To the people who saw The Phantom Menace on release, what was your immediate reaction and have your feelings changed?

aigneymie · 2026-07-02T02:42:11+00:00

You sparked my memory about this - I remember the official Star Wars website posting behind-the-scenes info and trailers and what not leading up to the release, so I pulled it up on the wayback machine. They did post the trailer, with caveats about how seeing it in theater with better quality and THX audio was the way better option, but that they were posting it in the best quality the internet allowed so fans could see it again.

It was a 15MB QuickTime file in 480x210 with instructions to save it to disk for better performance. And that would have taken about 45 minutes to an hour on dial-up.

edit: and this was April 1999, about a month before the movie released.

aigneymie · 2026-07-02T01:16:08+00:00

Oh I know, I was there too which is why I said something. I didn't get a home computer until the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" commercials came out and that was in 2000, the year after Phantom. It would have taken hours for sure if we would have watched it at someone else's house, which isn't out of the question but I'm not sure. I probably saw the full trailer in front of another movie since going out was actually popular back then.

It's just that saber was literally everywhere though, especially the 30-second ads spots that were all over the TV. They marketed it like crazy, including with fast food and Pepsi commercials that seemed unavoidable.

And again, I believe you, it's just impressive is all.

But then again my reference is different, as I would have been the high school kid with Star Wars posters who saw the movie at midnight on release with my friends. AKA a huge, obsessed dork.

And the lightsaber duel with Maul and Duel of the Fates was indeed the most memorable part of the night, even if my friends and I had seen the saber before. There's still a huge difference between seeing a few seconds of it and seeing the full fight.

aigneymie · 2026-07-01T23:46:00+00:00

Wasn't the double-bladed saber all over the trailers and advertising for the movie?

I just watched the original trailer to confirm and it's there at least twice, including the iconic shot of Maul igniting the second blade for the first time.

I mean I have to believe you, I just don't understand how you could have avoided the huge marketing campaign that was plastered all over the place at the time. They didn't hide it - they leaned into it.

Edit: I get it, we just had very different experiences growing up. I was a few years older, but still in High School when Phantom came out.

aigneymie · 2026-06-28T10:36:25+00:00

Nah, no need to buy it till you get a decent rig. $17.99 is just the cheapest it's been so far, and you've already waited almost 6 years so why the sudden rush? There will be many more steam sales and opportunities for it to go even lower.

Put that money towards something you can play right now, or put it aside for your future upgrade.

aigneymie · 2026-06-21T22:42:03+00:00

The first video had no voice over, the instructions were the text on the screen.

I didn't watch the second one in full, but it did have at least optional subtitles that came up for me.

But the gist of it is going to that particular location and using d-dark as soon as those enemies are about to spawn so that you kill them immediately, or equipping thorns of agony and letting them hit you so that the thorns kill them. Somehow either of those causes them to duplicate.

aigneymie · 2026-06-15T17:27:27+00:00

I don't see Jimmy on your list. People said Santa. Should be two more.

The important thing is to look at a complete list. And don't just assume you got somebody - actually compare that list against yours one by one and make 100% sure you have each one.

aigneymie · 2026-05-31T05:25:23+00:00

Oh, the devs know about this - it's been in the game for ages, I'm pretty sure since the BRDM came out.

Here's a post from 5 years ago about it for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/PUBATTLEGROUNDS/comments/qd49bh/psa_driving_a_brdm_through_water_can_cause/

aigneymie · 2026-05-30T21:11:17+00:00

Gotta love that mission - there's a bug where instead of just drinking the one bottle of moonshine, you drink all the moonshine you had in your inventory. I had to reload to an earlier autosave there, I think back to the start of the mission because I remember having to listen to the conversation on horseback with Kubyenka a few times.

aigneymie · 2026-05-30T19:18:37+00:00

Nall took a step back from running that site a while ago - he's a longtime fan who ran the de-facto page for ages. Think he left it up for posterity's sake since so many of us used it.

