Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

Not seen mention of this here (unless I'm blind again).

The Division 3 boss Julian Gerighty has left Ubisoft for Battlefield Studios.

It's got to be tough for Ubisoft when he was put in charge of the whole franchise only a couple of years ago. It's hard to say how much of an effect this will have on The Division 3.

@ZeroE Yeah I've put a load of hours into the first 2 with my brother (and he has done hundreds more on his own) so I'm pretty excited for it too. I'd like to think it won't have too much of an impact as I'm fairly sure all, or most, of the creative leads and staff of the series are still on it.
I haven't played it in a long time though but my brother plays the survival mode for the original frequently so he's also eager for the survival mode coming for 2.

@ZeroE I've seen a lot of those trucks offline but never driven one. They knew better than to allow me behind the wheel of one of those monsters. The biggest truck I've seen would be a RT-2PM. They carry the Topol system, they are huge. I see them at parades and things now and then. They weren't designed for the best intentions but I'm fascinated by the engineering and the massive size. You can feel the ground tremble as they drive past, truly powerful. The big E-7310 in Mudrunner is based of a MAZ-7310. They carry the BM-30 Smerch system, again not built for the best intentions but it's the engineering and size I'm interested in. I saw the Chinese PHL-03 model at a show once too. Each time I see these trucks I think 'put this in Snowrunner', I want to drive them minus the payload. I'm not sure what they'd even carry. perhaps a radio mast would work. I had one in Space Engineers, someone sent it to me one day.

It looks small there, it was huge. I drove it everywhere.

It's a fantastic game but everyone I knew who played it were actual engineers. It's took me so long to even make my first flight, then I crashed into a million little pieces. I've seen ships and vehicles on there that people spent months on. Of all the building games I'd say that's the most impressive, it takes a lot of smarts to build and work each system and mechanic needed for a build to function. My most advanced one was a ship that could take of vertically then drop two big drills and lower itself into the ground to mine minerals. I had maybe fifty pages of notes, all based on that one build.

It doesn't look like much but just trying to get that thing to stay in the air took days. It worked out great in the end. Those bits sticking out are thrusters. Each one had to work off a computer I built so that it could go forwards/backwards/left/right/up/down and so the drills could rotate, the minerals could travel up the drills into a storage unit. It was fast too I put it right through the wall of my home. Then there are power requirements too, it's a great game but you need a PhD in rocket science to reach anything even resembling end game. Fun fact both of Jack Blacks parents were rocket scientists. They worked on both Apollo 13 and the ground systems for the Hubble Space Telescope.

If Paw Patrol was Charlies Angels I imagine Ryder would be Charlie, that's a terrible comparison but I don't know what else he's supposed to be doing in the game. He hasn't lifted a finger to help.

As a result I've never completed either of the modern God of War games. And won't ever.

• That's a series I've been meaning to try for years. I don't know if you know Dante's Inferno? It's similar, I've played that one and would again if it came to Premium, the store, or if they remade it.

@KidRyan Have a very happy birthday. I hope it's fun 🎂 🎉 🎈🎁 🥳 🧸

@ZeroE It's impressive to see what the community build but they are on another level of understanding. I think console has a community hub now too so people can download and share builds. I never stuck with the game that long, I kept thinking of other things I should have been doing outside of the game. Which is also why I didn't game for so long until tonight, Paw Patrol helped to bridge the gap. Which isn't something I thought I'd ever be saying but it's not the bad. I better go to bed though, and thank you for the conversation, glad to hear you are doing better. I was worried when I saw your words last week, everyone deserves to be happy. I hope talking helped.

@ZeroE I wasn't really feeling that bad, just a little raw. And I wanted to be completely candid with you as you come across extremely sincere and interested. Kind of unapologetically yourself, it's refreshing. I've worked hard over years and years to reach a point of self control of stability and me tal balance, but it really just means the lid is fastened on tighter.

• That's part of turning emotional blindness into a super power. Being raw is sort of my default setting, but not in a bad way. Something I often hear in the organizations I support is 'I would have told someone sooner but I felt guilty, and ashamed and it felt like they'd judge me'. That's with men, women, children, and it's always those same emotions. Men especially, they go years without approaching anyone for help, I know you did seek help but some never do. They remain in a really bad situation, fully accept their circumstance and it breaks them down as a person then they wake up one day and think they deserve no better. Waking up in the morning is surviving, not thriving.

