Kalbear

Maybe? Still, it's a pretty interesting thing. Egypt has had relatively normal relations with Israel for a while, but Jordan was longer in coming and has had significantly worsening relations in the last few years. It would have been very easy for them to just not worry about it and let Israel and the US deal with it. I don't agree with @Spockydog's video garbage above - it isn't just about power, or at least not in the way he thinks; Jordan can do this because the populace of Jordan does not hate Israel so greatly that they must oppose them at every single turn. And that's even with the Palestinians being abused. This kind of normalizing or even helping Israel has in the past literally resulted in the populace overthrowing the government. That isn't the case today.

Right - I'm not surprised about their abilities to do something - I'm surprised by their willingness. Jordan not only didn't allow their airspace to be used by Iran for this, they explicitly worked to help Israel's defenses. An Arab country - especially one that has so many Palestinians - helping Israel in any way is a pretty big surprise for the world of the 80s and the 90s. Even Egypt doesn't seem that cooperative by comparison.

One thing I'm still a bit surprised about is Jordan responding and shooting down a number of the drones. Imagine thinking Jordan would aid Israel back in 1980.

Why do you think that the US (or whatever replaces it) would not be more involved in being against Israel? The cheeky answer is 'the same thing that is already happening, but at least it wouldn't be US bombs'. The US has shown very little ability to restrain Israel as it is, but even assuming that they are doing a fine job of it they are also selling bombs and planes - the same bombs and planes being used right now to do drone strikes and airstrikes on world kitchen workers and food distributions. And yes, it could be worse and I'm usually quite happy to say that you shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of the good. That said I'm not really going to condemn people who are quite unhappy because their government is facilitating the deaths of their families, and I'm really not going to chastise them about a fucking slogan.

I don't think they equate the two. I think that at least some of them refuse to participate or align in a system that forces the choices of killing their loved ones or killing their loved ones but also feeling kinda bad about it. They would rather fight that system than choose a slightly more palatable choice. And no, that doesn't mean picking a third party; that means not participating in the system as it is at all, and trying to bring down that system.

I don't think there is any difference. Unless you're really believing that a specific slogan is going to make a major difference compared to nuanced criticism - and I guess that's your prerogative - the slogan only has power because of the inference of it actually being linked to real issues that matter and have some facts. Do you think that "Joe supports war crimes" is going to be somehow massively ineffective? This seems to say that you shouldn't criticize, or you shouldn't criticize in any way that might harm the candidate of your choice, or you shouldn't criticize if I think that it might be a problem. Maybe they shouldn't criticize on message boards dedicated to a fantasy novel! Ultimately there is no place or form of criticism that cannot be weaponized, which means you are against criticism. And you may be right that it is self-defeating if you think that their goals are aligned with yours. As pointed out in another linked video upthread if the choice is between orange hitler and genocide Joe the solution may be not to support a system that gives those as the only two options.

Again, this means that literally there is no criticism of your leader because the other side might use it against that person. That is an obviously illiberal viewpoint. It is quite remarkable to me to see what values get left by the wayside when people are afraid. So I guess the response I have is - so what? Many of them are more than well aware that Trump will be harmful to their lives, possibly far more directly than it will be to yours. Telling people whose families and friends are being killed that they should be quiet because their anger, displeasure and choice of expression might not be politically expedient for you is...well, that's definitely something.

That's the viewpoint of those left folks who are calling him genocide Joe. My point is that if you're afraid of criticizing your leaders because the other side may use that as ammunition you've got a lot bigger problems than them using your own slogans against you.

Perhaps supporting war crimes is a bad thing to do?

No, it is almost 100% perfectly canon with an absurd amount of references to the games that are perfect. Sometimes I suspect too good, and certain things that are in the show don't work as well for being live like they do in the game. But they 100% roll with it.

