Frost Giant

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Baldur's Gate III was a well-deserving winner. The combination of traditional RPG mechanics with modern production values was hugely compelling, even if, strictly speaking, many other Gatelikes had better stories or mechanics or both (Pillars of Eternity 2, the two Pathfinder games from Owlcat, Tyranny).

Basically, any game where you can interrupt a villain's long monologue to yeet him into lava is going to get a round of applause from me.

Alan Wake 2 was outrageously good as well. The rotating between the two protagonists, the mechanics allowing newcomers to get onboard without any familiarity with the first game (which has aged middlingly, being generous), the excellent voice acting, the ludicrous graphics (the first time a game has actually tricked my brain into seeing it as photorealistic, at least in certain areas/lighting conditions) and the "walking around inside a music video" sequence which is easily the best single video game setpiece of the year (BG3 actually has its own banging musical number during the battle in Avernus, but it's not quite as impressive).

Phantom Liberty was also both excellent in its own right and completed Cyberpunk 2077's redemption arc in full. Getting Sad Keanu on the train (and being able to use trains!) was the icing on the cake.

Starfield was okay...ish, but easily Bethesda's weakest game since Daggerfall. Some interesting stuff in there but also some genuinely baffling design decisions.


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Fallout: The TV Show will hit Amazon Prime on 12 April 2024.


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As for combining books 2 and 3...eh. Did they at least sound the Horn and the Heroes arrived? That's kind of important to me.

Yes, in the Season 2 finale. That was a pretty good scene.


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This was pure Star Wars. The slightly goofy, friendly aliens, the non-verbal creatures with a vague comedy presence, the evil-but-competent Imperial commander planning stuff with more mystical bad guy Force-users, some stunning vfx (the arrival of the Chimera is an all-time epic shot), the young callow hero(ine) being somewhat out of her depth but also competent enough to deal with the situations. Thrawn is very hard to get right but they seem to be doing a really good job, and the actor playing Ezra is pretty spot-on. It's also doing an interesting mix of deepish lore cuts (the idea of Bokken Jedi, the Dathomiri witches) and new stuff, even if some of the new stuff is a remix of the old stuff (non-Tusken Raiders and Ewoks-but-they're-turtles-I-guess).

The show was far too slow to start with, but the last two episodes were outstanding. And it's odd that it's taken this long for someone to actually say "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." in dialogue (and it's amusing that it's Doctor Who who gets to say it).

My guess is that next week is Ahsoka arriving and trying to stop their departure, and in the last episode Thrawn returns to the SW Galaxy and wreaks some havoc, leaving things on a cliffhanger for the movie. Which I'm guessing they were expecting to be shooting by now and out next year, which now won't be the case due to the strike.


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Aberzombie wrote:

Just curious - are you playing on a computer or console. Debating on getting the game, but if I did I’d probably need a new computer. I don’t have a console it would run on (I think).

Also, my 5E experience is lacking (though not completely). Do you think that would hurt?

On PC. I just bought a brand-new giga-machine, so it had no problems with BG3 on maximum settings (until Act III, when it gets a bit buggy because they've haven't fully optimised the city itself). I believe it scales down well to relatively older hardware.

It's out on PlayStation 5 next week and on Xbox Series X and S before the end of the year.

The last time I played D&D tabletop was in 2009 (my group split after a couple of 4E campaigns and half the group absolutely loathing it and the rest wanting to keep on it with it over 3.5, and rejecting Pathfinder as an alternative), so I have zero experience of 5E and limited experience of 4E. I had zero problems with BG3 at all, it's pretty intuitive very quickly (the main appeal - and drawback - of tt 5E, I believe). The tighter focus of 5E versus PF1 and 2 is beneficial in a video game setting, whilst I found the attempt to put every single ttrpg mechanic from PF1 in Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous too overwhelming.

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Honestly, this kind of coverage makes me want to play the game less. I hear about all sorts of weird things that can impact cutscenes, but not as much about the game play. I'd prefer a game with little to no cutscenes and just fantastic gameplay.

Not saying the gameplay isn't good, just that the almost non-stop - "look at this weird thing I did which impacted a scene" is anti-marketing for me. I'd rather watch a movie or TV show if I want great cutscenes - 100% cutscene then!

People have been talking about the gameplay, reactivity, storylines, character arcs etc nonstop for the last month. There's been very long reviews about the game going into that stuff in detail and explaining why they've made it their highest-scoring game for years (PC Gamer US just made it their highest-scoring video game of all time).


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Ray Stevenson killing it as the bad guy. A great shame he passed away just a few weeks ago.

Overall, pretty solid start.


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GM SuperTumbler wrote:

I hope this is a fun fact:

"The Best of Both Worlds" cliffhanger codified the season finale cliffhanger ending.

While it was awesome, I hate what it created. So many series ended with cliffhangers and were cancelled.

I'm not sure that the cliffhanger with Picard as a Borg was the first, but it was the wildly successful one that everyone copied and still copies.

And if you don't know, it wasn't known to the creators (or the fans) that Stewart was coming back after that finale, so the episode was left open so they could write him out. The plan if he didn't renew his contract was to make Riker the captain and Shelby the new XO.

The season cliffhanger concept was likely borrowed from UK space opera BLAKE'S 7 (1978-81), which ended each of its four seasons with a massive cliffhanger to bring people back the following year. B7 itself was influenced by the original run of DOCTOR WHO (1963-89) which often ended episodes on a cliffhanger (though normally within a serial, occasionally between serials and only a few times between seasons). A bunch of TNG writers were also massive fans of DOCTOR WHO (a list of the then-seven actors to play the role is on a background monitor in the TNG Season 1 finale and the Borg are, at the very least, influenced by the Cybermen and Daleks).


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There is no more quintessential TTRPG feeling than a big bad making their appearance, making some BS speech about how they're going to kill you with ease, and you make a great initiative roll and instantly just shove them into the nearby lava without a second's remorse.


