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Speaking of blank slate vs vehicle protagonists, little things dragging down Shadowrun: Hong Kong: the player character isn’t a blank slate. The game starts out by having you put together your character as a blank slate, certainly. You have to pick out your name, your shadowrunner callsign, what kind of trenchcoat you’re wearing, all the cyberpunk lingo you’re fluent in, all that stuff that goes with building a blank slate character. Except you’re not. You’re a former street punk and the more adventurous sibling of your adoptive brother Duncan. You crossed the corps and disappeared for years. Your callsign is Seattle - it’s not but your handler always calls you that, as does your crew (except your brother who always uses your real name.) You don’t vibe cop. It’s all well and good and the writing’s enjoyable anyway but it left me feeling like I was dropping my character into somebody else’s story and trying to bluff my way through the lines. It would have been nice to get offered a ‘default Seattle’ or at least a little blurb at character creation time to set expectations.
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Oct 21, 2019 23:55
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Worst part of Epic launcher is there isn't one single Hentai Puzzle game for sale in their entire catalog. I'll stick with steam for the multitudinous anime tiddies.
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Oct 22, 2019 00:15
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The worst part of the Epic launcher in my book is that it apparently always has Fortnite front-and-center. And that game is specifically designed to look like goddamn candy, so no matter what I'm thinking about it's drat tempting when I see it. And now all the barriers are gone, because I already made my Epic account and downloaded the launcher, which were the main barriers before Control dragged me into the EGS.
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Oct 22, 2019 00:48
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Breetai posted:I've bounced pretty hard off of Homeworld, I can see why people like it but it's just not for me. I remember bouncing off Homeworld because missions adjusted themselves based on the strength of your fleet. As someone who liked mining each map dry of resources and building as massive of a fleet as possible this would bite me in the rear end by like the 4th or 5th mission and now I'm facing like 3 times as enemies as someone normally would. The workaround this was to scrap your fleet before leaving the mission and then rebuilding them again at the start of the next and that's just ... ugh... 
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Oct 22, 2019 00:58
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Ah, the Max Payne problem. One of the many bugbears of level-scaling is that leveling makes both you and the enemies stronger, but your equipment will be behind unless you grind to replace/upgrade them. In other words Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.
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Oct 22, 2019 01:24
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Cleretic posted:The worst part of the Epic launcher in my book is that it apparently always has Fortnite front-and-center. And that game is specifically designed to look like goddamn candy, so no matter what I'm thinking about it's drat tempting when I see it. And now all the barriers are gone, because I already made my Epic account and downloaded the launcher, which were the main barriers before Control dragged me into the EGS. EGS might as well be a money laundering front at this point, with the money coming in from Tencent. The moment Fortnite drops off, EGS will drop to the bottom of the barrel and any benefits Epic provides through it will be halted.
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Oct 22, 2019 02:59
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Ah, the Max Payne problem.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:35
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I understand the Ubisoft Rule is now that everything has to be an RPG with meaningless levelling and numbers but Odyssey in particular needs to scrap it. There isn't any loving point to it, enemies are always your exact level because of the insanely aggressive scaling (until you randomly run into a level 50 dog that oneshots you, because some quest dependent enemies are set levels higher than you but nothing will never be lower) so it just leads to the gear problems you describe Odyssey is so loving weird in this regard specifically because of the war going on. Like, you could fight in a huge skirmish in the beginning of the game to claim some land, but if either side sent a single high-level warrior from late in the game, they'd clear out the entire enemy force without issue.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:41
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Morpheus posted:Odyssey is so loving weird in this regard specifically because of the war going on. Like, you could fight in a huge skirmish in the beginning of the game to claim some land, but if either side sent a single high-level warrior from late in the game, they'd clear out the entire enemy force without issue. But the moment that soldier set foot in the province he'd be level-scaled to match it.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:51
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As much as the garbage RPG elements bring down Odyssey, it's the complete ruining of stealth and getting the drop on guys that makes it a lovely game (Former does contribute to the latter, I know). Yeah, you can still sneak around, but what's the point? Nine out of ten people in a fort or leader house won't go down in one stab and then raise the alarm and bring over at least three others. And that's before some dickbag bounty hunter decides to show up. It's not worth putting much effort into unless the effort involves spamming light and heavy attacks with the occasional block.
