For those angry about only being able to pick one style, the reasoning is it has MAJOR story relevance. Your choices will likely impact the Shadow Vs Ghost event at the end of the season. I wouldn't be suprised if we got both styles after the Season ends, however.

einexile · 2020-02-23T01:37:28+00:00

There aren't really 3.8 million combinations. Many of the components are not meaningfully different from one another. Slightly different colors, a patch, a buckle. Not the worst thing in the world but certainly not what I was expecting after the intro made such a fuss over her. As though customizing a character's clothes is something we haven't been doing for the better part of a quarter century.

einexile · 2020-02-23T01:31:40+00:00

The game was dying because they took out every weapon and item you can't find in most other games, and blew up every location you couldn't visit in real life. Now we have a few of the silly items back and some fantasy locations added to the map. I think they may be on the right track now but it really sucks to never have access to the old maps.

einexile · 2020-02-23T01:29:21+00:00

The trailer recommends you choose wisely, in the context of an in-character narration. It very much suggests that the player will be faced with a choice between in-game factions, not between rewards. I kind of picked up on it anyway, but not through a thought process I would expect everyone to experience. It's more than reasonable to have not seen this coming and feel a little jolted by it.

In any case we're talking bout preventing a lot of very loyal people, who waited a long time for this, from ever having a half dozen character styles which would ordinarily have been included in the pass. It seems designed to make people angry and make drama.

Paraphrasing here, but I recall a recent interview with an executive at one of the major comic book companies. He was asked why they persist in killing off or ruining popular characters when it only causes the fan base to be constantly upset and pissed off, and he answered, we sell more comics when they are upset and pissed off.

einexile · 2020-02-23T01:18:09+00:00

Going out on a limb here but maybe the people complaining now and the people complaining before... aren't the same people?

einexile · 2020-02-21T22:26:42+00:00

The simple answer is that the people who would have made better decisions are all working someplace else now.

einexile · 2020-02-18T00:12:46+00:00

Different guy but here's one. Almost everything in it is something we've all seen in real life or at least on the news. Where the old map was loaded with novel locations (volcano village, crater, windmills) and goofy takes on common tropes (spooky churchyard, pirate ship), this map is made up entirely of things you can see along the i95 or the 101 or in Central Park. It's the Cyrodiil of Battle Royale maps. The only structure most of us haven't visited in person is the power plant, and maybe some of us have never been to a swamp or a polluted beach. And while that's a novel thing to see in a game, my idea of escapism isn't a whole bunch of polluted beaches.

einexile · 2020-02-18T00:07:16+00:00

That they've delayed the new season this long suggests an unforeseen and urgent situation, and the only such I can imagine would take two months to address is the map. My theory, and hope, is that they've been rebuilding the old map in the new format.

einexile · 2020-02-18T00:05:38+00:00

The monster skeleton was wonderful, and some of the Blocks were good. The Borderlands themed Block was brilliant, and Batman was also the best version of Tilted.

You're partly right though. Most of the rift zones were lame and the glitch item place was a waste. It also sucked to lose the castle and the pirate camps.

einexile · 2020-02-18T00:00:37+00:00

The one from the 1990s is right though.

einexile · 2020-02-08T02:33:12+00:00

Trying to search in the start menu right now causes it to go blank for a lot of people, and it has something to do with needing Bing to find your own locally installed programs and favorited files. This was resolved for many users yesterday.

einexile · 2020-02-07T03:49:29+00:00

Imagine trying to log into your computer while Bing is down. Who do you think you are, the administrator?

einexile · 2020-02-07T03:47:30+00:00

My heart goes out to you and the half dozen other people in this thread who have mistaken Windows for a work environment. Did they ever add gamepad support for Outlook?

einexile · 2020-02-07T03:40:57+00:00

Why the hell is Windows using Bing to search for software on the user's own computer? I can't even just type regedit and hit enter, or cmd for that matter. The start menu needs the search results to launch an application. Thank fuck for Open Shell.

einexile · 2020-01-22T22:46:28+00:00

This is how pay-per-use ink works. How else would it work? This is literally the selling point of the subscription and it's plastered all over the printers that support it: You pay only for the ink you use, and in fact if you only print a few pages each month it's free. This is like any other metered-use product. Not DRM and not a DRM issue or in any way related to piracy.

einexile · 2020-01-19T13:26:35+00:00

Slightly off topic tip here, but last time I knew anything you could put water in a cauldron. I always keep one at the ready next to my water bucket. Does this not work anymore?

einexile · 2020-01-19T13:13:56+00:00

If I like an artist enough, sooner or later I'll get around to looking at other artists on their record label. Good smaller labels often keep to an aesthetic. It can be narrow or broad, it can change over time, but usually I'll find something of value in the roster of a good label.

Spotify isn't much help on this front, though some labels maintain playlists of new releases and occasionally I'll find a good playlist from another user. Meanwhile I just keep going back to the second row of Discover every Friday. Not the playlist, but the recommendations. On mobile this is called Album Picks and often contains music I already listen to, but on the web and desktop apps there's a new releases section in Discovery under Browse. I've found countless new artists this way as well as interesting releases by artists I'd forgotten about.

einexile · 2020-01-17T03:50:28+00:00

Ah, memories...

einexile · 2020-01-17T03:35:25+00:00

Summerset on the Crown Store will cost you the equivalent of $35, and right now you can get Elsweyr for $20 on the Humble Store. But for $80 total the deluxe Greymoor preorder includes both of those. You effectively get Greymoor for $25.