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This was 892nd episode of Star Trek. All of the 891 other TV episodes of Star Trek and all 13 movies are not musicals (Data singing Gilbert & Sullivan for 1 minute in Insurrection excepted). So it's fine if they take a punt on one or two weirdly experimental episodes here and there.

Buffy did a musical after just 106 episodes, and IIRC Xena managed to do two in around 120 episodes.


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Yup, M'Benga is in two episodes of TOS (A Private Little War and That Which Survives), played by Booker Bradshaw.


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Quark Blast wrote:

Good points but these are all writers. Painters sometimes too are known for producing their best works late in life. But for writers one often does not know how long the ideas were bouncing around inside their head before it finally got printed. Tolkien had been writing that story in dribs and drabs since the Great War and was expressly banging away at "the new Hobbit" for 15 years, more or less, prior to it's publishing dates. At any rate, a few exceptions doesn't really break the rule and it's not obvious to me that these writers are exceptions - though I think your strongest case is Cormac McCarthy!

* Shouldn't that be 2001?

JK Rowling is a writer as well, so the comparison seemed reasonable. Although I also noted Ridley Scott, a film director.

2001 is a film novelization that Clarke co-developed with Stanley Kubrick, and some people get antsy over its definition. Rendezvous with Rama doesn't have that categorisation problem, and was his most critically acclaimed novel. Although it is - finally! - getting a movie adaptation courtesey of Denis Villeneuve once he's done with DUNE.


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Quark Blast wrote:
I don't know any relevant facts re all the controversy but I do know that creativity wanes starting at about age 25 years, the decline is easily measurable by age 35, and is completely gone in the vast majority of people by 50. That's why JK is not producing anything new, and won't.

On the other hand, J.R.R. Tolkien published THE LORD OF THE RINGS at the age of 62, George R.R. Martin published A GAME OF THRONES at 47 (and its sequels at 50, 51, 57 and 62) and Arthur C. Clarke published his best-known novel RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA at 56. Ridley Scott directed his last great movie, THE MARTIAN, at 77. Cormac McCarthy published THE ROAD at 73.

It's also worth noting that Rowling is continuing her crime fiction series, but given it's somewhat tedious, that may actually prove the inverse.


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A 45-minute mega-deep dive.

There's some pretty good stuff here. The first and most massively obvious thing they've been working on is a graphical glow-up. This actually looks like a 2023 release, and the first time that a Bethesda game looks contemporary or even cutting-edge since Oblivion came out in 2006. It's also way, way more colourful than it looked previously.

They also go into more detail on how the game actually works. As usual you have your Bethesda Main Quest Which Is Kinda Urgent But Also Not Really and you can follow that and meet all the factions and a bunch of NPCs and that'll take ~40 hours to complete. There's also a metric butt-ton of side-quests all over the galaxy, likely your usual mix of inventive and interesting stuff and glorified fetch quests. Plus faction quests, with you being able to work for Constellation, the United Planets, the Freestar Collective, the Crimson Fleet, Ryujin Industries, the Red Mile, the House of Va'ruun and the worshippers of the Great Serpent. If you just want to do "normal Bethesda Game Studios game stuff," that'll keep you occupied for many dozens of hours.

More interesting here is the freedom the game gives you to "go anywhere" on the game's 1,000 planets, moons, asteroids and so on. How this works is that each planet/moon etc has a map which is divided into numerous tiles. Each tile is extremely large (at least a kilometre long on each axis, possibly several times that, and in the hand-crafted zones, larger still) and you can walk from one tile into the next, allowing you to walk right around the planet if you want to spend many hours doing that. It's much faster to fast-travel to your ship, take off, and land again elsewhere.

Whenever you land on a tile, the game populates it with stuff from a massive database, including abandoned mines or bases, space pirates, wildlife (friendly or not) and resources. Your experience of the game will vary from a friend's, as you might both visit the exact same tile on the exact same planet, but it'll be populated in different ways. It sounds like some hand-crafted quests and questlines will involve visiting these rando-worlds, with the location of characters and events dynamically changing depending on the situation. That will give the illusory feel of there being handcrafted content and stories even on the random side-worlds. That's quite clever, but how successful is will depend on how much of that stuff there is and how long it will take to run out.

For the most part, the game's story will take you to hand-crafted places to visit, with New Atlantis being BGS's biggest-ever city. It's so large apparently it has a monorail you need to switch between different districts (unknown if the monorail trains will be elaborate giant hats sitting on little man underneath the map, which is the tech hack Fallout 3 had to resort to to get the trains working).

A very nice touch is the variable gravity from world to world. The guy punching the enemy on Mars and them flying over the edge of the chasm fairly slowly and then hurtling towards the ground below is quite entertaining.

The game has a massive skill tree system, and there seems to be a general "stop the rot" feel to the game's RPG systems, with the systems looking much more complex than Fallout 4 or Skyrim (which both "streamlined" the RPG experience to the point of almost eliminating it).

It also looks like they erred on the side of "freedom" in allowing both starship and base customisation. The massive cargo ship that looks like Optimus Prime is most entertaining, as is the Platypus pirate ship filled with stolen sandwiches.

The space combat side of things is more involved than I thought, with you having power control systems (like X-Wing and Freespace) and the ability to board disabled ships and storm them. You can also amass an entire fleet of salvaged ships and switch between them at starports (it's unclear if you can send them off on other missions whilst your main ship is doing hero stuff, like the X series, but I assume not for now).

The crew system is also more involved. You can recruit your normal assortment of NPCs, but they can all travel with your on your ship. You can also assign any of them to other roles (including going with you on jobs), on the ship or on your bases. The NPCs have skill specialisations which can boost your ship's capabilities (i.e. stick a laser specialist on your ship's weapon consoles and your laser weapons will be more effective). You can also hire generic crewpeople, since it sounds like the number of fully-voiced, "proper" NPC companions will be limited to Skyrim/Fallout 4 levels (around a dozen) and you'll need way more than that if you're building lots of bases and you have a really massive ship.

