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Loxbourne fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 10:24
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Kibayasu posted:I hope there was at least a paragraph dedicated to the concept of "What if two guns?" "...two guns?" STEVE-227 stared at the lead scientist incomprehensibly, eyes imperceptivity flickering between the man's beaming face and the gun he held in his left hand. Not that you could tell under the face-concealing helmet. "Yes!" said the lab-coated supporting character, almost certainly doomed to be shot at the end of the tutorial. "One in each hand, like so." "Like...a left-handed gun AND a right-handed gun?" "At the same time!" STEVE-227 gaped as he looked from one hand, clutching a MILI-TECH 4300A "STORMBOLT" Close Combat Defence Weapon...to the other, also clutching a KruegArms 500 10.76mm RX-t-98 pistol. He experimentally flexed one trigger finger...and then the other....and then, in a moment of transcendence, both together. "You've given us the power to Finish This Fight(TM)" he said, fistbumping the man so hard he flew backwards into a shelf rack of SMGs. Just then a dozen Covenant burst into the room and shot the scientist fifteen times in the head. STEVE-227 screamed in anguish as the man's genius was denied to future generations and smacked the purple-armoured aliens over the head with a rocket launcher. Loxbourne fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Apr 20, 2021 |
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Apr 20, 2021 10:30
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See I was going to go look in the book and see if there was a suitable line, but why would I bother now? It won't beat that.
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Apr 20, 2021 13:29
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:Hey at least he got his own box. Most of the other human characters got rolled up into miscellaneous. And then it turns out the new guns were twenty years old anyway.
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Apr 20, 2021 14:09
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Out of curiosity, I found that my local library had the first Halo book and checked it out. It's... a very dark book, fair warning. The Covenant are portrayed as absolutely horrific to the point that it's pretty jarring how easily you wipe them out in the game and how comedic they sometimes are in the game, and the first Elite that John meets (the first Elite ever encountered by humanity, at least according to this book) is portrayed as his complete equal and drat near kills him in a fair fight. They got a legit good sci-fi author to do the book, too.
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Apr 20, 2021 14:12
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Cythereal posted:It's... a very dark book, fair warning. The Covenant are portrayed as absolutely horrific to the point that it's pretty jarring how easily you wipe them out in the game and how comedic they sometimes are in the game, and the first Elite that John meets (the first Elite ever encountered by humanity, at least according to this book) is portrayed as his complete equal and drat near kills him in a fair fight. It's worth noting the comedy is almost unique to the first game. It won't be back in Halo 2, beyond maybe some Grunt babble and some Sarge dialogue. H2 goes more for smirky one-liners and then the setting sets a firm course due Tom Clancy and kicks in the afterburners. A funny thing about Halo 1 is that the period it was released, and its ties to a Bungie who were beloved for the Marathon and Myth titles, meant it crossed over with the last flickering embers of a whole older era of internet fandom. There were Halo groups on Usenet, of all things, busily dissecting the plot and game mechanics. One of the very first things I saw on the internet was a Usenet discussion of that very novelisation, the posters on alt.games.halo going over the novel's fight scenes to work out which difficulty setting was "canon". From memory they took a sequence early on where Master Chief fires a certain number of shots to kill a Grunt, and from there concluded the novel is being "played" on Hard difficulty.
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Apr 20, 2021 14:23
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Frenzy, I'm pretty sure you indicated that you won't be doing Reach for the LP, but are you going to do ODST? I'm working my way through the series, just finished 3, and was looking at ODST next followed by Reach. Figure I'll finish off the MCC with 4.
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Apr 20, 2021 20:59
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CzarChasm posted:Frenzy, I'm pretty sure you indicated that you won't be doing Reach for the LP, but are you going to do ODST? I'm working my way through the series, just finished 3, and was looking at ODST next followed by Reach. Figure I'll finish off the MCC with 4. I'm definitely planning on doing ODST. I'm still sorta waffling on Reach. I stand by my argument that it doesn't "fit" with the storyline of all the other games, but I'm feeling like my answer to "why not just play them in release order?" isn't all that convincing even to myself.
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Apr 21, 2021 01:35
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Cythereal posted:the first Elite that John meets (the first Elite ever encountered by humanity, at least according to this book) is portrayed as his complete equal and drat near kills him in a fair fight. OK I think I've held my tongue enough: they retconned the early books to gently caress and back later on, and actually put out reprints of them with corrections; for instance, this Elite was nowhere near the first encountered by humanity, and in fact they'd been seen in combat operations pretty much since the start of the war.
