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End of Shoelace posted:It seems very easy to provoke gamers if a question as naive as that is still haunting them 26 years later. No wonder Undertale is megapopular with players and developers. "Haunting" is a silly way to put it. It's a stock twist that can be effective if given real world context (Spec Ops: The Line) but I don't think Undertale was thought provoking at all and it was cliche long before that came out.
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Mar 27, 2020 20:48
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CD is leaking.
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Mar 27, 2020 20:49
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SCheeseman posted:It isn't haunting, it's an answered question. You can unravell how different games answer and provide context for it, but conceptually the idea of there being bad people that you empathize with less than the hero, as well as the subversion of that, are absolutely ancient. Stories have used that as a device for as long as they have existed. Allright. Let's just talk about the Half-Life series, then. What makes your comment about a hero interesting is that the hero character in Half-Life series is a blank slate that the player controls. Effectively, he IS the player. When people talk about how cool Gordon Freeman is, they are talking about themselves. Marc Laidlaw posted:The one noticeable casualty of the camera’s elimination was the absence of Gordon Freeman himself, our main character, as a visible presence in the game. Apart from the loading screen and the multiplay menus, and on the box itself, you never get to see Gordon Freeman. This introduced an interesting challenge. How could we make a real character out of someone you never saw, and who never uttered so much as one word? Well, we let the player solve that problem for himself. You start the game knowing very little about Gordon; but apparently everyone else knows who you are, and they fill you in on their expectations. As a comparison, you've surely heard people groan at their TV when they make a mistake in Super Mario: "Aw come on, Mario! What are you doing?" Mario becomes a character that the player can reflect on, but strangely enough, nobody congratulates mario when they're excited about clearing a hard level. Marc Llaidlaw knew that playing a videogame is a very egocentric experience for the player. In Half-Life, the players adore themselves as the hero. End of Shoelace fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 20:50
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^^^ Hey Shoelace can you shut the gently caress up, literally everyone wants you to shut up, and you are not shutting up so please stop posting. This could be an otherwise good thread if you just shut up.Communist Thoughts posted:yea i have seen the rations and the newspaper lol. I think part of the reason may be because different people playing on different VR hardware means some really low res displays and perhaps making readable diegetic text was a problem for many users. Now why they couldn't have done audio logs or other forms of enviornmental story telling remains to be seen...
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Mar 27, 2020 21:03
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End of Shoelace posted:As a comparison, you've surely heard people groan at their TV when they make a mistake in Super Mario: The hero is usually identified with. You want to be Indiana Jones. You want to be Flash Gordon. Having a first person perspective amplifies this, something that is pretty self evident; in Germany FPS games are often called Ego Shooters.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:16
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So is the whole game just trying to be nothing but Ravenholm? I'll be honest, it's really starting to annoy me. Ravenholm was poo poo and this spoopy creepy crawly stuff is poo poo too. I've also heard that there's apparently a whole level later in the game that apes those garbage twitch-bait "horror" games ala Outlast, which makes me ever less enthusiastic about continuing it. EDIT: Also besides the absolutely stunning visuals nothing has really impressed me so far, at all. I've seen all of this before, done better, already. I guess also the way you use grabbity gloves is satisfying and unique too.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:26
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Skyarb posted:I think part of the reason may be because different people playing on different VR hardware means some really low res displays and perhaps making readable diegetic text was a problem for many users. Now why they couldn't have done audio logs or other forms of enviornmental story telling remains to be seen... Give every player running below a certain resolution a comically large magnifying glass stuck to their gloves.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:26
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I didn't know about "ego shooters". That seems to cut straight to the point, huh? The point that is most interesting to me is: why are fantasies of being someone who kills without consequence so prevalent in nerd culture? Characters like Rick Sanchez, the Joker, Batman and Thanos who commit horrible acts of violence and kill people endlessly are MEGA popular.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:31
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Jack Trades posted:I've also heard that there's apparently a whole level later in the game that apes those garbage twitch-bait "horror" games ala Outlast, which makes me ever less enthusiastic about continuing it. It's nothing like Outlast, and it's one of the best chapters in any Half-Life, up there with Surface Tension and the Ep2 ambush town. Ravenholm also had incredibly tight design though so your mileage may vary.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:34
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Skyarb posted:^^^ Hey Shoelace can you shut the gently caress up, literally everyone wants you to shut up, and you are not shutting up so please stop posting. This could be an otherwise good thread if you just shut up. Audio logs loving suck and they're always just used as terrible info dumps that the writers couldn't be bothered to actually integrate into the story. I'm glad Valve's writers aren't dumb enough to put them in the game. If anything they should've added more NPCs and more scripted sequences like Half-Life games are known for rather than relegating almost all of the story-important dialogue to Russel and Eli talking into Alyx's ear over a headset. Also, stop policing who gets to post in the thread, jesus christ. So we have a poster practicing literary analysis 101 in a video games thread, who fuckin' cares. Shoelace is allowed to have and present an opinion on the game. If you think it's stupid, boring or worthless or derailing or whatever, use the ignore list instead of being like the rest of the thread and whining about it for posts on end until the thread is actually thoroughly derailed and you feel justified in going "see, see, that's what the guy wanted to happen all along, he was just trolling!"
