To appreciate Karlach one has to experience her, because I’d heard stories and was not prepared for the Karlachness she brings to every situation.

Merchandize is a verb, but in this sentence structure the verb can be used as a noun anyway, so it’s irrelevant.

He’s a frontman for a massive money laundering organization funded by taxpayer dollars and backed by his old buddies who he started one of several companies with that he was fired from that he ended up owning stock in that were sold to even larger companies.

That is a totally fair perspective-I only bring it up because I think history is going to be much kinder to this game than reviews/comment sections would indicate. Because this game has obvious flaws, but there is something about it that is really compelling.

Thanks to Gamepass I didn’t waste my money and have Sea of Stars right there.

Starfield’s weapon modding is great for me, as was Fallout 4's. All of the building and crafting mechanics are pretty good except for that garbage cargo linking system that was just done better in Fallout 4 almost a decade ago.

Worse exploration than Fallout 4, worse narrative design than Fallout 76, worse world-building than Fallout 3, worse persuasion mechanics than Oblivion.

Space travel is cheap, supply lines for goods aren’t. Hypothetically you can travel from one end of the US to the other on foot in 1620, but it took 200 years for non-Spanish Europeans to do it. The game addresses this pretty well -- although leaves the player with the unfortunate realization that you are literally…

It’s not risky to implement a mechanic you don’t see until you’ve finished the game and which you can completely ignore. Also, they clearly meant it as a metacommentary on the god-seeking prowess of the typical gamer, but much like Trevor as a stand-in for certain players in Grand Theft Auto 5, they didn’t realize…

My biggest problem with Bethesda’s design ethos is “The Sweetroll Principle.”

“It is by the Divine Will of God that I was born rich. How can you not recognize your proper place in making sure to suffer so I stay rich?”

“I was hired by the shareholders to make sure you work hard and get paid nothing. I am being paid in stock, so I, too, am primarily a shareholder who only makes money if I don’t pay you anything. Now buckle down and make sure they made the right choice in goon to exploit you and pay you nothing!”

Not going to lie. I suspect there’s some executive resistance to having two Black hosts in a row.

If the business isn’t worker owned, then the purpose of the business is to take money from workers and give it to shareholders. Insofar as that works, firing workers is just an asset relocation since having no workers is the ideal business model.

Starfield built a bunch of ancillary mechanics solely to incentivize you buying skill points and leveling up by engaging with its central mechanics — shooting people and flying in your spaceship.

There’s a balance in there. Each planet has its own collection of resources for crafting and they’re not all available in every galaxy. This is where fuel costs for travel, outposts, and environmental hazards all come in to play.

Inflation-adjusted rent used to be A LOT cheaper in most places, and that’s what people spend most of their money on in any city.

If the market wasn’t increasing to match the cost of development, then profits would go down.

Nintendo’s profits went up almost 25% last year. Lockdown ended two years earlier. Those skyrocketing profits aren’t related all that much to people being locked inside.

There are literally THOUSANDS of games released in a generation. So ToTK only sold a couple million copies? Cool. Nintendo’s profits went up 28.41% from 2022-2023 for a total in final profits of 5.23 billion dollars from revenue of 15.09 billion dollars.