I collect ever explosive I find along the way. At this point it’s more about “How much can the game engine and my PC handle…”. Even got a bunch of hirelings and used the vendor reset on level up to really milk some of the vendors. (This is also a great way to get some of those nastier fights in honor mode completed too…)

Just to see what would happen, in one of my evil runs, Arabella dies and for some extra spicy evil, I brought her dead body to her parents and dropped it in front of them. To my surprise… they react.

One play through I went minion master. ALL THE MINIONS. Terrible idea… each turn takes 5 years and things get clogged up real quick.

I have not found a way yet to play EA again. I’ve legit e-mailed Larian asking for it too.

I can only guess as to why there was such a drastic change. Because one day (in EA) I’m playing the last EA patched version and the following day on release… a bunch of stuff blinked out of existence. My guess, is they ran out of time. Various zones (like Upper Baldur’s Gate) are just removed (said zone is just a stage now). Various story lines are incomplete. There’s story threads that stop cold (there’s supposed to be more Hags if the various letters/notes/and NPC conversations are to be believed). The whole end sequence were the capture dragon shows up… how they got that dragon is never shown… etc. So, that’s my guess, they had more ambition than time.

Oh another idea that wasn’t completed. Karlach (the last character added/worked on) is the only origin character you play that you can hear the inner thoughts/monolog. Everyone else is silent.

tl;dr, the story and motivation for everything was far more fleshed out

Here’s just some of the things. Not even going into mechanics that are removed (like Wyll’s eye). Or my personal opinion some of their starting looks were a bit more interesting/better (you get a bit of an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MeutkQFliM or from the CohhCarnage videos I link later)

There used to be way more dialog options for one. Your class/subclass/god/etc actually got reflected in more options. There was a great video of a cleric giving some unhinged prayer to the tiefling that opens the gate. It’s not major, but it adds to a lot to the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KameRUsFv8Y (with all the BG3 videos now, it’s harder to find some of the classics). Also, Shadowheart had a much more interesting conversation if you were also a cleric if you were a Cleric of Shar too.

The camp was way more interesting. There’s a ton of story ripped out of the game from the camps. This, was the thing that hooked me in EA. Daisy (the in-game code name for what would be replaced by your dream visitor) would entice you with power, encourage you to use the illithid powers. And when you finally do, and the narrator says “you’ve lost something you can never get back” probably makes more sense now. Once you did that, you got a class specific illithid power. There was no weird illithid skill tree, it was based around how often you used the powers. But going back to the camp, the companions would comment more about each other. Shadowheart and Lae’Zel’s hatred for each other was shown way better, even commenting if you talked to one or the other first. Here’s a couple of examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYRe2jHhBRc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw5q6u_iMN0 but overall, the camp at the end of the day was 1000x more interesting and really fleshed out the characters more and I’d say in important ways.

I’d even say the starting area (Nautiloid) was better. The current one is sufficient I guess. But the original showed you more about the fight the Illithids have with the Gith, you got to see more of the ship, what the Illithid did to people, what it meant to become a thrall (to really sell it that this is a terrifying process). But it showed you a few more mechanics too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-GWA_Yj2c starts at EP2, but you’ll want to go to EP 3 as well. But you can see the differences.

Tav used to talk.

For me, the story around “Daisy” was way more compelling. The song “Down by the river” is in reference to these encounters. Here’s a video on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTw_9vM5LgA

… So these are just some of the things, lol. There’s more like when you got down to the Underdark and some serious changes that happened there. And I haven’t even touched on the stuff that never made it in (like the extra companion that was to be a werewolf… or the original Nightsong) (you can see some of it cataloged here https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Cut_and_unimplemented_content ) and I’m fairly certain all the companions were originally supposed to show up in Act 1 instead of 1, 2, and 3. There’s a lot of dialog from characters for places they’re not “supposed to be” like the eagles (can’t find video, but its out there). But none of that is EA stuff, just cut stuff… but if the game had baked longer… I’m just saying… it might not have been cut sutff.

I always wanted children. Damn near every major life choice has been fueled by that. Took a job I knew I wouldn’t be happy at, but could be successful at to provide a better life. Yhe cars I’ve bought the safety rating for kids was to priority followed by reliability. The house I bought is within walking distance of every grade school, and the basement could easily be setup for a hangout spot for the teen years, oh and a good sized backyard for playing. One of the reasons I stayed at this job is I’m at max PTO and they actually offer paternity leave! I always make mental notes of fun places for kids so I could take them. When they were younger, and I was still considered cool, my niece and nephew wanted to move in with me 😆.

Just never met the right lady.