Overall, this is looking very impressive, certainly far moreso than maybe any Bethesda game since those previews for Oblivion. And it's out in 11 weeks.


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For these films they have the rights to Lord of the Rings in its entirety (including the appendices), and partial rights to The Hobbit. To do anything with The Hobbit they need the other rights, held by MGM (now owned by Amazon), so have to do a deal with them.

They do not have, and probably never will acquire, the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and the other books.

For what films they can make, it's probably a good idea to look at the first one already in production: The War of the Rohirrim. That's an animated film about Helm Hammerhand and the original battle where Helm's Deep played a major role. That has Miranda Otto returning as Eowyn to narrate the story from a post-LotR POV. That's due out next April.

So they could make a film based on Aragorn's younger days, or on the founding of the Shire, or the fall of Arnor in warfare against the Witch-King of Angmar, or they could do a story set 25 years after LotR about Aragorn's tax policies. As long as they can argue it's derived from LotR, they're fine.

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Has there been any really good adaptation of anything SciFi/Fantasy between Jackson's LotR trilogy and Dune - part 1?

Sure. The Expanse and Paper Girls were great, The Boys is pretty good and Shadow & Bone is decent (probably better than the source material). Tales from the Loop was good, although it didn't have a huge amount to do with the source material. Game of Thrones started off superbly, but fell off a cliff there towards the end. House of the Dragon and The Last of Us have both started superbly. The Martian, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and Station 11 were all excellent. Season 1 of Altered Carbon was very good. Sandman has been excellent so far, but early days.


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I suspect they'll dust off the scripts for an Eisenhorn TV show that the Man in the High Castle team were working on back in 2019. That never really went anywhere, but apparently Amazon was one of the studios they were talking to (which makes sense, as they made High Castle).

Eisenhorn is a also a very logical first step for an adaptation. It has Inquisitors, Chaos Cults, daemons, some brief Space Marine appearances and even a Titan parade, but it mostly focuses on human characters investigating other humans in the Imperium. You get a good look at everyday life in the Imperium at the ground level, and a relatively small scale whilst introducing some of the gonzoid-crazier elements in a measured way. You also have the flexibility of just adapting the original trilogy or bringing in the Ravenor and Bequin sequel trilogies to make it a more epic story. It's doable in live action in a way that, say, going straight to the Horus Heresy is not.

Something like Gaunt's Ghosts may be workable, but that has a huge problem in the third book, Necropolis, which is insane in size and scale. It's like the Battle of Stalingrad on hyper-steroids. Most of the rest of the books are easily adaptable but that one has individual scenes which would cost more than all of Rings of Power in its entirety (I'm thinking of the Hell Engines smashing into the walls of Vervunhive, disgorging Chaos forces by the tens of thousands, whilst artillery, tanks and aircraft are engaged furiously around them).


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Yup, there's been a heavy backlash against the show from a subset of the fandom, not helped by one of the writers on the first season coming out and saying that other writers were mocking the books and video games in the writers' room and deliberately changing things because they thought the source material sucked. I outlined some pretty huge problems with the books that makes them very difficult to adapt above, but there's a difference to changing things because the source material is not really suitable for TV drama and changing things because they hated the source material (in which case...why work on the project?).


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I think the show's biggest mistake so far has been to release one episode a week. It looks like they've divided the season into four three-episode arcs (with an introductory episode, rising action and then action-packed climax), and the first batch of episodes was all the better for being released in one go. They should have done the same for the whole season.

But as it stands this is easily the best Star Wars TV show they've done. It feels like Star Wars made by HBO. Lots of character focus and development and "all the pieces matter," with everything building up to a logical resolution (so far, they might mess up on that in the last five episodes). The Empire being presented not as a cool-looking dude with a laser sword, but a huge bureaucracy of squabbling middle-managers who can nevertheless kill millions of people if they feel like it is genuinely disturbing, and it's the first time ever - on screen at least - that it feels like genuine "political intrigue" is going on, even if it's fairly limited so far. It's taking as much influence from Brazil (the Gilliam movie) as it is the OG Star Wars trilogy, which I was not expecting.

It's also pleasing they've decided they don't have to have characters showing up from other movies/TV shows and Easter Eggs every five nanoseconds, and the few shout-outs there have been have actually head reasonable points (i.e. telling us that the show is taking place alongside the events at the start of Star Wars: Rebels, for example, by mentioning some of the same events).


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The first two episodes dropped today.

It was okay. Khazad-dum I think was the standout storyline, Owain Arthur was outstanding as Prince Durin, moving from proud dwarven bluster to a family man to a friend angry at having been left hanging for too long. Dwarves have been very undersold in any fantasy TV show or movie that uses them, even LotR to some extent (as Gimli devolved into comic relief in the movie trilogy and in the book was just kind of hanging out there), and one of the sole saving graces of the Hobbit trilogy was how it tried to give the dwarves more depth and more of a sense of civilisation (although they then got sidetracked by the romance and battle scenes and kind of forgot about the dwarves in the company in the end). This tried the same thing and was much more successful.

The Southlands I think was the weakest story of the bunch. None of the actors were very good (Arondir is the weakest link in the main cast), the plot dynamics were weak and the Arondir/Bronwyn romance didn't really gel as we are introduced it mid-flow. It would have made more sense to have had it established from the start here. The idea of having elves keeping an eye on former allies of Morgoth/Sauron is also fine, but keeping that going 1700 (or 3400, depending on how they're treating the timeline) years later with zero sign of Sauron being around feels extreme, even for the elves.

The elves were mostly okay, at least to start with. Elrond is fine, but the actor was a much better Young Ned Stark. Gil-galad was okay, probably the most Jacksonian of the elven performances, the depictions of Lindon and Ost-in-Edhil did feel inverted (Lindon should be the glittering city by the sea, Ost-in-Edhil should be smaller, although being over-engineered did feel on-point for Celebrimbor). Morfydd Clark was occasionally outstanding as Galadriel (the light Welsh accent and rolling Rs felt appropriate for the language) but hamstrung by an odd script that tried very hard to spell out her motivations but seemed to leave them confused. There's a very interesting idea here about elves' immortal memories making it difficult to move on from trauma and pain, but I feel that's probably better-handled in a grimdark fantasy series and not a Tolkien one.

