Uranhjort

Oh hey it’s that time again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc

A man in his position has people for that sort of dirty work. Mind you that sick, broken troglodyte might have done it just for kicks.

This turned into a long un. Short version: These are both fair points, but ones you would expect a game heralded as the best of all time to do better.

Long version: That’s a fair question, to me there’s very few good examples and so many bad ones, which is why I largely avoid games described as such. For an open world setting to draw me in it must employ the aspect of exploration to reward the player with more than just gameplay resources - worldbuilding lore, storytelling or knowledge that impacts the main story.

The better parts of Fallout 4 did it well I thought, while trekking towards your destination you could come across an interesting looking building which can be explored to learn why it’s full of super-irradiated ghouls or an extremely predatory deathclaw. The world is also dotted with little nuggets of environmental storytelling that have no bearing on anything but serves to add texture and context to the world, to make it seem as though it’s somewhere people live - or at least lived.

I found nothing of the sort in Breath of the Wild. If you followed the most direct path to the giant glowing pillars the game invited you to use for navigating you may come across another goblin camp or fairy hiding under a rock, none of which compels you to keep exploring further save for the fact that you need a steady supply of weapons to replace the papier-mâché ones that are apparently in vogue. Other than the towers, the identical dungeon entrances and the occasional settlement the terrain is virtually featureless.

To your second point, it’s absolutely true that no game can force you to care about the motivations of the protagonist, but most of them at least try. Link wakes up to a voice in his head, grabs a tablet and off he goes saving the princess. Why does any of this matter to him?

With the context of growing up playing The Legend of Zelda, you already know this - bees sting, birds fly and Link rescues Zelda. For someone new to the franchise it just seems gratuitous, and it’s never expanded upon either. Link is as blank a slate at the conclusion of the story as when he woke, ready, presumably, to be put on ice till the next time Zelda needs rescuing.

Both of these criticisms can be applied fairly to any game, it’s true. But Breath of the Wild and it’s sequel are constantly highlighted as exemplars not just of the genre, but of the whole medium. It’s fair then to expect something that’s excellent in every aspect, which is absolutely not what I’ve found through many attempts to play them.

How unlike are they though? I haven’t played any of the other games, but from what I’ve seen the chief difference is the open world setting, the gameplay loop is mostly the same.

It didn’t seem like a particularly well executed open world to me, either - while it did give the option to stray from the most direct route to the next dungeon, what you found if you did was mostly emptiness. It even had you climb honest to god Ubisoft towers to uncover the map.

Regardless, I felt like I was missing a frame of reference from the very start. It’s just as well there was no sense of urgency to the central conflict, because I was given no reason to care about the stoic mute elf child or his damsel in the castle.

Having tried and failed to get into it some 8 or 9 times, I have to agree. Maybe it’s different if you grew up playing The Legend of Zelda, but I just found the visuals drab, the combat overly simple and yet slow, and above all like it was trying to be deliberately aggravating to play.

Not at all what one expects from one of the most acclaimed video games of all time, I do wonder how it would have performed had an unknown studio released it as their first game.

The multinational corporations I’ve worked with in Copenhagen were English language, from the executive suite to the mail room.

And while it’s true you’ll need to offer a skill that’s in demand, the list currently includes hairdresser, baker and landscape gardener among others, not to mention pretty much all the trades, and none of them requires a diploma.

Once you master all the business with half twenties it’s just a matter of memorising which article randomly goes with every noun, knowing you’ll sound crazy if you get it wrong.

Easy peasy, or as they say here, “kamelåså”!

You will be absolutely fine speaking only English to start with in the nordics as well, especially if you can land a position in one of the capitals. You will be required to (and absolutely should!) learn the national language if you mean to fully migrate and become a citizen, but I’ve known people who’ve lived and worked here for decades who still only have a tenous grasp on Danish.

Leave it to natalists to make extinction seem the better option.

Or install Decky and its plugin Unifydeck to have your Epic and GOG libraries appear seamlessly in your Steam library.

Huh, with the sheer volume of Aussie bartenders and waiters I’ve met here in Copenhagen I assumed there was already an open border agreement in place.

Happy to hear they’ll be free to bring more great banter from down under.

Humming, wrapping all my niblings’ Christmas presents while listening to stories of hideous industrial accidents that ruined thousands of lives on Fascinating Horror.

Just anything evil-aligned would do to show that they at least understand that they’re on the wrong side of history.

You have to give it to Palantir (and nothing else), taking their name from a corrupted artifact that shows you whatever it needs to entice you but ultimately betrays everyone it touches displays an admirable sense of self-awareness.

Granted, it’s just incredible how someone can go through Aragorn’s story about a scion king using loyalty and honor to unite disperate peoples against the mindless hordes of a tyrannical warlord and missing the point so catastrophically that your only takeaway is “that’d make a cool name for my company making mindless hordes for a tyrannical warlord”.

Maybe that’s the point.

Why DO so many dystopically inclined companies have names taken straight from Tolkien anyway?

If you’re taking your eyes off the road to satisfy your smug little ego, while passing no less, you’re the idiot in that exchange.

Yet.

It’s ReCaptcha owned by Google, if you’re using a non-Chrome browser or an ad blocker it punishes you with tedium. Probably illegal to sabotage your competition but when did that ever stop them.

To “cry wolf”, raising a false alarm for attention. In the story the idiom references Peter’s sheep are eventually devoured by wolves as he cries for help, which the villagers assume is yet another prank.

Time will tell if truth matches fiction.

My employer was taken out of commission by a ransomware attack for nearly a month.

About when that concluded, my fiancée contracted severe pancreatitis from a fairly routine surgery and has been fighting for her life ever since.

My doctor chalks down all the extreme dizziness and sleepless nights I’ve had down to stress. I have to hope she’s right cause I really don’t have the energy to spare for being ill right now.

So in summary, less than great so far.