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Guy Fawkes posted:Seriously, what the... were the writers trying to accomplish, here? "Hey man, it would be loving sick to do a mission that's like Alien"
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Jan 28, 2024 00:21
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Qwertycoatl posted:Really they should have just leaned into cartoonishly evil, people don't play the zerg campaign in starcraft because they want sympathetic characters who are good at heart I mean, they COULD have done that, too. Have de-zerged Kerrigan no longer have the mental bandwidth to 100% control all of the Zerg, so more individual traits are coming to the fore, but they're still touched by Kerrigan having regained human characteristics like "empathy" and "compassion," so the part of the Swarm controlled by Kerrigan is struggling to deal with the engineered impulses that want them to CONSUME EVERYTHING and the Kerrigan impulses that drive them to be less ravenous and more considerate. But that's not what they're doing either. The whole failing isn't that Kerrigan is good or evil, or that the Swarm is good or evil, it's that the writers don't seem to actually understand what they're writing and what the appropriate tone for it is. They write Evil Kerrigan and Evil Swarm but seemingly keep trying to present her as the injured party in the genocides she's getting on.
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Jan 28, 2024 01:19
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On the one hand, this mission looks like a lot of fun. On the other... I feel like they could have left Kerrigan as a Zerg, because that's what she acts like, really.
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Jan 28, 2024 02:39
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another fun fact: I believe most of the protoss in that section at the end right where the escape pods start are actually hallucinations created by those sentries.
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Jan 28, 2024 03:50
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Intermission 4   The protoss will never forgive what I've done here. But I'm not going to wait for them to come after me. I'll strike first.Spoiler alert: There's like... one more ZvP mission in all of Heart, not counting evolution missions, and it doesn't involve what happened on Kaldir. Sarah Kerrigan has, for all intents and purposes, slaughtered the entire Kaldir expedition and got away scot-free.  Now that we're done here, the Mission tab has changed to a Travel tab. >Talk to Izsha.   She died bravely, trying to save her friends. Why do you care how the protoss died? I will kill anyone in my way. That doesn't mean I enjoy it. Oh drat, an actual conversation on revenge, I wonder what comeback Kerrigan has up her sle-  Figures.  >Talk to Abathur.    Clever. Lateral thinking. Protoss not able to be infested. But can still be host to foreign organism. Origin of parasite unknown. I made it Abathur. You're not the only one who can spin sequences. Revelation. Will continue work.Video: Roach Evolution  Might as well knock this out before we leave.         Suddenly, Roaches!    Essence count: 16   The Scantipede deals 20 damage a hit, and if it kills a Roach it'll pop out two babies.  But that's what the burrow hint was about.   Essence count: 17    The Murloc Marine and Mini Diablo from Wings are both here. It even plays the Murloc's signature sound when I zoom in!   Roachlings are melee units that last for 30 seconds, but have more health than an upgraded Zergling and far lower damage.  However, they can rush in first and draw aggro, at which point the rest of your army can move in without getting attacked. The new enemies will then spawn even more Roachlings.  This makes Corpser Roaches good at a rolling assault, using the momentum from one fight to start the next.   This last bit has protoss warp in, which makes things even easier for me since I can get a few kills before they finish warping and get some extra Roachlings.   Essence count: 18      There's a big speedup effect going here as the pool dries up and a few Roaches explode.     I sense protoss forces nearby. Let's see these new roaches in combat. Vile Roaches are mildly cracked, slowing almost every enemy by 75%.    Hey look, two Archons and four High Templar! An actually challenging fight!  Oh wait, the Templar instantly decide to fuse and give me enough time to kill the first two Archons before they can finish merging.    The Stalkers are annoying, as they'll happily Blink around and force me to waste time chasing them.   And finally, some Colossi.    Must prepare sequences. Returning to evolution pit.  Await decision. Essence Count: 19 Unlike the Zergling, the Roach evolutions are both perfectly usable. The Corpser lets you turn the enemy into your own frontline wall, cutting down on damage going to units you actually care about.  While the Vile Roach kneecaps enemy attack speed, cutting down on damage going to units you actually care about. While Roaches are mostly powercrept by Swarm Queens (seriously, Swarm Queens have better defensive stats if you don't take the +3 armor at half health mutation), this still makes them worth adding to my armies. Just toss in 3-4 Roaches so that I'm constantly getting those bonus effects.  I personally prefer the Vile Roach.  