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Mar 27, 2020 21:36
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End of Shoelace posted:The point that is most interesting to me is: why are fantasies of being someone who kills without consequence so prevalent in nerd culture? Characters like Rick Sanchez, the Joker, Batman and Thanos who commit horrible acts of violence and kill people endlessly are MEGA popular. People like the idea of violence against bad people, it's not exclusive to nerds. Remember the punchening of Richard Spencer?
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Mar 27, 2020 21:38
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Scissorfighter posted:It's nothing like Outlast, and it's one of the best chapters in any Half-Life, up there with Surface Tension and the Ep2 ambush town. Is it really though? Now I haven't played it myself but from the description of a friend who played it the whole section is you just running away and hiding from a spoopy monster that you can't fight against while a bunch of poo poo is placed in your path in the most inconvenient way possible to block your escape. That's like, every bad horror game made in the last 5 years.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:42
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You're not running away. The monster is blind and attracted to sound, it's all about manipulating the monster. He's no threat if you understand how he works. It's not 'oh no invincible monster! Time to run and hide'
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Mar 27, 2020 21:47
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The entire chapter is like a nonstop chain of the predictive design Valve is king of, where they predict what the player will do or is thinking and subvert it in entertaining ways. As soon as the whole scenario kicked off, I got excited because it was exactly the concept I knew they'd be able to exploit in a satisfying way. There's also not a single bit of fat on it.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:48
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Veotax posted:You're not running away. The monster is blind and attracted to sound, it's all about manipulating the monster. He's no threat if you understand how he works. This is why Jeff is my friend! Scissorfighter posted:The entire chapter is like a nonstop chain of the predictive design Valve is king of, where they predict what the player will do or is thinking and subvert it in entertaining ways. As soon as the whole scenario kicked off, I got excited because it was exactly the concept I knew they'd be able to exploit in a satisfying way. There's also not a single bit of fat on it. SCheeseman fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 21:50
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Tip posted:I not only got him into the garbage compactor, I turned it on, crushed him, then opened it up, and walked in around in the bloody goop that was left behind. Alyx made a joke about it and laughed. Same but I said "gently caress you Jeff" and flipped him off. It didn't end well for me.
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Mar 27, 2020 21:58
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Turin Turambar posted:Weee it seems this thread has gone full open spoilers. Thanks for saying the content of the vault... Yeah, I didnt even mean to look at that, just moused over it on accident and now I'm pretty pissed 
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Mar 27, 2020 22:03
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Finished the game up last night at right about 17 hours, at least 3 of those spent staring at setpieces and studying debris. Here’s some thoughts: 1) gently caress the Combine. CPs yelling “Compliance acquired, do not shoot” and then immediately opening fire when you leave cover was so underhanded the first time. I also vaguely recall the first combine you meet having murdered a citizen and saying “I’m sorry” before being killed, although I’m unsure if I interrupted the scripted scene or something Along with this I don’t see what Shoelace said wrong. The writing for CPs is a lot more detailed than in Alyx than any previous half life game, both by in-combat dialogue and scripted conversations. To say that Valve spent time humanizing is hardly a controversial statement, especially since they’re still shown to be hatable quislings regardless. Unless I missed an especially bad post, I’m confused why so many posts in this thread are making GBS threads on them instead of talking about the game 2) The amount of commentary in the game about worker exploitation (vorts being used as biological batteries, humans being used as cannonfodder, antlions being milked for blood, the pre-war quarantine areas being filled with notes complaining of poor working conditions etc), and I’d love to read someone smarter’s interpretations about it. 3. I’d also be interested in knowing how much psychological and voice feedback is taken into account during the game. Several things happened, like audibly saying “Whoa” and having Alyx repeat it immediately in dialogue. It was almost 4 AM during final fight with vort magic and after dying several times, a combine said something along the lines of “Alyx is time sensitive” and the combat went a lot smoother afterward. Very odd, but possibly coincidental. Ending spoilers: 4. Gordon is unable/unwilling to come back? Do you need to WANT to leave stasis? Was he standing beside the Gman an illusion or was it actually him, and was that an implication that they were one in the same? Did Alyx’ hiring and the after-credits ending mean that she’s taken over Gordon’s consciousness for Episode 3?
