I wouldn’t want Fallout 4’s incongruous fps shooting or the terrible “perk” system tainting FNV, tbh. Frankly I’d be pleased with the arrangement that Bethesda never touches FNV or anything related to it again, but blue sky thinking’s just that.

I mean you can be unconscious for more than head trauma. My thought was in line with heart issues and if the differences in sex played any part there, due to the differences in the appearance of problems with them between men and women, but maybe that’s not really relevant until they hit the hospital.(Since EMTs are stabilizing focused) Just having it on the card - avoiding the time needed to check especially if they’ve had surgery - seems helpful, if that was relevant. If its not of course it doesn’t need to be there but if there’s EMTs around chime in because obviously I don’t know.

I’d also add the consideration that a photo ID also serves the purpose of some base level medical information (or else our listing organ donor status on them is super weird) so having sex on there if you’re unconscious and the EMTs pick you up and need to check makes some sense. No reason both couldn’t work.

It continues to worsen the longer you try and consider the motivation for the 11 year old. Of which I can think of at least 2, if not more, but I’ll spare us all.

Nah, I loved changing out those disks. Core memory nostalgia material right there. Waste of time for sure, but one I remember fondly in hindsight.

I wonder how long it takes for some of those people to transfer to a more embittered relationship with Bethesda over it? Assuming any of them have that “I’m staring at a title screen realizing I haven’t actually had fun playing the game in weeks but the dopamine loop of the ‘loot, kill, craft’ system had me deluded into thinking I was enjoying myself. Like a social media doom-scroller or something” moment.

My love for the first two games is sortof why I’m avoiding it. I mean, I even didn’t like the concept of the proposed Black Hound game being called Baldur’s Gate 3. So I’m going to come in with opinions and just ruin it for myself even if its as good as some say, and that’s assuming WoTC having decades to ruin every scrap of coherency in the setting’s lore hasn’t impacted things negatively. (One thing I really appreciate about Larian’s handling of BG3 is that they gave me enough info to come to that conclusion first.)

I mean, that’s arguably incredibly conservative. “The old ways” and all that.

This is just my guess (I must solidly highlight that I haven’t played the game), but in normal D&D conditions its because you don’t survive Illithid tadpole implantation. Within about an hour or two you’re dead, and even if you kill the parasite before it completes its job you’re left pretty much brain-dead without a higher level Restoration or Heal spell because they directly eat gray matter.

They don’t just plug into your brain, they eat the gray matter and perform some sort of biological grafting between themselves and your nerves, then generate some sort of alien chemicals/hormones to morph the body over a week or more. So, despite BG3 letting you live, likely due to some sort of plot complication I’m unaware of slowing things down, killing the host isn’t likely to drive the parasite out of the body until its finished chowing down on your brain matter. (Even wild tadpoles left unattended eat brains until they grow into monsters.) Either way at this point you probably can’t actually be resurrected with Revivify, you’d need higher level Resurrection because your body isn’t fully intact anymore. (I mean, maybe you could but at best you’re in a brain-dead vegetative state with 1HP because Revivify doesn’t replace lost parts.)

Also a good chance the creature only abandoned the other host because they were already close to being out of brain food or something weird. Like them psychically being forced/ordered out of the host.

I fully expect Starfield was going to be disappointing, full stop.

If you play Planescape:Torment after this you might dig the Sensates/Society of Sensation. (Assuming that character has similar tastes to you.)

On top of some of the commentary here, I’d like to add that I think there’s a real chance that WoTC’s put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I’ll admit there’s more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don’t even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)

Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some “tried it didn’t like it” people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn’t seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.

I mean the first two parts are definitely true.But then we stayed for 10+ years attempting to rebuild some form of stability, decided to finally pull out after more than a decade, and what was built broke down disappointingly in the face of the first threat. Tmu, the reasons for that are varied, although some of its definitely on us. We approached the entire region’s politics wrong apparently and with a very modern western mindset of a country held together with an idea of some unified identity that doesn’t seem to really hold true for the region (or any region at first probably). I believe station/position abandonment in the fracturing nation was problematically common as people rushed back to their homes/families, or just to generally flee, instead of actually being a larger regional barricade against the threat, as an example.
IIRC, there was a similar problem with even the First Continental Army and Congress early on actually. With regional interests often superseding national goals in the minds of individuals and representatives.

So far as power vacuums go, as I alluded to, they had an elected government (there’s probably some debate on the accuracy of those elections while being occupied by a foreign government of course) and a standing military that was actively deployed. A not insignificant number of them tried to hold out, to not undercut their efforts, but its also true it wasn’t a truly unified defense in the end. Whether or not they would have been a more effective void-filler if we’d stayed longer or left sooner are just huge what-ifs.

There also seems to be a bit of weirdness even surrounding what “conservative” means. It used to mean an intent toward preservation of certain existing institutions/trends and preexisting stability, with a distrust for new institutions that may upset existing social calm. Which often is at odds with beneficial change but isn’t inherently against it, favoring instead that it be slow and precise. When I think of myself as conservative that’s the concept I have.

The problem is that “conservative” now can also include a group of people for which preserving an existing state (as in condition/mode of being ) is no longer acceptable, the demand either a reverse or entirely new directions.

As an example that’s a little less hot button - vouchers for private schools. That’s an active novelty and a change from an existing institution, rife with potential long-term impacts on both culture and stability that could be negative, and yet some positions push for it (often without addressing those problems). That’s not a conservative position. That’s a progressive one (maybe not in the direction someone on the left would want obviously).

Conservative got irrevocably linked with Right due to some preexisting social constructs and the urge to preserve them, but realistically it should hold just as well that a conservative would seek to preserve left-wing establishments as much as right-wing ones, or at least advise any changes to them be slow and incremental to avoid pop-up problems. Admittedly things like technology complicate that due to the speed with which it changes and demands response.

I’ve never even understood the whole “gay marriage” illegality thing. “You can’t sign a contract for mutual ownership of resources with someone you share a sex with”. What? You’re going to tell people they can’t sign over their cars to someone that share their hair color next? Literally insane.

I adore Minsc but feel like WoTC has started flooding him into stuff once they realized that he was popular. He’s in a comic, in Magic the gathering now, and I think even showed up in modules and games. Their involvement in any of this has made me trepidatious, tbh. It sounds like Larian may have made a good game despite them. (I have my own nitpicks there but I’m a very inflexible and nostalgic person, so that’s to be expected.)

I’m always thrown that the concept of managing inventory is always treated as such a huge burden. Most of the time its just a list you update with quantity and weight. It always feels like such a low lift thing for everyone to hate so much. Like seriously, even if you just want people to track how many arrows they fire some will get grouchy.