It also means more people can play on more hardware, it typically focuses the experience, it makes the interactive elements more visually distinguishable from the background graphics, it’s cheaper/faster to produce so less incentive to bloat with MTX to recoup massive investments, the scope is smaller so can be better aligned with a singular cohesive artistic vision, and the limited graphics encourages stylisation and artistic decisions when ‘photo real’ becomes not an option to target.

Also you don’t need to wait 10+ years for a game, just to receive a bloated mess where you only engage with 20% of the content yet had to wait for 100% of the development time, since at that point the investment demands it has to appeal to every possible consumer, only to still get a buggy unfinished release due to the massive scope. /rant. Anyway, indies are great and i love short games too.

Including Oblivion. I enjoyed it but it was a huge disappointment to me coming out of Morrowind. Bethesda reputation for me has been on Morrowind credit this whole time.

This reminded me of the Jar Jar Binks is a Sith lord theory

With such good indies, i don’t really need AAA. I prefer smaller, shorter, focused experiences anyway. AAA feels like a bloated predatory mess.

Maybe a good balance could be a human voice actor for main dialogue, supported by ai trained on their main dialogue to voice sidequest and deep lore dialogue. It could enable fully voiced dialogue-heavy games that would otherwise be too expensive to produce, something like generative RPGs or Morrowind, if all the books could be voiced, and more easily translated while remaining fully voiced. But keeping humans to fill the main campaign contributions, emotional beats and determine character personality. I’m just comparing Morrowind to Oblivion, which was voiced, but the dialogue and conversation trees were heavily reduced in volume as a result.

I didn’t think it was possible to make Google Assistant worse at this point tbh… but I’m sure Google can prove me wrong.

For me, i was burned by Diablo 3 (at launch), but I caved on D4 since the aesthetic did look more inline with what I wanted from the series, and a lot of time has passed, so I was hoping they had learned from D3… but no. So I also feel that D4 was the real dipping point for me, where it’s no longer an isolated incident.

I know people can chime in with the many times I should have learned this before D4, but I mostly didn’t actually buy those games. Plus, I already know it was dumb to buy D4, in retrospect, I just really love ARPGs and D2 (which they did manage to Resurrect really nicely).

MK2 was my first, and i still think it’s one of the best, or the most classic. MK1, the roster is too small and it’s too basic. MK2 is where it embraces the classic MK vibes. UMK3 remixes that with more modern styling and character elements, which was interesting in progression, but I think you could skip straight from MK2 to Trilogy and just drop in the deep end of the character craziness.

MK4 was also an interesting one in terms of characters and the shift into 3D for the first time. It wasn’t… great… but it was interesting.

After that, I wasn’t a big fan of the early modern 3D MK games, I couldn’t even play them all since they didn’t come out for PC (yes, I’m still bitter), but again I feel like you could skip these straight to Armageddon for early modern-era character craziness. It’s basically a generational sequel to Trilogy.

Then we get to the ‘last gen’ modern era of 9, X, 11, which i thought were great fun, and worth playing. The story is a ridiculous soap opera, but that’s critical MK DNA. Mechanics further refined, good character options. Other people already discussed these.

I haven’t played 1 yet, but it’s clearly another soft reboot, and looks really good to me.

Ofc this is all just my view on it. I have nostalgia and bias towards MK2, (3) and Trilogy :D

I moved from Google Search to Kagi, and I really like it. It’s a bit expensive though the experience is really nice, and you know where you stand with them as a customer, regarding their priorities/motivations.

Fair enough, but then it’s the same issue to try and convince them to add you on WhatsApp (or iMessage) if they use Telegram. The point is that these are all platforms that we similarly end up stuck on, depending on what most people in our community landed on. In that way it’s not so different to the situation in the US.

People only want to use one messaging client for all their contacts, and as long as the clients remain closed platforms, we are prevented from just using whichever client we individually prefer, we have to use the platform decided on by the community, or fight an uphill battle to get everyone to reluctantly install a second messaging app just for us.

Default launchers need ‘covers’ functionality, where a folder is opened via swipe, and tapping just launched the first app in the folder without needing to open it. It’s the main thing keeping me on custom launchers. That and icon packs.

Europe is a pretty similar situation with WhatsApp, where everyone is kind of forced to use that same platform, just luckily WhatsApp is available on iOS and Android.

Or Facebook Messenger, which I kind of have to use to talk to my relatives and some friends around the world.

Doesn’t have the same weird pressure to use one device manufacturer like in the US though, but trying to get someone (let alone everyone) to add you on Telegram or Signal can be a similar struggle, if they don’t see a value in the effort required to switch apps just for you.

I am not asking for a replacement to Google Drive, since that’s clear, I’m asking for a replacement to Google Photos, which means I’m referring to the functionality that makes Google Photos a separate product to Google Drive (aka, the fancy AI features, automatic image compression, automatic sorting, albums, search, etc).

I don’t know if it goes against Proton’s philosophy, that’s kind of besides the point. I’m just saying that for me to move from Google’s suite, as I would like to, this would be a blocker for me with Proton. It’s fine if Proton doesn’t want to address that market, it just means I personally would find it difficult to make the switch (and likely wouldn’t) even though I like a lot of what Proton is doing.

I’m sure it can work well for many others, so thanks for the recommendation, but personally I’m not interested in self hosting.

All the things that make Google Photos a separate product to Google Drive… that’s what I’m talking about.

I hope they might consider a Proton Photos, since Google Photos really holds me to Google Drive. And Proton AI for working with documents on Proton Drive.

I didn’t buy the Pixel almost entirely because it doesn’t support HDMI video out through the USB-C port. I use that to watch movies from my phone on hotel TVs, or my AR glasses, etc. So I went with the S22. Also has Dex, in case you want to use the phone as a tiny computer with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Firefox is dead to me until they bring back a proper tablet UI. No tab bar is a deal breaker.

Maybe it’s more about the taste, the texture, the subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark.

If this doesn’t get stopped, then these rules are pointless. But I guess the same could be said for other recent acquisitions that did go through fine with only minor tweaks.