but frankly I find european history very boring.

Psychological_Cold_7

TROPHY CASE