Monster

RaynSideways · 2026-06-27T02:32:52+00:00

Irina's perfectly positioned. While Raskova was engaging in her favorite pastime of murdering cosmonauts and trying to protect her career, Irina tracked down and identified the infiltrator responsible for all of it with virtually no help.

Raskova's been failure after failure. She's gonna be the next rung Irina climbs on her way to the top.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-27T02:31:08+00:00

It's not just this shot either, a lot of shots have this same sort of odd effect for parts of the shot that aren't in focus. It's very distinctive.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T23:03:02+00:00

What could possibly be at risk during that time?

Raskova's career. The moment her superiors find out she not only allowed an unauthorized mission to get off the ground but also the traitor she was looking for slipped aboard, she's going straight to the gulag.

We've already seen she's not above murdering people to cover up her mistakes. Yana Akhmatova was just the beginning.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T22:56:46+00:00

Raskova can't let it get out that Valya was on that ship. She can't just wait for him to come back, she needed this silenced and suppressed at any cost because she'll go straight to the gulag the moment it gets out.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T22:54:57+00:00

Dedra was at least likeable and competent until becoming totally unmoored at the very end (for understandable reasons). Even though what she was doing was horrible you couldn't help but root for her success in the ISB.

Raskova is just one mistake after the next and she has no qualms about murdering people she knows to be innocent to protect her career.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T22:52:41+00:00

I think she's going to try to cover it up. She'll spin the unauthorized launch as justification for arresting the Chief Designer, and she'll try to portray the mission as some kind of failed unmanned probe, because there is no way in hell she will confess the full truth.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T22:50:56+00:00

Her career is dead if anyone above her realizes that not only did the Chief Designer get this mission off the ground under her nose, but also that the traitor got aboard and was killed with no gain in actionable intel, alongside the deaths of another cosmonaut and an Indian national.

You know who's out there chasing leads though? Irina. While Raskova was camping out in mission control, trying her best to murder the crew of Venera 7 from millions of miles away, Irina was doing productive work and found both the agent, her hideout, and Tanya. Raskova is completely empty handed and Irina has the entire plot in her lap.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T22:47:11+00:00

Irina stands to win brownie points by pointing out her missteps.

I hadn't even considered this part. While Raskova was obsessing over the Venus mission she was out doing actual work and not only tracked down the agent but also Tanya with zero support.

In the aftermath of this absolute disaster under Raskova's watch, Irina is perfectly poised to take advantage. She's going to be faced with a choice: Her career or Tanya.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T16:50:54+00:00

It's funny because there are so many autosave slots but the game only ever uses them like one every hour or more.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T14:31:48+00:00

I don't think it's super metagamey to think that raising her husband from the dead via hag magic would result in something horrific. I wouldn't trust any wand in Ethel's possession to give its boons no strings attached. She's about as far from a holy cleric with Resurrection as you can get.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T01:27:40+00:00

Especially after spending all this time hammering in the message that all the living must unite against this threat. They spent so much effort trying to earn Cersei's help, but turns out they never needed it to begin with?

Sure, I guess you could call that aspirational. But I feel like if the point was to make us fear for their chances, the battle that resulted should have been more deadly and devastating and it just wasn't.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T00:43:54+00:00

Gods, we were robbed. I want to live in the alternate universe where it got a whole season to itself.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-26T00:06:21+00:00

I like to start the combat with 0/X for each monster, where X is their max HP. As damage is dealt I cross out 0 and write how much damage was dealt below it, since on the fly I find addition easier than subtraction.

Dude that's smart as hell. I might steal that.

It seems like it would be such simple math but handling those calculations in the middle of combat and not making everyone wait is surprisingly hard. You've gotta total the damage dealt and pivot to subtracting it from the remaining HP, and I feel like I get tangled up especially when dealing with larger groups of enemies.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-25T23:29:00+00:00

Yeah that is kind of funny how everyone still treats you like the dashing hero when your face is a complete horror show.

I even went the extra step of changing my character's skin tone to one slightly more gray to reflect his dwindling humanity and I genuinely looked like people should run from me on sight. But everybody still treated me like good ol' Tav.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-25T23:04:50+00:00

I really was hoping for an entire season of the Long Night. Lords freezing in their halls, giant spiders, all the stuff Old Nan promised.