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Oct 22, 2019 04:35
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spit on my clit posted:EGS might as well be a money laundering front at this point, with the money coming in from Tencent. The moment Fortnite drops off, EGS will drop to the bottom of the barrel and any benefits Epic provides through it will be halted. yeah at that point I'll have to think hard whether the $0/ month is worth it
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Oct 22, 2019 05:44
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Away all Goats posted:I remember bouncing off Homeworld because missions adjusted themselves based on the strength of your fleet. As someone who liked mining each map dry of resources and building as massive of a fleet as possible this would bite me in the rear end by like the 4th or 5th mission and now I'm facing like 3 times as enemies as someone normally would. Only Homeworld 2 did that. In Homeworld 1, the campaign was made hilariously simple by capturing every ship and going into the final mission with an armada 4x the normal supply cap supported by exotic otherwise-unobtainable craft like the multibeam frigates
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Oct 22, 2019 06:12
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Evilreaver posted:Only Homeworld 2 did that. They added scaling to the remaster, and they messed it up. It made the 3rd mission almost impossible to finish if you were doing too well. 8 to 10 assault frigates would vaporize the cryotrays you needed to rescue before you had a chance to react.
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Oct 22, 2019 09:44
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Whatever happened to the poster with the David Warner in Time Bandits avatar?
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Oct 22, 2019 12:28
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Lead Psychiatry posted:As much as the garbage RPG elements bring down Odyssey, it's the complete ruining of stealth and getting the drop on guys that makes it a lovely game (Former does contribute to the latter, I know). Yeah, you can still sneak around, but what's the point? Nine out of ten people in a fort or leader house won't go down in one stab and then raise the alarm and bring over at least three others.
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Oct 22, 2019 12:39
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Homeworld always had some scaling iirc Just more to salvage!
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Oct 22, 2019 14:13
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:unlocking the engraving that limits your health to 25% but boosts your damage by 100% improved the game immeasurably for me, mainly because it let you... do this properly, with the boost (and a few levels in the assassin skills, because obviously a game about assassins should require you to level up an assassin skill in order to assassinate properly). Still bloody stupid but I'd recommend any new players beeline it Its amusing that this setup improves a lot of games. Risk of Rain 1 was much more fun on the 10% health quad damage setting.
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Oct 22, 2019 14:15
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AC: Odyssey has an option to set enemy level scaling to no more than four levels behind you, depending on the area you're in, which makes the game much more fun. It keeps the enemies dangerous enough to take seriously in groups, but not so spongy that you need to keep your weapons upgraded to your own level to damage them. I have to admit, I hate Ubisoft's insistence on grind (unless you pay for a booster pack, but gently caress that bullshit), but it doesn't bother me in Odyssey. It's one thing to need to grind out radiant quests or the same areas over and over, but there's enough fresh content in Odyssey that I never fell behind the quest levels in my quest log. Even assassination worked well for me once I got the critical assassination upgrade, which, yeah, discourages assassinating enemies in an AC game, and the chain assassination upgrade lets me clear out whoever spots me killing the first guy. I like the new format for the AC games, and think Syndicate was the best possible output Ubisoft could have ended the old format on, but agree it needs tightening to be truly great. Changing topics, what's dragging Yakuza 0 down for me is that I took an extended break from playing it and completely lost my feel for the combat. If there's a practice room, I haven't found it, so I'm getting my rear end completely kicked every time I run into a few thugs.
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Oct 22, 2019 14:48
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StealthArcher posted:Its amusing that this setup improves a lot of games. Risk of Rain 1 was much more fun on the 10% health quad damage setting. Once I unlocked that I never turned it off again
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Oct 22, 2019 14:58
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:unlocking the engraving that limits your health to 25% but boosts your damage by 100% improved the game immeasurably for me, mainly because it let you... do this properly, with the boost (and a few levels in the assassin skills, because obviously a game about assassins should require you to level up an assassin skill in order to assassinate properly). Still bloody stupid but I'd recommend any new players beeline it Oh hells yeah. Thanks for the head's up! It's been a few days since I played but I stopped not far from the location with the spear that has the engraving.
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Oct 22, 2019 15:04
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StealthArcher posted:Its amusing that this setup improves a lot of games. Risk of Rain 1 was much more fun on the 10% health quad damage setting.  Enemies taking too long to kill is a major thing dragging alot of games down. I want my enemies to be deadly and die fast to keep the flow of the game moving.