I don’t really want to get into it, but, we have campaigns that actively target people who smoke and/or drink. Two other things that people can indulge in that can and will eventually lead to negative health effects and kill you, much like overeating will.

That’s really the only thing holding EV’s back. If we can get away from lithium batteries and get something like graphene batteries (one can dream), range, recharge, etc. everything immediately get’s better.
But electric engines are far superior.

I’m having a hard time processing that’s not from The Onion…

My job I’m classified as remote. And I like it that way. Recently they have decided that a bunch of people even if remote will now have to come on site at least hybrid. For “collaboration”. I even noted that in my employment contract I had in there that I was to work from home, to which HR said that they really don’t care.

My last year-end review was stellar. Top marks, praises from multiple departments, even got a promotion.

But I happen to live to close to a location, so there’s ‘simply nothing that can be done’. So I’ve already started looking for different work.

Cool, cool, cool … They going to ban pork products and all shellfish too? Or are we cherry picking here… Seems like it be right blasphemous to be cherry picking…

Honestly I can make a whole list.

I would. I could better plan out my life if I knew when and why it would end. If it comes back and says oh you dying 3 years from a brain aneurysm, I can’t be stopped… Then why would I be trying to plan out for retirement? I can take everything I have and live happy for 3 years. Without knowing I feel like my last thoughts would be ‘fuck, I wasted my life’

When you attack Stonehenge I’m not listening to what your ideology is. Because all I see is you being a jackass. Attacking works of arts or in this case Stonehenge to me looks like a child in a restaurant yelling and screaming that they want a cookie. I’m not going to give in to the demands of the child just because they’re loud. You’ll notice I don’t talk about the ideologies, I talk about their actions, so it didn’t work.

1. The original vision for the game would have been better. EA was more interesting.

2. Pacing and toes of gear is done poorly. There’s swords for days but only 2 interesting tridents, war picks, or hand axe for example. There’s barely any usable druid gear (anything that actually matters if you wild shape). And the most useful stuff for monks is found only in act 3.

3. A lot of people are nitpicky only because it won so many awards and it’s not their own perfect game (if such a thing exists).

I still give this game a 10/10 for what it is. Despite knowing if it baked another year it might have been so much more.

I really like the vibram shoes. They were fine for running, granted you could also get running shoes. But they also work very well for squats and deadlifts. And I do make proper lifting shoes too. But that’s already too many pairs of shoes to bring to the gym for me.

I remember people doing that way back in the NES era playing DuckTales.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/05/deleted-iphone-photos-show-up-again-after-ios-update

So photos were forever stored on a database… How’s that privacy and security? This isn’t even just another iCloud leak… these were things people thought were deleted coming back.

Apple likes to talk because talk is cheap. Just like Apple used to say that Apple products didn’t get viruses. Or how Google said do no evil. Talk is cheap.

Their unapologetic human exploitation to get the things made. When I think of Apple, I think of anti-suicide nets designed to prevent you from jumping to your death due to work conditions.

Anti-consumer practices. Which pairs well with the low quality, but high prices. (Before someone starts yelling at me, think how many strait up destroyed Apple product charging cables you’ve seen vs any other brand, or go watch Louis Rossmann)

A walked garden experience. Both in software in hardware.

I want to bring up prices again. Everything is overpriced.

They do a bunch of the same things Microsoft does, but for some reason, get a pass. The features on an iPhone lag behind Android. But for some reason, Apple is heralded as a leader and innovative.

So you just like the new lazy writing. Got it.

Because I know you didn’t just draw a straight line from the 1939 Batman to the current Batman and was like ‘these are the same!’

I’ll go watch my Adam West to Kevin Conroy versions. Where he was a multi-dimensional character. And you can enjoy the more modern one where he glares at people and had been reduced to ‘I’m Batman’. And this is where we part ways. Cuz this is a threat about opinions I gave mine and you are clearly mad that I don’t like your favorite version of Batman.

I would guess man hours.

Because it’s going to take time to put those servers back in production. Depending what they did it might have causing outage to external facing customers, which will have a higher impact than internal facing. But with that amount of money, it actually seems fairly low to me so I’m guessing they weren’t public facing servers.

So it was probably the time that it takes to recreate all those servers get everything back up and running, and delayed work caused by the outage.

That’s just my guess though

I think we’re only ever see a new engine once Todd is no longer part of the company. Because the quote him out of context ‘it just works’

They had a turd. They polished it up a little. It’s still the same turd.

Their ‘modern’ engine is only modern to them, but it’s pathetically behind everyone else. I can only imagine the spaghetti code that thing is at this point.