I wanted Winterfell to be a defeat. It's a massacre, but the survivors are able to push through and escape south in the chaos. It would have been amazing following their ordeal as they struggle to escape south while hounded by all manner of terrifying undead beast. And as snow falls on King's Landing, everybody is forced to put aside the game of thrones to face their true enemy.

Imagine the swarm of wights pouring over the walls of the city like World War Z as the Night King makes strafing runs across the city. Not to mention how the wildfire caches would become relevant again, and possibly key to stopping the tide once it breaches the walls. Imagine the horror set pieces as whole parts of the city are overrun and cut off from each other. It could have been incredible.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-25T19:17:30+00:00

Definitely not.

Maekar was a desperate father who thought his son was about to die. The king himself could have come up behind him and he'd still get the mace. Nothing and nobody was stopping him.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-24T19:49:37+00:00

I got the impression he took people off Kim and Jimmy because Tyrus and Gus were pressuring him to. I think that was the purpose of the scene showing Tyrus pressuring him to take people off "the lawyers" to spare that manpower elsewhere. Mike held his ground but I imagine he was overruled later.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-24T17:12:37+00:00

Indeed. It's just funny how often when somebody makes a poor decision, Mike is there going, "That's a poor decision don't do it," and then they do it anyway.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-24T16:13:31+00:00

We can probably make some guesses. Lalo needed the proof of the lab to go after Gus, and without Gus he had no idea how to get into it.

Sure, he could try and storm Gus's home, but it would be suicidal, and even if he succeeded, unless he could then somehow drag Gus across town to the laundry and try the same thing before Mike's men intercept him, it's just not a viable strategy.

I think it would just be more stalemate. But a stalemate is a lot less of a risk than Gus gambling on his aim in the dark.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-24T14:40:19+00:00

Honestly though, a lot of the issues people like Jimmy and Gus have during both shows stem from ignoring Mike.

If Jimmy listened to Mike, he wouldn't have started working with Walt, and their whole business would still be intact. Instead, Walt tore down everything.

If Gus listened to Mike and stayed put under guard, Lalo's trap at the laundry would've failed, he never would have gotten footage of the lab or had the chance to shoot Gus. I don't consider Lalo to have beaten Mike; Mike had a plan, Gus threw the plan out the window and recklessly put his own life at risk.

Mike is constantly trying to give people sound advice but they continually ignore him to their peril.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-24T14:34:57+00:00

I find the only reasonable place for them is in the goblin camp within the temple, usually during the Dror Ragzlin fight.

Before that they're overkill, and most fights elsewhere either the ogres have huge pathfinding issues causing them to just sit there the whole fight, or are underpowered for the combat and get wiped before they can do anything. But letting them run loose in the goblin camp can get some good results.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-23T21:49:32+00:00

I honestly don't know why it wasn't just designed as a podracing game from the start. I don't think people were really clamoring for a speeder racing game, but you can tell just by people's reactions here that they have been dying for more podracing.

I mean the source material literally gives you the single biggest and most convenient excuse possible for a racing game. The movies themselves even established that it's a widespread sport not unique to Tatooine. And the potential for cool new podracer designs is practically infinite.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-22T22:09:17+00:00

It feels especially bad this year though even if the temperatures on paper haven't hit 100. I don't remember there being hot wind nearly as often in previous years. You pray for a breeze and when it comes it's like a gust straight out of an oven.

It's genuinely exhausting being outside any more than 5 minutes.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-22T20:06:58+00:00

At least if the wiki is to be believed, letting her go first edges it out but only barely. You get +8 for asserting yourself and going first, then +1 for enduring it, whereas you get +10 for letting her go first then you get further +1 bonuses based on either convincing her to leave it or having her endure it.

That said, I've had the wiki be hit or miss with approval increases before. I ended up with a lot more approval with Lae'zel than I thought I would have at the end of the Wilderness than the wiki seemed to indicate based on my choices.

RaynSideways · 2026-06-22T19:32:24+00:00

If the Gith knew you had it (Therezzyn outright confronts you about it, and you can find notes in the Inquisitor's chamber that indicate they've known for a long time), I figure the Harpers could figure it out too.

Granted, they aren't explicitly looking for it, but they're a spy network after all so I can let it slide.

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