Galadriel saying, "f this noise, peace out," and jumping into the ocean a thousand miles or more from land with no way of surviving was...a choice. Maybe the idea was she was being encouraged to stay by the Valar or something, so was confident something would show up to save her, but that wasn't really hinted at. I'm also not sure we needed the "jump in the ocean, find a raft, get thrown in the ocean again, return to the raft, get knocked in the ocean again, return to the raft," cycle. That was repetitive.

The Harfoots were probably the most improved idea from expectations. The actors were solid (Markella Kavenagh has some real potential, I think), everyone seemed to get the memo and they didn't go overboard on the humour, which was a concern. The whole Meteor Man idea remains dumb as hell, but they at least made the mystery vaguely interesting, and the fact everyone saw the meteor apart from Team Galadriel when they were travelling across the ocean to Aman suggests he didn't come from Valinor, which lessens the strength of the Maiar/Gandalf/Blue Wizards idea and enhances the Sauron/random bad guy one.

The timeline being messed up wasn't really an issue in these first two episodes. That will become more apparent when Galadriel reaches Numenor. I still think this is the weakest idea in the entire project and I'm pretty certain now that they're going to have Durin's Bane showing up an entire Age early (they even vaguely allude to it in the second episode). Like, I understand why that's an attractive idea, but just because having the Romans fighting Napoleon's army is a cool idea for five seconds, that's no reason to do it. Maybe having the Bane show up, the dwarves defeat it and it returns to slumbering under the mountain, but even that feels unnecessary.

So far, stronger than The Wheel of Time. I don't think it's as strong an opening as House of the Dragon but it's not as far off as I anticipated. Intrigued to see how it does, but I think it will sink or swim based on Numenor and how it handles Sauron and the cult storyline. It also has very slow and deliberate pacing, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean by the end of these first two episodes we're a quarter of the way through the season and the full shape of the story and the stakes still feels very vague.


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It's worth noting they only have the rights to THE SANDMAN and not any other DC characters, so characters originated in SANDMAN they can use but not in earlier DC properties. So no Martian Manhunter, no Scott Free, no Batman or Superman, no OG Sandman, no Arkham Asylum. They can use John Dee, but they can't invoke his alter-ego of Doctor Destiny. They can use Johanna Constantine, as she first appeared in SANDMAN, but not John Constantine.


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Four episodes in and I think they pretty much nailed it. The changes are mostly logical, although I was worried. Having The Corinthian around as a villain in almost every episode feels like an error like over-exposing Vicious in Cowboy Bebop, but here it works because they organically intertwine the Corinthian with other characters and even helps explain a few incongruities from the original comics (humans trying to imprison the Endless with basic magic must have happened before and they were able to overcome it, but the Corinthian's insider info gives Burgess an edge). It also helps that Boyd Holbrook is cast to perfection as the Corinthian, whilst that other guy as Vicious was horribly miscast.

The trip to Hell was the comic come to life, Johanna Constantine works fine as a replacement for Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Series John (thanks to legal issues with The CW's use of the character), and David Thewliss's calm performance as John Dee is far more terrifying than either the comic book version or the Corinthian.

If I did have one complaint it's that Patton Oswalt's voice as Matthew is a bit too distracting, even if you didn't recognise him. It feels like the only bit of high-profile casting that feels incongruous.

The next episode (105) is 24/7, which a couple of reviews have already called the best hour of television this year, which seems like high praise, and then 106 is The Sound of Her Wings.


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Thomas Seitz wrote:
But is it 5e? I mean it's never stated what edition we're in. Other than we're (possibly) Faerun.

Hasbro will be cross-market-pollinating (whatever) the hell out of the movie into D&D products, so if they are referencing stuff it will be out of 5E.

Also, it is Faerun. The movie is primarily set in Neverwinter and according to the plot description they also have scenes in Waterdeep and Icewind Dale (presumably with slightly blurry posters for WATERDEEP DRAGON HEIST and RIME OF THE FROSTMAIDEN in the background).


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One problem they keep having, especially with the first movies for a director, is the director coming on board to find the movie already storyboarded out for them. It prevents the director from having as much input as they'd like. For the sequels that's less of a problem as the director is right on board from the start of the process. Although it can also backfire: Ragnarok wasn't full 100% Taika Waititi as he came onboard during the writing and storyboarding process, but Love & Thunder is 150% Waititi and I think that actually hurt the movie.

The only director who avoided that fate in their first film for the MCU is Sam Raimi, who had enough creative respect and power to simply come in and say, "We're not doing that, we're doing this my way," resulting in the most visually distinctive Marvel movie to date (although perhaps a little familiar to anyone who's watched the Evil Dead movies and TV show).

Shang-Chi I think was a really solid movie with good direction up until the final act, when it devolved a little into Standard MCU CGI Slugfest. I think Cretton can maybe take ownership of that a bit more going into his next movie. I'd be more concerned about him having to squeeze out Shang-Chi 2 (which is confirmed and already in development) and Avengers 5 back-to-back, but the Russos did pump out Winter Soldier-Civil War-Infinity War at two-year intervals, and shot Infinity War and Endgame back to back, so it is possible (if chronically exhausting).

As for Marvel Franchise Fatigue, yeah, I think there's a danger of that. I do think not having any Marvel product at all in 2020 did create a bit more of an appetite for it, but the films that came out afterwards (the underwhelming Black Widow, the okay-but-underdeveloped Eternals and the good but not great Shang-Chi) didn't exactly set the world on fire.I really liked Dr. Strange 2 but it was a marmitey film overall, and Love & Thunder was far, far too comedic to really make its dramatic scenes work.

