Radio Paranoia posted:

thi4f is the hottest garbage i've had the privilege of playing on somebody else's dime

what a mess

St Evan Echoes posted:

firewatch gonna be goty 2016, nerds

St Evan Echoes posted:

firewatch gonna be goty 2016, nerds

Radio Paranoia posted:

im stoked for firewatch but will wait for it on sale

Captain Foo posted:

read this as fishmech, got v confused

Al! posted:

darker

scamtank posted:

bobbin threadbare gave it a good go-over re: why it's gently caress

still don't know what the hell was up with those animal titty paintings

quote:

Alright, guys, I get it. Really, I do. The original Thief series wrapped up its plotline and you're a different developer, so why wouldn't you reboot the setting? It's a fresh team and a fresh start. Nothing wrong with that. Of course, with all the references and callbacks it seems like you want to eat your cake and have it, too. Plus you probably should have understood what made the original setting and characters interesting and not made New!Garrett into an unlikable twat in black eyeliner. I'd call him a taffer, but you did away with that, too, didn't you?

And I suppose it's a neat idea for the new bad guys to be from the aristocracy and the City Watch. There's a certain kind of sense to that; the nobility was always a sort of fourth faction in the original trilogy, so it's good to give them their time in the sun. But if you were going to do that, you probably shouldn't have ripped off Dishonored and Bioshock: Infinite's plotlines (poorly) and made the Thief-Taker General a moustache-twirling villain. There couldn't be any moral ambiguity, huh?

And hey, new powers and equipment! I don't mind the idea of using Focus to highlight important items and use other special abilities, plus it's not like you're ever forced to use it. Of course, it would've been nice if Focus-based lockpicking was actually easier than normal (at least on the PC), plus you kind of nerfed gas arrows and eliminated every means of ranged nonlethal takedown. That's kind of a problem since melee takedowns are apparently noisy as hell now and take several seconds no matter what else is happening.

I see you also added in a whole bunch of interface indicators that weren't in the original trilogy but are in basically every modern stealth and semi-stealth games, but I'm not going to hold that against you. After some fan outcry, you made pretty much the whole interface optional, so those who want to feel immersed can get immersed. I won't bother with doing so myself, but it's nice to have the option. On the other hand, the audio indicators can be pretty obnoxious at times, and in fact the audio in general can be pretty wonky. That's not such a good thing for a game like this.

The missions themselves are pretty linear, but I can understand why: you need transitions and points-of-no-return to mask loading screens. That's just how game design works these days. You still added plenty of nooks and crannies that hide bits of loot, and while the exploration is more constrained, there's something to be said for the puzzle factor of discovering the right path to obtain a shiny. On the other hand, since exploration is really a big focal point of the Thief series, I have to wonder why you didn't include any sort of requirement to do so or any reward beyond the money itself.

But hey, there's also open world gameplay! Thief 3 had that way back in the day, and although the maps aren't as big as Thief 1 and Thief 2, they at least put 3's maps to proper shame. Then again, there's no real reason to explore the city streets more than once since nothing but guard money respawns and all the tools are unlocked after Chapter 2. Plus there's also no reason to explore except just before the very end because the loot and collectables for Basso's side jobs don't spawn until after you actively take the jobs. It's not very rewarding to discover a hidden door only to find out the secret room behind it is empty because Basso hasn't told you what's in there yet.

And sure enough, there are collectables! It's true that Old!Garrett would have laughed at New!Garrett for considering anything "too precious to sell," but I can certainly see the player appeal in filling the old secret lair (secret lair? really?) with shiny collectables. But then...did one of the collectables have to include that? I mean, really? You couldn't have just, I don't know, left those two out and saved yourself a lot of awkward looks?

So to sum up, I get it. You wanted to do your own thing, and you wanted to do it by ripping off around a dozen or so popular franchises (including, ultimately, Thief itself). But just because you tried doesn't mean you succeeded, and just because I understand doesn't mean I have to like your game.

