Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@Ravix I can't deny my own lack of interest in trophy hunting, though. So I can't exactly relate to it or the trophy hunting site's accuracy.

• It's part OCD, part perfectionist and a lot of me just trying to grab that genuine well done, I'll get it eventually. You'd have a lot of fun going for 100% on the Witcher, it's not that hard at all. Death March difficulty is much easier on PS5, everything is more smooth and responsive. I think something like Gwent might be a deal breaker, there are cards you can miss. Now I'm wondering what those three or four are. Perhaps Kingdom Come.I think i'd go mad if I actually tried to 100% it, even once.
• We're inverted because I'd go mad if I didn't.

It is always better to read first for the best absorbtion, but the audiobooks definitely help with time and ease, especially if multitasking and travelling, as well. (Did you already read the books, i'm questioning everything now, including my memory)

• True but I like to do three things at once so audio-books really help, and then there are some hiccups with the language barrier. I tend to sleep when I travel, which will hopefully be soon because I'm missing England again and going from the coldest of Winter to literal Summer in one week really threw me this time. I expect to see a lot of rain, which you might not like walking in but I like watching it. You know that Placebo song 'English Summer Rain?' that's my song for England, but I like the rain.

Apparently there's a frost warning today, I kind of want to see what frost in the desert looks like. It's really bizarre seeing how different cultures handle different dips in weather, it's a little frost and people are 'we must prepare for the chill'. I told them 'habibi come to Siberia I'll show you minus twenty'. I'd love to see snow in the dessert, there's snow in The Sahara right now and for the first time in decades. One of the guys said I brought it with me, I told him you're welcome. It's sort of like The Amity Affliction 'I Bring the Weather With me', except not in a sad way, the literal weather.

I've only heard him read some Voltaire and to be honest Voltaire sounds better in French, but I imagine he'll do a good job with The Witcher. Well I thought he was Dan'de'Lion, or Dan'de'Leon, how does he pronounce it?

Cat Quest... or KCD? (Play KCD 😛)

This cat feels extremely sluggish after how fast the puppies were, especially in fire engines etc. I managed to get enough speed up to break through the map. Never mind I unlocked sprint, they have a pistol too.

@GirlVersusGame definitely no platinum for KCD. I like the game and the immersion, but i'm not going to play an entire 100 hour playthrough avoiding killing, I imagine that would be insanely hard to do and take away a lot of the game's mechanics i.e 'combat' in a game focused on lots of combat 😅 I can see how it would work up to a point where you can run away, or avoid bad situations by playing as a very normal person, but in a full on battle when met with an enemy, i'm not exactly sure how it would work. Obviously it is possible, but I can imagine it would take real effort. I think I enjoy the combat in the games too much so even if it would be interesting to some extent, as a role play, it would take out too much of the core gameplay, for me.

One was a golf game, I'm sure I had a few on an old account, but never on purpose. More like "oh what's that? A trophy? Okay... moving on" I think once I saw the GTA4 platinum involved catching pigeons and stuff like that? And I just thought, that isn't fun, no thanks. Even if I played the game a bunch of times start to finish, I would never play it to catch digital pigeons. To me, that would just suck as I didn't play it as a pigeon catching simulator. It just seems like a game within a game that I have no interest in.

Exactly, so audiobooks are perfect for that. And suit your needs perfectly, anyway. I got in to them first when I was travelling a fair distance, too, mostly as a way to pass time and reconsume The Witcher, and they sort of became a go-to, almost part of a routine from that. It used to be more music, then podcasts, but a well narrated audiobook is pretty sweet. I wish more were better produced and well acted.

Interesting, should I get some Peter Kenny narrated Voltaire added to my collection? Any recommendations there? Weirdly I did a quick search just now and his official headshot from his younger years popped up, and he legitimately looks like a real Witcher 😭 I have never seen a person look more like a Witcher than this (i'll tag in @Th3Solution for this random tangent)

I'll tell you who isn't a sluggish cat... Pebbles the horse from... (i'll stop now...)