If I was Kevin Feige I'd seriously be considering retiring after Secret Wars (he'd have been working on the MCU project for around twenty years at that point) and letting a new team take over, maybe with a ~3 year break becoming coming back with any new TV show or movie. You have to create the appetite and demand for a franchise rather than just assume it will always be there, especially with little kids now who see the 14-year-old MCU as being old-hat and dated.


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I believe Hasbro have clarified this was a fan poster created for the event which they gave permission to have there, rather than an officially-created Hasbro product. The film's actual poster has been released and is completely different.


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TRAILER.

It looks exceptionally good. Some comic panel images brought straight to life there. The Corinthian looks properly disturbing and Desire's Castle is straight out of the comics. And Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer is brilliant.


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John Woodford wrote:
Has anyone heard whether he got to see any of this before the trailer came out? It would have been a friendly thing to do.

Possibly. But I know people who've been producers on a project that they wrote and they only got to see the trailer on the same day as everybody else.


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It's also very cool to see the city of - I assume - Neverwinter on-screen for the first time, not to mention Red Wizards of Thay. A shame Ed Greenwood gets to see his creation in live-action for the first time (55 years after he created it!) the same week he lost his wife :(


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Traaaaaailer!

Slightly cheesy but way better than I was expecting. Seeing an owlbear tearing up a band of dudes is entertaining and dragons with their correct breath weapons is fun.


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First poster!

Including, erm, pre-existing PATHFINDER stock art of an intellect devourer.

I'm sure that's going to be fine.


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First character images.

Looks like Hugh Grant gets the assignment: cheesy fun seems to be the tone they are going for.


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I bought his 700-page analysis (!) of the MASS EFFECT trilogy. Some very clever and interesting stuff in there.


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Mark Hoover 330 wrote:
Did anyone notice that Erica called her character a "rogue" in the D&D session? In '86 we had AD&D, Basic, Expert and Immortals; there were no "Rogue" classes. You could play a THIEF, but not a rogue. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

I think a few years earlier that'd be a much bigger mistake, but by the late 1980s it wasn't uncommon to see people referring to thieves, assassins and bards together as "rogues." That's one of the reasons 2E made that distinction part of the rules, because it had been house-ruled for years earlier.


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A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

The Teixcalaanli Empire stands on the brink of war with an unknown alien race. Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus and her fleet stand at the edge of the conflict, tasked with defending the Empire from an enemy whose numbers, capability and disposition are all unknown. She calls in Envoy Three Seagrass to help formulate a way of talking to the enemy...who in turn calls on her friend, Lsel Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, for aid. These are the same two people recently involved in the circumstances surrounding the accession of the new Emperor, and this triggers a tidal wave of political intrigue stretching across light-years. But their mission must succeed, for the aliens pose a threat to far more than just the Empire.

A Desolation Called Peace is the second book in a loosely-connected duology, following up on A Memory Called Empire. That novel was as dramatically impressive as any space opera debut from the last couple of decades, a confidently-written novel about politics, identity and intrigue that won a Hugo Award. This book is the continuation, although the main story (about the first encounter with an unknown alien race in deep space) stands alone.

Desolation is not quite as striking a novel as Memory, maybe because it is trying to do a bit too much. The novel continues the political intrigue on the Teixcalaanli homeworld from the previous novel, albeit with some new players (most of the intriguers from the previous novel having been fired, killed, imprisoned or exiled), whilst also throwing in a widescreen, big-budget space war and an Arrival-style subplot with the protagonists trying to understand the aliens' language, which is difficult because it is rooted in concepts, ideas and fundamental biology that humans are completely unfamiliar with. Further subplots revolve around the new Emperor trying to assert their authority, the Emperor's heir learning important lessons about statecraft and Seagrass and Mahit's relationship, which was left on an awkward pause in the first book. There's also internal politicking within the Teixcalaanli fleet and a lot of business on Lsel Station as well.

It makes for a busy, breezy book with a lot going on, but the tight page count (480 pages in paperback) means a lot of these ideas are not explored in as much detail as maybe they could have been. Extending the duology to three books or making A Desolation Called Peace into a Peter F. Hamilton-class shelf-destroyer might have been a better way of expanding these stories more satisfyingly. Still, leaving readers wanting more and making novels as tight as possible is not a bad thing either.

Many of the themes from the first novel continue to be explored, such as the tension between the semi-decadent Teixcalaanli, whose overwhelming power makes them both arrogant and overconfident when faced with a potentially greater threat, and the much more pragmatic inhabitants of Lsel Station. The aliens are an added wild card here, with an interesting biology and impressive technical prowess, and a truly alien way of thinking that the author evokes well through the text. The aliens are also not over-used, deployed just enough so we get a sense of their strangeness but not so much that they lose their effectiveness.

If poetry was a theme of the first book, language is a theme here, and how language shapes ideas and ideology (and vice versa). Like some other plots, the Arrival-like storyline of talking to the aliens is a little curt, but what we do get is fascinating. There is also the way the Teixcalaanli use language themselves, and how they communicate and what methods of communication they use. This becomes a key point of the subplot involving the Emperor's heir, which initially feels detached from the main narrative but loops back in satisfyingly later on.

A Desolation Called Peace (****) is an accomplished, page-turning, idea-packed space opera which tells a lot of great stories, but the sheer number of stories it is telling in a constrained page count means that occasionally you find yourself wishing more greater elaboration of a storyline or character arc. But it also gives the novel a relentless, compelling pace.


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The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip

Sybel is the latest in a line of keepers of a group of fantastic beasts dwelling on Eld Mountain. She cares nothing for the outside world until the warrior Coren brings into her care a baby boy, Tamlorn. Tamlorn is the son of the king, but Sybel cares nothing for his heritage. A dozen years later, the outside world returns to intrude on their peaceful lives, and Sybel and Tamlorn must choose their fate.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld was originally published in 1974 and has since become regarded as a classic, foundational volume of modern fantasy. It mixes elements of epic fantasy - armies readying for battle, politics - with elements of fairy tales, particularly the magical beasts who live with Sybel and the way that the magic works, with sorcerers gaining power over one another through the knowledge of names and stories.