Al! posted:

"sexy daughter figure" is definitely something aaa designers need to cut the gently caress out

Vintersorg posted:

totalbiscuit is quitting twitter apparently

Vintersorg posted:

butt death comes for us all

Vintersorg posted:

totalbiscuit is quitting twitter apparently

ayn rand hand job posted:

rip totalbiscuit

Yodzilla posted:

Thief 3 was a good game come at me nerds

Vintersorg posted:

totalbiscuit is quitting twitter apparently

quote:

Well, you’ve heard this many times before, but maybe this will actually be the time this happens. I’m done with social media. I’ve had it. It’s enough.

Look, let’s be real here about the reality of what could happen over the next few years. In a few years, I could very well be dead—two to three [years to live] average is what I’m given for this particular form of this disease. I intend to outlive that by a significant margin, but if it ends up being the last few years of my life, I want to spend them not being loving miserable. And if that involves disconnecting from everybody, so be it.

My family is gonna come first, my loving mental health is gonna come first. The expectation that everyone who ever made it on the Internet’s gotta be constantly connected to their fans all the time 24 hours a day 24/7 is insane. It’s unreasonable. Nobody can loving handle it. Nobody. [sighs] God. You have no idea how many of my friends are in therapy just because of this job.

I even know what you’re going to say. I know what the loving naysayers are going to say. You’re going to turn around and tell me “ah, you’ll be back.” Yeah, maybe. I might be—because I’m hosed in the head, as I’ve explained many times. It’s a problem. It’s an obsession. But I’ve got to make at least a concerted effort to stop it. This is the only way I know how because I’ve tried every other way. I’ve been trying for years. It doesn’t work. I’m done.

So as of now, my Twitter account is in the hands of Chris [an assistant], and he is under explicit instructions not to let me post anything on it. If I tell him to post something, he’s not going to do it. He’s been told to put up the videos, make announcements, remind people of upcoming events, that’s it. After this Soundcloud is done, I’m giving him control of the Soundcloud—so I’done with that, too. There are not going to be anymore personal Soundcloud audio blogs. This Soundcloud is here solely to host the podcast and and audio versions of my YouTube content. This will be it.

I want no way—no way at all—to contact the wider Internet outside of my work. I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s too much. So that’s how it’s going to be. There will be YouTube videos and there will be streams. If I could, I’d probably shut down the chat in my stream, as well, but I think, at least, that stays reasonable the vast majority of the time so I could probably handle that. We’ll see. That’s probably going to get hosed up as well, isn’t it?

[sighs] There’s the thing. I would delete my Twitter right now if I could. I would delete it. I can’t. I legally can’t. [laughs] I’m under contract. I have to maintain this Twitter for my YouTube channel and for my sponsorship agreements. For my contractual obligations, it has to exist. I can’t get rid of it. So the only thing I can do is make sure that I can never post on it. Hopefully, if I never post on it, I’ll have no desire to read the responses to it, and it’ll be far harder for me to see it.

So that’s how it’s going to be. I’m going to make YouTube videos and you can do one of two things: you can watch them or you can not watch them. That’s up to you. If I end up losing a bunch of money from this because people feel the need to connect with me, otherwise they can’t appreciate my content, so be it. I’ll be happier. Money’s awesome, but it can’t buy me out of this…whatever this is. It hasn’t helped. What you’re gonna get is content, that’s it. Enjoy it or don’t—it’s up to you. I’m handing this Soundcloud account to Chris now, so this will be the last time I post on it. I know what’s going to happen now.

The usual people come out of the woodwork and go “ah, you can’t take criticism, nyah!” And all that other poo poo. OK! Fine. I accept it. I can’t take criticism. I’m dying of terminal cancer. I don’t think I need to read your Internet criticism of me. I think I’ll live longer if I don’t. And you know what? That should be the priority. I don’t want to leave my wife and son behind. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to leave my friends behind. I don’t want to leave my job behind. I don’t want to leave my pets behind. I don’t want to leave my family behind. [pause] No. If that’s the price—that I don’t read your feedback? Or I don’t take your criticism into account? I’m going to pay that price. I will happily pay that price.