Play KCD 😛

A frosty desert does does sound worth seeing. Only weather news i've heard is that they are trying to drum up a 'Beast from the East' again for the UK. But as usual it will probably just mean there will be snow in the Cairngorms 🙄 (there's basically always snow in the Cainrgorms is the joke there 😅)

@Ravix Avoiding killing for an entire hundred hours sounds like how I play the Hitman games. I tend to throw fire extinguishers at people then hide them in a big pile. I like how inventive that can be so I make myself play without killing people, except the targets. I've thrown so many fire extinguishers. I imagine in Kingdom Come Deliverance you hit them with a stick or a stone or maybe ride over them.

I can understand not going after things like pigeons in Grand Theft Auto and Feathers in Assassins Creed. The roots in Skyrim were some of the most annoying and that was only for a quest. I thought the herbal one for Red Dead Redemption would be fun because it's picking flowers, the same for the animals. I never got one hundred percent because of those. I think both The Witcher and Far Cry had caches, that took a while. Batman was especially time consuming for the Riddler trophies, I never want to do that again. Most one hundred percents are fun, but I won't do it for every game. Fenyx was fun too, I don't know if people skipped that game, I was hoping for a sequel.

It was only Candice but I think he did a very good job of narrating it. I'm not sure if you are familiar with it. I'd say it's timeless, and there's that word sheltered too. I'd call it an adventure novella.

• When Candide is cast out of his sheltered life, he embarks on a journey filled with war, natural disasters, betrayal, and heartbreak—all while clinging to the optimistic philosophy of his mentor, Pangloss. As he travels across Europe and the Americas, encountering a bizarre array of characters and suffering the harsh realities of life, Candide’s faith in idealism is repeatedly tested. In this classic satire, Voltaire skewers the pretensions of philosophy, religion, and social systems, offering a compelling critique of human nature. A timeless classic, Candide is a powerful exploration of optimism, human folly, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.

You can keep your golf game, it's the one activity that I'll just watch from afar. My Partner stopped asking me to go, he knows I can't do golf at all. You missed Zero and I's discussion over the weekend about soccer or football or both. All I could think of was Football Factory, Green Street and The Firm. That was an interesting night. I learned some Interesting facts like how bad the New York Jets are, I slotted that away for the next time someone mentions football.

I did a quick search just now and his official headshot from his younger years popped up, and he legitimately looks like a real Witcher 😭

• Oh he does, that's a good find. He also looks like he wants to tell me about his NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) band over a cup of tea.

A frosty desert does does sound worth seeing. Only weather news i've heard is that they are trying to drum up a 'Beast from the East' again for the UK. But as usual it will probably just mean there will be snow in the Cairngorms 🙄 (there's basically always snow in the Cainrgorms is the joke there 😅)

• I just checked and there are reindeers up there, weird. You know what's weirder, someone here was watching a TV show set in Yorkshire. Fully dubbed too, it was about a farm up in the hills. I thought of the pictures you shared a couple of week ago, it looked just like that except they were growing the animals there, they weren't free range etc. Watch The Beast From the East land right as I do, we narrowly missed the last storm, it looked like the grounded a lot the commercial flights. I'm overdue a trip to a certain pet-farm I've visited a couple of times, maybe in Spring when they have babies etc. I can't promise I won't try to borrow some.

@Ravix Context?! Who needs context to anything we say? I forget what I write about two minutes after doing so. Sometimes I read my comments back and think ''oh, what an interesting observation. I wish I'd thought- wait.'' I wish it was hyperbole (including the slight patting myself on the shoulder), but I can't say it is! Early onset dementia is coming for me eventually... I can feel it. Thank god I've spent my days filling my brain with all-important things such as checks notes... Real Housewives lore? There's gotta be something better in here, one second... the decades-long history of my fictional movie studio in a simulation game... wait, that's not it. Ah, here it is. The lyrics to every Demi Lovato-- ah, you know what?! I give up. I'm doomed!