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Apr 21, 2021 02:10
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Yeah, I'm researching some of the Halo canon for a couple other bonus videos and it can be very frustrating sometimes. It's often less a canon and more three retcons wearing a trenchcoat. Like, I've already pointed out that the whole "Master Chief is the last surviving Spartan" thing is complete nonsense, but it's actually like half of them that are alive at the start of Halo 1. The books keep finding reasons why Spartans who were presumed dead are actually alive on secret missions or other weird circumstances. Kinda like how the Star Wars EU kept coming up with Jedi who escaped Order 66. But again, that's why I'm trying not to talk about all that stuff too too much.
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Apr 21, 2021 02:46
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Now you know how people who catalogue Destiny's lore feel, a lot of the early things were clearly written just for flavor and nothing more, but then people started linking things and Bungie then went "oh poo poo, people are actually paying attention" and now the entire Destiny universe has turned into a never-ending trainwreck of 3D chessmasters constantly fighting each other.
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Apr 22, 2021 13:18
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Hahaha yeah I never got into the Destiny lore. I had a hard enough time keeping track of the details that were actually given to you as part of the campaign, much less when it's inferred by a poem that's split up into the flavour text of 4 different items. Wasn't there a goon who wrote most of that lore though, and helped at least the SA thread clear some stuff up?
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Apr 22, 2021 20:55
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Judge Tesla posted:Now you know how people who catalogue Destiny's lore feel, a lot of the early things were clearly written just for flavor and nothing more, but then people started linking things and Bungie then went "oh poo poo, people are actually paying attention" and now the entire Destiny universe has turned into a never-ending trainwreck of 3D chessmasters constantly fighting each other. I also hear that Bungie are trying to cram in ties to the Marathon trilogy in Destiny as well. That'll create an even bigger clusterfuck.
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Apr 22, 2021 21:39
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Mr. Fortitude posted:I also hear that Bungie are trying to cram in ties to the Marathon trilogy in Destiny as well. That'll create an even bigger clusterfuck.
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Apr 22, 2021 22:08
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seat of their pants writing has been bungie's approach to story and lore writing since pretty much day one from marathon to myth to oni to halo. it doesn't surprise me to hear that they took the same approach to destiny, haha.
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Apr 22, 2021 22:20
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AriadneThread posted:seat of their pants writing has been bungie's approach to story and lore writing since pretty much day one from marathon to myth to oni to halo. it doesn't surprise me to hear that they took the same approach to destiny, haha. Has anyone ever figured out what the hell happened in Marathon: Infinity
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Apr 23, 2021 00:44
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dismas posted:Has anyone ever figured out what the hell happened in Marathon: Infinity You stop the sun thing, some time later the universe ends. Somebody hunted down Greg Kirkpatrick a while back and he did a reddit AMA. He didn't remember any details.
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Apr 23, 2021 02:38
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I always got the impression that when the Pfhor unleashed the trih xeem at the end of Marathon 2 that they unleashed the W'rkncacnter and it proceeded to start getting all Eldritch and unraveling reality and time. Infinity is you bouncing around various timelines trying to set things right and prevent the W'rkncacnter from being unleashed.
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Apr 23, 2021 02:45
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If I had the wherewithal and any talent at those games whatsoever it would be fun to do a let’s play of them. Hell, start with Pathways Into Darkness
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Apr 23, 2021 02:54
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Same. I loving love Marathon and grew up on it. Also some of the fan content was incredible. Marathon RED, Eternal, Evil, etc. Lots of great stuff.
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Apr 23, 2021 02:57
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I always got the impression that when the Pfhor unleashed the trih xeem at the end of Marathon 2 that they unleashed the W'rkncacnter and it proceeded to start getting all Eldritch and unraveling reality and time. Infinity is you bouncing around various timelines trying to set things right and prevent the W'rkncacnter from being unleashed. Those are definitely words that you used.
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Apr 23, 2021 04:51
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malkav11 posted:Those are definitely words that you used. The plot to the marathon trilogy owns
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Apr 23, 2021 05:32
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dismas posted:The plot to the marathon trilogy owns I never beat the later Marathons but they're still my favorite Bungie games tbh. No shade on Halo or Destiny, but neither feels nearly as ahead of their time to me, or nearly as narratively rich.