This is my loving life, and what is left of it I am going to take control back. Sorry if this disappoints people. I know the vast majority of you are cool and you like this level of interaction, but if this is going to be the last few years that I get to live, I’m going to try and live it in a way that doesn’t make me miserable. I have too much poo poo on my plate as it is. I don’t need anymore.

Know that the vast majority of you, I appreciate you every day. It’s why I thank you at the end of every video. You let me live my dream, and I’m so very grateful for that. I’m going to go back to work now. See ya.

Al! posted:

he threatened to quit life and still came back, how long can this possibly last

kalstrams posted:

found his statement on it

Kenny Logins posted:

haveblue posted:

you have to be a really, really bad person to merit having fun made of you while dying from cancer and making annoying gaming videos is nowhere near that level sorry

Notorious QIG posted:

Let us turn to the good book.

Wikipedia.

Al! posted:

I thought he didn't have cancer no more

Improbable Lobster posted:

This is a repost from my rant forum on my site and since I'm interested only in it being read, rather than advertising or shilling it out for hits, I'm going to just repost it here. Before I do let me give you a quick introduction.
I finally registered on the SA forums a week or so ago having been a loyal reader for a couple of years. I don't like the new design of the site, I want to kill it with fire, I liked my good-old Web1.0 scrolly site, give it back please.
I'm posting this here because you lot are smart, and as such, I have no issues with you telling me that you think I'm wrong with this pseudo-rant. This may also be preaching to the choir a bit and for that I sincerely apologize. I hope at least you get some enjoyment out of this. If you're one of those fellows who likes to Digg, the article also has a Digg page, do with it as you see fit - http://digg.com/general_sciences/At...you_intelligent
With that said and done, here goes.
"It's novello time, and it's about religion, so unless you're ready to deal with some views you may not agree with, switch off now. In the words of Illidan "You are not prepared".
Let's get this out here right now. I'm a 23 year old law graduate with an IQ of 155. My political beliefs are liberal and leftist, I listen to Metal and I enjoy violent movies, books and videogames, and I've been a Christian since birth. Baptised, confirmed of my own free will, son of a priest (who are pretty notorious for rebelling against their father's religious beliefs just for the sake of it). I'm part of the Anglican Church of England, which is pretty much the result of Henry the 8th getting pissed off with the catholics not allowing him to divorce his wife(s). We're the state religion of the UK, if you could even say the UK has one, we're pretty liberal about most things, women priests, gay priests, homosexuals in general, sex before marriage, contraception, we take the modern, reasonable way of looking at all of them. At the end of the day, the Bible taught us about forgiveness and being excellent to one another. It had a bit of a round-about way of doing it but what do you expect for a 2000 year old book written entirely by clerical males? It's gonna be a bit out of date, you've gotta read it in context.
I have no problems with anyone's beliefs. Be whatever you want, as long as you believe (or don't believe) for a good reason. But here's what I really don't like, trend-atheism/trend-theism (also referred to as e-atheism, since it seems to be most prevelant in the domain of anonymous blogspammers and Digg-users).
In my late teens, I spent a long time thinking. Yeah, just sitting around and thinking, thinking about faith. Thinking about what it is that I believe in. Rationalizing the various conflicts and contradictions that faith presents us with, looking at the viewpoints of other faiths, or those with no faith at all, taking into account the new things we discover every day and factoring in the influence of science. Some people would claim that, if I had indeed done that, I'd have come to the conclusion, as an intellectual, rational thinker, that God does not exist. They would of course, be wrong.
My beliefs center around several factors. Firstly, it is important for us as human-beings to realize our own limits, and the limits of our understanding. Centuries ago we believed the world was flat. "The Bible told us so!", would be the first cry. Wrong, it really didn't. In the Old Testament, Job 26:7 explains that the earth is suspended in space, the obvious comparison being with the spherical sun and moon. The Old Testament, you remember that one? The one with the fiery bushes, the pillar's of salt, the cool plagues and such? Even that managed to get it right. There's a few more references as well to the 'round' earth (and before you say anything, flat is not a shape, it could have been a flat octagon for all they knew) but I'm not going to go into that yet. We've had computers for less than a century, powered flight for just over a century and of course our amazing horseless carriages. Genetics, electricity, nuclear-bombs, toaster-strudel, the world is in the palm of our hands! And it didn't take us too long did it?