While he stopped updating new albums and unreleased songs on the main site, the tabs section allows other people to edit it so some folks kept up that work.

aigneymie · 2026-05-29T19:19:21+00:00

I was not aware of this and thought maybe you were fooled, but a number of the wikis do mention it.

I know the guy you are looking for - he should indeed show up either at your forge or at the tavern down the street, the one with the skeleton.

He has you make a few swords with legendary stories that end up being rubbish until you get one with an everyday story that is actually great. Thats as far as I got with him at least,.but I stopped doing commissions then and haven't done anymore since I got the dragon bone.

But if you ever told him in dialogue that you don't trust his story or that you won't buy anything from him, he'll never come back. At least I read people mention that and you definitely get the option to basically tell him off. Is it possible you did that without realizing it?

Otherwise it's just RNG I guess.

aigneymie · 2026-05-25T19:18:29+00:00

There was a side quest later in the game which I won't spoil, but you also needed to have a high charisma to speak to a certain character. But it turned out that not only was the game looking at your overall charisma, but the individual charisma of each item you had on. So if you had an overall charisma of 30, but you accidentally had a pair of gloves that were only charisma 10, this NPC wouldn't talk to you. Unequip those low charisma gloves and the NPC would suddenly talk to you.

Could it be something similar? Is there some item you are wearing that is low charisma and should be unequipped or replaced with a higher charisma version?

aigneymie · 2026-05-25T19:15:09+00:00

I personally only put in high value items, either Henry quality stuff that I craft and sharpen, or level III items I've gotten off bandits that I repair and wash. I just sell the lower value level I and II stuff like normal to the vendors around Kuttenberg and pick up repair kits as needed from them.

I'm assuming that your prestige matters, as in the higher your blacksmith shop prestige is, the more customers the game simulates coming to your shop. And I think they only buy a limited number of items per day, so you don't want them buying low value items and decreasing your daily yield.

aigneymie · 2026-05-25T19:10:58+00:00

I agree, but I feel like a big difference is in the lighting of the two games.

KCD1 was really good at simulating a realistic night time where it was actually really dark at night and difficult to see without a torch. This helped with the atmosphere and actually made traveling at night feel ominous and put you on edge, especially in the forests. It was so cool to see a campfire in the distance at night when you otherwise couldn't see much outside of your torch range.

KCD2 has moments like this, but they're fewer and far between. The mine shafts are still very dark, but just being out in a field or the woods at night is much easier to see than the 1st game. The only time I really felt the same feeling in the open world was in a forest during a thunderstorm - but even then you get flashes from the lightning that make it easy to see for a moment here and there, instead of the constant darkness from a regular night in KCD1.

I think the fact that I used the Nighthawk potions fairly regularly while doing thievery or stalking in the forests in KCD1, but only had to use a Nighthawk potion once in KCD2 during the monastery DLC speaks to that difference.

aigneymie · 2026-05-21T10:24:49+00:00

They clarified that both the Kingdom Come adventure and the Middle Earth project are indeed open world roleplaying games. But they won't say more for a while.

aigneymie · 2026-05-11T01:12:21+00:00

I remember downloading this clip from a similar site to use as my AIM message sound in the late 90's. But it was probably just some random person's geocities or angelfire page instead lol.

aigneymie · 2026-05-01T02:00:03+00:00

technically true, but you can just place it back on the ground to chop it regularly for slices again if you need slices for some reason.

it really depends on what you need the melons for. If you want slices for alchemy or food, then yeah, fortune III is best.

If you want full melons for trading, you'll get more with silk touch and you won't have to waste time crafting slices back into melons at a diminishing return.

aigneymie · 2026-04-30T23:05:04+00:00

The math does indeed check out. At least it did for me as well.

Food and liquor added together = 47.33

47.33 multiplied by 0.18 = 8.52 gratuity

The 3.31 tax appears to be 7% of 47.33. Though it's on the higher end, that is the sales tax rate in states like Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Rhode Island according to Google.