What you said about that past relationship matched word for word what someone said just before Christmas and it made my ears go up, I recognized where that could have gone. His wife was arrested, she hit him with a toaster. Knocked him out, and that was normal because of allowing dangerous escalation. It happens so often, I can't help but see those emotions as barriers, they delay much needed help and support. I didn't always have that super power either so I can recognize when it activates and then do something about it. I can recognize those feelings and emotions in that other person, just not in myself. It allows me to be honest and candid like you said. I have all of the help and support that I need, but I know others don't and that bothers me. That same super power allowed me to talk to you that first night like I'd known you for years. I saw something there, and didn't second guess talking to you. The downside is having no filter, not recognizing taboo or inappropriate-cy, but I think the good outweighs the bad. I'd rather be free flowing and blunt than stagnant and inaccessible. Ninety nine percent of my life is insulted, being able to talk to normal people like you is the exception. I once had a lid of my own then I took it and flung it away like a Frisbee. I don't need nor want that lid to come back like a boomerang.

I've worked hard over years and years to reach a point of self control of stability and me tal balance, but it really just means the lid is fastened on tighter.

• It's possible to have all of the above and loosen that lid a little, like everything it takes time. You have it in you, everyone does and it sounds like you are trying to do something about it.

That's awesome that Paw Patrol offered a little something when you needed it. Very cool.

• I had a dream about it too, I'm playing it without the sound today. I can't listen to that Ryder child again he entered my dreams. I'm going to play a wine making simulator or something after this.

I've heard good things about this one, so maybe. Once I hundred percent Paw Patrol.

Finally getting hot water back tomorrow. And the washing machine packed up today. Think I’ve awakened some sort of primordial curse.

@nessisonett This happened to a friend so maybe.

[I deleted the rest after you read it]

@GirlVersusGame There’s always the general feeling of ‘maybe things will turn around’ but I don’t see any end in sight.

@nessisonett All I can think of is Jeff Goldblum and life finds a way.

[I deleted the rest after you read it]

@nessisonett Just wanted to say, I really hope you're simply front-loading a year's worth of bad luck, and that things start to get sorted for you real soon.

Honestly, if you can endure this past month, you can endure anything! You got this!

@Ravix So you've actually played The Witcher 3 more than me? 😭😂 how did I miss this? So it is just the books/audiobooks that you need to consume next?

• Across two accounts it would be the PS4/PS5 versions and the DLCs then I lost that account (I think, it's complicated) and then did the same on my newer account. Four Witcher 3 hundred percents, oh and maybe Xbox. So I guess that makes me a bigger Witcher fan than you? Except that I haven't watched the show, and those audiobooks are on Audible so they are definitely up next, unabridged too. I just have to find the right game to mix them into, it might be boring old Rimworld again or Satisfactory. It looks like I can get through all the books in about eighty hours, that's not bad. Discworld was maybe four hundred hours and Penguin just released them again so I have to go through them again. With a lineup like that how could you not, I've already listened to maybe five. I recently finished the new recordings of Lovecrafts work too, crystal clear and very well narrated. Hopefully the Witcher will be too.

I got bamoozled with Paw Patrol, the trophy site said four hours to one hundred percent. I've already logged twenty two hours, I need to see the end soon.

This man has been keeping me sane, also twenty two hours.

It might be the heat (it was 20 degrees today, I'm kind of melting) but those games were also around the same time and they felt much shorter. This feels like it's taking days. Also those CatQuest games are really good.

Edit: Thirty one hours later and it's over. I just noticed there's a third Catquest game, I might try that next.

@Werehog I at least have running hot water again finally! Had to bite the bullet and get into more debt to pay up a washing machine, it’s one of those things that you need. At this point, I’m running out of things to sell though, hopefully someone takes the records I‘ve listed on Discogs. Got knocked back by Morrisons so safe to say the job hunt is going well 😂

Thanks for remembering! I ate some pizza and platinumed Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I also opened these gifts from my Mom.

@GirlVersusGame Nice! Good job 😄

I can't deny my own lack of interest in trophy hunting, though. So I can't exactly relate to it or the trophy hunting site's accuracy. Like, I love The Witcher, but I think i'd go mad if I actually tried to 100% it, even once. I'm wired different (with loose connections all over) though. And thus I have very few platinums. I'd say maybe 3 or 4 all time, if that.