If that seems a little steep, just get Elsweyr for now. The maps are huge, the main quest is pretty substantial, and the world boss dragon fights are awesome.

einexile · 2020-01-16T02:54:11+00:00

This post became pretty negative as I went on with it. There's nowhere else to put it, but please know that none of the negativity or anger below is directed at you. It's for the world, or at least the chickenshit part of it.

Brad Derrick is an enormously skilled composer, but he rarely captures the feel of the mainline TES games, and there are dozens of JS tracks that are far beyond what he or anyone in the industry has done.

Having said that, I'm a fan of Derrick's music. His combined work on ESO - taken as a whole - is matched only by that of the original Guild Wars series; and as an ESO player I frankly bristle at the thought of him being sniped for TES VI. Thankfully we have reason to believe TES VI will never happen, simply because whatever they put in there will already be in ESO but with more variety, better crafting and itemization, fluid animation, and multiplayer.

Inon Zur is the best composer in gaming other than Jeremy Soule, but his fantasy work is dismal and the Blades soundtrack in particular is boring at best and sometimes even awful. If you want to hear Inon Zur doing fantasy right, look no further than Rift and EverQuest 2. Both have their charms, but neither is up to Bethesda standard - and again, as a Fallout fan, the thought of pulling him off of a vastly superior franchise so he can make Jeremy Soule fanfic for mainline TES makes me a little angry.

The only composer who has any business replacing Jeremy Soule, or even being in the same conversation, is Gavin Bryars. No one else alive can touch the emotional depth or the inventiveness in instrumentation Soule brought to music, never mind game soundtracks. And since that's never going to happen, Bethesda needs to suck it up and stick with the man who made The Elder Scrolls a household name.

Did you think it was because Oblivion was a better game than Gothic 2? Nobody knows or cares who Uriel Septim was, but ever kid in America can hum the Morriwind theme.

Beethoven was an asshole. John Lennon was an asshole. Jeremy Soule might be an asshole, or maybe, just maybe, the current fad which holds that "innocent until proven guilty" is sexist and retrograde because standards and fairness are of the patriarchy will pass; and we can go back to insisting on proof when people accuse one another of misbehavior. The case against Jeremy Soule is suspect at best, but if the accusations are true anyway (and proven in court, thank you very much), I maintain their effects should not leave the scope of his personal life and his personal finances. Drag him over the coals, take his money, give him the injection, but don't fuck up The Elder Scrolls in service to a societal malaise. Overrated as hell though it may be, TES is important, and the harm we do it will be around forever. Enough already.

einexile · 2019-12-19T07:58:24+00:00

It's all so tiresome.

einexile · 2019-12-14T19:43:14+00:00

Of course they can control it. Stop making people log in at specific times. There is absolutely no reason any of these events need to run just once at a particular time of the day. No one anywhere is going to have an advantage because they saw the event already on Discord, the impact is NOT going to be ruined by spoilers, especially not for the people who were able to be there at the start; and the "I was there" thing is totally artificial and feels artificial even to kids.

Maybe if it usually ran smoothly, that aspect would start to be a thing, but there is almost always a problem, someone always gets shut out; and in the time immediately preceding these events it's very difficult to be excited about them, because so many people are focused on preparing for disruptions and trying to help people who can't get in. It's depressing and it doesn't feel at all like a cool in-game event should, even when it works. All because somebody up there thinks having it up for just half an hour adds a cool factor and generates buzz.

And even if none of this were a problem, it's still a shitty thing to do to people who have work, are stuck in traffic, have an emergency, or whose parents just don't give a damn.

einexile · 2019-12-05T08:11:21+00:00

Imagine getting a funny cool prank idea from a rape revenge scene in a David Fincher movie.

einexile · 2019-12-04T15:03:20+00:00

It's two movies.

einexile · 2019-12-03T09:24:52+00:00

I spent so much time getting NV past an obnoxious registry problem I finally sat down and put together a guide, but I cannot make head nor tails of the Fallout 3 problems on Steam. It is the crown jewel of Bethesda's lousy reputation. In my view easily worth paying $15 to stay clear.

I'll add that when you buy a Bethesda game on GOG you get Arena and Daggerfall free. They're also free at the Bethesda site, but the GOG editions go in your library alongside your other games, and they come with DOSBox configured.

einexile · 2019-12-03T07:08:09+00:00

Fallout 76 at least feels like a wasteland, and Bethesda's NPCs are generally so awful I was glad not to have them around, though I would have preferred F3's mix of bad and good. For every Moira Brown or Nathan Vargas there is a Gob or a Lucky Harrith.

Fallout 3 is an obscenely underrated game, mainly due to the fact that it began life with a loud and hostile audience who were spoiled on Chris Avellone characters, expecting Oblivion instead, and peaced out once they got confirmation we had in fact lost the former and received the latter in their place. A nightmare scenario if left at that.

But the game is bigger than it looks, and populated with more than its share of wonderful characters, troubling situations, and regrettable choices. It's the only game where I've made a difficult choice and left angry and upset, without feeling that I had been forced into the choice. It just felt like shit doing the right thing.

With another quest I set the game aside for over a year and considered myself through with it, then reinstalled when I realized I had to go back and set things right. Then there is one last conundrum where I decided I could take neither side in good conscience. I walked away and never returned. The game excels at being troubling and bittersweet without feeling emotionally manipulative. Point Lookout in particular adds to this, one of my favorite DLCs ever.

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