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Oct 22, 2019 15:17
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OutOfPrint posted:AC: Odyssey has an option to set enemy level scaling to no more than four levels behind you, depending on the area you're in, which makes the game much more fun. It keeps the enemies dangerous enough to take seriously in groups, but not so spongy that you need to keep your weapons upgraded to your own level to damage them.  I mean... it does solve the problem of everything levelling with you I guess, but I feel like I'd just be ticking a "make the game easier" toggle at the point where the game is already pretty easy. It's good that it's there and maybe I should have had it on from the beginning, think that's when it would have helped most, even if it's a pretty blunt fix to... well, the underlying design of the whole game.I agree with your second point though, I started playing it when UPlay+ was free mostly for the Discovery Tour and discovered to my immense surprise and slight irritation that overall the game really worked for me. Just full of boneheaded cargo cult design lol (this is the single annual SA use of the phrase "cargo cult" which is actually appropriate, please appreciate)
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Oct 22, 2019 15:26
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Agent355 posted:
I've recently been playing the Requiem overhaul mod for Skyrim which, among other tweaks, makes combat much deadlier for all involved. It's astounding how much more fun and involving combat is when you can't just stand in front of a bandit tanking his blows while you whittle him down with your own hits. Now you dodge attacks, take cover from arrows, and take advantage of openings to take people down in just a couple of swipes and it feels incredible.
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Oct 22, 2019 15:48
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I never found the level scaling to be too much of a problem in Odyssey. You just kind of have to commit to a particular skill tree and only wear gear that directly benefits your build, but that's par for the course in any RPG. The Assassin tree even lets you punch above your weight a little bit since it tends to have the highest damage multipliers and you almost never use your weapon damage, only skills. Rush Assassinate is the most brokenly OP skill in the history of video games, ESPECIALLY with crit/crit damage at full health. One thing I would definitely recommend for newcomers is getting a few of the passive abilities that benefit every type of build. 2 points in Hunting Mastery lets you always have 1 bar of adrenaline at the start of every fight, 2 points in Arrow Mastery lets you craft your own fire/poison arrows, and 3 points in whatever that baseline Hunting passive is gets you 8 whole seconds to land a stealth attack once you're spotted. Then in the Warrior tree everybody should get the passive that gives you 90% more armor.
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Oct 22, 2019 16:08
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Lead Psychiatry posted:As much as the garbage RPG elements bring down Odyssey, it's the complete ruining of stealth and getting the drop on guys that makes it a lovely game (Former does contribute to the latter, I know). Yeah, you can still sneak around, but what's the point? Nine out of ten people in a fort or leader house won't go down in one stab and then raise the alarm and bring over at least three others. The Evil Within 2 has this problem as well, where it has enemies that can survive a sneak attack and are murder at close range, so it’s pointless to try. They also have enemies that randomly burst into flames, so if that happens just before you attack them, too bad!
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Oct 22, 2019 16:38
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exquisite tea posted:I never found the level scaling to be too much of a problem in Odyssey. You just kind of have to commit to a particular skill tree and only wear gear that directly benefits your build, but that's par for the course in any RPG. That's the problem.
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Oct 22, 2019 18:42
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StealthArcher posted:Its amusing that this setup improves a lot of games. Risk of Rain 1 was much more fun on the 10% health quad damage setting. MIddle Earth: Shadow of War, the second lotr open world game, had a difficulty patched in after its release that made you far more lethal but only able to survive a single hit before you get knocked down and have to avoid an execution move, and you only get one qte-save-yourself-from-beheading mechanic before the next hit will just kill you. Having this game be incredibly lethal made it so much more fun and dangerous, I had a wonderful time. Especially as every time you get killed your enemies level up off of you. During my learning phase of this game I kept getting killed by a ranged spear-throwing mob that would always show up when I was fighting something else. He eventually learned a tracker skill that meant he could track me down no matter where I went in the gameworld and was especially devoted to destroying me. He eventually leveled up to past 85 and was genuinely terrorizing my playthrough for the entire first half of the game, I remember him way more than the real boss of the game in cutscenes or whatever.
