I, for one, hope this doesn’t lead to another ME2 (a staggering overcorrection to the flaws of its predecessor that introduced much deeper and more fundamental ones in the process).

Yes, this is true, we got female Quarians at a roughly equal rate to males.

Glad to see several of these: the fake email alerts, updating conversation tags when there’s new material behind them, deconstructing Deluxe gear, the broken Nomad Shield Crafting mission.

Pretty sure the intention is to refer to the paucity of female non-humans. There were no female turians, krogan, salarians, volus, or elcor in the first game at all. Asari don’t count since they’re monogendered. The only females were human, except for Tali. There was only 1 female krogan in the second game, and still…

No kidding. It’s not censorship when you’re localizing to adjust exact wording to account for cultural differences - it’s doing the job properly. The purpose of localization is to convey the original meaning, not slavishly parrot a literal translation. And unintentionally adding a racist and deeply offensive subtext…

Please explain how Anita Sarkeesian is any kind of “official.” Then please demonstrate how having a conversation wherein she was invited by the developers to visit them and discuss this topic is “examining” their work. Once you’ve done that, show us how some developers then voluntarily deciding to take into account…

The thing is, so long as both Microsoft and Sony stick to x86 chip architecture, there is no hardware-based reason why consoles actually need hard “generations” - they could function much more like PCs, where the software could upscale or downscale elements of the graphics to run efficiently on the hardware currently…

Sure, with the help of Russian cyber-intelligence running an active operation on his behalf. And riding a wave of systemic misinformation passed around inside a propaganda machine decades in the making that has ensured that a large fraction of the conservative base in the United States has no grasp of reality…

First, were non-Jewish Canadian children routinely circumcised in the late 1800s?

“People looking at this think I’m some kind of explicit ethno-nationalist, but I’m not,”

Yeah, me too. There was a tiny part of me that was hoping it was real, and that 45 would take over the briefings himself. Which would cause him to have a massive coronary on national television within a month.

Didn’t EA release a demo of Mass Effect Andromeda the other day, too? I know they put out one for ME3 when that first came out. DA2 as well, I think.

Bioware tends to be one of the few studios that can still convince me to pre-order a game, even with my vastly reduced gaming budget (partly due to less free cash than I once had, partly due to considerably reduced free time), and even with the missteps of DA2/ME2/ME3 (which all had parts I liked and parts I REALLY…

My parents weren’t precisely atheistic, but it would be fair to characterize them as agnostic. My dad is culturally Jewish, but religious observation was never really a big part of his life. My mother was raised Catholic, but became seriously disillusioned with the Church in her late teens. She’s acquired a vague sort…

Not necessarily, actually. Confirmation bias also plays a role - people will tend to look for reasons (or excuses) to like something they’ve chosen to invest in. This will influence different people to different degrees, and almost always unconsciously.

When it comes to public figures in positions of actual power, it is not necessary to know them personally to gain a sense of the kind of person they are: they have made decisions that have material effect on other people in measurable ways, and you can judge them on that basis.

There’s some pretty solid circumstantial evidence that he’s a cocaine addict, and probably also on at least a couple of dubious prescription medications - including one that’s supposed to reverse his balding, but has side effects that apparently exacerbate his narcissistic tendencies.

I’m pretty sure movie-Tolkein orcs (on which Shadow of Mordor is based) are asexual. We not only literally never see a female orc, but we do see some being born at Orthanc, full-grown, out of mucky cocoons. It’s not clear exactly how more of them are made, but I don’t think it’s through sexual reproduction.

I don’t disagree with anything you say, I was just speaking about this console’s success from a business standpoint. I’m fond of Nintendo’s software, but haven’t really been a fan of their hardware decisions for quite a while. The original NES was our second home console when I was a kid (we had an Intellivision…

Normally, this is very true, but this is a bit of a special case, I think. On the one hand, the Wii U does not have expensive, bleeding-edge hardware inside, and is a few years old. But on the other, the Switch has moderately advanced hardware designed to fit into a mobile device - that takes trade-offs of its own, in…