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smoothbrain coldtakes
smoothbrain coldtakes @ canis_majoris @lemmy.ca
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2 yr. ago

  • You can check the md5 hash checksum provided by Microsoft to verify the authenticity. Massgrave gets it from Microsoft, it's a legit ISO just rehosted.

  • Sure, the fanservice can be a lot.

    My main thing is just that it's clear how much McMahan loves the source material and it's great how he can operate within the parameters of the universe with reverence despite being jocular.

  • I wouldn't say mishandled but I would say both Disco and Picard's first two seasons were incredibly sloppy due to a clear lack of planning, vision, and the difficulty of transitioning to a fully serialized format.

    By contrast Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds were really able to find their footing quickly because they had season-wide arcs but outside of that they were generally episodic and allowed for a lot more exploration of the core of the universe. This is just a better format for the franchise in my opinion.

    I find Kurtzman is occupied with making the series more cinematic than it needs to be. Overly cinematic Star Trek results in eye bleeding lightshows like the finale of Disco S2, while grounding the shows a bit more allows for more character growth and development. You can't just always have Sacrifice of Angels all the time, you need to cut it with some Take Me Out to The Holosuite. I find that SNW and LD have found that balance for me.

  • I am very aware of Kurtzman's influence on the franchise. I think he's not the right guy to be in charge. It really feels like this is a Dave Filoni/Kathleen Kennedy situation but in Star Trek.

  • I dunno man, LD is like half fan service and half universe building, and it's my favorite thing they've produced in the last decade and a half.

    Can we just get Mike McMahan in charge of everything, please?

  • The Traveler!

    Shows up, warps the crew to the center of the galaxy, refuses to elaborate.

  • Yes, transporters were originally made to avoid the high production costs of models, which would have been necessary to use for shuttles back then.

    Very smart imo.

  • I think putting the face onto the source is what made it lose the value, unfortunately.

    My comparison is what they did with the Borg and the Queen. Wolf 359 is a terrifying, tragic ordeal, made all the more serious by the fact that it was done by one cube that could not be negotiated or reasoned with. As soon as the Borg had a way to negotiate and reason, they became less scary because they had understandable motives and goals that could be bargained with, as excellently demonstrated by Janeway.

    Ultimately, I agree with you that it's kind of more of a TOS-y sort of plot device. I do feel like back then they really followed the science being indistinguishable from magic logic, and we've progressed over time to wanting more hard and serious technobabble. I think that's kind of a disconnect for me, personally, is that they had to dip into a serious explanation for something that effectively functions like magic.

  • We can replace the words "magic" with "strongly telepathic" and it's basically the same problem.

    It's a great idea to fuck warp travel right on its head as a concept, but the execution was majorly lacking for me. I would have much rather had a continuation of the plot from Force of Nature where warp had significantly damaged subspace gradually (like a climate change allegory), rather than a universe-wide explosion that happened all at once in a flash.

  • They can farm it out to an existing provider like Dropbox or something.

    It doesn't have to (and probably shouldn't) be proprietary, just like Twitter integration wasn't.

  • I tried Citadelum, which is a Roma-era city builder.

    It's a bit janky given that it's an early demo, but it's a neat premise given that the last Roman city builder I was aware of was Caesar 3 from '98.

    I give it points for concept and setting, but I think Anno 117 is going to be my preferred Roman-era city builder when that drops, because I already know and love the Anno mechanics.

  • Tell me you didn't read the article without telling me you didn't read the article.

  • Interesting. I didn't know there was an Arch-based atomic distro. This is really rad.

    If I wasn't already happy with Bazzite and immutable Fedora-based distros, I'd definitely take a more serious look.

  • I wonder what kind of changes they will make to this iteration. I know VI was a big change from V, but eventually I learned to enjoy the different mechanics and have a ton of hours logged.

  • As an alternative you can try using the streaming service through any Chromium browser.

    Whenever I've used Linux to stream, it's always been through the browser, and it's generally worked fine for me.

  • Yeah I tried it last night just to fuck around and so much stuff doesn't work properly.

    When you flip into desktop mode it just immediately crashes.

  • I agree.

    Even using my examples of KOTOR and ME, comparing them to (relatively) modern counterparts, Jedi Survivor and Andromeda, you can see that the storytelling has taken a back seat to the open world. ME 1-3 were all very tight corridor cover shooters, going from fully constructed combat environment to another, while Andromeda tried to shoehorn in survival crafting and exploration. KOTOR has more deep RPG mechanics and overall a better story than Jedi Survivor, and I would agree it's because the focus changed on providing sprawling open worlds over more bespoke environments. I would also say that the combat in Andromeda and Jedi Survivor are superior to their older counterparts, but at the loss of other things.