I’ve played a bit of Far Cry…3? No, Far Cry 4. Idk, the one with the guy in the pink suit, lol. And yeah, that world was chock full of stuff. Maybe even a bit too much – there’s no pleasing me, apparently – but it definitely felt more alive and interesting. Which I’ll take any day over barren and empty. I’ve enjoyed the GTA series and at least Sleeping Dogs 2, for the same reasons.

I have some friends who keep recommending RDR2. That’s another one where the story and setting dictate the emptiness. But I’m hesitant to buy it because of that.

I’m getting my 13yr badge in November. Idk. I don’t think I’m deleting my account. I couldn’t even muster up the willpower to delete my Twitter account that I’ve had since 2009, that I’ve barely used for the last several years.

So to delete my reddit account, that I use everyday – except at least today and tomorrow; probably first time in several years, maybe even a decade – feels wrong.

My goal, however, is to reduce my activity on reddit over time. Give up my remaining mod positions. Start unsubscribing from subreddits little by little. Maybe just use it for researching work related thing. So far, Beehaw/Lemmy and Tildes and Mastodon have been holding my attention pretty well. We’ll see.

Well that’s good to know at least. Still not sure I’ll ever try it again, but at least if I do, I’ll know that I can just yolo it. That’s generally my favorite my part of some games. Seeing if I can make whatever the hell I’m doing work for me. Doesn’t have to be the best or strongest tactic; it just needs to work!

FF7 is a great game. One of my favorites. And for quite a long time, people say that it aged well.

I don’t think that’s true anymore. And probably hasn’t been true for years.

But you know what’s even better than the original? The FF7 Remake. I was somewhat ambivalent about it. Cautious, even. Because I knew it was going to be real-time active battles instead of the old traditional turn-based system. And I like the latter (because I’m bad at real time stuff). But SE did a fantastic job on the remake with the battle system. It’s so much fun. I even think the updated story is great. I highly recommend it to anyone who didn’t really like the original FF7.

Breath of the Wild probably tops my list, largely for the same reason as others. But in the particular, it’s the emptiness. I get that it’s part of the story, but I still hate the emptiness of it. What good is an open world if it’s largely devoid of content and interaction? That criticism probably encompasses many open world games. Subsquently. I don’t play a whole lot of them.

Path of Exile is another. While I enjoyed Diablo 1, 2, and 3, any maybe will eventually get Diablo 4, I’ve never been a hardcore player of any entries in the series. I think what annoys me the most with PoE is that it seems like you can’t have an organic experience in that game. Whenever I asked how I should be speccing out my character, I just got the answer – from multiple people – “Oh just find a build guide online.” OK…but I don’t know any of the builds. Or anything about the game. So what am I supposed to do, just sit there and research build guides, reading about things I don’t even understand, before I even really get into the game? When I said I’d just wing it for a bit like I do in every other game, I kept hearing, “Oh you’ll have a bad time then…” OK well then forget it. I just won’t play. I’m really not a fan of min-maxing. Also, the trade system and lack of actual currency sounded horrendous to me. There’s a reason we have currency in real life.

Huh I hadn’t heard about Stack Overflow’s protest. Found these articles:

“Stack Overflow strives to protect community content from AI firms, striking mods say “re-enable the data dumps””

“Stack Overflow Moderators Stop Work in Protest of Lax AI-Generated Content Guidelines”