What? No! At 5th level the bonuses are actually pretty reasonable for everyone - 3rd level spells' power match up pretty well to both the proficiency bonus and the extra attack. That's my central thesis - that the power that most martials get at 5th level is actually reasonably balanced with the power that 5th level casters get. The main imbalance is that casters have basically all the tools to deal with multiple foes and martials don't, but the martials get significantly more damage to single targets. Where it goes off the rails for the most part is level 7. And my solution is exactly as I said - balance martials to give them similar power levels as casters at that point. Either make martials have significantly more versatility for the things they can do via skill checks or ability checks at that level to match things like Greater Invisibility or Divination, or give them more ability to do multitarget damage like ice storm, or give them more abilities to do more interesting things like polymorph or some of the summon abilities. The absolutely stupidest easy thing to do is take a few 4th level spells and make the martials have effectively copies of those spells that they can do better than a wizard, per class/subclass. That would make it so that each martial can do things that are at that powerlevel, and can do them better, but a wizard can be significantly more versatile and do almost anything - just not quite as good. There are lots of other ways to do it too, mind you - but that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. My solution, simply, is to make everyone as good as wizards are. And then balance the rest of the game around that. I'm not forgetting that; it's part of the general system. And it's not a basic understanding of math; it's a fundamental example of the relative power increase. I get that it is scaling with the things you're facing and that's important to note because after 5th level is where the scaling starts really suffering for martials, but the scaling math doesn't change. At levels higher than 5th you don't need to worry about a lot more extra attacks from anyone other than pure fighters, but you do start needing to worry about hold monster, polymorph, ice storm, wall of fire, etc while balancing fights.

Yeah, that's why I said basically. There may be a few other Easter eggs too.

So far basically none of the characters are from the games.

Of course they're having a good time, they can visit all those pot shops and porn shops

So I think these are the two that are the most influential, along with another that you're missing that's very important. BG3 has really great characters AND really great character relations. The Mass Effect relationships are not remotely as cinematic and close as BG3 in many ways, but the easiest one to demonstrate is that you can't play as any of those characters. All of the BG3 starting characters are fleshed out with their own storylines that make them the main character if you so choose to do. I say this with some seniority given how many people who care fuck all about most video games, much less RPGs, have wanted to play this. The scripting and character beats and relationships are a very large part of it. There's another part that BG3 does better than a lot of other games and that's the actual script. That's different than the story but I think it should be called out - there are a genuinely lot of hilarious moments, a lot of incredibly sad moments, some real clever dialog and quips and relations that many other games do not nail. I know of two people in my house who play BG3 and got into it almost entirely because of things like small scenes or beats that were awesome or funny, like causing a spider uprising or flinging a gnome into the stratosphere. That they're acted with better skill than almost anything we've seen is another factor, but BG3's characters have absurd depth. Especially when you factor in the other part that BG3 does better than most: - consequences: This is probably the biggest one that you don't mention, and probably the biggest difference from most of the games you've called out earlier. BG3 has an absurd set of consequences for almost every choice you make or don't make in the game, and lets you do almost anything you want to. That combination of freedom of action and consequence of action is very well done. I'm sure other games do have things like it, but not many and not to the scale and thoughtfulness that BG3 does. From huge character beats and story arcs to small things like going through a dungeon in a back to front way which makes the enemy bandits think that you're a zombie (because you're coming from the zombie area). That also dovetails into the other thing you didn't mention: - freedom: The ability to do all sorts of nearly game-breaking things (and sometimes actual game breaking things) and just let you do it is pretty crazy. It's close to Deus Ex or Dishonored in how the developers just let you cook. BG1 and BG2 did this too to a large degree, but BG3 does it better and with more interesting results. Most areas and fights have multiple ways to approach them, multiple entrances/exits, multiple ways to approach the boss fights (or avoid them completely), reward exploration and discovery, and in general just let you do things the way you would actually like to do them. Between these two things I think it gets down to one of the big cores of game design that Sid Meier said a long time ago: great gaming is about having choices and making your choices matter. BG3 may not do this as well as another brilliant game - Disco Elysium - but there are very few games that can say they do this better. Certainly not things like Skyrim or Morrowind. Definitely not Witcher or CP2077 - and they do a good job! Uh...well, I guess if you think you had to beat a giant eye you might find it underwhelming. Maybe you played a different game altogether? Because the whole point is that you don't have to just save Baldur's Gate; you're having to save the entire goddamn realm from an Elder Brain with the power of a literal god. You are stopping the culmination of the entire Mind Flayer prophecy and goal - of enslaving every single sentient race in the multiverse. That's pretty apocalyptic! But the big one - at least for me - is that BG3 does something that almost no other game I've ever played (at least single player) does - it captures the absolute chaos, inventiveness and silliness of an actual D&D tabletop game. Other games have had more moving beats or made me feel more of that role, other games have had some more interesting character interactions (though not very many), but none of them have captured that feeling of sitting around a table and talking to other people in character and having them react to my choices in ways that were real surprising and adapting the story to those changes.