The audiobooks, as I mentioned to Sol, are great, but with some quirks. It is always better to read first for the best absorbtion, but the audiobooks definitely help with time and ease, especially if multitasking and travelling, as well. (Did you already read the books, i'm questioning everything now, including my memory) Peter Kenny is a legendary VA, but sometimes the translations mean he is shortchanged. The most notable being the constant changing of how Dandelion is spelled and thus pronounced. His work with all the main characters is top notch, especially by the time the novels kick off, as there is obviously a consistency. And some of his peasants and side characters really are top tier (some less so, but easy to forgive when he audibly characterises every single character in the books) I kind of hope they use him in TW4 in some capacity for some secondary characters or peasant NPC's. Easter Egg opportunities abound. I think the first english Audiobooks came out around the same time as the game, but since have become quite well-loved. So it would be cool to see something done as a nod to that.

Cat Quest... or KCD? (Play KCD 😛)

Thanks for remembering! I ate some pizza and platinumed Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I also opened these gifts from my Mom.

• I might have made a note of it, and you're really welcome. It's hard to beat pizza and gaming. Is Spiderman your favorite Superhero? mine's Batman, I've seen all the movies, watched the cartoon series and played most of the games. I haven't played Spiderman yet but it sounds like a lot of fun. Your Mum has very good taste in clothes, she covered every style and design expertly. I love the colours of Spyro, the sharpness of Kingdom of Hearts and the retro'ness of Astrobot. I think my next game will be Catquest 3, I liked the other two and didn't know they'd made a third. I'll have to try a Spiderman game soon, there's at least two now and I do like a good open-world.

@Ravix I can't deny my own lack of interest in trophy hunting, though. So I can't exactly relate to it or the trophy hunting site's accuracy.

• It's part OCD, part perfectionist and a lot of me just trying to grab that genuine well done, I'll get it eventually. You'd have a lot of fun going for 100% on the Witcher, it's not that hard at all. Death March difficulty is much easier on PS5, everything is more smooth and responsive. I think something like Gwent might be a deal breaker, there are cards you can miss. Now I'm wondering what those three or four are. Perhaps Kingdom Come.I think i'd go mad if I actually tried to 100% it, even once.
• We're inverted because I'd go mad if I didn't.

It is always better to read first for the best absorbtion, but the audiobooks definitely help with time and ease, especially if multitasking and travelling, as well. (Did you already read the books, i'm questioning everything now, including my memory)

• True but I like to do three things at once so audio-books really help, and then there are some hiccups with the language barrier. I tend to sleep when I travel, which will hopefully be soon because I'm missing England again and going from the coldest of Winter to literal Summer in one week really threw me this time. I expect to see a lot of rain, which you might not like walking in but I like watching it. You know that Placebo song 'English Summer Rain?' that's my song for England, but I like the rain.

Apparently there's a frost warning today, I kind of want to see what frost in the desert looks like. It's really bizarre seeing how different cultures handle different dips in weather, it's a little frost and people are 'we must prepare for the chill'. I told them 'habibi come to Siberia I'll show you minus twenty'. I'd love to see snow in the dessert, there's snow in The Sahara right now and for the first time in decades. One of the guys said I brought it with me, I told him you're welcome. It's sort of like The Amity Affliction 'I Bring the Weather With me', except not in a sad way, the literal weather.

I've only heard him read some Voltaire and to be honest Voltaire sounds better in French, but I imagine he'll do a good job with The Witcher. Well I thought he was Dan'de'Lion, or Dan'de'Leon, how does he pronounce it?

Cat Quest... or KCD? (Play KCD 😛)

This cat feels extremely sluggish after how fast the puppies were, especially in fire engines etc. I managed to get enough speed up to break through the map. Never mind I unlocked sprint, they have a pistol too.

@GirlVersusGame definitely no platinum for KCD. I like the game and the immersion, but i'm not going to play an entire 100 hour playthrough avoiding killing, I imagine that would be insanely hard to do and take away a lot of the game's mechanics i.e 'combat' in a game focused on lots of combat 😅 I can see how it would work up to a point where you can run away, or avoid bad situations by playing as a very normal person, but in a full on battle when met with an enemy, i'm not exactly sure how it would work. Obviously it is possible, but I can imagine it would take real effort. I think I enjoy the combat in the games too much so even if it would be interesting to some extent, as a role play, it would take out too much of the core gameplay, for me.

