Why did this immediately start playing in my head as soon as I saw this picture?

https://youtu.be/XpJEg6MTPzc

FWIW, Amazon bought the James Bond IP last year (and also owns MGM Studios as of 2022). The relationship between this game and Amazon may be nothing more than that.

Playground is planning to fill their games with AI slop, so I can't say I'm overly interested in anything they have to say or show off.

That just leaves Gamefreak, which simply cannot make a good game if a gun was held to their head, so I don't have much interest in them either.

But what about 20 1-minute videos? 🤔

FWIW, duck and cover was more meant to protect kids from falling debris in the event a nuke goes off a distance away that is survivable. I don't think anyone expected this to help in a direct blast type of scenario

Just my 2 cents on a surface-level reading of the character because it's also been a while since I've watched it.

Aragorn is strong and capable, with a generally masculine image about him. He's handsome, good with a sword, rides horses, and commands respect by his presence.

But he is not prideful or boastful, he doesn't seek glory, and he's respectful to the women in his life.

At least the way the movies present it, his relationship with Arwen is one in which both partners are equal participants. Aragorn is not controlling, and Arwen isn't some damsel who lacks agency without her man there to tell her what to do. And when Eowyn shows affection towards him, he is quick to respectfully decline her advances without leading her on, thereby preserving a positive and supportive relationship between them.

That might be the sort of thing people are referring to, as far as his characterization. There might be more examples, but that's what I remember.

Correct. Imgur hasn't implemented ID verification on their site, so the only other way to comply with UK law at present is to geoblock users from the UK.

There are better hosts out there anyways, not sure why it is still so widely used here.

Hmm, so is it light-based? If a werewolf is on a shaded side of the moon, no werewolf, but if the sun shines on them, werewolf time?

Would make for some interesting fiction, actually. Space werewolves that only come out during a lunar day, night is the only safe time.

Guessing the deadly nightclub fire in Switzerland last week.

Verizon

I heard a joke once: Man turns on computer. Goes to edit settings. Needs a patch to fix a system deficiency. Can't find any other solution. Windows says, "The fix is simple. Only a system administrator can make these changes. Go call one. That should take care of it." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But Windows... I am the system administrator." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Upgrade to enterprise for $199.99. Curtains.

(Original reference)

Well yeah, you don't want the undesirables to benefit from healthcare, right? On my tax money? continues to spend thousands on insurance

God it killed me a bit just to type that

Wild, you're right, it's apparently blocked by my mobile carrier. Tried it again with a VPN and it worked fine.

So much for the idea of a free and open internet...

I can't even view OP's image at all, but it's just showing as WebP to me? Is Catbox just down?

Don't worry, I also died a little bit inside just when looking up the dates to make sure I was remembering correctly! Definitely a moment feeling like that Saving Private Ryan gif.

There were 17 years between the release of Elder Scrolls 1 (1994) and Elder Scrolls 5 (2011).

It's coming up on 15 years since the release of Elder Scrolls 5, and still no release date for Elder Scrolls 6 in sight.

Not to mention those companies have divided priorities. Valve's main income is Steam, they have a vested interest in keeping their product dominant. Microsoft and Epic simply don't, because their stores are only side projects that incentivise their main income sources. But that's not to say I want to substitute Steam with some other corpo giant's latest money grab either.

The bigger question is why more consumer-friendly stores like GOG that sell DRM-free games can't compete with Steam. High profile games have no incentive to release DRM-free versions of their titles on GOG because the bigger store where they make more money encourages DRM. And these locked-in publisher relationships built on DRM allows Valve to outcompete more consumer-friendly stores through sales and user experience.

Valve gets a lot of clout in the Linux sphere because their adoption of open-source platforms is better than their competitors, and we have the mindset of "a rising tide lifts all ships", but this is also what we were saying about Google and Android 15 years ago and we can see how that is shaping up. Something something "you either die a hero..."

Basically, Valve is too big to compete with at this point, because any competing product needs to be more perfect out the gate for people to even consider using it. Which is hard to do when you are not as entrenched and don't have the kind of money Valve has.

Or maybe we can all just, like, stop trying to take over countries?

Guessing it didn't enter full production until after Starfield, which itself had a delayed launch. Bethesda has a lot of money, especially under Microsoft, but their core studio (BGS) is still a comparatively small team, likely no A-team/B-team development pipeline.

I'm guessing development of the game is well underway at this point, maybe aiming for a release in the next couple of years. But development is always a dice roll of whether a project goes smoothly and launches on time or if speedbumps might necessitate changes in plans.

Despite the "trailer" for Elder Scrolls 6 that is already 8 years old at this point, Bethesda typically does not start hyping their projects until they're fairly close to completion (e.g. Fallout 4, first trailer in June 2015, release in November 2015). Starfield was intended to be similar, with its first real trailer (something more than just a title card) in 2021 and a planned release in 2022, though the release was delayed a year by Microsoft for polishing, which I am guessing it desperately needed.

The Elder Scrolls 6 title card reveal, from that same showcase where Starfield got its token title card reveal, was more of a statement of commitment that the series wasn't dead, not necessarily to show off the results of a project in process. So I'd anticipate that when we do actually see some tangible material from Elder Scrolls 6, its release date will not be too far off. You know, barring delays. But that's maybe the only optimistic thing I can say about the game right now.

I think the Starfield engine was...fine. Not amazing, but it was probably the least buggy game at launch they ever put out.

I'd worry more about the gameplay loop and quality of writing. That's where Starfield tanked, and that's what will end up killing Elder Scrolls 6 if they don't make improvements.