One thing that I think hampers the Borderlands franchise's storytelling is how crowded the universe is with beloved and memorable characters, while each game establishes new player characters who increasingly feel like tourists in other people's stories.
It feels like they've decided Lilith is the main character of the series, which is fine, I love her, but 3 really feels like I'm just tagging along on her war, a feeling that started in 2.
Every new location I go to, I'm immediately thrust into a story in progress involving characters who are more invested in the events unfolding that my character is. And I love these characters, new and old. I just feel like a roving supporting character.
I like the gameplay well enough and I enjoy the characters and I even like the stories. I'm just not convinced it's the best combination of story and medium.
Yeah, this is something that is a big difference between 2 and 3. It really felt like Jack was engaged in a conversation with the Vault Hunters in BL 2, whereas Tyreen just seems to be talking *at* me.
I think Borderlands 3 would work better if instead of taking something precious from Lilith, Tyreen took something from the player character in the opening act. Then it would feel like PC vs. villain instead of NPC vs. villain and also the PC is there.
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I'm re-reading A Christmas Carol to test this, but the thing is, I don't think Marley and Scrooge are even good businessmen. I don't think a single point of this editorial is actually supported by the text.
The *idea* behind the WSJ editorial is that Marley and Scrooge created wealth that enabled people to build railroads and factories that raised the standard of living for the nation and the world, but I don't see any indication in the text they invested in those things.
I'm re-reading because this is one of the most adapted works in the English language and so it's hard to separate my memories of the adaptations from the texts, but the impression I have is that Scrooge's main business is the equivalent of sub-prime mortgages.
I was given the most precious gift of all, @dimension20show merch. First up, the Goddess of Gold Gardens and a Gold Gardens tee!
Next up is a mug featuring the warmth and wisdom of everyone's favorite anarchist halflings, the Cubbies.
And then we have the Corn Cuties, whom @BrennanLM once vainly insisted are not adorable. The Dungeon Master's word is mostly infallible, but can be overruled by the marketing department.
Never worked face to face retail but when I did catalogue sales, I worked on 9/11/2001. A woman called and when I answered, she asked if we were open and when I confirmed that we were, she lost it and started demanding to know why.
As I have said on this site before, I bear this woman no ill-will and I sympathize with and believe I understand her reaction. It was the weirdest thing that happened to me but not the worst.
She was calling a party supply company so probably she had some event coming up with a fixed date that she had to get ready for even if the world had just turned upside down. She probably called thinking there was no chance she would get through but she needed to do something.
I'm slightly obsessed with this "#PenceCard" nonsense which is like the Platonic ideal of the current level of Trump election stealing conspiracy theory nonsense.
Here's a thing about the United States: the vice president famously *does nothing*. By design. The job is not like the vice president of marketing or whatever where the guy has a job. Mike Pence is the spare president. He's there in case anything happens to the first one.
In the original formulation under the constitution, the vice president was the runner-up of the presidential race. Nobody ran for it. There was no assumption that it would be an ally of the president; more likely they would be rivals.
If you're lost as to why the stimulus bill has a passage dealing with this, that, or the other thing, or why it's thousands of pages long if it was just written at the last minute: it's not a stimulus bill. It's an a must-pass spending bill the stimulus was folded into.
I just saw somebody asking how they call it a "consolidated" bill when it's so long and this is the answer: it's long *because* it's consolidated. They consolidated a bunch of funding and other priorities into one giant bill.
I think this is an area where Congress needs to be better at explaining itself and its doings, because every once in a while the whole country pays attention and doesn't know what's normal or how things work.
The thing about Geordi treating Data like a person is that's just how he relates to technology; Data is the first machine to love him back.
The writers had him fall in love with a hologram he made of a married woman and the journal entries of a supposedly dead woman. Not only were his romantic plots with inanimate simulacra, but simulacra of unattainable partners.