One was a golf game, I'm sure I had a few on an old account, but never on purpose. More like "oh what's that? A trophy? Okay... moving on" I think once I saw the GTA4 platinum involved catching pigeons and stuff like that? And I just thought, that isn't fun, no thanks. Even if I played the game a bunch of times start to finish, I would never play it to catch digital pigeons. To me, that would just suck as I didn't play it as a pigeon catching simulator. It just seems like a game within a game that I have no interest in.

Exactly, so audiobooks are perfect for that. And suit your needs perfectly, anyway. I got in to them first when I was travelling a fair distance, too, mostly as a way to pass time and reconsume The Witcher, and they sort of became a go-to, almost part of a routine from that. It used to be more music, then podcasts, but a well narrated audiobook is pretty sweet. I wish more were better produced and well acted.

Interesting, should I get some Peter Kenny narrated Voltaire added to my collection? Any recommendations there? Weirdly I did a quick search just now and his official headshot from his younger years popped up, and he legitimately looks like a real Witcher 😭 I have never seen a person look more like a Witcher than this (i'll tag in @Th3Solution for this random tangent)

I'll tell you who isn't a sluggish cat... Pebbles the horse from... (i'll stop now...)

Play KCD 😛

A frosty desert does does sound worth seeing. Only weather news i've heard is that they are trying to drum up a 'Beast from the East' again for the UK. But as usual it will probably just mean there will be snow in the Cairngorms 🙄 (there's basically always snow in the Cainrgorms is the joke there 😅)

@Ravix Avoiding killing for an entire hundred hours sounds like how I play the Hitman games. I tend to throw fire extinguishers at people then hide them in a big pile. I like how inventive that can be so I make myself play without killing people, except the targets. I've thrown so many fire extinguishers. I imagine in Kingdom Come Deliverance you hit them with a stick or a stone or maybe ride over them.

I can understand not going after things like pigeons in Grand Theft Auto and Feathers in Assassins Creed. The roots in Skyrim were some of the most annoying and that was only for a quest. I thought the herbal one for Red Dead Redemption would be fun because it's picking flowers, the same for the animals. I never got one hundred percent because of those. I think both The Witcher and Far Cry had caches, that took a while. Batman was especially time consuming for the Riddler trophies, I never want to do that again. Most one hundred percents are fun, but I won't do it for every game. Fenyx was fun too, I don't know if people skipped that game, I was hoping for a sequel.

It was only Candice but I think he did a very good job of narrating it. I'm not sure if you are familiar with it. I'd say it's timeless, and there's that word sheltered too. I'd call it an adventure novella.

• When Candide is cast out of his sheltered life, he embarks on a journey filled with war, natural disasters, betrayal, and heartbreak—all while clinging to the optimistic philosophy of his mentor, Pangloss. As he travels across Europe and the Americas, encountering a bizarre array of characters and suffering the harsh realities of life, Candide’s faith in idealism is repeatedly tested. In this classic satire, Voltaire skewers the pretensions of philosophy, religion, and social systems, offering a compelling critique of human nature. A timeless classic, Candide is a powerful exploration of optimism, human folly, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.

You can keep your golf game, it's the one activity that I'll just watch from afar. My Partner stopped asking me to go, he knows I can't do golf at all. You missed Zero and I's discussion over the weekend about soccer or football or both. All I could think of was Football Factory, Green Street and The Firm. That was an interesting night. I learned some Interesting facts like how bad the New York Jets are, I slotted that away for the next time someone mentions football.

I did a quick search just now and his official headshot from his younger years popped up, and he legitimately looks like a real Witcher 😭

• Oh he does, that's a good find. He also looks like he wants to tell me about his NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) band over a cup of tea.

A frosty desert does does sound worth seeing. Only weather news i've heard is that they are trying to drum up a 'Beast from the East' again for the UK. But as usual it will probably just mean there will be snow in the Cairngorms 🙄 (there's basically always snow in the Cainrgorms is the joke there 😅)

• I just checked and there are reindeers up there, weird. You know what's weirder, someone here was watching a TV show set in Yorkshire. Fully dubbed too, it was about a farm up in the hills. I thought of the pictures you shared a couple of week ago, it looked just like that except they were growing the animals there, they weren't free range etc. Watch The Beast From the East land right as I do, we narrowly missed the last storm, it looked like the grounded a lot the commercial flights. I'm overdue a trip to a certain pet-farm I've visited a couple of times, maybe in Spring when they have babies etc. I can't promise I won't try to borrow some.