I’ll always advocate for patient gaming, but in case you were looking to catch up on the first two before this one comes out, I would start sooner than later for a couple reasons. First is just because they are absolutely massive games that may take longer than expected to complete, but second because I think they benefit from taking a break in between. I wouldn’t do one right after the other.

Spring 2027, so less than a year away (assuming no delays). Also will be a simultaneous launch on all systems, no exclusivity window this time.

FWIW, this one isn’t just jumping on a trend, it has a whole fucking odyssey behind it.

Patrice Desilets (original director of the Assassin’s Creed series) had a falling out with Ubisoft and left the company to begin developing this game with THQ between 2010 and 2012. In 2012, THQ declared bankruptcy, got chopped up into pieces to sell, and their Montreal studio along with the 1666 Amsterdam IP were bought up by Ubisoft.

After the buyout, Ubisoft then fired Desilets as a spite move for his earlier departure, canceled the game, and dissolved the studio into Ubisoft Montreal. The only real evidence that this game even existed in tangible form was an early development reel that leaked a few years later. In the interim, there was a whole big lawsuit, and it somehow eventually ended up with Desilets becoming the rightsholder to Amsterdam 1666 again.

So this game has been in something of a development hell for about 15 years now, and it’s pretty cool to see it finally come to light.

Glorious.

Is this Balmoral Castle in Scotland? Where the Queen died? That’s the best guess I have.

Just to echo what others have said, it is way better than it has any right to be.

The movie somehow manages to effectively capture the feeling of playing a casual campaign with friends. The story is played completely straight in-universe (as in, there is no outer-level frame narrative of nerds with character sheets gathered around a table), but you can just sense where the tabletop RPG tropes were woven into the plot.

Edit: also to clarify, the specific movie others are describing is D&D: Honor Among Thieves. Not any of the bad D&D movies made in the early 00’s.

I was already really good at not believing in literally every other religion around the world, so I asked myself what made the religion that I was raised in any different?

How did I know I was lucky enough to be born into the right faith? If I had been born elsewhere, wouldn’t I just feel the same way about whatever religion is worshipped there? And so is that the infidel’s fault that they were just born in the wrong place, with no one to tell them that they had it wrong? Or perhaps would they think the same about me?

And so if our religion truly was the right one, why didn’t our supposedly omnipotent deity just make everyone else born into societies that worship it, or render infertile anyone who didn’t? Or if someone else’s religion was the right one, with a similarly omnipotent deity (or deities), why was I born here?

Why would a good and loving God condemn them forever for being exactly what (S)he designed them to be?

This is it exactly. Why even have a “chosen people” in the Israelites during the Old Testament? Why create those other people at all? Just to give random people for the Israelites to genocide like they did the Midianites/Canaanites/Hittites/10 other -ites?

And what of the world before Noah? God realizes he messed up and needs to cull all but a small handful of humans? I thought God was supposed to be unerring. Same for Sodom and Gomorrah, why allow cities to become dens of sin? Or why fear the hubris of humanity constructing the Tower of Babel (or create them with motivation to do so in the first place) if divinity remains safely unreachable to mortals?

Just way too much that doesn’t make sense.

Basically. There’s a mostly linear plot with some diverging narrative choices that affect outcomes. There’s some sort of mystery element, you gather up information/clues/resources, and most of the games have some sort of superpower gimmick that you use to explore the world and story (e.g. rewinding time, telekinesis, aura reading).

The games are like an old point and click adventure, but without the pointing and clicking. Or the adventure. If that makes sense.

Just like how Biden caused COVID in 2020.

Yeah, it works as a general rule of thumb but there are nuances. Running 2km or 1 mile burns roughly 100 calories.

If you were burning 100 calories running per day, and consuming just as many calories each day as you were burning, the lack of running puts you at a 100 calorie daily surplus without a change in diet. That translates to an annual surplus of 36,500 calories, which will likely gain you about 10 pounds of body fat in that year.

Simple solution in that situation is to eat 100 fewer calories per day, if you can (or however much else you estimate you were burning). 100 calories is half a candy bar, half a bottle of soda, skipping sugar in your coffee/tea, etc. If the injury was specifically a leg injury, can also supplement with cardio exercises that only work the upper body and don’t require your legs, if desired.

And also worth mentioning that 1 great photo comes after 50 or so not-so-good ones. A lot comes down to luck, especially with more dynamic shots. Take a shit ton of photos and a few of them are bound to turn out nice.

I think part of it just comes from the practice of naming other star systems after the star they orbit. E.g. the Epsilon Eridani system orbits Epsilon Eridani. Our own star system is generically called the “Solar System,” so sci-fi likes to formalize into the Sol System.

TBH, if you’re actually looking to replay it, I would recommend just getting an emulated version on PC with the added quality of life feature that lets you swap kongs at any time. The game is very tedious without it.

No-life an MMO, join a big guild, get to talking more with folks who have similar interests as you.

And yet a lot of kids are entering the workforce today not knowing how to use a computer mouse or what a web browser is.

A lot, TBH. The walled garden is everything in tech these days. When you control the platform and make it hard to leave, you control the flow of information.

He’s not even up for reelection for another four years, chill.

Nursing can advance quite a bit. A nurse can become a nurse practitioner, for instance. NPs can even open their own practice in some places. Or get a DNP, become a doctor nurse. Sure that pushes one more towards the admin side, but that doesn’t mean it’s removed from the world of nursing either.

But I guess one could say the same about being a physician as well. Where is there to go? It’s not really about advancing positions, but just doing more stuff that gets you paid more. Whether that be research/education/administration/specializing/whatever else.