For all the problems the game has, the major thing they get right is the environment.

Almost every area looks more than great, some are industrial, luxurious, barren, creepy, outright hostile, or cozy, but they are usually always gorgeous.

The environments are what pushed me to keep giving the game a chance after the initial shock of not having a cohesive overworld.

I’ve flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this…

Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.

But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they’ve built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.

I believe they’ve left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.

“New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99”

That’s 100% going to happen.

If you have a good unit then most of the military experience is hanging out with your friends all the time.

Except for the 5am PT every morning, and at 7am when you’ve got to get your truck ready at the motor pool, or 8am when you’ve got special duty to set up the range, or 9am when there’s a 2 hour briefing about keeping your hands to yourself and having a designated driver.

Lunch at 11am is usually alright, except the base you’re at has the worst DFAC you’ve ever seen.

That range you helped set up? It’s at 12am, and it’s fun to blast away at targets thinking about how much weapon cleaning you’re going to do tonight.

There’s a lot of leftover ammo, but you only had to shoot 2 magazines, so your rifle isn’t going to be that hard to clean. (Any vets know what’s coming next?)

First Sergeant says we can’t waste ammo, if we don’t use the 10,000 rounds they give us, they will only give us 5 rounds next time.

So the next several hours is spent in the sun, loading more rounds to mindless blast in the general direction of targets on the range.

7pm rolls around, it’s quitting time. Just kidding, night land nav, time to stumble around around in the dark with shitty NVGs and try to find all the points scattered throughout 2 miles, using nothing but a compass and a map.

Except nobody ever gets all the points, so everyone gets together at the end to share the points they found.

10pm, now it’s quitting time, except wait, some moron has lost their night vision goggles, so instead of going back to the barracks, everyone is going to spend the night on the land nav course until it’s found. In the morning it’s found right next to one of the vehicle tires.

Those are the general events of a somewhat easy day in a combat unit. A day without overnight watch, hours of formations and drill ceremony, 30km ruck marches, endless briefings, flipping landscaping rocks because first sergeant doesn’t like the side you flipped everything to last month, etc etc etc.

Personally I know several people who have been to prison, and many of them absolutely needed some institutionalized treatment.

Well, really they needed a strong community with support, mentors, and motivations to succeed, but in our broken society where community is all but dead, they needed prison.

Prison is a broken hellhole system, but with total reform, it could be a positive tool for society.

Maybe in a utopian society we could do away with prison, but there are a ton of changes we need to make before then.

It really is a big move, since it likely cost them millions in early sales.

I probably would have bought it already if I couldn’t find a crack, but now I can pirate and wait for a nice sale.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

You can just click the checkbox for “Copy crack to install directory” to get the installer to do everything for you.

I’m not sure why that isn’t the default.

Do you keep the game if you get the “Deluxe Upgrade” on GamePass? Or do you have to keep paying the subscription if you want to play?

Which GPU did you get?

And also, the “early access” is just a way to get people to pay more for the game in the first week.

By all reasonable standards, the game has been fully released.

“Pre-ordering piracy”… What does that even mean?

I think it’s pretty ok off the bat.

The only major gripe I have is how segmented the world is by fast travel.

You can’t just wander around getting into trouble the same as you could in earlier Beth titles. You have to fast travel here, then fast travel there, oh and now you’re done with this “dungeon”? Go fast travel here and there to get back to the city, then fast travel out to your next planet, then fast travel down to the surface.

Maybe that experience gets less abrasive over time, but I don’t feel like it will.

One of it’s strengths is the really detailed and interesting environments the game dumps you in early on. Starfield really does look and run great. Granted, I do have a 4070 Ti and 13600k, so maybe get the input of someone with a more average system.

The armor/weapon/environment systems are also pretty cool, and the loot is unique and interesting, but I haven’t gotten that far into the game, so I can’t say if it keeps up the pace.

Anyway, to cut this rant short, Starfield is fun, gorgeous, and a little flawed, but it’s a game that’s absolutely worth playing. Maybe not $100 “early access” worth playing, but I wouldn’t feel ripped off if I paid $70.

I don’t know why you’d want to rent the game if you’ve already got the cracked copy, but I would be surprised if the save files were any different between the two platforms.

The Georgia GOP is going to get itself caught up in federal RICO charges at this rate.

I wonder how that would work.

I’m almost positive they’ve been developing an image recognition AI that will make slightly altering csam photos obsolete.

Here’s hoping.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, but in many counties the bondsman doesn’t actually front any cash to the court, and they don’t get charged if the suspect runs. They operate as a sort of slush fund for the owners, the officials, and the cops.

So these companies are often just another way to siphon money from people accused of a crime.

Super shady stuff.

Maybe 30 years ago.

But in the last 20 years there has been a lot of of funding towards prevention and researching a cure.

https://avac.org/project/resource-tracking/

An HIV vaccine has proven itself to be an extremely elusive target.

But with recent developments in biotechnology, it may not be much longer before we finally have get one.

And by they, you mean the right wind politicians in power.

The people who vote for them are constantly voting against their immediate interests.

If we had some sort of ranked choice, a lot of these one-issue voters might actually have a choice in their representation. Which would be good for all of us.

WinAeroTweaker will let you decide what junk you want to disable.

I mean, illegal online transactions are like the one place where crypto really shines.

Eh, I would support blocks on that. [Porn]

Okay, so lets build all the infrastructure and technology to block porn in the most effective way possible.

And I pinky winky promise to never use that technology to silence my political opponents.

Just think of the children.

And the thing is, there are open source internet browsers that can be written to avoid any browser checks that a law might require.

However, if Google’s browser DRM gets widely implemented, a browser-side content blocker would be effective, because all those open source browsers would be unable to access the wider web.

I think if Big Brother Browser with Google DRM is our future, we’re going to see people using 2 browsers as standard. They’ll have one “corporate” internet browser, for Instagram, Amazon, whatever. And one “free” browser for all the grey area stuff.