Reality-check, we're still primitives. In the great scheme of things this technology is a mere blip on the historical radar. We've got an awful long way to go before we're able to dissect and understand the mysteries of the universe. We haven't even put a man on Mars yet, let alone left our solar system to find out what exactly is out there. How can it be that we have suddenly, so recently, become so arrogant as to believe we know more than we really do? The Laws of Science are written by man, based on our understanding of how things work. They are theories that, while prove true today, may be debunked by another amazing discovery tomorrow. Which leads onto my next point.
Name this quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Arthur C Clarke, physicist and author, smart fellow. It also hilights the point I'm making. Our understanding of the universe is peerless only amongst ourselves. We are not as smart as we think we are. Just as fire wowed the neanderthals, what would it take to wow us? What would make our jaws drop and our minds boggle? Well, any sufficiently advanced technology of course. And what is technology after-all? Man-made machines. The concept of technology is a human concept, a concept that may, in other parts of the universe, not even exist, replaced by something even more advanced than that, so advanced that we cannot comprehend it. Not surprising really as we mammals only use 10% of our brains.
So where am I going with this? Simple really, take yourself off of your high-horse, you, and the human race, is not as smart as it thinks it is. Now, open your mind a little, and let's explore some possibilities.
The definition of a God. Let us turn to the good book.
Wikipedia.
"God most commonly refers to the deity worshipped by followers of monotheistic and monolatrist religions, whom they believe to be the creator and ruler of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the various conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent"
Hmm, a tall order one might think. Could such a being exist? Some argue that logically, he could not, however, there is very little logic in denying the possibility that a being or beings of such power and advancement exist that they could indeed, be considered 'God' within our definition. That's not to say that God is a small green alien with a flying saucer and a phaser though that would give some of the overzealous fundamentalists something to sweat over, much to our amusement. But what is this God? A creator? Sure, we create. We create technology, we're getting to the stage of being able to create life in one form or another, using the basic building blocks of nature. Could it not be surmised therefore that it is entirely within the realms of possibility that someone or something created those building blocks? Like a programmer creates a new program, someone must have also created the coding language in which he created it. We scramble for answers. We come up with theories. Some believe in the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Some believe a man in the sky created it everything in 6 days and then mooched around on the 7th. Which is valid?
Neither, and both. They attempt to apply meaning to something where meaning may, or may not exist. Creationism and the Big Bang are in that sense, as bad as each other. They are both merely attempts for us to explain the unexplainable. The Big Bang contradicts our laws of physics (something most catalyse an explosion, therefore something must have been there in the first place, where did that come from, at which point your brain melts). The Creation Story contradicts our laws of physics (Same reasons, who created God after all?). Everything we've so far managed to come up with, from the sublime to the ridiculous, the complex to the simplistic, it's an exercise in desperate straw-clutching. At the end of the day, we don't know jack.