McKillip's writing discipline is awesome to behold. In just 200 pages she packs in more story and more ideas than most entire trilogies. The writing is elegant and stylish for all of its tremendous pace, and the character development of Sybel, Tamlorn and Coren is superb. Particularly powerful is the discussion of the intersection of power and morality: just because you can do something does not mean you should. Sybel's grasping of how to wield great power responsibly, unlike some of her opponents who just don't care, is explored well.

The superb prose and excellent pacing does sometimes come at the expense of other elements. McKillip provides just enough worldbuilding to support the story and no more; some may feel this hurts immersion, but I never saw it as a problem (and even something of a relief). The characterisation of secondary figures aside from the big three is also more limited, due to a lack of page time. King Drede is presented intriguingly as a complex antagonist with mixed motivations, but we don't really get to know him in depth.

These complaints are slight. McKillip's writing is compelling, her storytelling is phenomenal and the way the book balances different elements is superb. It is unsurprising to learn that the novel won the inaugural World Fantasy Award in 1975, and has since become regarded as a classic of the genre. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (*****) is available now in the UK and USA.


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Ncuti is one of the leads in the Netflix show SEX EDUCATION and is very good and is very funny in that. He initially appears to be the standard "gay best friend" trope but almost immediately develops beyond that and in a different direction. He shows humour, flair, great dress sense and, when he gets really angry, can be quite scary. I think he'll make an excellent Doctor.

It is amusing that people think he's much younger than he is though, because he plays a 16-18 year old on that show. He's 29 right now, will be 30 by the time he makes his first appearance (presumably at the end of the next special) and 31 when his first full episode airs in late 2023. Both Peter Davison and Matt Smith were younger when they first appeared in the role (Smith four years younger).


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Is that the ending? It didnt seem like an ending but they released 3 episodes an I don't see more coming.

No, there's 12 episodes in Season 1. They released the first 3 on 28 January, episodes 4-6 last week and episodes 7-9 this week. 10-12 will be next week.


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Tristan d'Ambrosius wrote:


They each have one credit prior to this just like 2 other dudes allowed to be show creators who seemed to have no experience. And Game of Thrones worked out pretty well for those guys.

For at least four seasons, anyway.

Plus David Benioff had way more credits than that before Game of Thrones. He had at least four: The 25th Hour, Troy, The Kite Runner and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as well as an acclaimed novel and short story collection.

Quote:
Galadriel Warrior Princess

Galadriel had retired from the smacking people around stage of her career in the Third Age at the time of LotR, but she was straight-up bringing the pain earlier on. She took part in the Kinslaying at Alqualonde (until Tolkien had her switch sides to defending her kinsmen rather than attacking them, but still fending people off in combat), she led thousands of her kin across the Grinding Ice, she viewed the dwarves of Khazad-dum as warriors she could "command" against Sauron's forces, she is named High Lady of Eriador at one point and she "leads the defence," alongside Elrond and subordinate to Gil-galad, during the War of Sauron and Elves.

In his "Letters" collection Tolkien straight-up describes her as an "Amazon".


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dirtypool wrote:
Okay, having watched it, no that was not Steve Downes as the voice of the Master Chief. Which is a little disappointing given that Jen Taylor is Cortana. Would have been nice to have them both

They have already said we will get to see Master Chief's face in this so they had to hire an age-suitable actor (Pablo Schreiber from THE WIRE and AMERICAN GODS). Steve Downes is a great voice actor but he's also 71, so clearly is not going to be suitable for playing the live-action role.

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Werthead, glitchy blue Cortana was the look from Halo 2 onward. Combat Evolved Cortana was purple.

She's definitely blue in the Master Chief Collection remaster (I just replayed it a few months ago).


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They're actually mixing the two series together. Chronologically, the first two Empire books take place simultaneously with Magician, then Silverthorn takes place and the last Empire book takes place around the time of A Darkness at Sethanon, maybe a bit later (Prince of the Blood and The King's Buccaneer then take place after both series).

So we'll be with Pug and Tomas for a few scenes, then cut to Mara for a few bits, then back to Pug and co etc.

It's an interesting approach. There's enough going on in both series to sustain two storylines, and it's not like there's a really big team-up of both storylines (Mara and Pug chat a few times and Pug meets Kevin at one point, but that's about it). But it does mean that the Riftwar Saga gets some additional, urgently-needed major female characters who actually do important things, and you get more of a balanced Midkemian and Kelewani perspective on both sides of the Riftwar.

Shadow & Bone did the same thing recently, combining the OG trilogy with the Six of Crows spin-off series, and that worked surprisingly well.


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Ha. As was prophecised by the retrospective captain.

EA and Respawn are working on three new STAR WARS games: JEDI: FALLEN ORDER 2 (duh); a brand-new first-person shooter, which I guess will be more in the DARK FORCES vibe; and what sounds like STAR WARS: XCOM, a turn-based "cinematic" strategy game with Bit Reactor, a new studio founded by Firaxis devs and veterans of the CIVILIZATION and XCOM series.


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Thomas Seitz wrote:
So yeah, doubtful we'll see anything Star Wars from Microsoft any time soon.

There's no reason why not. EA's exclusivity contract with Disney expired a couple of years ago and other developers and publishers are on board. Ubisoft are doing an open-world STAR WARS game right now.

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I wonder which company (or more) Sony buys up in the next 6-18 months to play capital keep up now... hmmm, EA is looking mighty attractive to them right about now, esp if they can somehow score the various SPORTSBALL games as timed exclusives.

