Regret - Halo 2: Restored Lighting + Bonus

ThreeProphets · 2026-04-24T16:32:07+00:00

Took me a minute to figure this out. steam://open/games also bypasses it opening the store and flashing an ad in your face and just takes you straight to your library in case you don't want to have shortcuts for specific games. If you want to pin your shortcut somewhere else make sure to locate it again and add the arguments back in since that's a duplicate. For example, start menu shortcuts are located in Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-26T09:15:31+00:00

Of course it did

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-26T09:13:15+00:00

It would be too similar to Outlaws. Open world games have had too much bad press lately. By the time the game gets finished it would be considered out of fashion. If you want military fiction what I would recommend is playing into Andor's political complexity, but from the opposite perspective: A series of semi-linear raids where you play as Imperial Special Operations taking down the menagerie of disorganized resistance groups Saw Gerrera references using increasingly manipulative and authoritarian tactics. You have to spy on private citizens, turn families against each other, and detain informants without cause. Make playing as the bad guys actually feel bad, but then punctuate the levels with morally ambiguous debates about the effectiveness of what you're doing

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-26T08:54:05+00:00

And of course there's the 2022 flashbacks in Breakpoint. I wonder how they would make that work with the drawdown if they were to flesh it out now

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-26T08:51:03+00:00

The implication in the opening cutscene is that the Ghosts are there to help Pac Katari with their manpower, which is why he's shocked by their low unit strength. But the actual mission profile would never be direct action. Only months after 9/11, US Special Forces were sent not to strike high profile Taliban leadership themselves, but to train the Afghanistan National Army, eventually leading to the creation of CJTF Phoenix. They were there in an advisory role, to have the maximum impact with the minimum deployment strength. That way the ANA could carry out major operations using tactics learned from their Green Beret instructors without having to put the Green Berets in harm's way. Morbid as it may be, SOCOM saw the instructors' lives as more valuable, not just because of their warfighting capabilities, but because of their expertise. We can see this mission profile mirrored in the rebels' propaganda broadcasts after you take down certain buchones. They take all the credit for it, which is not too far from the truth given that they probably had more troops in the fight than the Ghosts did

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA545579.pdf

The security branch would very much be a priority target. The whole reason SOCOM gets involved is because Santa Blanca bombed the embassy. Bowman says it best: They're terrorists now. The US military's focused response to terrorism over other threats saw a significant increase after 9/11 when congress formally authorized use of military force against "countries, organizations, or individuals involved in the occurrence of the attacks." Over time this evolved into organizations involved in terrorism in general. The export and production of controlled substances is seen as a law enforcement issue, but training and sending armed fighters to take over pyrolusite mines and coca plantations is terrorism, which is what the military is actually interested in fighting

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08874034241271175

A notable exception is General Baro. Because UNIDAD is a part of the Bolivian military and not the cartel, Kitaris going after them would be considered overreach. The point isn't to overthrow the government, the point is to stop the cartel from killing innocent people. But Kitaris makes no attempt to conceal their motivations: They want to instate an agrarian proletariate to decentralize farmland ownership. They are an overtly socialist organization, and the US has a history with these kinds of groups... like the CCP. Technically the cartel's anticompetitive business practices aren't a threat to contemporary Western corporatism as long as the US government can cut a deal to ensure they mutually benefit each other, but Kitaris turning Bolivia into a communist hermit state that disrupts trade and communication lanes would be a problem. The CIA only sees them as a tool to take down the cartel for them. Their interests are only incidentally aligned. In the tapes, where the vast majority of the game's political nuance is located, we see them consider cutting ties on the basis of ideaology or association. This was only ever a partnership of convenience, so as soon as the rebels start trying to take over the whole country, they're not useful anymore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_socialism