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Apr 23, 2021 05:55
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malkav11 posted:I never beat the later Marathons but they're still my favorite Bungie games tbh. No shade on Halo or Destiny, but neither feels nearly as ahead of their time to me, or nearly as narratively rich. Destiny's narrative is split across weapon/armour descriptions, pixel hunting for very obscure lore dumps in overworld locations and story blurbs on the main Destiny site. Most of the best stuff can be found on their website and fans are forever going "This is great but why isn't it in-game?"
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Apr 23, 2021 07:03
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Judge Tesla posted:Most of the best stuff can be found on their website and fans are forever going "This is great but why isn't it in-game?" Probably because Bungie have learned the hard way that their storylines will be experienced by both hardcore lore fans and the itchy trigger finger crowd, who are bored and repelled by long stretches of story or dialogue. There are more of the latter than the former, they have money, and they are surprisingly easy to offend and drive off. We will see in upcoming games just how much time and effort Bungie put into making the UNSC exactly like the US military. You could argue that was a shrewd bit of branding, given the time period the series was being released (heck, at the time Halo 1 came out, an antagonist race motivated by religion was actually considered new and interesting). It certainly made Microsoft's marketing a lot easier. So bluntly, the reason Destiny hasn't done as well as Halo is not that the storyline is convoluted per se, it's that it doesn't have an easily-understood zero-effort path through it. And of course, doesn't have the US marine corps in it.
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Apr 23, 2021 09:34
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Judge Tesla posted:Destiny's narrative is split across weapon/armour descriptions, pixel hunting for very obscure lore dumps in overworld locations and story blurbs on the main Destiny site. I mean, I definitely like the Destiny lore that's actually accessible, but...most of it isn't. Not least because they keep doing time-limited event-based lore stuff.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:06
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Judge Tesla posted:the entire Destiny universe has turned into a never-ending trainwreck of 3D chessmasters constantly fighting each other. This was my impression when I played Destiny 2 in free mode and tried looking up who the hell these people were and why they were fighting. Just an endless procession of 536th dimensional chess played between godlike beings and the actual player characters and what they're doing are barely a footnote.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:10
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 Halo 2 is pretty obviously the sequel to the breakout hit Halo: Combat Evolved. Developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios, Halo 2 was released on November 9, 2004. The sequel seeks to continue the story of the Master Chief and humanity at war with the alien Covenant, as well as the new complications from the existence of a nearly unstoppable parasitic plague, The Flood, and ancient doomsday ringworlds, the Halos. Halo 2 is an excellent sequel in a lot of ways. Bungie managed to improve the graphics and mechanics of the original Halo, and added new characters and game elements while keeping the general formula and feel that made the first game great. With the addition of online multiplayer, Halo's popularity further exploded and it was the most played game on Xbox Live for a full two years, and remains the best-selling game released on the first generation Xbox. However in other ways it's a little bit of a sophmore slump, what in hockey would be called a Stanley Cup hangover. Brimming with confidence from the success of Halo 1, Bungie was maybe not as focused or disciplined as they should have been. During development a lot of work had to be scrapped and restarted from scratch, sometimes even after having been shown to the public. Several levels and the original planned ending to the game were cut in order to save time. Deadlines and release dates had to be repeatedly pushed back, to the point that eventually a Microsoft executive, Peter Moore, had "November 9" tattooed on his arm to prove that was the real release date. Still, what we ended up getting was a great game that slots very fittingly as the middle entry in a trilogy.  00 - Sgt. Johnson and the Journey Home 01 - Cairo Station 02 - Outskirts 03 - Metropolis 04 - The Arbiter 05 - Oracle XX - Screwing Around on Earth 06 - Delta Halo 07 - Regret XX - Humanity, the UNSC, and Spartans 08 - Sacred Icon 09 - Quarantine Zone XX - The Covenant and Arbiters 10 - Gravemind 11 - Uprising 12 - High Charity 13 - The Great Journey XX - Bonus Content  Announce Trailer Theatrical Trailer TV Commercial E3 2003 In-Game Demonstration FrenzyTheKillbot fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Nov 10, 2021 |
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Apr 23, 2021 21:32
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 01 - Cairo Station In the aftermath of Halo, the Chief is honored at an awards ceremony, but the Covenant show up to crash the party.
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Apr 23, 2021 21:43
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It's entirely possible to have a geosynchronous orbit that isn't based around the equator, it just won't be geostationary. Regardless though, the cluster is a few thousand miles south of the stations' namesakes, you can see the Nile delta in the opening cutscene and it's definitely not directly below the Cairo.