I didn't know there was so much uproar regarding Kingdom Come: Deliverance from all sides. Crazy how (what is by all accounts) a great game can still draw so much ire over things that ultimately don't really matter. I will say I'm probably a bit more opinionated and resentful regarding certain inclusions and types of people and their behaviors regarding others and/or media. I wouldn't really describe myself as neutral, but I do try to find the nuance in every situation before making my judgment. I feel like that's a lot more than many people will care to engage with nowadays, and frankly, I'm finding it harder and harder for myself as well. There's just so much negative stuff out there that I absolutely don't agree with and seemingly gets louder by the day that sometimes I simply don't have the time or energy to even intellectually try to think about their perspective. Sometimes it doesn't feel worth it either, especially if it's the type of person that wouldn't even offer me the same consideration. It's the type of person I hate to see myself becoming, but I figure that as long as I'm aware of when I'm doing it, I'm still one step ahead of many. That's a lot of vague wording to avoid coming across as overtly hostile to anyone, but I think you have a pretty good idea of who I am and what I think that you can follow my drift.

I think you perfectly summarised how both sides end up going wrong. Everything has become so reactive. Everyone quickly starts resorting to insults and assumptions of what type of person the other is. Anyone who comes in with a take that is thought through for more than a second becomes the outlier, and so, the neutral or well-considered party becomes the enemy. This is why everybody hates Switzerland. Right, everybody? Not just a me thing? I'm legally obligated to hate Switzerland since moving to Germany. Apologies to the Swiss! Frankly, it's a miracle you have any normal opinions at all with your preference for giant-sized heads and weird, emo sambuca parties. I think we should all simply acknowledge that you are a miracle of nature rather than alienate you! I was going to get more into the whole discourse you've mentioned in detail, but honestly, who gives a toss right now. I'll save you the read, haha.

Apologies about the attempted catch-up draining all your energy. I'm known to be a bit of an energy vampire (for all of our What We Do in the Shadows fans out there), so I can have this (intended) effect on people. I appreciate you involuntarily sharing all your energy with me. I hope that your New Year's blues have settled a bit again and everything's gotten back to normal. You seem to be back to posting on the forum more (while I have fallen off the face of the Earth due to life commitments), so I'll take that as a positive sign! I'm doing well aside from the aforementioned commitments. My roommate/best friend has been having a flare-up with his chronic illness, so any time I'm not working or holding the household together, I've been caring for him. What a time! But I'm holding together just fine. Thanks for checking in and, again, for the virtual hug!

@Tjuz understood.

Man, all I wanted to say was 'stay strong, and be there for your friend' This is what really matters, here 🫶

And, well... that vampirism is probably because you have so much updog.

But it is a good fit, because I have the intellectual prowess of Nandor 😁

@Ravix And, well... that vampirism is probably because you have so much updog.

@Tjuz It's a trap.

• I found out what that was this weekend. I won't be updawg'd again. I'll remember it.

@Ravix With regards to GamerGate and Vavra, he actually came out multiple times to say he supported GamerGate, while all at the same time GamerGaters were harassing women and intimidating liberal journalists and developers, he described them as being such nice people.
He is different from your average gamergater, I agree to that.

However... to say he is in a way misunderstood goes a bit far. He went very far back in 2015 to make clear he sided with GamerGate back then. Didn't nuance it back then, didn't distance himself from the grifters at all.

Some people are misunderstood. Like when the devs of Expedition 33 or Larian talk about AI, but Vavra did nothing at all to distance himself from the bigots.

He probably learnt from it. He apologized for what he said later and at least he's been more clear on these matters lately, but let's not do any rewriting of history here. He retweeted Trump Jr, Charlie Kirk, people with Nazi flags. It's not subtle stuff.

@Herculean okay, maybe I misread some of that then. I am always happy to be informed better. I wasn't really around gaming news back then, either. Perhaps there were reasons that motivated it based on his experience with journalists targeting his game that led to this feeling. I am probably projecting my own self onto it a bit to help understand it. My understanding was there were female journalists that did target KCD for random reasons before release, despite it being clearly a satire and historical game based on historical beliefs if you play it. Is the timeline right that the game was targeted by someone before he responded to that?

I always got the impression he was outspoken but a bit misunderstood. But again. Maybe projecting myself 😅