I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.

Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.

If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.

In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.

Pretty soon everyone will be clamoring to let the CCP keep it.

What is it with people like Bobby Kotick? He could do whatever he wants and all he wants is power. If I had that kind of career that I had generational wealth and was still somewhat young I would find something to do that’s so much better than just more work. Honestly, I think it would be pretty awesome spending a few years figuring out how to give away a couple billion. You would meet so many interesting people and learn so much about the world. Imagine being able to have a positive, life-changing impact on more people than you can count. And then imagine you buy a toxic, addictive app to make more money instead. What a loser.

Genuinely curious… Do they make any good games? When I think of Ubi, I think of crappy launchers, having to sign into some bullshit account and mediocre games. I tried that Viking assassin’s creed game and it was trash, but I admit I don’t like any of the assassin’s creed games. What’s their killer app for someone who would give the game a fair chance?

Fuck ransomware gangs. Also, fuck Epic. I guess if it’s gotta happen the silver lining is that it happened to an asshole company.

To be honest, Bethesda’s best work is probably behind them. They will sell a few more games based on brand recognition and because we are suckers, but I don’t expect much. I’m old enough to have seen many of my favorite developers go through this. It’s difficult to have overwhelming success and keep knocking it out of the park with every release. Expectations for something better than the last thing are so high, the pressure to do something new, the culture change that comes with huge growth, and they eventually lose that magic that captured us in the first place.

FWIW, my kids were shit talking that game and saying it was going to be so bad. They started playing the demo and actually like it. They say it needs some polish but it’s fun to play. They are big Sea of Thieves fans.

The headline makes it sound like a bad thing, but that’s more than plenty for launch if they are distinct apps that represent a variety of use cases. Frankly, it’s a lot more than I would expect for a new product like this. Sure, there’s VR and AR available now, but Apple has a track record of rolling together existing tech in a package that’s more accessible and often more useful. You can throw a few things out there to showcase what’s possible, but you also have to wait and see how consumers actually want to use it. They will find use cases the creators didn’t think of or were unsure about. Then the floodgates can really open up in terms of apps. I really wouldn’t be surprised to see people wearing these things out in public.

If this runs on Linux, it’s an instant buy for me. This looks awesome.

Is the story that bad? I played a few hours and I was into it. Does it get worse later? I set the game aside because it was buggy and didn’t exactly run well. I’m planning to pick it up again after it gets some updates.

In the 6 or so hours I played, it was the inventory and menus that drove me crazy more than anything else. They are so poorly designed and implemented that I wonder if anyone actually played the game during testing. I can’t see myself continuing the game until they are improved.

It will be if they give it some TLC like CD PROJEKT and Hello did with their games. There’s a lot to like about Starfield, but it has problems that have a big impact on gameplay. I don’t want to deal with that inventory system for the hours it will take for me to enjoy the story. In general, the menus kinda suck. They really need to work on the ergonomics.

Hopefully a new CEO with better vision and ability to execute. Mozilla’s leadership is a joke.

Edit: If you like black coffee, go for a medium roast premium or specialty grade coffee from Costa Rica that goes through a honey process. Very smooth, low acid and a hint of natural sweetness from the coffee fruit.

Yeah, they over roast their coffee. It’s deliberate. I assume it’s for consistency and because it’s a low effort way to cut through all that milk and sugar in expensive lattes. Americans have also been conditioned to associate dark, bitter coffee with “strong”.

The irony is dark roast has less caffeine than lighter roast and it’s usually done to mask defects in the bean. Whether to roast light, medium or dark typically isn’t an arbitrary decision or based on any preference. There’s a whole grading process where the ideal roast is determined based on the quality of the beans.

The highest quality beans will often be roasted medium and you start going darker as you get into the lower quality stuff. Basically, you’re cooking off bad flavors that may be the result of sour beans, mold, insect damage, chemicals or worse. There are all kinds of farming practices you don’t want to know about where they get away with it by roasting dark and/or blending with a little bit of a higher quality coffee.

The thing with Starbucks is they actually start with good beans so they don’t have to do this. They also have a wide variety of suppliers and bean types. They could easily put together a great flavor profile that would work for lattes as well as black coffee. But things do change a little bit from one harvest to the next. Starbucks is all about consistency. You can order the same drink at any location in the world and it tastes exactly the same every time.

A small black coffee is $2 because people will pay that much. The cost is less than 25 cents for the coffee. The cup and lid might cost more than what you’re drinking if it’s a commercial grade bean. Coffee is a high margin business.

Man, this looks cool. It’s been on my wishlist for a while. Merry Christmas to me!

I played it for several hours when it first came out. It’s ok. The little bit of story I saw was engaging. I’m interested in the world - more so than Elder Scrolls. The gameplay is what I would expect from a Bethesda RPG. But it’s definitely lacking polish.

The thing is there are other games out there worth playing so there’s no reason to jump into unfinished Starfield right now. BG3 is sucking up a lot of gamers’ time. I’m still working on P5R that’s been in my backlog for awhile. The Cyberpunk expansion came out and that’s solid. There’s a bunch of stuff out there to play.

I will eventually play Starfield because what I saw has potential, but I’m going to do it after it’s had some improvements. I don’t think there’s too much reason for concern. This is about par for the course with Bethesda. It’s not like they were ever knocking it out of the park with great releases on day one. There are always elements of their games that draw you in, but it’s always been a little bit of a mixed bag. Considering the staying power of their previous games, I think this one will eventually get as good as the others in time.

Nice change from all the recent headlines about layoffs at other game companies. I hope this means they are gearing up for a new game. I’m in the endgame of P5R and it’s a special game. I can’t wait to see what they do next.

He would be the victim of his implant.

What if they turned him into a drooling hobo or cyber psycho who fried his brain with a homemade implant? I could be down with that. If not, I’m counting on a mod to remove his ass.

Yes

Just fired it up. Runs good at 4k on medium settings with a 5600x and 6600xt. Getting 45-60 fps in the benchmark. The graphics still look great on medium. The control icons are showing Xbox controls instead of keyboard/mouse. Kind of annoying, but I imagine it will get fixed quickly since this wasn’t an issue before the patch. I’m playing via flatpak Steam.

I haven’t tried 2.0 yet, but it previously ran fine on Linux. I’m hoping to play tonight.