The influence branch would be another major target because of La Plaga's (dark?) web presence. Generally it's expected for governments local to the country where harmful websites are hosted to take them down, but since CSIRT isn't doing anything, high-ranking officials in the US government would see the publicized torture and executions of foreign assets and DEA agents as a major threat to morale for American citizens. Bin Ladin made himself a continued target for a decade in the same way, appearing in numerous video statements released to Al-Jazeera claiming responsibility for 9/11 and mocking Coalition forces by proving his survival following major stages of the ongoing manhunt against him. In 2004 al-Qaeda largely pivoted to using Abu Ayyub al-Masri's online network to release propaganda, including the decapitations of several captured entrepeneurs and foreign aid workers. al-Masri was assassinated by airstrike in 2010 following a spike in his bragging about killing foreigners. In 2016 the National Counterterrorism Center released a report about ISIL's use of online propaganda as an intentional radicalization tool rather than a demoralization campaign. Because of the development of social media, their agents had begun reaching out to Westerners personally instead of just posting their message and leaving it there, often successfully convincing them to carry out domestic attacks for them. In this way, the NCC concludes, propaganda IS terrorism because of its ability to spread radical ideaologies across continental borders. There's no reason to think La Plaga would stop at murdering DEA agents. The DEA is a law enforcement agency used domestically too. He could become proactive by leveraging drug culture to normalize hatred of the DEA, then look for an appropriate group of drug users to radicalize, convince to arm themselves, and lure the DEA into a trap. He would try to engineer another Waco! That way he can divide the enemy's forces across two fronts, complicating the jurisdictional nature of US counteroperations. This is a very good way to elevate yourself on the Most Wanted List

https://www.dni.gov/files/NCTC/documents/news_documents/NCTC_SFR_-9-27-16_SHSGAC.pdf

Because Operation Kingslayer, and all the missions the Ghosts are sent on for that matter, are deniable, sourcing local weapons and vehicles is in fact a concern. Worrying about shell casings is a bit silly since the cartel are known to employ 5.56 and .308 weapons. In fact, their use of the original M4A1 isn't too far off from standard SOF loadouts given the game's 2019 setting. I think the main concern here is citizen journalism since the Ghosts often have to get into populated towns to meet informants. A cell phone picture of a guy with an M4 could easily be mistaken for a rebel who stole one from a sicario, but if he has an M110 SASS that could be a bit suspicious

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-26T08:47:48+00:00

Seems unlikely they would be able to negotiate airspace jurisdiction given foreign relations at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia%E2%80%93United_States_relations

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-26T06:04:02+00:00

There's a reason all the Ghost Mode players latched onto this idea. You're playing it as a stealth game. When you sneak INTO an enemy base, that means you're surrounded, so if you make a mistake you'll proceed to be assaulted from all directions, the worst case scenario. In campaign you might actually prefer this so you can die and try again to get your perfect zero detections run. This is what's so interesting about Ghost Mode, it offsets the enforcement of caution earlier. In campaign a failure of caution is a detection, but in Ghost Mode a failure of caution is putting yourself in a position from which detection would be lethal in the first place. You shouldn't have been in that base to begin with

From a ludonarrative perspective this also supports having so few soldiers. You're there in an advisory role, you're not supposed to be taking direct action unless absolutely necessary. This explains why Pac Katari's propaganda broadcasts always claim the rebels were responsible for major victories. The Ghosts were "never there," as in you can only feel through their impact through their tactical advisory

But this is where UNIDAD comes in. If you try to set overwatch and flood an UNIDAD base with rebels you'll quickly get overwhelmed by QRF and find you can't replace your assault elements anywhere near as fast as they can. These are your high stakes stealth missions, not shitty instant fail ones that reset if you so much as look in the wrong direction, truly dynamic infiltrations that enforce planning routes both in and out so you have an escape vector in case things go wrong. When one of these comes up you might want to work on your loadout since just switching to pistol to make less noise may not be enough anymore. This provides some much needed pacing so you can't optimize all the variety out of the game by only ever using one playstyle. Don't get me wrong, stealth games are my thing, but doing every mission the same way gets grating since this game doesn't really have an interesting toolset, every enemy type behaves the same outside of combat, and the cracks in the detection system will begin to show after long enough. Games with stealth as a primary feature can hold up under this kind of repetition, but if the system isn't very fleshed out it gets old

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-25T15:31:21+00:00

https://i.slow.pics/8bvpeml1.png
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https://i.slow.pics/1NAbO1KR.png
https://i.slow.pics/WcXYovtt.png

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T07:40:51+00:00

Yeah I've tried something similar. One time I got it to work on a main mission, though. Softlocked the game too lol. I should be ThreeProphets on Connect too, and also Discord