Sony does not remotely have the same financial firepower as Microsoft, but it does have around $30 billion in cash reserves, which would be enough to buy out a bit more than half of Electronic Arts' shares. So Sony could buy a controlling stake in EA, but it couldn't buy the company outright, unless it could stump up twice that amount. Of course, Sony could borrow but it would be a bit of a risky venture, especially because EA's portfolio of mega-hits is looking thinner than it has in the past. FIFA is really the jewel in its crown (at least the only thing to really compete with CoD) and I believe the actual FIFA's contract stipulates the games have to be released on all formats.

Microsoft could much more easily buy EA. Hell, Microsoft could possibly buy Sony, if it wasn't for the fact that the anti-trust watchdogs would 100% shoot that idea down.


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Pan wrote:
Who owns the old Lucas Arts stuff? Id love to see a reboot of The Dig and Maniac Mansion.

LucasArts (and hence now Disney). The studio was recently relaunched, although more as a brand name and partnership programme rather than a studio on its own right.


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Yeah, vanilla MW5 is solid but flawed. With mods it becomes a work of art.


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The biggest news story yesterday in gaming was Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard for just under $69 billion. The deal dwarfs the $7 billion Microsoft paid for Zenimax/Bethesda less than two years ago and the $2.5 billion they paid for Mojang in 2014. Microsoft also picked up the much smaller Obsidian and inXile in 2018.

The acquisition means some of the biggest franchises in gaming - including CALL OF DUTY, WARCRAFT, STARCRAFT, DIABLO, OVERWATCH, SKYLANDERS/SPYRO, CRASH BANDICOOT, GUITAR HERO and, er, CANDY CRUSH - will now be owned by Microsoft, will become Xbox/PC exclusives going forwards and will likely be available on GamePass and Steam, though not before mid-to-late 2023 when the deal clears regulatory hurdles.

Microsoft's strategy here is to grow GamePass and make it too good an offer to turn down, and in the long run combined it with streaming so you don't even need a console to use the service (although the woeful state of internet infrastructure in many countries, particularly the USA, remains a major block to that). Their previous acquisitions and moves were aimed at more hardcore gamers, but making CALL OF DUTY Xbox-exclusive is a huge shot at getting very casual gamers, the people who maybe buy two games a year and one of them is always the latest CALL OF DUTY, to switch to Xbox. Whether it works remains to be seen.

What is interesting is that Microsoft will likely be not as keen on making sweatshop annual release games, so CALL OF DUTY might switch to a new game every 2 or 3 years rather than every year, potentially freeing up those studios to work on something more intriguing. A new STAR WARS JEDI KNIGHT game from Raven, for example, is a mouthwatering prospect.


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Quark Blast wrote:

This is another series that comes out "just ok". Not regretting I watched it but there will be no temptation to see it a second time.

Why 'O why can't they use the story they're given and not butcher it with their stupefying "better" ideas?

Because they'd be lucky to get three seasons out of them. The books are super-short (until the last one) by epic fantasy standards and also mind-bogglingly slow-paced, which quite a bizarre combination.

Spoiler:
In the books, at the end of Book 3 Ciri is separated from Geralt and Yenn and basically doesn't see them again until Book 7. Geralt assembles a D&D adventuring party to find Ciri, but most of them die on completely unrelated side-quests and every time they think they've found Ciri, it turns out she's in a completely different castle. Meanwhile, an assortment of mages, kings and Djikstra spend ages having strategy meetings spelling out what's going on the political storyline, which ends up not being massively important anyway.

You can't really turn that into a seven-season TV show so they had to do something different with the pacing and storytelling and they did bring in some new elements like the Baba Yaga thing to give the characters more to do. A massive complaint about the novels is that Geralt ceases doing any proper Witchering after the first two books and gets less and less screentime until he's a guest character in the series named after him, whilst Ciri becomes the star. Which of course they can't do whilst they're paying Henry Cavill millions to play Geralt.

That said, they did do some things that were really weird, like inverting Lambert and Eskel's characters and then killing Eskel (who is a far more important character in the books) almost instantly for no obvious reason.


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Eternals was fine. Maybe in the middle of the pack? It had several really nice and original ideas, like no generic mostly off-screen villain (well, the Celestial, but he's more of a sequel problem) and they developed the next best thing from within the team.

However, most of the standard complaints are valid: there's too many characters and not enough time (even with an extra half-hour), the major actors are oddly sidelined (Hayek and Jolie have little to do) and Kit Harington is solely in this to set up his next appearance, presumably in Blade, rather than doing anything in this film himself. Also, although there is some humour, it's turned way down from the Marvel norm which is both refreshing but then that makes bits of the film kind of dour.

Greylurker wrote:

Oh that's weird. Up in Canada it's all Disney+; Micky Mouse, Frozen, National Geographic, American Horror story, Aliens, The Strain all in one spot. (I'm still waiting for Owl House Season 2 though)

I'm assuming you pay a lot less if they split things up between two subscription

In most countries that are not the US, most of Hulu's content is on Disney+. Here in the UK we have it under a sub-channel called "Star" (which is easy to confuse with Starz, which here is a sub-channel on Amazon Prime rather than its own thing as in the US but also shows non-Starz stuff which gets very confusing).


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Discworld #20: Hogfather

The Discworld is preparing to celebrate the great festival of Hogswatch, when young children receive presents from the Hogfather. However, someone has marked the Hogfather's card and given the task to the Assassins' Guild of Ankh-Morpork to carry out. Bewildered at the idea of executing a mythical being, they give the task to their most creative and ruthless inhumer, Mr. Teatime. As the plan unfolds and the Hogfather goes missing, Death steps in to fill the void, commanding his granddaughter Susan to, under no circumstances, search for the missing Hogfather.

Hogfather is the twentieth Discworld novel and the Big Christmas Special of the series. Pratchett had occasionally mentioned the festival of Hogswatch in previous novel and with his Discworld novels usually being published at the end of the years and being an annual Christmas gift in some households, it was a reasonable move to actually write a novel about Christmas, or at least the Disc's typically idiosyncratic version thereof. Christmas therefore joins the various other topics - like films, rock music, crime, fundamentalist religion and Shakespeare - that Pratchett has covered over the series to date.

