I was playing through Xenoblade Chronicles 1’s post-endgame trying to do all the quests and because I didn’t know to steal a certain item from a certain enemy I now have to defeat a Lvl 120 boss that is the most powerful in the game to get one form of ultimate weapon. Not feeling like getting something like that after the fact, time to call it done and move onto the expansion.
This statement reminds me awfully of the Living World Season 4 Story in Guild Wars 2.
And yes, before people become angry about this comparison: I said “reminds me”, not “the same as” or anything else.
Explanation (hard spoiler!):
spoilerIn essence, you do everything you can, unite different people for the fight that determines the fate of the world. But… you lose and that was the only chance. You barely survive with your friends; but not all. youtu.be/jk5nfHxyQno?t=7220The Commander (you) are asked what to do (because you always had some kind of answers; a plan; every time). But since this was the only hope, you say “I don’t know.”
That line hit hard when I played it. It’s rare to see protagonists acknowledge being at the end of their wits and have no clue what to do in face of impending doom.
At least for me I could get into the next story part after I was like “wtf just happened” but for players at the time of release this was the latest part of the story and they were stuck with this awful last line for week(s).
When the review was first published in 2007, it was reported that Electronic Arts were not happy with the review and complained to the magazine’s publishers and editors, resulting in the reviewer no longer being asked or allowed to write reviews for any more The Sims titles.
LOL they hanged that motherfucker for making some crappy DLC. How the mighty have fallen, in the world of game journalism. Where’s their review of Horse Armour?
It’s sickening how much people jerk this guy off cause he’s “a good billionaire”. There is no such thing as a good billionaire, they all got there by sealing from the workers below them. Steam workers aren’t allowed to unionize but Gabe gets to be a billionaire, fuck him.
He founded Valve primarily with his own money and has ran it for most of it’s existence, allowing them to release games that were regularly groundbreaking.
Half Life brought us advances in AI, in simulating complex details like animal food chains, in making story part of the gameplay through seamless in engine cutscenes, in “seamless” level transistions. It nearly single handedly killed tje genre of arcadey “doom/quake likes” for literal decades.
Half Life 2 further heightened the bar of story in games, graphical effects, reconstruction of real faces in games, facial animations, mocap for games, and was one of the first well done use of a “modern” physics engine in games. There were news articles about the great leap forward it represented in tackling the “uncanny valley”.
Portal’s, well… Portals were groundbreaking. Left 4 Dead created the co-op horde shooter genre, further advanced AI with the “horde director” concept of an AI orchestrating the placement/amount of enemies, and was one of the first large scale examples of well done contextual dialog. Team Fortress 2 revolutionized the class based team shooter genre, and unfortunately popularized microtransactions for skins/unlocks forever. Half Life Alyx is the first “VR first/only” full length triple-A game.
There’s the Valve Index, pushing forward VR tech. The Steam Deck, pushing forward handheld computing (at least in terms of build quality/price/ease of use).
They bought the rights to Dota, the original Warcraft 3 mod that was the very first Moba game, and made a sequel to it. CounterStrike was one of the vanguards of the original rise of eSports and it’s latest sequel is still a major player in that scene.
Without all of their Source Engine games we wouldn’t have Garrys Mod and the huge cultural impact that it’s still having on the internet. Source Filmmaker brought 3D animation with effectively anything you could import into Garrys Mod into the hands of the masses, which has also had a massive impact on internet culture.
There’s a hell of a lot of reasons to love/respect Valve, and by extension it’s founder, besides just Steam.
You ever hear of mass layoffs at valve? You ever here of disgruntled employees? If them having incomes too low? Of any scandals?
The guy built and runs a private company. Doesn’t exploit his workers. Doesn’t try to influence government. Isn’t ripping anyone off. Promotes and invests in open source software. Gave permission for anyone who wants to use the os used on steam deck on any other handheld device, and here you are being pissed at him because his company is worth a lot.
NPC: hey buddy I know you just killed the world ending dragon but my shoe string broke and it would be dangerous to for me to walk to the other side of town to get a replacement string. Can you go get me the string? If you do this for me I give you an item that you have an inventory full of that you won’t use because you are saving them all for a tougher fight, even after beating the secret ultra hard boss and the final boss but there might still be a need.
Me: hell yes I’ll get your shoe string on the other side of the world if I had to. Don’t worry about giving me any money I maxed that out hours ago and can’t find anything to spend it on. Sure I’ll take the item, you never know when you might land in a fight where a potion that heal 1% saves me. Sorry about not talking to you 100 hours ago your character model looked kind of plain so I didn’t think you would have quest for me.
One in a million chance to ask such a niche nonsense rando and expect an answer, but… does anyone have a clue what the green machine in the blurred background on the shelf is?
The (likely) wheels on top look like a press, kinda like I’d expect from a rubber vulcanizing press. The side covers look like it’s either geared or belted. The side opposite the beefy lever arm looked like a motor to me at first, but that doesn’t make sense for the lever arm IMO.
I don’t know the guy or reference, but that looks like an electronics lab with prototyping capabilities; something I do as a hobby too. The machine might be related to screen printing, toner transfer, photo lithography, a film based solder mask or even multi-layer composite stacks for printed circuit boards, based on my limited knowledge. It would be fun to know what that is exactly.
He’s Gabe Newell, the founder (and I think still CEO) of Valve Software.
Former Microsoft employee that started up a small game studio in the 90s. They took the Quake engine, modified the balls off of it, and used it to make Half Life, an FPS game that revolutionized the landscape forever with things like real time in-engine cutscenes that wove the story in through the gameplay, and through how advanced the enemy AI seemed. It also featured a ton of miniscule details requiring some clever coding to pull off, which really added to the atmosphere.
They also made the Steam gaming client, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Dota 2.
He’s not involved with the day to day much anymore. Pretty much retired in (I think) New Zealand now.
Very nice guy by most accounts. Was still responding to fan emails semi-regularly around 2010, and was one of the main voices in the dev commentary features in their games up through the Orange Box (Half Life 2 Ep 2, L4D, Portal, TF2).
lemmy.world
Aktywne