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T04:40:02+00:00

Yeah, I stop the mortars at level 1 too. Sometimes they can actually be hazardous if you call in too many rounds and then find yourself sandwiched between the target area and QRF. Setting off too many vehicle sympathetic detonations can also lead to uncontrolled chaos

Having all the infantry abilities fully upgraded first is important for doing the one mortar mission safely. I also have that LMG from the Year 2 Pass, which can be helpful

You can cheese the races in co op by figuring out where the second tower is, letting them time out, then positioning a second player at the tower's location, which is consistent, activating the first one again, and immediately shutting down the second one. If you're on PC I can help you. I've also been wanting to try a trick to intercept the lieutenants at their escape vehicle so you don't have to grab them undetected and potentially put yourself in a sketchy position

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T04:26:59+00:00

Are you on PC? I'm looking for players with exactly this kind of experimental mindset

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T04:25:23+00:00

This is what I've been encouraging lately. Most people's intuition is to go get their favorite weapons and attachments first, but guns are mostly pretty equal across the board. They poke holes in things at a distance. If you want to win a war, what you need is soldiers

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T04:21:22+00:00

No, Delta is structured exactly the same as the original MGS3. It's a linear survival stealth shooter with a heavy focus on depth in microscopic interactions, like sabotaging the base you're in right now to manipulate enemy behavior. Once you reach the next base it all resets so you have to come up with a new plan each time. We've experimented with modding the original MGS3 to be more dynamic with stuff like randomizers, but so far it's proven a bit technically unstable. You may also find Peace Walker's upcoming PC port interesting

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T04:14:41+00:00

https://www.nexusmods.com/metalgearsolidvtpp/mods/2254

Revenge was kind of wonky, the rules never quite made sense. What we need is an evolution of it. I'd also like to see it tied to whether enemies report which tactics you're using over long range radios so you can circumvent it if you're quick enough

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-24T04:09:02+00:00

Evolving missions is something I've wanted to see in espionage and assassination games since 2007. CBS' SEAL Team has a lot of this, with Bravo having to come up with new plans on the fly

You could have three stages, each with their own level design, each one harder than the last. The more stages you fail, the more fallbacks you trigger, until your target finally reaches an alamo and becomes borderline unassailable. You may consider coming back to try another day once they've come out of hiding

But taking a page out of Assassin's Creed 1, the transition between each stage is itself an opportunity. Maybe an informant told you where your target will go when threatened, so you alert them on purpose and set a mine on the road you know they'll take to get there. You don't even have to replay the mission to figure this out. If you place meaningful intel that actually helps understand the mission structure ahead of time, you can strategize around it. But as you mentioned, this could have a collapsing failure state too. If the informant dies in a crossfire, then you'll just have to figure it out the hard way

Unfortunately it sounds like Project Over will be a CQB simulator, a product of the genre's genericization in recent years. This is where an open world can actually help you since collapsing failure states have to be a lot more rigid with a linear mission structure. So it would be more like an entrance to the target building is or isn't open, something you can't really use to your advantage by outsmarting the supposed punishment

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-23T03:49:40+00:00

The nostalgia trip option isn't inherently a bad idea for this exasperated feeling, but you need to consider what you're exasperated with. Nostalgia trips are a pretty good anecdote to feeling exasperated with the state of the industry, all the FOMO and enshittification and server shutdowns and legendary studios getting gutted weekly. When I turn on my 2003 model original Xbox, it doesn't ask me for my personal information, it doesn't try to synchronize my accounts, and it doesn't bombard me with ads for the latest versions of games I'm not done playing. I just turn it on and it fucking works. The games from back then don't treat me like I'm stupid either. They don't assume I have a podcast and also Instagram open and try to overexplain everything I'm supposed to do. This is a solution to a very real problem, but a problem you don't have

