I mean, the vast majority of “content” in the game is optional - not just the shards and astrariums. Honestly, you can skip most of the quests in the game (like rooting out Venatori), the stupid fetch quests in the Hinterlands (fetch me ten blankets, stick a herb on my dead wife’s grave!!!!), or the dragon fights.…

Technically, you can do this in Inquisition, it just results in a bad ending since you probably end up not completing some “crucial” quests that really are still boring fetch quests but just affect the main story.

Shit, at least DA2 had the excuse that it was made in a year - and it still came out with a half decent story and pretty good companion quests.* What’s DA:I’s excuse?

I mean, the shards are a pretty good example? The astrariums (while, puzzle/fetch quests), the pretty dull combat/fetch quests like getting the void tears.

Oh, and the shot of The Shimmer’s barrier was bringing to mind the shots of Solaris’ churning waters.

For me, Annihilation is too much like Solaris (1972). It’s way more body focused than Solaris (which was obviously more psychological). The relationship dynamic in Solaris is reversed in Annihilation, the “monster” in Annihilation is able to reflect/distort/refract pretty much like the planet in Solaris, and it pretty…

I’d say Annihilation is a body-horror version of Solaris, which I liked and didn’t like.

That scene where the one replicant is removed from the sleeve indicated to me that Luv was devoted to Wallace. Initially when Luv was crying, I though she hated Wallace. Her utter devotion to him, like a dog with its master, demonstrated later suggested that she adored him in some pathetic way.

I actually feel really bad for Luv. She seems to...love...Wallace. She’s totally devoted to his cause. I guess that makes her human in a way, her devotion.

To note: DA:I has the War Table function as the quest giver, the main way to communicate various functions about Haven/Skyhold and hub management, and lore dump.

As someone who has beaten the game on normal with about 200+ hours invested and beaten the game on insane with about 150+ invested (no dlc) I honestly feel like I can judge the shit out of this game.

If DA:I at least had it’s world(s) filled with anything but fetch quests I would’ve probably enjoyed the game...

I think that’s a fair reading - but I would say that this cruelty is what PKD is concerned about in the novel (and I would say the same for the first film, though I think Scott may have just inadvertently said something similar the more I hear his opinion about the universe and AI). This capacity for endless cruelty,…

I understand that the second film is pretty much building off the first film and ignoring the novel, but I would still say the second film even ignores some of Blade Runner’s themes. Blade Runner does establish that replicants are capable of empathy, humanity, and the like. The thing about the first film though is…

Sure they had hard lives, but they were totally remorseless in killing and no hard life justifies that. They never had a second thought, never considered the value of another person’s life at all. They were solely concerned about self-preservation to the point that anybody even partially in their way could justifiably…

Fair, but the issue is that Scott seems to think the first film’s themes are identical to the second film’s themes. I believe there’s an interview (the one where he complains about 2049's length) where Scott says most of the story is his built off his ideas. It just muddles some of the first films themes for a lot of…

Remember though, the replicants often killed or attacked unnecessarily. The replicants also never had a second thought about killing and showed a lack of remorse about doing so (except for Roy, who does transcend as you point out). Deckard, importantly, always felt bad about killing the replicants - which fits with…

““To me, the replicants are deplorable. They are cruel, they are cold,

I totally agree that 2049 sets up more “requirements” to be considered human than just having children.

Scott has continually moved from the original meaning of the novel (as implied by PKD), being human is empathizing and lack of selfishness, to this idea that the replicants just *are* human as long as they can think. The first film (even the different cuts, though each cut hurt the original message) imo got most of…