Fez

There's not going to be that kind of senate majority, no matter what. In the wildest fantasies of Democratic strategists, they end up with 53-47 senate majority. And that only happens if they defend every incumbent who's up successfully, and somehow flip Texas and Florida. To get to 60, they'd have to win 7 out of Utah, Nebraska (2 races), Wyoming, Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi. It's just not happening. Not a chance The politically stars aligning for 2024, means Biden winning the electoral college 318-220, a continued 51-49 senate majority, and re-taking the House with probably a 230ish to 205ish majority. And also flipping the Arizona state legislature while successfully defending all the legislatures they currently hold. And, maybe filpping Wisconsin's legislature if the gerrymander lawsuit is successful and there's new maps in place. That's an extraordinarily good night. And all it does is ensure another 4 years of status quo instead of things going to utter shit. Also, it ensures the federal judiciary continues to slowly get unfucked a little more; and maybe we get really lucky and Thomas dies so the supreme court gets a little better too.

But only some. It sounds like there's still a certain trigger that incorrectly blocks your final scene with whoever your love interest is.

IIRC, they are planning to get Patch 2 out before the PS5 launch on Sept 6. Although so far the only thing they've said is that it'll have performance fixes. TBH, I wouldn't expect much else considering the short time frame left. Though maybe there's a few other, bigger things that just weren't ready in time for Patch 1. There's been no announcement yet of what the roadmap post PS5 launch looks like. Personally, I wouldn't expect much in the way of new features until a definitive edition (which hasn't been announced, but seems likely based on their past 2 games), probably about a year from now. That's probably when any changes to the structure of Act 3 would be implemented as well. It seems like this patch does address my biggest concerns, about logic flows of key conversations. So I will continue playing. Although I think I'll start over to ensure a cleaner playthrough.

The upside is that he (and importantly, many of his advisors) think that Biden can barely string a sentence together and that the debates will be a knock out to clinch victory.

Not in the primary, unless it someone does become 1-on-1 and is losing. But I think he'll absolutely debate Biden in the general. He, along with most Republicans, have bought their own bullshit that Biden is totally senile and he thinks he'd destroy him in a debate. Despite that also being what he/they thought in 2020 and proven wrong.

Scott is enough of an empty vessel that lots of different GOPers can project whatever they want on him; it's why he has the highest favorables of any of them (including Trump) among primary voters. But so far, he hasn't translated that into a ton of support; partially because one of the bigger natural support groups for him, evangelicals, are being split with Pence (and Trump of course). I think Haley would be their strongest general election candidate, but I don't think she'd do great even 1-on-1 with Trump. Being both a woman and POC I think is too big a hurdle for those voters.

Even two is probably too much. But in a one-on-one race, I could see a couple of the candidates being able to beat Trump; Tim Scott still being the strongest of them I think. But it won't be a one-on-one race until far too late. Too many of them are running for reasons other than trying to actually win, and so have no incentive to drop out.

He does have a second plane that was in the air at the same time. I suppose it is possible that he was on that plane. But it seems pretty likely he's dead. What an unbelievably stupid man. He inexplicably folded during his one shot at victory and then seemed to think he'd actually be safe to just roam Russia?!

After looking at a few more trailers, I'm thinking maybe Armored Core VI actually isn't a game for me. That kind of impersonal (I haven't seen a single human character model or artwork) mission-structure game gets boring for me way too quickly; like the Ace Combat games. But I do want something new to play while waiting for Starfield and patches for BG3. Maybe this would be a good time to get Shadow Gambit actually, or one of the other small games I mentioned before.

I liked Cyberpunk, though I understand many of the complaints. I think the difference is that Act 1 of BG3 is so good, and is exactly what the complaints want the whole game to be, that there's a lot more good will towards Larian than CDPR. Also, because Act 3 has the biggest issues, and the game is so, I think a lot of players just haven't experienced the issues yet. I wouldn't be surprised if there starts being a growing backlash over the next couple weeks though (unless Patch 1 is very big indeed).

Act 3 design and gameflow, but not story, spoilers

It's a mix. There's some bugs that are very random, especially the more technical ones (I had a conversation last night where the NPC's head rotated around like Linda Blair's). But there are also bugs that everyone is experiencing, it's just that some people don't realize that it's a bug (like with a certain companion being too quiet). And there's the cut content. Some of it seems like normal cuts that happen during game development due to changes in design decisions. But the Act 3 stuff that was cut literally less than 2 weeks before release (and was being actively promoted at a PR event at that 2 week mark) feels like it was absolutely meant to be in the game but was so broken that it had be excised to ensure that there was a shippable product. To me, it feels like a reasonable assumption that such content will eventually be put back into the game once it's working correctly. Probably not in the first patch, but at some point. And it sounds like, if/when it is, Act 3 in general would flow a lot better.

IIRC, there's been one patch mentioned so far. Patch 1 will have "thousands" of bugfixes according to Larian. They haven't given a time frame, but the rumor is that it'll be in advance of/at the same time as the PS5 release. The one major bug that Larian has confirmed will be addressed is that the companion you get by going evil in Act 1 is supposed to be a lot more fleshed out then they are right now. Apparently the various dialog triggers aren't working correctly. Also, I don't know all the details because I've been trying to avoid spoilers, but it sounds like there's a lot of bugs in Act 3 stemming from the fact that a major area of the game was cut sometime in the final 2 weeks before release (which likely relates to the last minute 'crisis' that the studio head accidentily mentioned in an interview). And quests that relied on going to that area are all screwed up. The hope is that either the area gets restored or that the various quest triggers get fixed (e.g. one companion's good ending is literally impossible to do right now). But there's been no announcement of if/when this will get fixed.