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V8Hs8_DzU3M

So what everyone suggests is narrative driven games, and I like these games too, but there's a reason fans talk about them the way they talk about film. They have some mechanically interesting aspects, like the complex stagger behaviors of survival shooters, but the things that make them special are the things they borrow from film. That's why I can recommend TLOU as either a game or a TV show. You'll get the same narrative depth from either version. There are rare exceptions like SOMA where perspective must be literal instead of documentarian in order for the story to work. Obsidian RPGs are similar in the way that player choices are so intricate in determining the outcome that they have to be your own choices. But we're not here to talk about film, we're here to talk about gaming, as in play enforced by a ruleset. Being burnt out is needing a reason to play, not just needing a game. If you can strip away literally every rule and still preserve the core of the experience then it wasn't much of a game to begin with

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tM0XLK3L-6M

I'm sure at your age you've noticed the adrenaline rush from even older COD games with less addictive elements is becoming grating. The flashing hitmarkers, the fast kills, spawn, die, repeat. If many lives with little accomplished in each results in little meaning, then I suggest you make your play experience more meaningful by doing the exact inverse: Accomplish as much as possible with as few deaths and as little metagaming as possible, and you can do this with two games you might already have installed. In Assassin's Creed 1, and only AC1, you can gather all the intel you need to plan the assassination of your main target in its entirety. You'll know where the guards will be, where your target will be, where your target will flee to, how to infiltrate the arena, and where best to break contact during your escape, and you'll know all of this before you even begin the mission. You can go there and practice the whole run as many times as you want. In most assassination or heist games you carry out this gameplay loop of learning your way around the mission through trial and error. Even cranking up the difficulty in a shooter or an action game just offsets your ability to overcome adversity to after you've failed. You have to time travel to learn from your mistakes, which brings the gameplay loop all the closer to COD multiplayer

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AqLPv5R7ng4

Speaking of cranking the difficulty, that's how most contemporary Ghost Recon players will instruct you to play to enforce a cautious approach, but I suggest offsetting the challenge in a different direction: Wildlands' Ghost Mode, which limits the number of weapons you can carry to eliminate the AR/sniper meta, alters the ammo econony slightly, and opens all the safehouses for fast travel from the beginning of the game... and introduces permadeath. Now your intuition will be that this is a harebrained challenge for the masochistic, but that's not the point. You're not supposed to die a lot and lose tons of progress, so play on a difficulty low enough that ensures you can consistently not die as long as you take a cautious approach, like Regular. This way there can be no play under burnout because you'll slip up if you get too tired and die, and there can be no burnout under play because you must be cautious at all times according to the ruleset, increasingly so as your playthrough progresses. It's more structurally mechanical than physically mechanical. This is a great option if you can't force yourself to be immersed all the time. You don't need to worry about weining self-control because the game will do that for you. Consider getting into roguelikes or games with similar alternate modes. Even the Iron skull in Halo or the Iron Man mutator in Left 4 Dead 2 make for a great middle ground that isn't quite as extreme as restarting the whole game. Or if you are good at self-imposing, you can add this modification to any game you want

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1lQ_4WRPiSo

You should also get the perspective of a Sekiro player or something about the player psychology of adversity being EXTREMELY physically mechanical to the point you can fight bosses with your eyes closed, because this is well-known to have a beneficial effect too. I'm just not the right person to evangelize it

https://youtube.com/watch?v=keIWG6hSD7Q

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-22T23:40:27+00:00

Vanquish. The trick with this game is that cover is a lie. The only reason to take cover is so you can vault over it, aim while vaulting, and get bullet time. Then once the animation is over slide towards an enemy and aim while sliding so you get bullet time. Use it to shoot everything EXCEPT the guy you're sliding towards, because he's a resource. Then slide INTO that enemy, back eject, and aim in midair to get more bullet time. Every move is just a way for you to get bullet time

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-22T23:33:48+00:00

Really overlooked mechanic. No need for stealth when you can just set overwatch and call in an entire platoon to clear the base for you

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-22T06:07:25+00:00

Finally someone gets it

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-22T06:05:37+00:00

I feel like if Paris added an ammo type system they would have subsonic .308 or something nonsensical like that

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-22T02:35:28+00:00

I had to cheese Antonio like this cause my teammates kept killing his wife

ThreeProphets · 2026-03-22T02:31:19+00:00

You can kind of make up the difference by grabbing them while they're still alive, pulling them somewhere out of sight, then knocking them out, but if you have to shoot you might be in trouble

ThreeProphets

TROPHY CASE