The novel also acts as the fourth novel to focus on the character of Death, and the second on his granddaughter of Susan Sto Helit (following Soul Music). Death's character has been explored pretty thoroughly in three previous books, so Pratchett splits the story here between Death and Susan, with more focus on Susan as she explores the mystery of why the Hogfather has disappeared and why someone would want to kill him. It's a sold spine for the book, and it's fun following the path of clues which eventually leads to the solution. Susan remains one of Pratchett's more underrated and capable protagonists, as he puts it, a "Goth Mary Poppins," so it is surprising she makes so few appearances (aside from this novel, she only appears in Soul Music and Thief of Time).

One of the biggest surprises about Hogfather is how dark it gets. Pratchett's reputation for comedy and laughter belies the fact that he can get quite venomous and biting when he wants to, and it's probably not a coincidence that his darkest novels - Small Gods, Night Watch and Nation - are among his very best. Hogfather doesn't go that far, but it does feature an unpleasant gang of criminals with rather unpleasant habits and tics. In Mr. Teatime it also features possibly Pratchett's most psychologically damaged and unhinged antagonists, someone who is not a nice guy and who isn't going to be won over by witty speech by the lead character. This gives the novel a surprising amount of bite for what is supposed to be the Discworld Christmas Special.

The book does falter a bit in its pacing. Once again, the presence of the Unseen University faculty slows things down to a drag. There are some nice gags here - Death communicating with the primitive AI, Hex, and the Senior Wrangler going on a date - but once again the Bursar's mental illness being played up for laughs and the other faculty going through their routines is something that was played out in Reaper Man, at the very least, and should have been retired by now.

Beyond that problem, Hogfather (****) is a very solid novel with some of Pratchett's most accomplished and unpleasant villains, which normally would be a good thing but I'm not sure it works within the context of a Christmas story. Great characters and a nicely knotty plot overcome pacing problems and some repetitive story beats to make for a rare Christmas fantasy novel that is worth reading. The book is available in the UK and USA now.

The book also has the distinct honour of being the first Discworld novel adapted for the screen in live-action (animated versions of Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music were produced a decade earlier). Sky produced a two-part TV adaptation of Hogfather in 2006, starring Ian Richardson as Death, Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) as Susan Sto Helit and Marc Warren in a very memorable role as Mr. Teatime.


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I did a recent replay and ended up putting 100 hours into the game in a much more relaxed, enjoyable playthrough. The mix I found was doing story missions but then doing every optional mission on the same planet before moving on. Before I mainlined the main story missions and quickly outlevelled myself, and had to spend ages mid-game grinding side-missions. If you mix them up from the off, the game becomes much better paced.

I would definitely recommend playing with the DLCs installed and switched on. The city maps are a huge force equaliser, turning very tough missions into easier ones because you can take cover behind buildings, disrupt sightlines, use jump jets to get better vantage points or blow buildings apart which enemy units are standing on, which can destroy their legs. However, if playing with the DLCs remember to keep 4x Lights and 4x Mediums in reserve for missions with tonnage limits (in the base game you can literally get rid of them all and just have 4x Assault running around, which is no longer the case).

A huge advantage - I didn't really bother first time around, hence why so much frustration - is using the Called Shot and Vigilant abilities to give you a boost in combat, and on the ship taking upgrades that boost your morale. Maxing out your morale bonuses on the ship means being able to use special abilities every 1-2 turns in battle rather than maybe once or twice in the entire battle, and you can level up morale upgrades on the ship surprisingly quickly.

There's also much wisdom in looking out for better mech salvage and pieces to buy, and being optimistic about it. On my first playthrough I didn't get Assault Mechs until almost the end of the game (I think I still had 1 Heavy on the final mission), but on my second I lucked out with getting a couple of Assault pieces early on and then salvaging the third piece from the very first enemy Assault Mech I faced, so had an Assault running around relatively early which was a huge force equaliser.


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Vicious was a poor letdown from the anime, though in fairness anime is able to better handle the "badass bad guy who you get is badass despite having sweet FA characterisation" trope then you could ever get away with in live action.

Julia I thought was a massive across-the-board improvement. She was just a cypher in the anime, but now she is a character with a real arc (if a pretty traditional noir-based one) whose story makes sense.

Spoiler:
Her blowing up at Spike assuming she was just waiting around to be rescued was a great scene.

Keeping Vicious alive for a second season is a bad idea, though. His story was done. Kill him and let Julia take over as the antagonist.


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Greylurker wrote:
Is it me or did they totally skip an entire City and two of Rand's girls?

They couldn't afford to build a massive set for Caemlyn, put it in storage for ~2 seasons to use for one scene and then bring it out of storage again a season and a half later to start using regularly. So they moved the story to Tar Valon, which is a set they'll be using for the entirety of the rest of the series.

Min appears before the end of this season, Elayne appears next season.


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A message from the guy who created the original mod:

Quote:

This mod can not just be "updated"... it needs to be re-made. The game that was released in 2019 was an under-development alpha version, PGI continued to develop it further. A lot has been changed on the foundation of this game. The modded assets are not simply added to the game, they replace original assets in the game file... and when original assets go through major updates, then your old modifications replacing the new files will often lead to crashes, since the modded assets does not include the updates PGI made. The changes to modded assets can not be "copy/pasted". That's not how UE4 works. You need to create functions, address variables, modify original code and BP graphs... none of which is "copy/paste-able"

Back in early 2020 I had free time and could work 5 hours a day on mw5 mods. This is not the case anymore. I am neck deep in work projects and don't even have enough time to sleep. Even through weekends. I can't take hours off, and I can't accept donations or have any financial problems. Simply, I don't have enough time on my hands. Certainly not a full month of full time every day work that's needed to remake this.

This is going to be the situation at least for the next 7-8 months. After than, I'll have to wait and see.

There have been some other UI mods but they are pretty bare bones in comparison. The original mod was a work of art and it's a shame it's no longer compatible with the current version of the game.

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