Time to get off this frozen rock. Cinematic: Birthworld  ...After Zeratul steps in to vomit some exposition and feed us the plot again.  Don't pay any attention to all the bodies on Kaldir, Z-man. I swear they were here when I showed up!   Kerrigan is just chilling with that one Zergling from the end of Umoja.   What's that, Fido? You smell the plot?     And Sarah Kerrigan, ever the diplomatic sort-   Immediately goes for the throat. You can't even chalk this up to her whole 'I'll attack the protoss first' thing from a few minutes ago, since this cinematic plays regardless of which planet you do first! If we went for Char, than this would be the first time she's seen any protoss since the fight at New Gettysburg!  Hell, the only way Kerrigan could even know Zeratul exists would be if Jim told her, and he'd probably bring up the fact that Zeratul told Jimmy to save her in the first place.  Kerrigan Force Grabs him.  And yeets him into a pillar.         Do you think the Leviathan can feel itself get damaged during this fight?  Or are two people just so insignificant compared to it that it barely feels a faint muscle twitch.      Zeratul finally does something!    And just starts beaming lore directly into her mind! None of that Ihan Crystal poo poo!  ARE YOU loving READY!  FOR poo poo TO GET SO GOD drat STUPID!  the literal loving manual for SC1 posted:Traveling thousands of light years into the drat, DON'T THAT poo poo LOOK FIERY?  still the loving manual posted:Although drat, DON'T THOSE LOOK PARASITIC?     The little guy crawls through a small tunnel.  But it ain't enough to save him.     So yeah, the entire backstory of the zerg has been taken out back and shot.  The Overmind assimilating all life on Zerus? Nah, Mister Dark Voice hosed off with a few primal zerg and let the rest do whatever, I guess.    Oh, and the primal zerg have Fantasy Evolution as their superpower.  Case in point: This one eats another primal and... instantly grows more eyes?  It even starts glowing.  Dramatic zoom-out!       After clearing one world, Zerus opens up.  So we can finally go deal with the Dominion a bit.   You must go to that place, Kerrigan. Learn its secrets and take its power....Or take advantage of Zeratul giving us the plot for two games in a row to go get Kerrigan a power boost. 
BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 04:23
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The Roach evolution is the most frustrating one to me. You've got the Corpser, which is decent against Terran for drawing fire, and you've got the Vile, which is very strong against Protoss, especially Stalkers and Immortals, as we saw in the update. But unfortunately, like the update says we only fight Protoss once more after this so Corpser is the better choice. Kind of obnoxious.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:33
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We get a new NPC on the bridge on Char, please vote Char.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:35
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I'm not gonna lie: my inner four-year-old that watched videos of dinosaurs fighting loved the whole thing with the Primal Zerg. Is it loving stupid? Yes.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:45
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I mean, Kerrigan certainly told Valerian that she doesn't remember anything from her time as the Queen of Blades... but there have been lots of hints that while that's MOSTLY true, she does retain some flashes here and there. I strongly suspect that "Zeratul = very dangerous enemy I've fought multiple times" is one of those flashes she remembers. And yes, let's hit up Char. It belongs to the Zerg drat it, and we are the Swarm. Let's start into a bit of that whole "Revenge" thing that's our entire motivation for doing literally anything at this point.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:48
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Voting Char also has the advantage of keeping all of the stupid poo poo on Zerus at bay for just a little while longer.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:49
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gohuskies posted:We get a new NPC on the bridge on Char, please vote Char. On the other hand, Zerus has The Stupid Part of the plot of Heart. Yeah let's go to Char, I'm too sober for The Stupid right now.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:50
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Oh, also, I could buy the idea of, over eons, the volcanic ash world of Zerus eventually becoming a fertile utopia. I mean, volcanic eruptions make soil extremely fertile on Earth, so I could see maybe somehow, uh, seeds or something coming from... somewhere, I guess? Life, uh, finds a way, yadda yadda. Really they probably just didn't want to retread Char, but I can squint at it and turn my brain off and kinda accept it. No idea what's going on with the Primal Zerg, though. I guess you take the initial Zerg parasite and leave it to its own devices, each infesting a host but without any broader connection, and you get... Nope, yeah, still not getting it. But to me, really, the Primal Zerg's greatest sin is just not being very interesting. I could forgive a lot of dumb retcons for something if it's cool enough, but the sort of "what if space magic Lamarckian evolution big lizards" just doesn't do it for me. So yeah, I also voted for Char first.