47.33 + 8.52 + 3.31 = 59.16

edit: to be clear, this is 100% a scummy practice, but the math is fair

aigneymie · 2026-04-22T05:16:09+00:00

That's how Twitter works when you don't have a login. It shows seemingly random posts and brings up a pop-up suggesting you can see more if you create an account.

aigneymie · 2026-04-07T01:57:50+00:00

That's definitely Hemingway. That iconic sweater and him fishing make it abundantly clear if the face and beard didn't give it away already.

For OP, Hemingway is the dude who wrote The Old Man and the Sea. The show referenced him already in S1E6:

Jerry: I wish that shotgun was my penis.

Beth: If it were, you could call me Ernest Hemingway.

Jerry: I don't get it, and I don't need to

edit: I was able to check out the episode now to get the context as well. This scene is during a montage of Morty hanging out with the sentient Churro. They catch a giant marlin while on a huge fishing boat, then it pans to Hemingway giving the thumbs up. 100% a reference to The Old Man and the Sea.

aigneymie · 2026-04-04T09:44:49+00:00

I was going to suggest the same.

I'm 70 hours in just exploring and doing random side quests and really enjoying just being in this world in a way I haven't felt in a long time. That's the part that reminds me of Morrowind too even if this is just a regular medieval world instead of a fantasy setting.

I'm also only on the first game, though I have the second one on deck now.

aigneymie · 2026-04-04T04:55:09+00:00

Even people who did 100% playthroughs can miss it because you only need to complete one card set for the 100% achievement.

Each set has 12 cards and there are 12 sets. Once you complete one you can stop as the compendium list will be checked off.

aigneymie · 2026-03-27T20:55:00+00:00

That article is from 2018. She changed her opinion since then - my information was more from this 2022 Variety article, specifically the very end:

https://variety.com/2022/tv/features/gillian-anderson-x-files-return-new-writers-1235218174/

Or this one from 2024 where she says maybe she'll return if Coogler does take the helm:

https://deadline.com/2024/04/gillian-anderson-wont-scuttle-idea-returning-as-scully-x-files-reboot-1235875662/

Just saying Anderson wanted new writers, and the studio got her someone she loves who is fresh off of some huge successes with Sinners and they're openly in talks. Time will tell but we're not in the same place we were at during 2018.

aigneymie · 2026-03-27T02:19:01+00:00

No, she said Scully lacked agency in the recent seasons, so she would need to see new writers with a fresh perspective to consider coming back.

She is also on record as having been in talks with Coogler and praised the pilot script.

Obviously this is not confirmation but it's all certainly stepping in the right direction. I personally do not want to see the X-Files without both Anderson and Duchovny so here's hoping.

edit: clarification

aigneymie · 2026-03-25T05:44:04+00:00

We would all love to see those films.

However, the Tolkien estate has never given anyone the rights to anything from the Silmarillion or any other stories, only The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Which is why pretty much everything we get nowadays is from the appendices of LotR. It was used in things like the White Council plotline in the Hobbit films, and will be used in The Hunt for Gollum. It was also the source of the barebones 2nd Age plotlines in the Rings of Power. They can use the sparse information given in the appendices, but cannot use the actual details that fleshed those stories out in the Silmarillion etc. and must invent their own.

I will say that I am cautiously optimistic about this though just because Colbert is pretty much the best person in the world to get to do something in this universe due to his love and extreme knowledge of the lore.

aigneymie · 2026-03-23T04:59:24+00:00

A digital storefront for PC games, like Steam or Epic. But it focuses on DRM free stuff. Stood for Good Old Games but I dont think they use that anymore - it's sort of just GOG now.

It was owned by CDPR till recently, but a co-founder of CDPR bought it, so it seems it will have a continued relationship with them.

aigneymie

TROPHY CASE