And that's ok. Someone once said that the journey matters more than the destination, it's not the winning, it's the taking part, at least ya tried sport. These explanations of where it all comes from, be they ancient or modern all boil down to the same need. To know. Who'd have thunk it, we've got brains for a reason, and they rather like being used. Those neurons like to be fired, the little grey matter likes a little exercise every once in a while. Just as the Creation Story was a way to explain an unexplainable concept, so is the Big Bang theory. If one were to compare the human mind to a computer, try feeding the Big Bang theory to the medieval man, and it's like trying to shove Bioshock into a Commodore Vic20. Good luck. And what will our children's children's children's grandchildren's children think of our Big Bang theory? My money's on exactly the same thing.
So what am I trying to tell you, stop asking questions, stop looking for answers and just believe whatever the hell suits ya? Absolutely not. Believe whatever suits you, but question it, never stop thinking, never stop asking or learning. In this day and age it seems people are way too willing to believe, or not believe. Belief, or non-belief should be a life-long arduous process and it should end involuntarily, when you fall over dead. Someone (there's a lot of talkative someone's aren't there?) once said 'Never stop believing', I say, "Never stop asking yourself what you believe, and why".
It's time to criticize, so let me load port and starboard cannon and fire a volley at both atheists and theists alike. Believing, or not believing, does not make you intelligent. Smart people do not come to a conclusion on the basis of insubstantial evidence. Smart people do not mindlessly attack other people's beliefs just because they don't conform to their own. Smart people do not assume that their own rigid, poorly formed definitions of logic and faith, reason and belief are mutually exclusive and that if one exists, the other cannot. Smart people think outside the box, not pick fights with those poor souls trapped in it.
What makes you intelligent, is knowing why you believe what you believe. Knowing that you are but one mind, and knowing that at any time you could be proven wrong, only for that person to be proven wrong ad infinitum as we as a race advance.
I suppose you're waiting for my personal beliefs, waiting for this to be some kind of sermon, preaching why my God is better than your God, or non-God. You'll be waiting a long time, because it's not coming. My personal beliefs are just that, personal, they're mine, they belong to me. You cannot take them away from me, only I can. What I can give you though, are my opinions.
Right now shots are being fired. They're not physical shots, they're bullets and shells of ignorance and bigottry. And it's no one-sided battle let me tell you that much. Factionalized camps everywhere you can imagine. Atheists, Theists, Satanists, Christians, Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, Communists, every group you can imagine, all shouting 'Your God/Non-God sucks, mine is better!'. These days, the internet's become their battleground. So much for sharing knowledge, we're sharing ignorance.
The bigottry and the condemnation has to stop. The sad thing is, I'm having to condemn the condemners. Isn't it lowsy how you generally have to be a hypocrite in order to make a point these days? Food for thought. We can look at the extremes and see the simplistic, secular vs sacred, trend-atheists vs fundamentalist evangelical christians, the most common stereotypes. But in reality, it's so much more complicated than that. It's this stereotyping and narrow-minded attitude that prevents us as a race from achieving the greatness we can. I could make as many decrees as I wanted till I was blue in the face, and I'm going to just to let off a little steam mind you,
"Trend-atheist Digg users, shove your agendas where the sun don't shine, refusing the possibility of a supreme-being does not make you a genius or a radical thinker, it makes you a bloody sheep hiding behind a cloak of anonymity"
"Evangelical Fundamentalist morons, get your overly simplistic, judgmental, dogmatic Crayola God out of my face, you have about as much understanding of the universe as a wet lettuce. That does not make you holy, pure, or guaranteed a private booth at the big game in the sky, it makes you a bloody sheep hiding behind a cloak of propaganda that you only believe because you're told to"
Wow, that feels good, I can understand why you internet-bound condemners like it so much. Gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling doesn't it? What, I'm not allowed to indulge in such a guilty pleasure every once in a while? Play fair Wink
Where's my conclusion? Hell if I know. Did you have the mistaken impression this was some carefully constructed plea for tolerance? Absolutely not, it's an angry slap in the face to my peers. Wake the hell up and use your brain, because my God/Non-god/Explosion/Man-in-the-sky/Vic20 gave you it for a reason.
TB.

Al! posted:

I thought he didn't have cancer no more