Okay the game is definitely showing its cracks now. I reloaded and... I think maybe I'm going to put the game down until it gets a few more patches. Maybe come back to it after Armored Core 6 and Starfield.

Either the game is getting buggier in Act 2 or Larian didn't expect that some players would ever take certain options. The whole thing felt really disheartening. And I'm thinking I'll probably reload from before that moment and act more the way the game expects.

Even in WoTR, where multiclassing is a lot more common/necessary I try to only use two classes at most and have them be thematically related. So far I haven't multiclassed at all in BG3 and I haven't felt the need to. I might do it in a second playthrough, sticking with my thematic rule. But I'm hoping they patch in a class progression encyclopedia first. I don't want to have to use any outside tools to figure out what I want to do.

The absence of variant human is a change I'm totally fine with, they're too OP. And the replaced racial feature is shockingly good actually for casters. Remember, it means that they can get a free +2 AC by having a shield; and that includes party members like Gale and Wyll. It's also good for any ranged martials that don't otherwise have shield proficiency, since you get the shield bonus even if you are using your ranged weapon set. This is my number one complaint by far. It seems like a relic of when the game was intended to force you to chose which 3 party members you'd have for a playthrough. But even inventory management within the active party is a real pain.

That's basically where I'm at too, early in Act II. I really like how cinematic it is, and the voice acting is top notch. But in most other respects I think WotR is the better game. I've also noticed that the battles mostly don't seem as tactical as D:OS2. I'm glad there's not the overwhelming reliance of surfaces, since that's not really 5E. But it feels like there's a lot less verticality or terrain involvement in most fights. There's some, like the Grove defense. But a lot of fights enemies rush right up to me (or I can rush right to them) and it's just back-and-forth rolling until something is dead. Separately, kinda funny start of Act II spoilers:

Absurd how busy this gaming year is. It's not just all the big games either. There's also Shadow Gambit (from the makes of Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3), Book of Hours (from the makers of Cultist Simulator), Dredge (horror-ish fishing game), Roots of Pacha (prehistoric Stardew Valley), Viewfinder (puzzle game), Jagged Alliance 3, and Remnant 2. All came out this year, and all I haven't touched yet. There's also The Lamplighter's League in October. And, probably at some point this winter, WH40K Rogue Trader (which, if it's anything like Wrath of the Righteous will seriously eat my time, I've put over 1,000 hours into that game).

I got the booze one too. The whole hirelings system just seems odd to me. We can already respect any of the companions anyway. And I think the hirelings are all appearance-locked, right? So they aren't even good for adding another custom character as a workaround for the multiplayer issues that exist. I guess they're useful if you happen to kill/drive away too many party members and can't get a full team otherwise?

If you have animal speaking you can get out of the fight. But even if you do, if you wander too closely she'll attack you. The main draw, I think, is that the owlbear egg is valued at 750 gold. Not sure yet if there's a way to hatch it and have two baby owlbears in your camp. You can also trick some cultists into attacking the owlbears. And, most importantly, in the other part of the cave there's a selune statue. There's some decent early loot there and if you have shadowheart with you there's a dialog check to trigger the next part of her story earlier than you'd otherwise get it.

The Oath of Vengeance is basically the easy mode for being a Paladin and keeping the Oath. But also, Oathbreaker isn't really a bad thing (except from a RP perspective potentially). It's its own fully defined subclass with some good spells that pure paladins otherwise can't get.

So I did decide to restart as the Dark Urge; albeit one struggling to be good rather than embracing the evil so my major decisions haven't been too different yet. And the playthrough has been a lot faster so far since I already know where a lot of stuff is. At 10 hours I'm level 4, halfway to 5, and have done everything on the first map except the goblin camp at all or the Underdark (also, from what I explored of the Underdark on my first playthrough, I really did not like how navigating it felt; maybe I'll skip it this time). I really like a lot so far. I appreciate that, unlike a regular playthrough (or just about any other RPG), some of the conversations with party members are about me and my problems rather than about them. And trying to be good does, so far at least, really make it feel like a "Tav+" playthrough. I could see how an embracing the evil playthrough should wait until a second game though, since it seems like it would cut off a lot of stories prematurely. But as is, I get lots of cool choices (and plenty of RPing opportunities) and only a couple unavoidably evil moments. It's also been interesting seeing how playthroughs can feel different even when making similar choices. I'm not sure what hidden triggers are causing it (I don't think its related to the Dark Urge stuff specifically), but this time I've gotten a lot more Asterion camp events and almost no Gale events (no staring into the fire, no looking at his image, etc.). In fact, the first event I had with Gale after his initial intro was when he was telling me about his big problem. And since I won't be able to play much this week anyway, I'm also hoping that by the time I finally hit the later parts of the game the bugs have gotten smoothed out more (since it does sound like Act 3 can be pretty buggy for some people).

I decided to read this spoiler since I knew you were behind me in the game and...

Been continuing my Act 1 exploration. I'm still wrapping up quests and getting XP, but I'm kinda getting the sense that maybe I should push the main story forward. The map is starting to feel pretty depopulated (not that everyone is dead of course, there's been an awful lot of "oh, i'll see you in Baldur's Gate!" lines from NPCs too) and most of the companions haven't had much to say in a while. But at the same time, I've been reading some general non-spoilery things and am starting to wonder if I should start over as The Dark Urge. It really does sound cool and some people are saying it doesn't need to wait until a second playthrough.