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Jan 28, 2024 04:51
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Both roach upgrades are fantastic, which really just makes a bunch of the other evolution missions having a clear winner or just both being meh stand out even more.Regalingualius posted:I'm not gonna lie: my inner four-year-old that watched videos of dinosaurs fighting loved the whole thing with the Primal Zerg. Yeah, for all the stupid plot stuff, I forgive Zerus for the primal zerg designs. E: Between the primal zerg and all the evolution mission variants, the best part of heart was getting to play with the 5 billion new models in the editor. FoolyCharged fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jan 28, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 05:25
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I still wanna know what the Aberration is; and I want to wait a little while longer before the wheels apparently come off. Voting Char. I dunno maybe it's because I was a kid but Zeratul is cool in my memories. I hated him in WoL though and it seems this game is a repeat. He doesn't come across as being mysterious and having his own motivations, he feels like a deus ex machina. Choreography on the fistfight was neat but it also sits wrong with me. I don't feel like being a powerful psychic is about punching people really hard; it's the kind of thing where maybe a powerful psychic would use the force (because that's what it is in Starcraft, at this stage) to punch people really hard, but a really powerful psychic would sit in her chair and make someone's head explode with a thought. Real power doesn't exert itself.
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Jan 28, 2024 05:32
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Zeratul the unit in sc1 was a dark Templar that could take serious punishment and got a boost to the already ludicrous dt base damage and was perma cloaked and... I don't think he was that interesting story wise(although he was definitely more interesting than being a prophecy bot in SCII), but he stuck out and it was easy to get attached just because he was so fun to use. The SC2 version is still pretty strong, but it doesn't have as much impact because the damage isn't quite so silly, and hitting single targets for silly damage isn't as exciting as merely solid aoe damage with how armies clump up so much in 2.
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Jan 28, 2024 05:39
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FoolyCharged posted:Both roach upgrades are fantastic, which really just makes a bunch of the other evolution missions having a clear winner or just both being meh stand out even more. The Roach upgrades are probably the best Evolutions at a glance since they definitely show off two differing ideas about how to use roaches. I do think that after a certain point Roaches definitely don't tank nearly as well, but the Creeper at least makes sense as a mass tanking unit, and clearly there's a distinction where if roaches are really more of a supplement to your forces you'd probably prefer the vile roach since you only need a few scattered throught your forces to be effective. JohnKilltrane posted:No idea what's going on with the Primal Zerg, though. I guess you take the initial Zerg parasite and leave it to its own devices, each infesting a host but without any broader connection, and you get... Nope, yeah, still not getting it. There's.. a reason, but as always, and I hate that I quote myself here: quote:We will get to that. It will not be satisfying.
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Jan 28, 2024 06:23
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Say what you want, missions like last one is why Heart of the Swarm is so much better gameplay wise than Legacy of the Void with its very unique mission objectives each being either "There are 4 (things) scattered around the map that need to be destroyed. Each is guarded by a progressively stronger force of enemies" or, twice "survive X minutes" Writing? What writing?
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Jan 28, 2024 08:23
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Jan 28, 2024 08:30
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Zerus power boosts Kerrigan into stratosphere, letting her solo the rest of the campaign. Ergo, we should go there so we can style on Dominion while taking our revenge.
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Jan 28, 2024 08:52
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I legit don't remember most of this game between the start and the end, but I do remember really enjoying the Zerus arc. Super Jungle Dinosaur Planet is a much more fun idea than Char But Its The Original Version on its face. And if the original version of the Zerg backstory is that they were something similar to the larvae that parasitized onto local species, then the Xel'Naga modified them to consume, assimilate and evolve new forms based on what they ate, this doesn't seem like all that radical a departure on the surface. They just found their own evolutionary path to what the Xel'Naga made their cousins and kept doing their own thing when the rest of the swarm left. But hey, like I said, I don't really remember how it plays out. I'm certainly open to it being incredibly stupid given what we've already had to sit through. Either way I vote for Char first.
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Jan 28, 2024 08:55
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I could absolutely just  the entire discrepancy away including the "it was a burned world and now it's a jungle" one, but that would require far more thought being put into SC2 than Blizzard ever used.
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Jan 28, 2024 09:12
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Wouldn't it take an awful long time for a world to turn from a fiery volcanic one to a lush jungle one? Many millions of years? But given how time works in Starcraft 2 it probably was less than 100 years.
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Jan 28, 2024 09:52
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Poil posted:Wouldn't it take an awful long time for a world to turn from a fiery volcanic one to a lush jungle one? Many millions of years? But given how time works in Starcraft 2 it probably was less than 100 years. It's only mostly volcanic because of the big magma-proof life forms that keep breaking through the planets crust.