I guess? To me your quibble was that there were too many actual new countries and places, and things were recovering. That's been true everywhere in Fallout. There are going to be a whole lot of wild places for a very long time - especially since the radiation doesn't die down in a whole lot of spots - but civilization is coming back and thriving, and it's not all brutal raiders killing everyone and eating each other for funsies. I think this is mostly how you're interpreting the word and the world, and I'm likely not going to convince you otherwise to change how you're using the definition or thinking that you're right. I'll just say that the show is deeply close to the games, and the notion that you have to nuke everything so people can go back to playing Fallout 'the way it was intended' is really not remotely accurate by the way the games have been done.

BG3 is apparently the very first game to sweep all 5 of the major game awards since they were created. A bunch of games got close but most of them actually didn't make it with the BAFTAs, largely because BAFTAs are often too late the following year. That's pretty cool. In other news, a wrestler cosplayed as Karlach in one of her matches: https://www.ign.com/articles/ring-of-honor-wrestler-athena-baldurs-gate-3-karlach-cosplay

Yeah, this is very much not really the games. That's how you usually start the games but even they start meeting small villages and doing the equivalent of killing 10 rats. All of the fallouts have had significant development of factions and behaviors, and all of them have been about how humanity both adapts and splinters to these things. It is definitely not mad max. It's far more high-tech and advanced than that. Fallout has a few major themes I would say: The retrofuture style, especially evoking the capitalist/communist split Often very tongue-in-cheek humor A combination of both people barely getting by with spit and bailing wire and very high-tech components both from a bygone age and advancements Completely off-the-rails ethical behaviors But things like pockets of society? No - there are societies, big ones, big factions and behaviors and people getting back together. It is a lot of competing societies in most of the games and quests that matter.

I guess for me if you are going to count Skyrim or Morrowind as RPGs then Deus Ex and Cyberpunk obviously also qualify without any special 'action' part associated with it.

I think a lot of this has been moving to TV. Expanse was mentioned, but so is something like Foundation, or Westworld, or For All Mankind, or Fallout.

And I don't see how Cyberpunk doesn't qualify. You pick how you advance your character, you have a lot of choices in what you do in quests, you have choices in who you pursue romantically, you have consequences on your decisions and branching storylines, optional quests and lots of emergent gameplay. How is it not an RPG? It's certainly more of an RPG than Mass Effect. I guess if you decide things like CP2077 aren't RPGs then it's really easy to decide that BG3 is the best RPG; by your imagined bullshit criteria it might actually be the only RPG in existence.

You might notice that a whole lot of people did say that, and that they've said that in this thread. I don't think decriminalization has caused the problems, is the point. That'd be the one that you appear to continue not to get. How it's been decriminalized and what they've allowed and not allowed is the issue.

On the weed thing - Washington state has had it for a while now and I don't see nearly the kinds of issues that that cesspool of horrible weed, porn, and non-mafia run streets that is NYC has. The idea that it should be made illegal because it's badly run is an obviously stupid thing that should be applied to far more dangerous things in the real world before it comes for pot.

Replayability is a very odd metric to gauge how great a RPG is. If you're going to go that way I'd say that Skyrim is going to beat everything by a large order of magnitude given the years of people's lives that it has taken and how it remains highly played 10 years after the fact. I've only played every Deus Ex once and I'd say that's way better that BG3. I'd say Cyberpunk was a significantly better RPG too on a lot of levels, especially now that it's been so heavily fixed. I will say that BG3 has set a very high bar for acting in an RPG. And don't get me wrong, I like it a whole lot and think it's great - but there's a lot of other things to gauge it on than the incredible voice acting and branching choices.

First two eps were pretty awesome, especially decent given my viewing audience hadn't played the game. The Aw shucks vibe of the vault dwellers and the action beats have played pretty well, along with the over the top hilarious gore.