I think it’s the distinction of whether or not it is voluntary. Buying things is a choice, taxes aren’t (outside of voting for certain political candidates who promise to use taxes in different ways).

A lot of people out there have short-sighted mindsets like “Why do I have to pay for schools when I don’t have any kids?” or “I have my own insurance, why do I have to pay into someone else’s public healthcare too?” People can’t be relied on to make the spending choices needed to support a healthy and stable society on their own, so taxes and public spending make it for them.

To add on to that, not all taxes fund things for the public good. In the US at least, and other countries with large military spending, one must accept that a lot of tax money goes to fund the military industrial complex. Taxes are also used to line the pockets of corporations via bailouts and overpriced government contracts.

Now I also believe there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, but taxes are nevertheless different from a voluntary exchange of currency for goods and services that one directly benefits from.

Usually services in English will have English (US) and English (UK). Sorry to all the other English-speaking countries out there, though.

Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.

The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.

Do you mean 343/Halo Studios or is 545 some sort of reference I’m missing?

You can!

Worth noting for anyone looking to play both N64 games is that OoT Gerudo stay stunned indefinitely (until the area is reloaded) but the Pirates in Majora’s Mask who are borrowed from the Gerudo guards only stay stunned for a short time before getting back up.

This incentizes use of the Stone Mask, which can be obtained from the invisible guard by giving him a red potion. If playing the N64 version, he is located outside of Ikana Graveyard, which is a place that you can get to at that point in the game but many might not have bothered exploring yet. In the 3DS version, they moved him directly into Pirates Fortress so he’s harder to miss, but it does require just a little bit of stealth to get to where he is first.

Nothing says legitimate like some weird AI generated images.

The people you’re messaging might, though.

I just think it stopped being a good deal the moment they implemented their first price increase. That signalled that they’re willing to do what every other subscription service does and raise prices as arbitrarily high as people are willing to pay, with the enticement being that once you’re in deep enough, you can’t unsub or you’re left with no games.

If you have copious time for gaming and are always on the hunt for sometbing new, is it still a better deal than buying every game at release? Sure, at least for now. But the patient gaming strat at least gives me a backlog of affordable titles too long to finish them all, and I can also return to it at any time without worrying about titles eventually disappearing from a subscription catalog.

Same here in Massachusetts back in 2020.

It’s not necessarily a GOP vs Dem issue, it’s dominant parties worried that giving voters more choice will weaken their control.

The universe where her real name is Kasumi

Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh too.

Each has real-world analogs. Kanto is the literal Kanto region of Japan, Johto is Kansai, Hoenn is Kyushu, and Sinnoh is Hokkaido.

I’m honestly surprised people still have it.

The general worker anxiety in the US is so bad that most people believe that attempts to unionize will end up costing them their jobs anyways.

Worst part is that not all of them are wrong.

May constitute a war crime? Israel is a war crime.

That’s exactly it, they have the ability to go about certain scenes in different ways.

I still only have the Astarion/Cazador example, because that’s the only origin character I played as, but one moment I remember as different between Astarion as party member versus Astarion as player is the conversation with his former lover Sebastian before confronting Cazador.

In my playthrough with Astarion as an NPC, he basically auto-piloted through most of that conversation. He remembered who Sebastian was, it was somewhat touching, and the player was able to ask Astarion questions for context.

In my playthrough as Astarion as the player, you can navigate that conversation in different ways, but there are also certain things that are no longer a given. You actually have to roll to remember who Sebastian is (which I flubbed) and that changes the course of the conversation away from the NPC “default” conversation.

Edit: I found some examples of that specific scene on YouTube, to compare the differences.

Astarion as a Party Member

Astarion as an Origin Character

Comment still agreeing with the mistaken criticism above, despite the apology, just to be argumentative.

Leadership inaction

but if you play as any of the characters you barely hear them, or so I’ve heard.(haven’t done it myself)

This is the case. There are a small set of instances where the character might get a one-off voice line, but in general you’re left mute, even during high impact story moments where the character would usually get a spotlight (e.g. Astarion confronting Cazador).

It’s just a bit of a shame because you’d think people would opt to play characters they like because they want to experience more of them while playing, but ironically you get less that way.

Agreed, I think it’s more that Jennifer English is out there putting in the work to get as many solid gigs as she can, BG3 being just one of several.