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Mar 27, 2020 22:26
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Apathy420 posted:Ending spoilers: I haven't played HL2 or the episodes in a while, but I thought it was referring to how the vortigaunts get him back from the G-man using their alien powers, so that's why G-man couldn't use him anymore, so he was like eh gently caress him anyway, I'll just get Alyx instead
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Mar 27, 2020 22:49
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Beat it yesterday. In my opinion it's possibly the best game I've ever played, I mean holy gently caress the immersion they managed to achieve!
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Mar 27, 2020 22:53
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Does the mic aka breathing or talking actually work and give me away to enemies?
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Mar 27, 2020 23:15
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Right, I'm grabbing my torch and going back in
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Mar 27, 2020 23:19
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SabinBlitz posted:Does the mic aka breathing or talking actually work and give me away to enemies? There is at least one enemy that is true for, but I didn't test it on every enemy.
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Mar 27, 2020 23:27
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I just want to reiterate how good the ending was. The kind of game I wish I could forget so I could experience again!Ruflux posted:Also, stop policing who gets to post in the thread, jesus christ. So we have a poster practicing literary analysis 101 in a video games thread, who fuckin' cares. Shoelace is allowed to have and present an opinion on the game. If you think it's stupid, boring or worthless or derailing or whatever, use the ignore list instead of being like the rest of the thread and whining about it for posts on end until the thread is actually thoroughly derailed and you feel justified in going "see, see, that's what the guy wanted to happen all along, he was just trolling!" Stop policing how I can police others! Skyarb fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 23:29
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Skyarb posted:I just want to reiterate how good the ending was. The kind of game I wish I could forget so I could experience again! I had to play the whole game seated because I'm too sick to stand for more than five minutes, so I'm pretty excited to play through it again standing once I'm better. Oh, and I played it on Rift S but I should have an Index next month. Gonna be a whole new experience for me. I gotta say, despite having some big limitations and drawbacks to the VR implementation it's still the best VR game out there and better than Half-Life 2. I'm really looking forward to the modding community making tweaks to the game that address all my issues with the VR implementation. It's now my second favorite game of all time, right behind the original Deus Ex. If a VR Deus Ex game comes out that's better than the original I will never leave VR again.
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Mar 27, 2020 23:41
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SabinBlitz posted:Does the mic aka breathing or talking actually work and give me away to enemies? There was one time when I did the jump down too far and it turned to a red skull and Alyx said "I can't survive that jump" out loud and the combine guy below me didn't even notice.
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Mar 27, 2020 23:42
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I am back in sunlight! OK this is much better for me, much more HL in vibe, loving it again
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Mar 28, 2020 00:23
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Lemming posted:Ending spoilers too: No you're right, it's a badly written ending. Everyone's too bedazzled by the VR experience to care.
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Mar 28, 2020 00:30
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Lemming posted:Ending spoilers too: The dude clearly exists outside the bounds of normal space time, I don't think it works the way you're thinking. What we saw was simply the version that existed before G-Man's intervention, G-Man had to allow that to happen or he couldn't undo it to get what he wanted from Alyx. What tripped me up for a bit is that if he exists unbound from spacetime, it doesn't do any good to lock him up if he ever gets free because he could still be active and loving with you in the current time where he's locked up. But, I think the solution there is that he can't exist at two points in the same time. So after he's freed he can't go back and do anything during the time that he was stuck in. I would be interested to see how you capture someone who already knows the future, but I'm guessing that using vortigaunt powers was pivotal there.