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Apr 23, 2021 22:21
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Having spent close to a decade making GBS threads all over the CEA graphics at every available opportunity, I was absolutely blown away when I played H2A. Everything feels very faithful to the original game and what I feel it "should" look like. And wow the cutscenes in particular are incredible. Look at that explosion the Chief flies through with the bomb, holy poo poo.
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Apr 23, 2021 23:06
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Oh man, Halo 2 rules. Out of the original trilogy it's probably the one I hold the most fond memories of. I played the poo poo out of the first one, but that was on friends' copies and mostly consisted of squinting at split-screen deathmatches on garbage tv's. I got a OG XBox just in time for 2's release and played the hell out of the campaign over and over until my disk literally cracked. While it might have fallen short Bungie's ambitions in some ways, the steps up it takes from Combat Evolved really make it a smoother, more satisfying experience over all imo. Storywise, the intro cinematic is a classic and that blunt but effective contrast between the Elite Commander and Master Chief's returns home is probably some of the best simple storytelling Bungie's ever done. There's a lot being set up in those Covenant scenes, and Halo 2's dives into the dynamics and workings of the Covenant really do wonders fleshing out an enemy who were a lil' underserved by CE. Gameplay wise so far, Dual Welding kicks rear end. It really sells the power fantasy of being a Spartan to pick up a pair of Plasma Rifles and just go to town, and the combinations you can play around with really help spice things up, only getting better as the series goes on and adds more one-handers to mix and match. Personally I don't think it breaks the Golden Triangle that hard, rather supplements it in a naturalistic way, you're giving up flexibility for more power after all. Also gameplay wise, loving RIP the Assault Rifle for now. Personally I feel like the Battle Rifle and SMG are way better replacements, especially the Battle Rifle being one of the most satisfying guns to use. I hazily remember a lot of gnashing of teeth from the Assault Rifle being replaced, and I honestly never understood it. Beyond it's good visual design, the thing was always an rear end to actually use, even our dumbass kid brains figured out it was garbage from a butt back during those late night multiplayer rounds.
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Apr 24, 2021 00:20
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Ah yes, Halo 2. This is the one I spent the most time with, especially since it came out during my freshman year in college and everyone was all over it. I absolutely love the dumb bomb delivery cutscene, simply because it is pure action movie nonsense and I love it. And out of the new weapons, like many, I fell in love with the battle rifle and tried to use it as far as I could before needing something else. But yeah, Drones are really loving annoying. I appreciate the decision to add a flying enemy to spice things up, but did they really have to make one that refuses to hold still for more than 2 minutes? I honestly lost track how much ammo I burned through just trying to hit one drat Drone.
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Apr 24, 2021 01:18
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So we mentioned Sgt Johnson surviving the first game, but there's also the covenant commander now. "We're alone," huh Cortana? Maybe the swap from the sole survivor horror movie ending to action movie bomb goofiness is a lot more jarring to me because I didn't seriously play through the story modes until halo 3 was out. I got that back to back rather than the wait everyone else had. That said this level is amazing and everything said about the opening and ending cutscenes is true.
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Apr 24, 2021 02:20
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The Covenant commander surviving doesn't surprise me, they had a whole fleet at Halo and I gather they skipped out when Halo blew. An alarming lack of point defense on the battle stations, I must note.
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Apr 24, 2021 02:25
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Man I completely forgot about this level. In my head the game starts on Earth.
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Apr 24, 2021 02:47
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Cythereal posted:The Covenant commander surviving doesn't surprise me, they had a whole fleet at Halo and I gather they skipped out when Halo blew. They've got point defence, it's just the Covenant have a lot more boarding craft.
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Apr 24, 2021 03:25
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halo 2 is the one game in the series i missed out on the first time around, and yet it's also the one i was most excited for. the ilovebees ARG that hyped up the release really captured my imagination as a high schooler
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Apr 24, 2021 05:49
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Those cutscenes are extremely shiny but they certainly went all out on them.
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Apr 24, 2021 06:40
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I'm shocked at how good the original graphics look in Halo 2. It's the first "old" game with realistic graphics that looks about how I remember it looking in my head The criticism of their level design in the last game must have really stung, because Bungie even gave levels gimmicks like low gravity this time around
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Apr 24, 2021 15:22
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