I agree that Bethesda’s RPG writing is amateur at best, and I can’t dispute that there can be some good points in Dishonored. But at least for me, a mark of bad writing is that I find myself unable to care about the outcome for any of the characters in a story, and in Dishonored, I personally didn’t care much about any of the character’s struggles or personalities, as they were all pretty one-note. I can’t recall a single character’s name from Dishonored except for Corvo, since I found it novel to hear Stephen Russell as a main character again (big Thief fan, which incidentally I would point to as a game with excellent writing).

There was one instance in the main base/hub of dishonored 1, where there’s a short excerpt of a story about a whaler in a book, I think in the room where Emily was supposed to chill out in. I thought the writing of that little short story was so compelling, I sat back in my chair after I finished it and thought “Why isn’t this game about that?”, because I felt it highlighted how boilerplate the actual game’s story was in comparison. So in that way you’re right, the micro-writing, the world building, the atmosphere, is all top notch. I just wish the characters and plot were able to match it, as then it would be a masterpiece.

I should mention that I’m pretty difficult to impress with writing in video games, as I don’t think most of them can compare to the quality of writing available in books except for a handful of examples such as Thief, Gemini Rue, Mafia, and the original Deus Ex.

I wouldn’t say the writing for dishonored is terribly strong. The first game has a pretty bog standard plot, and the set up for the second was quite contrived. The gameplay and world are their strengths.

He posted this update a few months ago, it seems to be progressing well!

That sounds similar to this quote:

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” — Edsger Dijkstra, 1975

But there’s been a good deal of programmers who have said that BASIC, and its ease of use and seeing almost instant results is extremely useful to not turn people off learning to code to begin with. Python is functionally the new BASIC in that regard, and while the language itself may not teach you to become an expert programmer, it may have gotten more people in the door than otherwise would have.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

Ahh, the ol put the rum in the banana shipment from Karamja method. A classic.

I don’t see that as any more desirable than a US or Russian CEO doing the same. It’s all wage slavery for the people generating those profits, and it’s all gravy for the CEOs to funnel into offshore accounts. Only funding a worker coop would make it more ethical and desirable, regardless of geographic location/regime, IMHO.

Wouldn’t the surplus profit just go to the CEO of the company? I can’t imagine there’s much difference for the average worker in China between mass manufacturing PC’s for direct sale vs. Mass manufacturing for another brand.

I don’t believe there are many worker coops building PCs, unfortunately.

Matrix is the closest replacement, and XMPP can replicate some functionality too.

You’d probably enjoy his normal content then! He makes great stuff.

If you’re not sure what StopKillingGames is about, the creator of the campaign, Ross Scott (of Freeman’s Mind fame) made this short video to give the rundown.

If your main value is small government, have you looked into classical anarchism?

A while back I put together a pretty big list of free Linux games, along with their license info. A good amount of them are FPS games, hopefully one of them interests you 🙂

I guess for tactical shooters, Urban Terror might qualify?

The information I’ve seen regarding deep discharge life-cycle for sodium ion is that the latest tech is actually extremely good, at least according to this. I don’t see how the lower voltage is a problem, since for grid situations you’ll have step-up transformers anyway, and the batteries can just be hooked up in series to increase the voltage.

They use abundant materials, will be much cheaper than lithium ion, don’t need to be actively cooled, and massively lessen the risk of rupture and fires.

The low density per unit of weight isn’t relevant for grid storage, so they seem pretty ideal.

Sodium batteries require very little rare earths in comparison to lithium batteries.

Sodium electric batteries, like the type that CATL developed? Or do you mean hot molten salt thermal batteries? Because I think the other poster is referring to the first kind.

Curious how much that still applies, being a decade old now.

I’ve never installed it myself, I’ve only used it on the instances that offer it, such as my home instance at slrpnk.net.

This was the major plot point of an old web comic I used to read, Mare Internum (warning, attempted suicide on page one). I’m sure the creator is quite happy with this news.

That was a fun review, I like the style you went for with it!

I played this back in the day on the 360, which didn’t seem to have the bugs you encountered. I recall having a pretty good time with it, and it was short enough not to overstay its welcome. The jumping mechanics and training for it were unique at the time, and I thought it was a nice twist on the WWII formula.

The lacking narrative (or at least, I don’t remember one, or any characters) hurt it, as it felt sort of like I was playing a multiplayer game alone at times.

I also thought it was neat how the sniper rifles were more accurate/less wobbly if you slowly squuezed the analog trigger, I’m not sure I’ve seen that elsewhere.

But yeah, good review, I’d honestly enjoy reading more from you.

Ah, that’s unfortunate. As an alternative, I have seen some online games name their bots with a random name generator that’s designed to sound somewhat real, like AnnoyingPidgen or WrecklessRaptor. If the voting account naming system was more like that, it would be easier to notice voting patterns/manipulation while still being anonymous.