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Mar 28, 2020 00:49
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Tip posted:The dude clearly exists outside the bounds of normal space time, I don't think it works the way you're thinking. What we saw was simply the version that existed before G-Man's intervention, G-Man had to allow that to happen or he couldn't undo it to get what he wanted from Alyx. Continued ending spoilers: Yeah I mean from what I can understand it seems like the most likely thing is that the G-man was never contained in the original timeline, but some other external event kicked off that let the Combine capture him in the Alyx timeline. I'm guessing there's another entity of some sort involved since it doesn't really seem to me like the Combine would be capable of that on their own. There's definitely some serious time fuckery going on. Maybe Aperture or something idk
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Mar 28, 2020 01:01
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Had my first VR faceplant due to this game. Ducking behind some barrels, a grenade hits near-by. Want to grab it and toss it back. The inevitable happened. There was a low profile wall that wasn't IRL. I guess I was into it. Also, I'm at Chapter 7. I hear I'm gonna regret it.
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Mar 28, 2020 01:10
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Haven't beaten the game yet but I love that being aggressive during firefights are super satisfying.
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Mar 28, 2020 01:34
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Just finished chapter 7 I crushed that farty motherfucker so quick.
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Mar 28, 2020 05:04
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Has anyone else run into performance issues with HL: Alyx? My rig is overkill for the game but I still get the "Low GPU Memory" message and some terribly nauseating stuttering at times, it looks like it might have to do with the way assets are loaded or something because textures will sometimes completely fail to load and every time I load a save the performance tanks, even bringing up the weapon select menu will cause performance hiccups. Really confused. A cursory search has a bunch of others with the same issues and it doesn't seem to be connected with their hardware.
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Mar 28, 2020 05:46
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sigher posted:Has anyone else run into performance issues with HL: Alyx? My rig is overkill for the game but I still get the "Low GPU Memory" message and some terribly nauseating stuttering at times, it looks like it might have to do with the way assets are loaded or something because textures will sometimes completely fail to load and every time I load a save the performance tanks, even bringing up the weapon select menu will cause performance hiccups. Really confused. A cursory search has a bunch of others with the same issues and it doesn't seem to be connected with their hardware. Do you have anything else open that might be using some of your gpu memory? I had that issue the first time I played, but closing the 50 chrome tabs I had open fixed it.
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Mar 28, 2020 05:49
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I only have Discord running; I'm curious if it's because I'm using a Quest with the Link cable because it then has to run the Oculus Home Environment, Steam VR Environment and then the game at the same time. It's kinda clusterfuck. However, just running the game wirelessly to my Quest I still have performance issues as well. The strange part is I've used both methods and had great results but now it just seems to be happening constantly, even on a fresh reset.
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Mar 28, 2020 05:54
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Lemming posted:Continued ending spoilers: Unfortunately The second you get into time stuff, typically, logic just doesn't really work. You kind of have to just give them benefit of the doubt that this is how time apparently works. I know its kind of a lazy crutch and does detract from the story telling a bit but I stopped fighting time travel paradox stuff a long time ago and though yes this is a braindead answer: its just more enjoyable to not think about it. I am also likely giving this game more credit than I would give others. It will be interesting to see if he affects time often or if this is like, the one and only time so they could retcon eli being alive
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Mar 28, 2020 06:12
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sigher posted:I only have Discord running; I'm curious if it's because I'm using a Quest with the Link cable because it then has to run the Oculus Home Environment, Steam VR Environment and then the game at the same time. It's kinda clusterfuck. However, just running the game wirelessly to my Quest I still have performance issues as well. Look up the stupid auto supersampling menu and disable it then use like 100%. I'm pretty sure I had the same issue, it's srupid as gently caress they basically stealth sabotage you
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Mar 28, 2020 06:48
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Lemming posted:Look up the stupid auto supersampling menu and disable it then use like 100%. I'm pretty sure I had the same issue, it's srupid as gently caress they basically stealth sabotage you Didn't seem to make anything better or worse.
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Mar 28, 2020 07:57
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I was wondering how the game ammo worked, as you never have too much but also the designers couldn't use melee as fallback, as there isn't any here. Well, it's easy: they cheat. The game dynamically spawn more ammo for at least the pistol in the next "looting point" if you pass a threshold. There was a place where I killed two barnacles with the pistol, I advanced and found two pistol magazines in a garbage bin. I reloaded and this time I didn't kill the barnacles and that time the magazines were not there.
Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 11:31
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