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Jan 28, 2024 10:13
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Zerus is very boring but we have form for ignoring the manual backstory - the manual has all the terran planets, barely a dozen, in one star system
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Jan 28, 2024 10:36
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My worm... look how they murdered my worm... I loving despise the flagrant, idiotic, terrible, pointless, dogshit, stupid, godawful, trashfire garbage retcon to the Zerg background.
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Jan 28, 2024 10:43
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on one hand, going to zerus makes future cutscenes make way more sense on the other hand, char means avoiding all of the stupid poo poo on zerus decisions............
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Jan 28, 2024 11:35
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BisbyWorl posted:
You may notice this is the Raptor version of the Zergling. This is not due to the choice made in the evolution mission - it will always be this version even if you chose swarmlings (for some reason). Feels like someone at Blizzard realized what a non-choice that was.
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Jan 28, 2024 11:35
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Poil posted:Wouldn't it take an awful long time for a world to turn from a fiery volcanic one to a lush jungle one? Many millions of years? But given how time works in Starcraft 2 it probably was less than 100 years.
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Jan 28, 2024 11:59
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Sanguinia posted:I legit don't remember most of this game between the start and the end, but I do remember really enjoying the Zerus arc. Super Jungle Dinosaur Planet is a much more fun idea than Char But Its The Original Version on its face. And if the original version of the Zerg backstory is that they were something similar to the larvae that parasitized onto local species, then the Xel'Naga modified them to consume, assimilate and evolve new forms based on what they ate, this doesn't seem like all that radical a departure on the surface. They just found their own evolutionary path to what the Xel'Naga made their cousins and kept doing their own thing when the rest of the swarm left. I was in the same boat, at least the first time I played. Starcraft 2 commits a lot of sins in its writing, but I did and continue to give zero shits about whether it contradicts manual lore from that didn't even make it into the first game itself. That said, the second time I played the campaign, and was viewing it for itself rather than comparing it to the way fans talked about it, It still holds up badly and presents a vision of the Zerg that is just a lot less cool than the faction had been up to this point. Basically, the problems with Zerus have nothing to do with whether it's supposed to be an ash world. All that said, they had a very easy out that they could have taken to keep things consistent - if there were simply zerg left behind when the Overmind moved to the Koprulu sector. Either then or after it died, they lost all control or structure and started multiplying and evolving rapidly. That the entire jungle is all zerg, no longer being kept geared toward being an effective army and just filling every possible ecological niche as a free-wheeling ecosystem. At least that would have been kind of cool.
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Jan 28, 2024 12:27
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Jan 28, 2024 14:17
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I don't know what the original is. And I don't care. This is amazing.
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Jan 28, 2024 15:05
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Jan 28, 2024 15:12
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I would 100% play a version of this game where Kerrigan is like some mob boss who denies everything. Lasarra: Do you understand? We are colonists. And you are killing us. Kerrigan: Lasarra, Lasarra. You insult me. I'm a legitimate businesswoman. I'm here to prospect mineral clusters. What's happening to your people is truly an unfortunate accident, but the Zerg are territorial creatures. Your people provoked them. I had nothing to do with it. Lasarra: You're their queen! You control them! Kerrigan: What, that? No no no. That's a, whaddyacallit, an ironic nickname. Like calling a big guy "Tiny," right? They call me "Queen" because I have no control over them at all, capisce?
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Jan 28, 2024 15:34
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Jan 28, 2024 15:43
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JohnKilltrane posted:I don't know what the original is. And I don't care. This is amazing. It makes me so irrationally happy that a Johnny Five Aces edit can still impress even if you have never heard of him.
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Jan 28, 2024 17:30
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JohnKilltrane posted:I would 100% play a version of this game where Kerrigan is like some mob boss who denies everything. That's a nice planet you have there Be a shame if somebody...creeped all over it
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Jan 28, 2024 17:53
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Kith posted:The reason for this is a combination of balance concerns and production costs. Also, now that we've got some Evolution Missions under our belt, Fun Fact: All of the Zerg units were intended to get Evolution variants, even the weird side cases like Aberrations. However, making all of the model variants for the Evolution Missions taxed the hell out of the art team, so a bunch were cut for reasons of cost. Kith fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jan 28, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 18:10
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JohnKilltrane posted:I would 100% play a version of this game where Kerrigan is like some mob boss who denies everything. Oh my god, this is perfect! I love it.
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Jan 28, 2024 18:45
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JohnKilltrane posted:I would 100% play a version of this game where Kerrigan is like some mob boss who denies everything. There are just so many ways you could make the writing better by approaching it with even the slightest amount of joy. Like this!
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Jan 28, 2024 18:46
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