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Oct 22, 2019 18:54
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I've been binging the Farcry 5 for the first time with some spoilers already getting me but still; The mission sequence where you kill the John Seed is lets just say UN-loving-believable: -I know I am walking into an ambush so I put my sniper girl into that water tower right across, and my generic soldier dude to just watch the road. Cutscened! -I have taken that mansion place beforehand, so why not treat it like I have not. Cutscened! -I actually failed the dogfight but managed to somehow land safely on a lake upside down; OK -I fought the John's airplane grounded with LMG, RPG and followers just outside US Auto, he gets hosed by my rocket. OK -So he parachuted; Cutscened! -Se when I find him, he gets shot to head by my sniper, he revives from a KO before kill shot and steals a loving jetski; Cutscened! -So I get to him, gets shot to head by sniper AGAIN; this time it sticks; OK. -I get locked into another story mission, go to the bunker and take over, OK. -So OK my followers aren't allowed into the bunker, however I am almost out of ammo. Cutscened! What ensued was a loving story mission that _would_ _not_ _just_ _fucking_ *end*. I get through all of the bullshit enemies and fight my way to the bottom just to learn that why the gently caress not, fight back upstairs! Cutscened! I did not have anything beyond melee to reliably drop heavys, so I handcrafted explosives and used them as remote grenades, over and over again. And then the mission decided to go first person platformer on me, and put me into a showdown arena where I was the only one taking damage on the expanding fire and explosives damaging and obscuring me constantly. This did nothing to bother the enemies and their aim. Cutscened! Abouth tenth time I failed because I had no place to withdraw and those loving shotgunner peggies wasted me I almost threw my controller;. And I never do that, not even with Dark Souls and such. What A loving STUPID railroad of a mission, goddamn! SO good loving job, for the first time after leaving puberty, you made a mission that actually made me mad about video games. EDIT: So yes, I know the standard stuff that's mentioned by Before I Play and have completed Tribal, 4 and 3 before playing this but come on, the phasing and difficulty compared to other stuff related to releasing the area is completely bonkers. Der Kyhe has a new favorite as of 19:36 on Oct 22, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2019 19:24
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I just find the entire story of Farcry 5 to be annoying. I’m only about halfway through the game but being continually captured by the enemies is just annoying and I feel like it’s put in there so the writers can force you to listen to the schlock that they thought was oh so deep and clever.
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Oct 22, 2019 20:21
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As far as I'm concerned Far Cry 5 basically existed as a cartoonishly-unrealistic-but-fun flight simulator, most everything not related to flying around was various levels of annoying.
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Oct 22, 2019 20:59
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moosecow333 posted:I just find the entire story of Farcry 5 to be annoying. I’m only about halfway through the game but being continually captured by the enemies is just annoying and I feel like it’s put in there so the writers can force you to listen to the schlock that they thought was oh so deep and clever.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:20
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FactsAreUseless posted:It's an amazingly bad game even by Ubisoft standards. And I liked FC3 just fine. I really enjoyed FC5 when it wasn’t pulling the kidnapping bullshit. The gunplay felt way better than past FC games because it was way more lethal. 3 and 4 had basic enemies that could tank half a clip of assault rifle rounds if you didn’t get a headshot, but in 5 even the starting assault rifle was typically lethal with 2-4 shots to the torso. I didn’t upgrade my health because I liked the balance of having fragile enemies but only being able to take a little bit of sustained fire myself.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:26
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I really liked FC5.  The guns were fun, the outposts were fun, the wildlife was suitably deadly, fishing was decent enough, I liked the entire area with hallucination enemies, and they did crazy poo poo with the in-game "arcade game" levels. Yeah, the kidnappings were annoying, but just traipsing around the mountains causing chaos was great.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:34
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food court bailiff posted:I really liked FC5. The fishing and hunting in that game was so great, it’s not often in games that I’ll spend a few hours dicking around with the sidest of the side stuff like that but it was so relaxing. And also a lot of fun when “hunting” was performed by taking all the drugs I could get my hands on and punching bears to death.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:36
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I got so tired of FC5 before even the second story mission.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:44
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The fishing and hunting in that game was so great, it’s not often in games that I’ll spend a few hours dicking around with the sidest of the side stuff like that but it was so relaxing. Basically everything in the game that isn't related to the story in some way is dope. I don't think I've played another game that has absolutely not earned the ending they wrote more than Far Cry 5. It's almost insulting.
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Oct 22, 2019 21:56
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The story of Far Cry 5 just gets worse and worse as time goes on, and worst of all, it's literally inescapable. I somehow got abducted from a cessna flying 1,000 feet above the ground to sit through another mandatory villain monologue.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:12
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I hope one day somebody from one of the ten Ubisoft studios who worked on it leak exactly what went down behind the scenes when making that game.
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Oct 22, 2019 23:37
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From what we already know it sounds like the big issue they had behind the scenes was that the head writer was a crazy person who agrees with Joseph Seed's doomsday prophecy of "The Great Collapse"
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Oct 22, 2019 23:45
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muscles like this! posted:From what we already know it sounds like the big issue they had behind the scenes was that the head writer was a crazy person who agrees with Joseph Seed's doomsday prophecy of "The Great Collapse" How does a factoid like this coexist with such a meh end product
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Oct 23, 2019 00:17
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